The Medium

The Intel Core i5-10400F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti presents a distinct imbalance in “The Medium.” The processor, a 6-core, 12-thread Comet Lake part with a 2.90 GHz base and 4.30 GHz boost clock, is a generation older than the Blackwell GPU. The measured frame rates show this pairing, where the CPU’s 12 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel DDR4 memory interface feed a GPU that is far more modern. Across all resolutions, the performance ceiling appears bounded by the GPU’s settings, but the CPU’s synthetic benchmarks, such as a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 10297 and a single-core score of 1453, indicate it can keep pace with the game’s demands, though it lacks the raw thread count of newer parts.

The RTX 5070 Ti is the dominant component. With 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus delivering 896.0 GB/s of bandwidth, the GPU has ample headroom for high-resolution textures. Its 8960 shading units and 70 RT cores are built on the Blackwell architecture, and the 45,600 million transistors on a 5 nm process give it a Passmark G3D score of 32974. This GPU sits in the 87th percentile of all tested GPUs, and its average benchmark score of 52086 is nearly identical to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080, which shows a 0% deltaPct. In “The Medium,” the GPU’s raw power is the primary driver of FPS, but the game’s settings scaling reveals that even this hardware struggles with the most demanding presets.

Resolution Scaling

The data shows a clear pattern of diminishing returns as resolution increases, but the shape of the curve is unusual. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo achieves 108.6 FPS. Moving to 1440p Low drops this to 98.4 FPS, a modest 10.2 FPS decrease. At 4K Low, the score falls to 96 FPS, which is only 2.4 FPS lower than 1440p. This suggests that at Low settings, the game is largely CPU-bound or otherwise limited by engine logic, as the GPU has plenty of spare capacity. The delta between 1080p and 4K at Low is just 12.6 FPS, indicating that the RTX 5070 Ti is not being fully utilized until the resolution climbs.

The scaling becomes more pronounced at higher settings. At High settings, the drop from 1080p (80.5 FPS) to 1440p (71.8 FPS) is 8.7 FPS, and then to 4K (52.8 FPS) is another 19 FPS. This is a total 34.4% reduction from 1080p to 4K. At Ultra settings, the trend is even steeper: 1080p yields 64.3 FPS, 1440p drops to 55.7 FPS, and 4K falls to 45.7 FPS. The 4K Ultra result is 28.9% lower than the 1080p Ultra result. This indicates that at higher presets, the GPU becomes the limiting factor, with the 4K resolution demanding more from the 896.0 GB/s memory bandwidth and the 43.94 TFLOPS of FP32 compute. The game’s fixed camera angles and pre-rendered elements in “The Medium” often mask CPU load, but the FPS drop from High to Ultra at 4K (52.8 to 45.7) shows a 13.4% penalty, confirming the GPU is working at its limits.

How This Combo Ranks

In the overall database of tested combinations, this pairing of the Intel Core i5-10400F and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti ranks 375 out of 1689 combos for “The Medium.” This places it in the top 22.2% of all systems tested. The rank is a composite measure of performance across all settings and resolutions. The CPU’s benchmark percentile is 73, meaning it outperforms 73% of all CPUs, while the GPU is in the 87th percentile. The combination of a mid-range CPU with a high-end GPU results in a system that is faster than most, but not at the very top.

The nearest rivals for the CPU, based on average benchmark scores, include the AMD EPYC 7552 with a 0.4% higher score and the AMD Ryzen 3 7320C which is 0.8% lower. The GPU’s closest rival is the RTX 4080 with a 0% deltaPct, meaning they are effectively tied in synthetic tests. However, the actual game performance here is dictated by the GPU’s settings, not the CPU’s synthetic score. The 375th rank suggests that while the GPU is powerful, the older CPU does not hold it back in a way that would place this combo in the top 100. The data implies that the i5-10400F is sufficient for this game, but the combination’s rank is pulled down by the CPU’s lower single-thread score of 1453 in Geekbench, which may affect certain engine tasks.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark results clearly indicate that the Ultra preset is not viable for smooth gameplay at any resolution. At 1080p, Ultra yields 64.3 FPS, which is playable but not ideal for a horror title that benefits from consistent frame pacing. At 1440p and 4K, Ultra falls to 55.7 and 45.7 FPS respectively, making it a poor choice for anything above 1080p. The High preset offers a better balance. At 1080p, High produces 80.5 FPS, which is 16.2 FPS higher than Ultra. At 1440p, High maintains 71.8 FPS, which is still smooth, and at 4K, High delivers 52.8 FPS, which is borderline acceptable for a slower-paced horror game.

The Medium preset is the most consistent performer across all resolutions. It produces 86.6 FPS at 1080p, 86.2 FPS at 1440p, and 76.6 FPS at 4K. The 4K Medium result is 23.8 FPS higher than 4K High and 30.9 FPS higher than 4K Ultra. The delta between 1080p and 1440p at Medium is negligible (0.4 FPS), and the drop to 4K is only 10 FPS. This suggests that the Medium preset is where the GPU’s resources are best utilized without hitting a hard bottleneck. For a 60 FPS target, Medium at 4K (76.6 FPS) or High at 1440p (71.8 FPS) are the optimal choices. The Low preset, while achieving over 96 FPS at all resolutions, sacrifices visual quality for marginal gains, as the jump from Low to Medium at 1440p is only a 12.2 FPS difference.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average FPS values are as follows: Low settings produce 108.6 FPS, Medium produces 86.6 FPS, High produces 80.5 FPS, and Ultra produces 64.3 FPS. The scaling from Low to Medium is a 22 FPS drop, which is significant, but the drop from Medium to High is only 6.1 FPS. The most demanding setting, Ultra, is 44.3 FPS lower than Low. This indicates that at 1080p, the GPU is not fully stressed, and the CPU’s 6 cores can feed frames up to the 108.6 FPS ceiling.

At 2560x1440, the results are: Low at 98.4 FPS, Medium at 86.2 FPS, High at 71.8 FPS, and Ultra at 55.7 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium narrows to 12.2 FPS, while the gap between Medium and High widens to 14.4 FPS. The Ultra preset is 42.7 FPS below Low. The 1440p results show that the GPU is starting to become the limiting factor, particularly at High and Ultra settings, where the 4K-class bandwidth is not fully utilized but the shading units are working harder.

At 3840x2160, the data shows: Low at 96 FPS, Medium at 76.6 FPS, High at 52.8 FPS, and Ultra at 45.7 FPS. The drop from Low to Medium is 19.4 FPS, which is larger than at lower resolutions. The drop from Medium to High is 23.8 FPS, and the drop from High to Ultra is 7.1 FPS. The 4K Low result of 96 FPS is remarkably close to the 1440p Low result of 98.4 FPS, confirming that the GPU is not the bottleneck at Low settings. However, at High and Ultra, the 4K resolution demands more from the 16 GB VRAM and the 256-bit bus, causing the FPS to plummet. The 4K Ultra result of 45.7 FPS is the lowest in the entire dataset, highlighting the GPU’s limits when pushed to its maximum. The overall trend shows that the RTX 5070 Ti provides a playable experience at 4K only when settings are reduced to Medium or below.