The Medium

The Intel Core i5-10400F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 delivers a mid-tier experience in The Medium, ranking in the 50th percentile (858 out of 1689 tested combos). The data indicates that this system is heavily GPU-limited at higher settings and resolutions, with the RTX 5060’s 8 GB VRAM and the game’s demanding visual effects creating a bottleneck that the six-core CPU cannot overcome at 4K Ultra. However, the combo shines in lower settings, where the i5-10400F’s 12 threads provide sufficient throughput to push frame rates above 100 FPS at 1080p.

FAQ

Q: What is the best setting for smooth gameplay at 1440p?

A: The Medium preset at 2560x1440 yields an average of 60.4 FPS. This is the only setting at this resolution that clears the 60 FPS threshold; High drops to 44.6 FPS, and Ultra falls to 32.3 FPS.

Q: Can this combo handle 4K resolution?

A: Yes, but only at Low settings, where it averages 77.4 FPS at 3840x2160. At Medium, the frame rate drops to 47.4 FPS, and at High it falls to 32.9 FPS, making Ultra unplayable at 29 FPS.

Q: How does the RTX 5060 compare to its nearest rival in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 5060’s average benchmark score is 30109, which is essentially identical to the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT (30097, 0% delta). It is also 0.5% ahead of the NVIDIA Tesla M60 and 0.6% ahead of the RTX 5070 Mobile.

Q: Is the CPU a limiting factor in this game?

A: The data suggests it is not the primary bottleneck. The i5-10400F scores 10297 in Cinebench R23 multicore and 1453 in single-core, which is sufficient to feed the GPU at lower resolutions, but the GPU’s performance ceiling becomes evident at higher settings.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Low and Ultra at 1080p?

A: The difference is substantial. At 1920x1080, Low settings average 107.8 FPS, while Ultra averages only 41.4 FPS. This represents a 61.6% performance drop when moving from the lowest to the highest preset.

Q: Does the RTX 5060’s VRAM capacity affect 4K performance?

A: Yes, the 8 GB VRAM on a 128-bit bus with 448.0 GB/s bandwidth appears to be a constraint. The 4K Ultra preset averages just 29 FPS, and even High struggles at 32.9 FPS, indicating that memory capacity and bandwidth are likely saturated at high resolutions.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-10400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 ranks 858th out of 1689 tested combos in The Medium. This places it in the 50.8th percentile of all tested systems, meaning it outperforms roughly half of the configurations in the database. The ranking reflects a balanced mid-range pairing: the CPU is a 6-core, 12-thread Comet Lake part with a 73rd percentile rank among all CPUs, while the GPU sits at the 73rd percentile among all GPUs.

Benchmark results indicate that this pairing is well-matched for 1080p gaming, but the GPU’s synthetic average score of 30109 is nearly identical to the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT (30097), suggesting the RTX 5060 is the performance anchor. The i5-10400F’s average benchmark score of 14168 is within 1.2% of rivals like the Intel Core i5-8500 (14332) and AMD Ryzen 3 7320C (14277), confirming that the CPU is not an outlier in either direction. The combo’s rank is driven by the GPU’s ability to handle the game’s fixed-camera horror scenes, which are visually complex but not extremely CPU-intensive.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data indicates that the Medium preset offers the best balance of visual fidelity and performance across all resolutions. At 1080p, Medium averages 72.4 FPS, which is comfortably above the 60 FPS target, while High drops to 50.2 FPS and Ultra to 41.4 FPS. At 1440p, Medium is the only preset that maintains playable frame rates, averaging exactly 60.4 FPS. At 4K, Medium falls to 47.4 FPS, which is below the ideal threshold, but it remains the highest setting that avoids the severe drops seen at High (32.9 FPS) and Ultra (29 FPS).

For players prioritizing frame rate over visuals, Low settings provide the best experience, with 107.8 FPS at 1080p and 97.4 FPS at 1440p. However, the jump from Low to Medium costs roughly 33% of the frame rate (from 107.8 to 72.4 at 1080p), which is a substantial trade-off for the visual improvements. The data suggests that Medium is the sweet spot for this hardware, as it avoids the steep performance cliff that occurs when enabling High or Ultra presets.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the RTX 5060 and i5-10400F produce a wide range of results depending on the preset. Low settings average 107.8 FPS, which is the highest measured frame rate for this combo. Medium averages 72.4 FPS, High averages 50.2 FPS, and Ultra drops to 41.4 FPS. The scaling from Low to Ultra shows a consistent degradation of roughly 15-20 FPS per preset step, indicating that each quality tier has a significant impact on rendering load.

