The Medium

The Intel Core i5-12400 paired with the Intel Arc B570 delivers a playable but constrained experience in The Medium, with performance heavily dependent on preset selection. The measured data indicates that the Medium preset is the optimal choice across all resolutions, offering a significant performance uplift over High settings while maintaining a more stable frame time experience than Low. At 1080p, the combo achieves 49 FPS on Medium, which is 40% faster than High settings and 75% faster than Ultra, making it the clear sweet spot for this pairing. The data shows a harsh penalty for Ultra settings, which drop performance to 28 FPS at 1080p, rendering that preset impractical for smooth gameplay.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark results make a definitive case for the Medium preset as the best experience on this hardware. At 1920x1080, Medium delivers 49 FPS average, which is comfortably above the 30 FPS threshold typically considered minimum for a horror title, though not reaching the 60 FPS ideal. The measured minimum of 41 FPS at Medium shows the frame pacing is consistent enough to avoid jarring stutters during tense sequences. This contrasts sharply with High settings at 35 FPS, which loses 14 FPS average and offers no visual benefit proportional to the performance cost.

For users prioritizing frame rate, Low settings at 1080p provide 78 FPS, a 59% improvement over Medium. However, the data suggests this comes at the cost of visual fidelity that The Medium's fixed-camera horror presentation relies on for atmosphere. The Medium preset represents the best compromise: it nearly doubles the frame rate of Ultra while retaining enough graphical detail for the game's moody lighting and shadow work. At 2560x1440, Medium drops to 41 FPS, still playable, but the 1080p Medium experience is clearly the intended sweet spot for this combo.

Ultra settings are effectively unplayable across all resolutions, with 18 FPS at 4K, 23 FPS at 1440p, and 28 FPS at 1080p. These numbers indicate that the Arc B570 simply lacks the raw throughput to handle the Ultra preset's additional effects and draw distances. The performance cliff between Medium and Ultra is steep — a 43% drop at 1080p — suggesting that Ultra enables features that disproportionately tax this GPU architecture. Users should avoid Ultra entirely; the visual uplift does not justify cutting frame rate in half.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B570 is the primary bottleneck in this pairing, and the benchmark data confirms this through the dramatic scaling between presets. The GPU's 10 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 160-bit bus with 380.0 GB/s bandwidth is sufficient for The Medium's asset streaming, as evidenced by the fact that even the heaviest Ultra preset at 4K does not produce catastrophic minimum frame drops — the Ultra 4K result of 18 FPS is a steady, if slideshow-like, performance. The GPU's 18 ray tracing cores are present but appear to provide no meaningful benefit in this title, as the preset scaling shows traditional rasterization performance dominating the results.

The GPU's boost clock of 2500 MHz and 11.52 TFLOPS of FP32 compute are the key specifications driving these results. The Medium preset at 1080p demands roughly 4.9 FPS per TFLOPS of compute, a modest efficiency figure that reflects the game's 2021 release date and its DirectX 12 rendering path. The GPU's 200.0 GPixel/s pixel rate and 360.0 GTexel/s texture rate are adequate for the game's fixed-camera scenes, which typically render simpler geometry than open-world titles, but the 80 ROPs become a limiting factor at higher resolutions where fill-rate demand increases linearly with pixel count.

The Arc B570's 150 W TDP and PCIe 4.0 x8 interface do not appear to create bandwidth bottlenecks in this game. The 1080p Medium result of 49 FPS is consistent with the GPU's position in the benchmark hierarchy, where it sits at the 65th percentile of all GPUs. The data shows that the GPU's memory subsystem handles the game's streaming well — the 10 GB capacity is never exceeded, as evidenced by the lack of catastrophic frame drops in the Medium preset's measured minimums (41 FPS at 1080p, 35 FPS at 1440p, 27 FPS at 4K).

How This Combo Ranks

The combined performance of the Intel Core i5-12400 and Intel Arc B570 places this pairing at rank 2321 out of 2911 tested combinations in The Medium, putting it in the bottom 20% of systems. This ranking reflects the GPU's limitations more than the CPU's capabilities. The i5-12400 is a capable mid-range processor with a 72nd percentile ranking against all CPUs, and its benchmark scores — including a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 15989 and single-core score of 2257 — indicate it is not the limiting factor in this pairing.

The combo's rank of 2321 suggests that most tested systems, including those with older or lower-tier GPUs, outperform this configuration in this specific title. The nearest GPU rivals to the Arc B570 — the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile (0.1% higher average score) and Intel Arc A750 (0.1% lower) — indicate that the B570 is competitively positioned in synthetic benchmarks, but The Medium's specific rendering path appears to disadvantage this architecture. The CPU's nearest rivals show a similar clustering: the AMD EPYC 7643 is 0.1% behind, and the Intel Core i7-1355U is 0.3% behind, confirming that the i5-12400 is a solid, average performer in this tier.

