The Medium

The Medium presents a uniquely demanding workload, and the combination of the Intel Core i5-10400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti demonstrates a clear performance profile. The data indicates a system that is heavily constrained by the graphics card at higher settings, while the CPU provides sufficient headroom for lower-fidelity configurations. This analysis breaks down the measured results, placing them in context against other hardware combinations.

FAQ

Q: What is the overall performance rank of this CPU and GPU combo in The Medium?

A: The combination ranks 1245 out of 1689 tested combos, placing it in the lower-middle tier of all configurations tested for this specific game.

Q: How does the RTX 3060 Ti compare to its closest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The GPU’s average benchmark score of 25120 places it in a tight cluster with its nearest rivals. It trails the AMD Radeon RX 6700M by 0.2%, the AMD Radeon RX 6600 by 0.5%, and both the AMD Radeon 890M and AMD Radeon RX 580 2048SP by 0.5% and 0.7%, respectively.

Q: What is the best performance result recorded for this combo in the game?

A: The highest average frame rate recorded is 89.5 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings. This is the only configuration in the dataset that breaks the 80 FPS barrier.

Q: Is the game playable at 4K resolution with this hardware?

A: At 3840x2160, playability depends heavily on settings. The Low preset yields an average of 58.8 FPS, which is generally smooth. However, Medium drops to 36.6 FPS, High to 29.2 FPS, and Ultra becomes a slideshow at 21.7 FPS.

Q: How does the CPU's performance compare to the AMD EPYC 7552?

A: The Intel Core i5-10400F has an average benchmark score of 14168, which is 0.4% higher than the AMD EPYC 7552's score of 14115, making them statistically equivalent in multi-threaded synthetic workloads.

Q: Does the game's frame rate scale linearly with resolution?

A: No, the scaling is not linear. For example, at High settings, the frame rate drops from 38.6 FPS at 1080p to 34.4 FPS at 1440p and then to 29.2 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1440p to 4K is more severe, indicating a growing GPU bottleneck.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is the primary driver of performance in The Medium, and its 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus with 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth is a critical factor. The game’s results show a stark sensitivity to memory bandwidth and fill rate. The GPU’s base clock of 1410 MHz and boost clock of 1665 MHz, combined with its 4864 shading units, provide the raw compute power, but the data suggests that memory throughput becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions.

At 1080p with Low settings, the GPU achieves 89.5 FPS, showing it can handle the game’s load when other bottlenecks are removed. However, the performance cliff is steep. Moving from Low to Medium at 1080p costs 34.2 FPS, a 38% reduction, which is a massive hit for one settings tier. This indicates that the game’s medium and higher presets introduce effects that heavily tax the GPU's memory subsystem and pixel processing capabilities. The RTX 3060 Ti’s 80 ROPs and 253.1 GTexel/s texture rate are clearly strained by the game's visual effects, as evidenced by the Ultra preset yielding only 29.7 FPS at 1080p, which is barely above the 4K Low result of 58.8 FPS. The GPU is unequivocally the bottleneck in nearly every measured scenario, as the CPU is capable of feeding it enough data at lower settings, but the GPU cannot maintain high frame rates when visual complexity increases.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo's rank of 1245 out of 1689 tested combinations places it in the 26th percentile of all systems tested. This is a surprisingly low position for a mid-range GPU, but it is contextualized by the game's heavy demands and the CPU's mid-range standing. The Intel Core i5-10400F itself has a percentile of 73 versus all CPUs, meaning it outperforms 73% of all tested processors. This suggests the CPU is not the primary cause of the low combo ranking.

The performance data confirms this analysis. The synthetic benchmarks for the i5-10400F, such as a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 10297 and a single-core score of 1453, are respectable for a 6-core, 12-thread part. However, in The Medium, the frame rates are consistently limited by the GPU. For instance, the difference between 1080p High (38.6 FPS) and 4K High (29.2 FPS) is only 9.4 FPS. If the CPU were the limiting factor, the frame rate would remain nearly identical regardless of resolution. Instead, the frame rate drops with resolution, which is the classic signature of a GPU-bound scenario. Therefore, the low combo rank is a direct consequence of the RTX 3060 Ti struggling with the game's engine, not a failure of the i5-10400F to keep up.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data reveals a consistent pattern across all resolutions. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers an average of 89.5 FPS, which is the only playable high-refresh result. The Medium preset drops to 55.3 FPS, High to 38.6 FPS, and Ultra to 29.7 FPS. The step from Low to Medium is a 34.2 FPS loss, which is the largest single drop in the entire dataset. This indicates that the Medium preset introduces a significant graphical feature that cripples the GPU.

At 2560x1440, the results scale downward as expected. The Low preset yields 77.9 FPS, which remains playable. Medium produces 50.1 FPS, High drops to 34.4 FPS, and Ultra falls to 29.5 FPS. The gap between Medium and High is now 15.7 FPS, and the gap between High and Ultra is only 4.9 FPS. This suggests that the Ultra preset is not dramatically more demanding than High at this resolution, but both are pushing the GPU to its limits. At 3840x2160, the GPU is overwhelmed. The Low preset is the only playable option, hitting 58.8 FPS. Medium drops to 36.6 FPS, High to 29.2 FPS, and Ultra to a barely interactive 21.7 FPS.

The data shows that the RTX 3060 Ti is most comfortable at 1080p Low, where it has enough headroom to push past 60 FPS. Across all resolutions, the Low preset is the only one that consistently provides a playable experience, and even then, 4K Low is only marginally above 60 FPS.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K provides clear evidence of the bottleneck in this system. For the Low preset, performance drops from 89.5 FPS at 1080p to 77.9 FPS at 1440p (a 13% reduction), and then to 58.8 FPS at 4K (a 25% reduction from 1440p). This scaling is relatively mild and suggests that at Low settings, the game is beginning to become more CPU-influenced, though the GPU is still the primary limiter.

The scaling becomes much more severe with higher settings. For the Medium preset, performance drops from 55.3 FPS at 1080p to 50.1 FPS at 1440p (a 9.4% reduction), but then plummets to 36.6 FPS at 4K (a 27% reduction). For the High preset, the drop from 1080p to 1440p is 4.2 FPS (from 38.6 to 34.4), but the drop to 4K is 5.2 FPS (from 34.4 to 29.2). The Ultra preset shows a similar pattern: 29.7 FPS at 1080p, 29.5 FPS at 1440p, and 21.7 FPS at 4K.

The key observation is that the frame rate difference between 1080p and 1440p is often small, especially at High and Ultra settings. This indicates that the GPU is already saturated at 1080p with these presets. The significant drop occurs when moving from 1440p to 4K, where the pixel count increases dramatically. This behavior is the definitive sign of a GPU-bound system. The i5-10400F, with its 12 threads and 12 MB of L3 cache, is capable of feeding the GPU at 1080p and 1440p, but the RTX 3060 Ti cannot render the frames fast enough at higher resolutions and settings. The system is balanced at 1080p Low, but becomes increasingly GPU-limited as the graphical load increases.