The Medium

Resolution Scaling

The Medium presents a classic GPU-bound scaling pattern with this Intel Core i3-12100F + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 combination, but the magnitude of the drop from 1080p to 4K reveals where the bottleneck shifts. At Low settings, the frame rate falls from 144.7 FPS at 1920x1080 to 138.4 FPS at 2560x1440, a modest 4.4% reduction, then drops sharply to 107.6 FPS at 3840x2160, a 25.6% decline from the 1080p figure. This pattern indicates that at Low settings and lower resolutions, the CPU is the limiting factor, as the 144.7 FPS ceiling aligns with the processor's multithreaded capabilities rather than the GPU's headroom.

Moving to Medium settings, the scaling becomes more linear: 99.2 FPS at 1080p, 84.1 FPS at 1440p (a 15.2% drop), and 64.6 FPS at 4K (a 34.9% drop from 1080p). The High preset shows similar behavior with 71.1 FPS at 1080p, 63.5 FPS at 1440p (10.7% lower), and 50.1 FPS at 4K (29.5% lower). Ultra settings produce the steepest curve: 56.3 FPS at 1080p, 48.3 FPS at 1440p, and 40 FPS at 4K. The 1080p-to-1440p deltas shrink as settings increase, confirming that the RTX 5070's rendering workload becomes the dominant constraint at higher presets, while the 4K-to-1080p gap remains consistent at roughly 29-35% across Medium, High, and Ultra.

The data indicates that at 4K with High settings, the combination produces 50.1 FPS, which is playable but not smooth for a horror title that benefits from consistent frame pacing. The 4K Low figure of 107.6 FPS shows the GPU is capable of high refresh rates at this resolution when visual fidelity is reduced, but the 4K Ultra result of 40 FPS suggests that maximum settings are reserved for slower-paced exploration rather than action sequences.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in The Medium?

A: The data shows that 2560x1440 offers the most balanced experience. At High settings, the combo delivers 63.5 FPS, which is comfortably above the 40 FPS floor seen at 4K Ultra, while the 1080p High figure of 71.1 FPS is only 12% higher, indicating diminishing returns from dropping to 1080p.

Q: How much performance is lost when moving from 1080p to 4K at High settings?

A: The average frame rate falls from 71.1 FPS at 1920x1080 to 50.1 FPS at 3840x2160, a 29.5% reduction. This is the same preset where the 1440p result of 63.5 FPS represents only a 10.7% drop from 1080p, showing that the 4K jump is where the RTX 5070 starts to struggle.

Q: Is the RTX 5070's 12 GB VRAM sufficient for this game?

A: Based on the measured results, yes. The card's 12 GB of GDDR7 memory with a 192-bit bus and 672.0 GB/s bandwidth handled all tested settings without any min FPS data indicating stutter. The VRAM capacity is not a limiting factor in any of the twelve measured configurations.

Q: Can this combo hit 60 FPS at 4K?

A: Only at Low settings, where it achieves 107.6 FPS. At Medium, the 4K average drops to 64.6 FPS, which barely clears 60 FPS, while High (50.1 FPS) and Ultra (40 FPS) fall short. At 1440p, High settings produce 63.5 FPS, just above the 60 FPS threshold.

Q: How does the CPU's 4-core/8-thread configuration affect high-refresh gameplay?

A: At 1080p Low, the combo reaches 144.7 FPS, which is likely near the CPU's limit given its 4 cores and 8 threads boosting to 4.30 GHz. The small 4.4% drop from 1080p to 1440p at Low settings (144.7 to 138.4 FPS) indicates the CPU is maintaining its output as resolution increases, but it caps the maximum frame rate before the GPU can stretch further.

Q: What is the difference between Low and Ultra at 1440p?

A: The gap is substantial: Low produces 138.4 FPS while Ultra produces 48.3 FPS, a 65.1% reduction. This demonstrates that The Medium's Ultra preset imposes a heavy rendering cost, likely from the game's fixed-camera horror aesthetic requiring high-fidelity volumetric effects and reflections.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070, with its GB205 chip built on a 5 nm TSMC process, contains 31,100 million transistors across a 263 mm² die. Its 6144 shading units, 192 texture mapping units, and 80 raster output pipelines provide the raw throughput for The Medium's fixed-camera scenes. The card's boost clock of 2512 MHz, up from a 2325 MHz base, allows it to maintain high utilization during sustained gameplay. The 48 RT cores and 192 tensor cores are present but their role in this title is secondary, as The Medium's horror atmosphere relies more on traditional rasterization than ray tracing effects.

The 12 GB GDDR7 memory operates at 1750 MHz with a 28 Gbps effective rate, delivering 672.0 GB/s of bandwidth over a 192-bit bus. This memory subsystem is critical for The Medium's 4K performance, where the 50.1 FPS High result at 3840x2160 shows the card is not bandwidth-starved. The pixel rate of 201.0 GPixel/s and texture rate of 482.3 GTexel/s explain why the 4K Ultra preset drops to 40 FPS — the combination of high-resolution output and maximum texture filtering taxes these units heavily. The FP32 throughput of 30.87 TFLOPS is more than sufficient for the game's shader complexity, as evidenced by the 107.6 FPS at 4K Low.

The GPU's benchmark scores corroborate its in-game behavior. The Passmark G3D score of 29137 places it in the 83rd percentile of all GPUs, while the 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 result of 5077 indicates strong DirectX 12 performance. The closest rivals in aggregate benchmark score are the AMD Radeon Pro 5300 (0.2% higher) and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (0.6% lower), though these comparisons are based on synthetic tests rather than The Medium specifically. The GPU's OpenCL score of 185269 and Vulkan score of 179413 show balanced compute capabilities, though The Medium's engine does not appear to leverage these APIs for the measured frame rates.