This ranking data tells a clear story: the combination is CPU-sufficient but GPU-limited. The i5-12400's 6 cores and 12 threads with an 18 MB L3 cache provide ample headroom for the game's CPU demands, but the Arc B570's mid-range positioning (65th GPU percentile) drags the overall combo down. Users considering this pairing for The Medium should expect performance below the median tested system, though the specific preset choices can mitigate the gap — the Medium preset at 1080p delivers 49 FPS, which is competitive with many higher-ranked combos that require High or Ultra settings to achieve similar visuals.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full preset range shows a clear hierarchy. Low settings produce 78 FPS average, which is the only preset that approaches the 60 FPS target commonly associated with smooth gameplay. Medium settings deliver 49 FPS with a minimum of 41 FPS and a maximum of 56 FPS, indicating consistent frame delivery. High settings drop to 35 FPS, and Ultra falls to 28 FPS. The gap between Medium and High is 14 FPS (29% loss), while the gap between High and Ultra is 7 FPS (20% loss), showing diminishing returns as settings increase.

At 2560x1440, the same pattern emerges with lower absolute numbers. Low settings deliver 66 FPS, still playable. Medium produces 41 FPS with a minimum of 35 FPS and maximum of 47 FPS, maintaining playability. High drops to 29 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 23 FPS. The Medium-to-High gap is 12 FPS (29% loss), consistent with the 1080p scaling. The 1440p Medium result of 41 FPS is notable — it matches the 1080p High result of 35 FPS in terms of playability, suggesting that resolution scaling is more efficient than preset scaling for this GPU.

At 3840x2160, the results become marginal. Low settings produce 52 FPS, still technically playable. Medium delivers 32 FPS with a minimum of 27 FPS and maximum of 37 FPS, which is borderline for a horror game where frame drops during cutscenes could be noticeable. High falls to 23 FPS, and Ultra is effectively a slideshow at 18 FPS. The 4K Medium result of 32 FPS is below the 1080p High result of 35 FPS, indicating that the GPU's fill-rate limitations are the primary constraint at this resolution.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1080p to 4K reveals a steep performance curve that confirms the GPU as the limiting component. At Medium settings, the FPS drops from 49 at 1080p to 41 at 1440p (a 16% loss) and then to 32 at 4K (a 35% loss from 1080p). This scaling is more aggressive than the pixel count increase would suggest — 4K has 4x the pixels of 1080p, but the FPS only drops by 35%, indicating that the game is not purely fill-rate bound and that CPU overhead or other bottlenecks mitigate the resolution penalty.

The Low preset shows the best resolution scaling: 78 FPS at 1080p, 66 FPS at 1440p (15% loss), and 52 FPS at 4K (33% loss). This suggests that at Low settings, the GPU has enough headroom to handle the resolution increase without hitting hard limits. The High preset scales worse: 35 FPS at 1080p, 29 FPS at 1440p (17% loss), and 23 FPS at 4K (34% loss). The Ultra preset is the worst scaler: 28 FPS at 1080p, 23 FPS at 1440p (18% loss), and 18 FPS at 4K (36% loss).

This data indicates that the i5-12400 is not the bottleneck at any resolution. If the CPU were limiting, we would expect the 1080p-to-1440p drop to be minimal (since the CPU workload stays constant) and the 1440p-to-4K drop to be larger. Instead, the consistent ~15-18% loss per resolution step suggests the GPU is the limiting factor across the board. The i5-12400's 4.40 GHz boost clock and strong single-thread performance (Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2257) are sufficient to feed the GPU even at 1080p Low where the frame rate reaches 78 FPS.

FAQ

Q: What is the best preset for this combo in The Medium?

A: The Medium preset is the optimal choice. At 1080p it delivers 49 FPS average with a 41 FPS minimum, which is 40% faster than High settings and 75% faster than Ultra. At 1440p it maintains 41 FPS, and even at 4K it stays at 32 FPS, making it the only preset that balances quality and playability.

Q: Can this system run The Medium at 4K?

A: Yes, but only at Low or Medium settings. Low delivers 52 FPS at 4K, which is playable. Medium drops to 32 FPS, which is borderline but workable for a slow-paced horror title. High (23 FPS) and Ultra (18 FPS) are not recommended for 4K.

Q: How does the Intel Arc B570 compare to its closest rivals in this game?

A: The B570's average benchmark score is 20556, placing it 0.1% below the Intel Arc A750 and 0.1% above the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile. In The Medium, this translates to performance that is competitive with those GPUs, though the specific game's optimization may favor one architecture over another.

Q: Is the Intel Core i5-12400 holding back the GPU?

A: No. The resolution scaling data shows consistent FPS drops from 1080p to 1440p to 4K, which indicates GPU-bound performance. The i5-12400's Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 15989 and single-core score of 2257 place it in the 72nd percentile of all CPUs, providing ample processing headroom for this game.

Q: What frame rates can I expect at 1440p with Medium settings?

A: The measured average is 41 FPS, with a minimum of 35 FPS and a maximum of 47 FPS. This is playable for The Medium's slower-paced gameplay, though users sensitive to frame drops may prefer to drop to 1080p Medium for a steadier 49 FPS experience.

Q: Does the Ultra preset provide any benefit worth the performance cost?

A: No. At 1080p, Ultra delivers 28 FPS compared to Medium's 49 FPS — a 43% performance loss. At 1440p, Ultra hits 23 FPS, and at 4K it drops to 18 FPS. The visual improvements from Ultra do not justify the severe frame rate penalty on this hardware.