The Medium

The Intel Core i5-11400F paired with the AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT delivers a playable experience in The Medium, but the optimal settings depend heavily on your target resolution. At 1080p, the Medium preset produces an average of 67.1 FPS, which is a substantial improvement over the 47.1 FPS seen at High settings while remaining well ahead of the 38.9 FPS at Ultra. For 1440p, the Medium preset drops to 58 FPS, still smooth for most players, while the High preset at 40.1 FPS is borderline. At 4K, the situation shifts; the Medium preset at 46.9 FPS is the only viable option above 30 FPS, as High falls to 32.2 FPS and Ultra to 27.9 FPS. The Low preset is the outlier, delivering 112.7 FPS at 1080p, 93.2 FPS at 1440p, and 71.7 FPS at 4K, but this comes at a significant visual cost. For the best balance of image quality and frame rate, the Medium preset is the recommended starting point across all resolutions, with adjustments downward only if you prioritize frame rates above 60 FPS at 4K.

FAQ

Q: What is the best preset for a 60 FPS target at 1080p?

A: The Medium preset at 1080p delivers 67.1 FPS, which exceeds the 60 FPS threshold. The High preset at 47.1 FPS falls short, so Medium is the highest quality setting that reliably hits this target.

Q: Can this combo achieve 60 FPS at 1440p?

A: No. The highest average FPS at 1440p is 93.2 FPS on Low settings, but the Medium preset drops to 58 FPS. To maintain 60 FPS, you would need to use Low settings, as Medium and above all fall below 60 FPS.

Q: How does the 4K performance compare to 1080p at the same preset?

A: At Medium settings, the frame rate drops from 67.1 FPS at 1080p to 46.9 FPS at 4K, a reduction of approximately 30%. At High settings, the drop is from 47.1 FPS to 32.2 FPS, which is a similar proportional decrease.

Q: Is the Ultra preset ever recommended for this hardware?

A: No. The Ultra preset only reaches 38.9 FPS at 1080p, 34.1 FPS at 1440p, and 27.9 FPS at 4K. These frame rates are all below the 40 FPS mark, making the visual quality gain not worth the performance sacrifice.

Q: What is the highest FPS recorded for this combo in The Medium?

A: The highest average FPS is 112.7 at 1080p with the Low preset. This is followed by 93.2 FPS at 1440p Low and 71.7 FPS at 4K Low.

Q: Does the data suggest a CPU or GPU bottleneck at 4K?

A: The performance drop from 1080p to 4K is steep across all presets, with the Medium preset losing about 20 FPS. This pattern indicates that the GPU becomes the primary limiting factor at higher resolutions, as the CPU's workload does not scale with resolution to the same degree.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-11400F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Rocket Lake architecture, with a base clock of 2.60 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. Its 12 MB of shared L3 cache and 6 cores provide sufficient thread count for modern games, but The Medium's performance data shows that the graphics card is the dominant factor in frame rate scaling. The CPU's benchmark scores, such as a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 14372 and a single-core score of 2029, indicate solid processing power, yet the game's frame rates at 1080p are not exceptionally high, suggesting a balanced load between CPU and GPU at this resolution.

At 1080p, the CPU is more likely to be a co-limiting factor, as the frame rate differences between settings are relatively modest. For instance, the jump from Low (112.7 FPS) to Medium (67.1 FPS) is a 45 FPS difference, but the jump from Medium to High (47.1 FPS) is only 20 FPS. This suggests that beyond Medium, the GPU's rendering workload becomes the bottleneck. The CPU's 3DMark scores, including a max threads score of 5652 and a single-thread score of 868, show it can handle the game's logic, but the measured FPS data indicates that the RX 6700 XT's capabilities are the deciding factor for higher presets. The CPU's 75th percentile ranking among all CPUs, with a Passmark multi-thread score of 16908, places it in a comfortable mid-range position, but it does not boost the frame rates beyond what the GPU can deliver.