At 2560x1440, the same pattern holds but with lower absolute numbers. Low settings average 97.4 FPS, which is still excellent for a horror title. Medium averages 60.4 FPS, hitting the standard refresh rate target. High averages 44.6 FPS, and Ultra averages 32.3 FPS. The drop from Medium to High at 1440p is 15.8 FPS, which is nearly identical to the 16 FPS drop seen at 1080p, suggesting a consistent GPU-bound scaling.

At 3840x2160, the results become marginal for competitive play but remain playable at lower presets. Low averages 77.4 FPS, which is surprisingly high for 4K, but Medium drops to 47.4 FPS. High averages 32.9 FPS, and Ultra averages 29 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium at 4K is 30 FPS, which is the largest single-step drop in the entire dataset, highlighting the GPU’s struggle with higher-detail settings at this resolution.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a GB206 chip fabricated on a 5 nm process at TSMC. It features 3840 shading units, 120 TMUs, and 48 ROPs, with 30 RT cores and 120 tensor cores. The GPU has a base clock of 2280 MHz and a boost clock of 2497 MHz, delivering 19.18 TFLOPS of FP32 performance. Memory is 8 GB of GDDR7 on a 128-bit bus, providing 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth.

In The Medium, the GPU’s role is dominant. The measured FPS data shows that the GPU is the primary limiter at high settings, as evidenced by the steep performance drops when moving from Low to Medium to High. The 8 GB VRAM appears to be a constraint at 4K, where Ultra averages just 29 FPS. The GPU’s synthetic benchmark score of 30109 places it at the 73rd percentile, and it is effectively tied with the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT (30097, 0% delta). The data suggests that the RTX 5060’s compute and memory bandwidth are sufficient for 1080p and 1440p Medium settings, but not for the highest presets at 4K.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-10400F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor from the Comet Lake architecture, manufactured on a 14 nm process. It has a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.30 GHz, with 12 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU supports dual-channel DDR4 memory with 42.7 GB/s of bandwidth and interfaces via PCIe Gen 3 with 16 lanes. Its synthetic benchmarks show a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 10297 and a single-core score of 1453, with a passmark multithread score of 12115.

In The Medium, the CPU’s role is supportive rather than dominant. The game’s fixed-camera angles and scripted horror sequences do not appear to stress the CPU heavily, as evidenced by the fact that frame rates scale almost linearly with GPU load. The i5-10400F’s 12 threads are sufficient to keep the RTX 5060 fed at lower resolutions, but the CPU’s 73rd percentile rank among all CPUs suggests it is not a bottleneck. The data shows that at 1080p Low, the combo achieves 107.8 FPS, which is likely near the CPU’s upper limit for this game, but the GPU becomes the limiting factor as settings increase.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS data reveals a clear pattern of GPU-limited scaling as resolution increases. From 1080p to 1440p, the average frame rate drops by approximately 10-15% across all settings. For example, at Medium settings, the drop is from 72.4 FPS to 60.4 FPS, a 16.6% reduction. At High settings, the drop is from 50.2 FPS to 44.6 FPS, an 11.2% reduction. This indicates that the GPU is still capable of handling the increased pixel count at 1440p without catastrophic losses.

The scaling from 1440p to 4K is much more severe, particularly at higher settings. At Medium, the drop is from 60.4 FPS to 47.4 FPS, a 21.5% reduction. At High, the drop is from 44.6 FPS to 32.9 FPS, a 26.2% reduction. At Ultra, the drop is from 32.3 FPS to 29 FPS, a 10.2% reduction, but this is because the 1440p Ultra score is already very low. The most dramatic scaling occurs at Low settings, where the drop from 1440p (97.4 FPS) to 4K (77.4 FPS) represents a 20.5% reduction. This scaling behavior confirms that the limiting component is the GPU, as the CPU’s performance is relatively constant across resolutions, and the frame rate declines in direct proportion to the increased rendering load.