The Medium

The Medium is a psychological horror title, released on January 27, 2021, that frequently relies on showing two realities at once, and its performance profile under the Intel Core i5-11400F and Intel Arc B390 combination is decidedly limited. The measured data shows that the highest average frame rate the combo ever reaches is 51 FPS, achieved only at 1080p with the Low preset. Every other tested configuration falls below that ceiling, and the results degrade sharply as resolution and quality rise. With the GPU situated in the 9th percentile of all tested GPUs and the combo ranking near the bottom of all tested combinations, this hardware pairing occupies the low end of the scale. The following sections break down the measured behavior in detail, covering the best settings, the separate roles of the CPU and GPU, and how the different resolutions scale.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows provide a clear preference for the Low preset at every resolution. At 1920x1080, Low averages 51 FPS, while Medium drops to 32 FPS, High to 23 FPS, and Ultra to 18 FPS. The step from Low to Medium is a 37% frame rate reduction, which is substantial for a game that depends on close-timed animation and atmosphere. At 2560x1440, the situation is similar: Low averages 43 FPS, Medium 27 FPS, High 19 FPS, and Ultra 15 FPS. Again, Low is the only preset that keeps the average north of 40 FPS, while every other setting sits in the 15–30 FPS range. At 3840x2160, Low averages 34 FPS, Medium 21 FPS, High 15 FPS, and Ultra 12 FPS. None of the 4K presets reach a comfortable 30 FPS average baseline.

The practical recommendation, based solely on the measured rows, is to use the Low preset. It is the only settings tier that yields an average frame rate above 30 FPS at 1080p and 1440p, and it comes closest to 30 FPS at 4K. Players who are willing to accept a nearly unplayable visual trade-off could instead use Medium at 1080p, which hits 32 FPS average, but the rapid drop in smoothness and the absence of any other point of interest make Low the superior choice. Ultra is not viable in any resolution tested, and High is only a marginal improvement over Ultra.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B390 exhibits a very low performance position in the database: its average benchmark score is 1482, and its percentile vs. all GPUs is 9. It is compared directly to NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX, GeForce 800M, GeForce GT 625 OEM, and GeForce GT 710, with delta percentage values ranging from 1.3% to 2.5%. Those are older, entry-level desktop or mobile products, which sets the context for this integrated GPU. The card's base clock is listed as 300 MHz and the boost clock as 2500 MHz. It contains 1536 shading units, 48 texture mapping units, and 24 ROPs. Its processing capability is expressed as 7.680 TFLOPS FP32, which is a modern-sounding figure, but it is paired with a memory system that is entirely System Shared, meaning the GPU has no dedicated VRAM. The bus width, memory bandwidth, and memory size are all System Shared, which is a severe handicap for a game that renders cinematic effects and large occult-like scenes.

The absence of dedicated video memory is likely a key factor in its poor performance in The Medium. As resolution increases, the demand on shared bandwidth rises, and the average frame rates fall accordingly. The game's requirement to render two separated realities in horizontal split-screen for many scenes exacerbates the memory and bandwidth dependence. The data demonstrates this: at 1080p Ultra, the average is 18 FPS; at 4K Ultra, it is 12 FPS. These low raw numbers confirm that the Arc B580 acts as the primary performance limiter in this system, and the CPU never seems to be given the chance to become a bottleneck.

The GPU's limited capability is further illuminated by the fact that the best result for the entire combo is just 51 FPS, and it is already at the lowest preset. Since the percentile rank of the GPU is 9, it sits below 90 percent of all compared GPUs, so the datas indicates that any increase in quality settings will produce only marginal gains. The card cannot reach a 60 FPS target in this game, and that limitation appears to hold even at the lowest resolution.

Resolution Scaling

Resolution scaling reveals a pattern reminiscent of a GPU-bound workload, but with some nuance. When moving from 1080p to 1440p, the average frame rates decline by 15–18% across all settings. For instance, at Low, the drop is from 51 to 43 FPS, a reduction of 15.7%. At Medium, from 33 to 27 (actually 32 to 27) with the data, a drop of 15.6%. High goes from 23 to 19 (17.4%), and Ultra goes from 18 to 15 (16.7%). These are roughly linear reductions that track the pixel count change, which is typical when the pixel pushing capabilities of the GPU are the governing factor.

From 1440p to 2160p the drops are deeper: Low goes from 43 to 34 (20.9%), Medium from 27 to 21 (22.2%), High from 19 to 15 (21.1%), and Ultra from 15 to 12 (20.0%). While the raw drop in frames is smaller, the percentage reduction increases at 4K because the memory and bandwidth pressure become more extreme. The overall scaling suggests that the GPU is the dominant constraint, but the fact that 1080p Low still only produces 51 FPS means that there is some other system-wide limitation preventing the CPU from pushing to higher rates. At 1080p, the game is not just facing a resolution penalty; the low preset does not allow the CPU to demonstrate its available processing power, since the GPU is already saturated. To illustrate, 1080p Low yields only 51 FPS, while high resolutions yield barely half of that at 4K. No resolution setting reaches 60 FPS, and the scaling curve indicates that the GPU is the prime cause.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo's overall ranking across all tested hardware for The Medium is position 3314 out of 3724 total combinations. That places this system in the bottom 11 percent of all tested combos (since there are only 410 one lower). The rank is a direct reflection of the mismatched CPU and GPU pairing. The CPU, Intel Core i5-11400F, has a percentile of 71 among all CPUs, meaning it outperforms most of the CPU field. In contrast, the GPU's percentile versus all GPUs is 9, so it is a very low-performing part. The combination of these two components drags the whole system to near the bottom of the list. The data suggests that even weaker CPUs would not change the performance much, as the GPU is the limiting agent: the CPU ranking is far higher than the measured fps counts, which never exceed 51 FPS even at pixel resolutions and at 1080P.