The processor's 65 W TDP and dual-channel DDR4 memory support with a bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s are standard for its class. The data shows that at 4K, the CPU's role diminishes further; the frame rates across all presets are tightly clustered, with the difference between Low (71.7 FPS) and Ultra (27.9 FPS) being 43.8 FPS, which is almost entirely attributable to GPU rendering load. The CPU is not the bottleneck in this scenario, as the GPU is clearly saturated by the pixel count. The i5-11400F's 6 cores and 12 threads are adequate for The Medium, but the benchmark results confirm that this game scales more with GPU performance than with CPU clock speed or core count.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the Intel Core i5-11400F and AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT ranks 929th out of 1689 tested combos in The Medium, placing it in the 55th percentile of all systems. This mid-pack ranking indicates that while the hardware is capable, it is not near the top of the performance hierarchy for this title. The GPU's 77th percentile ranking among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 33721, is higher than the combo's overall ranking, suggesting that the CPU is slightly holding back the system's potential in this game. The CPU's 75th percentile ranking, with an average score of 17181, is only slightly lower than the GPU, but the combo's rank of 929 out of 1689 shows that this pairing does not achieve the same relative standing as its individual components.

The nearest rivals for the CPU show a tight cluster of performance. The AMD Ryzen 7 5700U has an average score of 17189, a delta of 0% from the i5-11400F, while the Intel Core i7-1260P and Core Ultra 7 164U are both 0.2% slower, and the Core i5-1240U is 0.2% faster. This indicates that the i5-11400F sits in a very competitive mid-range segment, with no significant advantage or disadvantage over its immediate alternatives. For the GPU, the AMD Radeon RX 6800 is 0.7% faster, while the Radeon HD 7950 and RX 480 are 1% faster, and the NVIDIA RTX A5000 is 1.3% slower. These small deltas show that the RX 6700 XT is positioned in a performance band where minor architectural differences do not translate into large FPS changes in this game.

The combo's ranking of 929 out of 1689 means that approximately 44% of tested systems perform worse, and 56% perform better in The Medium. This places the system in the upper half, but not in a dominant position. The data shows that to move significantly higher in the rankings, a stronger GPU would be required, as the CPU's relative performance is already within 0.2% of its closest rivals, leaving little room for improvement through processor upgrades alone.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a clear pattern of performance degradation as resolution increases from 1080p to 4K. At the Low preset, the average frame rate drops from 112.7 FPS at 1080p to 93.2 FPS at 1440p, a 17.3% decrease, and further to 71.7 FPS at 4K, a cumulative 36.4% drop from 1080p. This scaling is consistent with a GPU-bound scenario, where the increased pixel count directly impacts the rendering load. At the Medium preset, the frame rates are 67.1 FPS at 1080p, 58 FPS at 1440p, and 46.9 FPS at 4K, showing a more linear decline of approximately 13.6% from 1080p to 1440p and 19.1% from 1440p to 4K.

The High preset shows a similar trend: 47.1 FPS at 1080p, 40.1 FPS at 1440p, and 32.2 FPS at 4K. The percentage drop from 1080p to 1440p is 14.9%, and from 1440p to 4K is 19.7%. The Ultra preset is the most demanding, with 38.9 FPS at 1080p, 34.1 FPS at 1440p, and 27.9 FPS at 4K, representing a 12.3% drop from 1080p to 1440p and an 18.2% drop from 1440p to 4K. Across all presets, the drop from 1080p to 1440p is relatively consistent at 12-17%, while the drop from 1440p to 4K is steeper at 18-20%.

This scaling behavior indicates that the GPU is the limiting component at higher resolutions. The RX 6700 XT's memory bandwidth of 384.0 GB/s and 12 GB of GDDR6 memory are sufficient for 4K textures, but the raw compute power, as evidenced by its 13.21 TFLOPS FP32 performance, is strained by the 8.3 million pixels at 3840x2160. The CPU's role is minimal at 4K, as its workload does not increase with resolution. The fact that the frame rate differences between presets remain similar across resolutions further confirms a GPU bottleneck. At 1080p, the CPU may contribute to the bottleneck, but as resolution increases, the GPU's limitations become the sole determinant of frame rate. The data shows that to maintain a playable 30 FPS or higher at 4K, the Medium preset is the maximum setting, while at 1080p, even the High preset provides a playable experience.