The Medium

The Medium, a fixed-camera horror title from 2021, presents a demanding rendering workload that scales sharply with resolution and quality settings. For the combination of the Intel Core i5-10400F and the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT, the measured data reveals a system that is firmly bound by the graphics card at higher settings, while the processor demonstrates sufficient headroom to maintain playable frame rates at lower presets. This analysis breaks down the specific FPS measurements, the roles of the CPU and GPU, and how this pairing ranks among all tested combinations.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1080p to 4K produces a dramatic and predictable decline in average frame rates across all settings, indicating that the GPU is the primary performance limiter in this configuration. At Low settings, the frame rate drops from 89.5 FPS at 1920x1080 to 74.1 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of approximately 17%, before falling further to 63.1 FPS at 3840x2160. This scaling pattern is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario where the RX 5700 XT is working progressively harder to fill the increasing number of pixels.

The scaling penalty becomes more severe as image quality increases. At High settings, the average FPS falls from 41.8 at 1080p to 35.6 at 1440p, a drop of 15%, and then to 25.0 at 4K, which represents a 40% reduction from the 1080p baseline. The Ultra preset shows the most aggressive degradation, with the frame rate plummeting from 31.9 FPS at 1080p to 26.3 FPS at 1440p and finally to 19.4 FPS at 4K. This steep decline at Ultra suggests that the game's highest quality tier imposes a significant computational cost that the RDNA 1.0 architecture struggles to sustain at higher resolutions.

The data indicates that the RX 5700 XT is the decisive factor in resolution scaling. The CPU, with its 6 cores and 12 threads, does not show signs of bottlenecking in this scenario, as the relative performance drops align closely with the GPU's rendering load. The gap between Low and Ultra settings widens consistently from 1080p to 4K, reinforcing that the graphics card's pixel throughput and memory bandwidth are the limiting resources.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-10400F, based on the Comet Lake architecture, provides a solid foundation for this gaming workload. With a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.30 GHz, the processor offers adequate single-thread performance for the game's fixed-camera scenes, where logical thread scheduling is less critical than in open-world titles. The 12 MB of shared L3 cache helps maintain data locality, though the game's relatively static camera angles mean that cache effectiveness is less of a differentiator.

Benchmark data shows the CPU's standing among its peers. The 3dmark single-thread score of 688 and the cinebench R23 single-core score of 1453 indicate modest per-core throughput, which is sufficient for The Medium's frame pacing at lower resolutions. The multi-threaded results, such as the cinebench R23 multicore score of 10297 and the passmark multithread score of 12115, demonstrate that the processor can handle background tasks without interfering with game rendering.

In the context of this game, the CPU's role is secondary but not negligible. At 1080p Low settings, the system achieves 89.5 FPS, which suggests that the processor can feed the GPU at this level. However, the fact that the frame rate does not scale linearly with resolution at Low settings — the 4K result of 63.1 FPS is 70% of the 1080p result — implies that the GPU is still the primary constraint. The CPU's percentile ranking of 73 against all processors places it in the upper tier, and its nearest rivals, such as the AMD Ryzen 3 7320C and the Intel Core i5-8500, show negligible performance deltas, confirming this is a balanced mid-range part.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT is the dominant component in this pairing, and its specifications directly explain the measured FPS figures. The GPU features 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This is a significant asset for The Medium, which uses high-resolution textures and dual-world rendering that demand substantial memory throughput. The boost clock of 1905 MHz and the game clock of 1755 MHz allow the card to maintain consistent performance, though the RDNA 1.0 architecture lacks dedicated ray tracing cores, which is relevant for this title's lighting effects.

The GPU's compute capabilities, including 2560 shading units and a peak FP32 throughput of 9.754 TFLOPS, are the primary drivers of the frame rates observed. At 1080p Medium settings, the card delivers 58.9 FPS, which is a playable result, but the Ultra preset at the same resolution yields only 31.9 FPS. This 46% performance hit from Medium to Ultra illustrates the cost of the game's highest quality shadows and post-processing effects, which heavily tax the shader units.

The 4K results are particularly telling. The RX 5700 XT manages 25.0 FPS at High and 19.4 FPS at Ultra, numbers that fall below the threshold for smooth gameplay. The memory bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s is strained at this resolution, and the 8 GB VRAM capacity, while sufficient for most titles, is tested by The Medium's asset streaming. The GPU's percentile ranking of 68 against all GPUs, alongside its nearest rivals like the NVIDIA RTX A5000 Mobile and the Intel Arc A350M, shows that it sits in a competitive mid-range segment, but it lacks the headroom for 4K Ultra in this specific game.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured data provides a complete picture of performance across three resolutions and four quality settings. At 1920x1080, the system achieves 89.5 FPS at Low settings, 58.9 FPS at Medium, 41.8 FPS at High, and 31.9 FPS at Ultra. These numbers indicate that 1080p gaming is viable across the board, with only the Ultra preset dipping below the 60 FPS mark. The scaling from Low to Ultra represents a 64% reduction in frame rate, which is a substantial penalty for visual fidelity.

Moving to 2560x1440, the averages drop to 74.1 FPS at Low, 46.7 FPS at Medium, 35.6 FPS at High, and 26.3 FPS at Ultra. The Low preset remains smooth, but Medium and above require compromises for playability. The 1440p results show a more pronounced gap between Low and Medium, suggesting that the GPU's fill rate becomes a limiting factor as texture quality increases.

At 3840x2160, the performance is marginal. The Low setting yields 63.1 FPS, which is still playable, but Medium drops to 36.7 FPS, High falls to 25.0 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 19.4 FPS. The 4K data reveals that the RX 5700 XT is only suitable for Low settings at this resolution, and the transition from 1440p to 4K at High settings incurs a 30% performance loss, which is a direct consequence of the GPU's bandwidth constraints.

How This Combo Ranks

Among all tested combinations in the benchmark database, this pairing of the Intel Core i5-10400F and the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT holds a combo rank of 1270 out of 1689 total combinations. This places it in the lower-mid portion of the rankings, which is consistent with the GPU's age and the demanding nature of The Medium. The rank reflects the system's inability to handle 4K Ultra settings, where it produces only 19.4 FPS, a figure that severely limits the overall ranking.

The ranking is influenced by the fact that The Medium is a GPU-intensive title, and the RX 5700 XT, while capable at 1080p, does not compete with newer cards that feature more advanced architectures. The CPU's contribution to the rank is minimal, as its performance is adequate for the game's logic and rendering calls. The data shows that this combo is optimized for 1080p Medium to High settings, where it delivers 58.9 FPS and 41.8 FPS respectively, but the rank of 1270 indicates that many other combinations, likely featuring higher-end GPUs, achieve significantly better results at higher resolutions.

The rank also suggests that users of this combo should target 1080p or 1440p Low to Medium settings for a consistent experience. The measured FPS at 1440p Medium of 46.7 FPS is borderline, and the 4K results are not viable for action-oriented gameplay. The combo's position in the rankings is a direct reflection of the GPU's limits, and the data does not indicate any unexpected bottlenecks from the CPU.