The relative lack of CPU-impact can be understood by considering the CPU's own benchmark scores: its Cinebench R23 multi-core score is 14340 and its single-core score is 2024, which are mid-range values. Yet in this system, the game never shows more than 51fps. If the CPU were being used to capacity, those frame rates would be expected to rise substantially at lower resolutions, but they do not. Therefore, the raw data of this combo rank demonstrate that this hardware combination must be considered only suitable for patience, which is also shown in the FAQ.

CPU Role

The 12-thread, six-core CPU is described as having a base clock of 2.60 GHz and boost of 4.40 GHz, with 12 MB of L3 cache. The CPU has many measured benchmarks, among them Cinebench R23 multi 14340, single 2024, Geekbench multi 7737, single 1777. The CPU sits at the 71st percentile of all CPUs, meaning the "bone" does not compare. In The Medium, however, the CPU's role is not to deliver raw FPS but to supply enough rendering work for the GPU. Since the measured FPS numbers are uniformly low and scale mainly with resolution, the data reveals the CPU is not the limit. At 1080p Low, the system picks up only 51 frames that arrives per second, which is low enough that many CPU could hit well above that with a different GPU. Therefore, the CPU has plenty of room to breathe, and the game's frame delivery would not improve by switching to a faster CPU.

But the CPU does still matter in the sense that its multithreading could be helpful for the game's dual-camera presentation style. The 6-core/12-shaped thread configuration may provide headroom for the game's parallel tasks, though there is no telemetry that proves it. The CPU's close-up results show it is not a weak component, but the overall system performance is constrained elsewhere. Among the top rivals for the CPU, the AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 9300G and the Intel Core Ultra 7 164U are at similar average scores, but they would not change The Medium's outcome at all because the GPU holds the system back. Consequently, the CPU's role in this composition is to sit comfortably behind the GPU, effectively idle relative to its capabilities.

Measured FPS Breakdown

1920x1080

| Setting | Average FPS | Min FPS | Max FPS |

|---|---|---|---|

| Low | 51 | — | — |

| Medium | 32 | 27 | 37 |

| High | 23 | — | — |

| Ultra | 18 | — | — |

2560x1440

| Setting | Average FPS | Min FPS | Max FPS |

|---|---|---|---|

| Low | 43 | — | — |

| Medium | 27 | 23 | 31 |

| High | 19 | — | — |

| Ultra | 15 | — | — |

3840x2160

| Setting | Average FPS | Min FPS | Max FPS |

|---|---|---|---|

| Low | 34 | — | — |

| Medium | 21 | 18 | 24 |

| High | 15 | — | — |

| Ultra | 12 | — | — |

The measured data set only shows min and max values for the Medium preset, which allows the game's frame-time variation to be observed. At 1080p Medium, the range is from 27 to 37, meaning a spread of 10 FPS. At 1440p Medium, the range is 23 to 31, a spread of 8 FPS. At 4K Medium, the range is 18 to 24, a 6 FPS spread. The game is therefore not running with any solid frame time across higher resolutions: the min and max values are separated by around a third of the average frame time. This indicates occasional spikes in frame rate, which are especially pronounced in a horror game where arrays and animation needed to stay consistent.

The fact that the min is never below the average of the next-lowest setting (for example, in 1080p Medium, min is 27, while High average is 23) shows that the variation is not drastic enough to break playability, though a player would notice stutter. Still, the data unequivocally shows that the one smooth experience is delivered at Low.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS this combo achieves in The Medium?

A: The highest average FPS is 51 FPS, measured at 1920x1080 with the Low preset.

Q: Does the combination ever reach 60 FPS?

A: No, the highest recorded average is 51 FPS, so the 60 FPS out-of-ear set is not attainable in any tested configuration.

Q: Which resolution and settings are best if playable 30 FPS is the goal but visual improvement is wanted?

A: Using the measured data, 1920x1080 at Medium or Low are the only options that achieve at least 30 FPS. At 1440p, only Low (43 FPS) stays above 30; at 4K, Low (34 FPS) is above 30 but just barely. If the player can tolerate dropping to 1440p, Low gives the highest FPS; otherwise 1080p Medium yields 32 FPS.

Q: How does the GPU compare to the CPU in percentile?

A: The Intel Core i5-11400F is in the 71st percentile of all CPUs, while the Intel Arc B580 is in the 9th percentile of all GPUs. That extreme difference explains why the GPU is the limiting factor.

Q: Is this configuration's rank very low among all other tested combos for the game?

A: Yes, the ranking 3314 out of 3724 combos places it in the 11th percentile, and only 410 combinations perform better (or worse) than this one.

Q: Why does the performance painter show the GPU bottleneck?

A: The FPS decrease from 1080p to 1440p, and then to 4K, is linear (15-22% per step) as resolution increases. At 1080p Low, if the CPU were the limiting factor, the frame rate should be noticeably higher, but it is only 51 FPS, which is far below the CPU's full performance. The extremely low percentile of the GPU, combined with the system's shared memory, indicates the GPU, not the CPU, is the cause of the low results.