Settings Recommendations

For the best balance of visual fidelity and performance, the High preset at 2560x1440 is the standout configuration. The 63.5 FPS average clears the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, and the 1440p resolution provides substantial visual improvement over 1080p without the steep cost of 4K. The gap between High and Medium at 1440p is 24.5% (63.5 to 84.1 FPS), suggesting that High is not overly demanding relative to the fidelity gain. At 4K, High drops to 50.1 FPS, which is playable but not ideal for a horror game where sudden frame hitches can break immersion.

Players prioritizing smoothness over fidelity should consider Medium at 1080p, where the 99.2 FPS average ensures consistent frame delivery on high-refresh displays. The Low preset at 1080p reaches 144.7 FPS, but the visual compromise is likely too severe for a game that relies on atmospheric lighting. For 4K owners, Medium settings at 64.6 FPS is the highest preset that maintains 60+ FPS, though the 4K Low figure of 107.6 FPS offers substantial headroom for those who prefer maximum frame rates. The Ultra preset is not recommended at any resolution, as even at 1080p it only manages 56.3 FPS, and the 40 FPS at 4K falls below acceptable playability standards for this genre.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo produces a clear hierarchy: Low delivers 144.7 FPS, Medium produces 99.2 FPS, High reaches 71.1 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 56.3 FPS. The 45.5 FPS difference between Low and Medium shows that the first step up in quality costs roughly one-third of the frame rate, while the jump from Medium to High (28.1 FPS) and High to Ultra (14.8 FPS) are progressively smaller absolute reductions.

At 2560x1440, the pattern shifts: Low yields 138.4 FPS, Medium produces 84.1 FPS, High reaches 63.5 FPS, and Ultra drops to 48.3 FPS. The 1080p-to-1440p penalty ranges from 4.4% at Low to 14.2% at Ultra, indicating that higher settings magnify the resolution impact. The 1440p Medium result of 84.1 FPS is notably close to the 1080p High figure of 71.1 FPS, suggesting that resolution and settings trade-offs are roughly equivalent in this range.

At 3840x2160, the results are: Low at 107.6 FPS, Medium at 64.6 FPS, High at 50.1 FPS, and Ultra at 40 FPS. The 4K Low figure demonstrates the RTX 5070's raw capability, but the 67.6 FPS gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is the largest of any resolution, highlighting how the highest preset scales disproportionately with pixel count. The 4K Medium result of 64.6 FPS is only 1.1 FPS above the 1440p High figure, making these two configurations nearly equivalent in performance despite different resolution and quality trade-offs.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i3-12100F is a 4-core, 8-thread processor from the Alder Lake-S generation, based on a 10 nm process. Its base clock of 3.30 GHz boosts to 4.30 GHz, and it carries 12 MB of shared L3 cache plus 1.25 MB L2 per core. The processor's 58 W TDP and 16 PCIe Gen 5 lanes from the CPU indicate it is designed for mainstream builds, but its benchmark results show it is capable of feeding the RTX 5070 in this title.

The CPU's Cinebench R23 multicore score of 11912 and single-core score of 1681 place it in the 72nd percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 13516. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3975WX (0.1% lower), Intel Core i7-1250U (0.4% higher), and Intel Core i7-7700K (1.8% higher). The 3DMark 8-thread score of 4026 and max-thread score of 4023 are nearly identical, confirming that the 4-core/8-thread configuration saturates with only modest thread scaling. The Geekbench single-core score of 2224 and multicore score of 7413 show a ratio of 3.3x, which is typical for a quad-core with hyperthreading.

In The Medium, the CPU's influence is most visible at 1080p Low, where the 144.7 FPS result approaches the processor's practical ceiling. The 4.4% drop from 1080p to 1440p at Low (144.7 to 138.4 FPS) is smaller than the 25.6% drop from 1440p to 4K (138.4 to 107.6 FPS), indicating that the CPU maintains its frame delivery as resolution increases until the GPU becomes the constraint. The Passmark single-thread score of 3444 and multithread score of 14015 suggest that the CPU's single-thread performance is adequate for the game's main thread, while the 8 threads handle background tasks without introducing stutter. The 3DMark single-thread score of 893 and 2-thread score of 1659 show the processor's per-core efficiency is strong for a mainstream part.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i3-12100F + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 combination ranks 334th out of 1689 tested combos in The Medium, placing it in the top 19.8% of all configurations. This ranking is notable because the CPU is a budget-oriented 4-core part while the GPU is a high-end 50-series card, and the data shows the GPU is doing the heavy lifting in this title. The 4K High result of 50.1 FPS and 1440p High result of 63.5 FPS are competitive with systems featuring more expensive processors, as The Medium's fixed-camera design places less stress on CPU physics and AI than open-world titles.

The 334th rank out of 1689 combos means the 1355 combinations ranked below this system are likely limited by either weaker GPUs or CPUs that cannot feed their graphics cards effectively. The RTX 5070's 83rd percentile GPU score and the i3-12100F's 72nd percentile CPU score suggest that the combo benefits from the GPU's high position in the performance hierarchy, while the CPU's lower percentile is partially compensated by the game's moderate CPU demands. The 4K Low result of 107.6 FPS confirms that the GPU alone can drive high frame rates at 4K, and the ranking would likely improve if the CPU were upgraded, as 1080p Low's 144.7 FPS suggests the processor is capping performance in lower-resolution scenarios. For a system with a 4-core/8-thread CPU, this rank demonstrates that the RTX 5070 is the primary performance driver in The Medium, and the CPU's 4.30 GHz boost clock is sufficient to avoid severe bottlenecks at standard gaming resolutions.