The Medium

The Medium presents a uniquely punishing workload for this particular pairing of an Intel Core i5-12400 and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 4 GB. The benchmark data reveals a system that is consistently constrained by its graphics processor, with frame rates that plummet as resolution and visual fidelity increase. This combination ranks in the 1513th position out of 1689 tested configurations, placing it firmly in the lower quartile of the database, a position that reflects the GPU's limitations rather than any deficiency in the processor.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate data shows a stark and predictable collapse as resolution scales from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160. At the High preset, the average frame rate drops from 31.5 FPS at 1080p to 26.5 FPS at 1440p, a loss of 5 FPS, and then plummets further to 19.4 FPS at 4K. This trajectory is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario where the render target's pixel count overwhelms the graphics card's fill rate and memory bandwidth.

The scaling pattern becomes even more telling when examining the Low preset, which is the most revealing indicator of the system's true bottleneck. At 1920x1080 Low, the combo achieves 64.3 FPS. Moving to 2560x1440 Low yields 57.1 FPS, and at 3840x2160 Low, the average falls to 43 FPS. The fact that even at the lowest settings the frame rate drops by 33% when moving from 1080p to 4K indicates that the GPU's shading units and ROPs are saturated regardless of the reduced shader complexity. The RTX 3050's 32 ROPs and 64 TMUs are simply insufficient for the pixel throughput demanded at 4K.

What is particularly striking is the delta between 1440p and 4K at the Medium preset. The average frame rate goes from 36.5 FPS at 2560x1440 to 29.6 FPS at 3840x2160, a reduction of 6.9 FPS. This suggests that the 4 GB VRAM buffer is also becoming a limiting factor, as the larger framebuffer at 4K likely exceeds the available memory, forcing the GPU to rely on slower data transfers over the PCIe 4.0 x8 interface. The data shows that this combo is strictly a 1080p performer, with 1440p requiring a significant reduction in settings to remain playable.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 4 GB is the dominant constraint in this configuration. The GPU operates on the Ampere architecture with a GA107 chip built on Samsung's 8 nm process. Its boost clock of 1740 MHz and base clock of 1545 MHz are modest figures, but the real limitation is the memory subsystem. With a 128-bit bus and GDDR6 memory running at 1500 MHz (12 Gbps effective), the card offers a bandwidth of 192.0 GB/s. The 4 GB VRAM capacity is notably small for a modern game like The Medium, which is known for its heavy texture loads.

The benchmark results show that the GPU's 7.127 TFLOPS of FP32 performance is insufficient for the game's demands. At 1080p Ultra, the average FPS falls to 23.4, a figure that is barely playable. The jump from Medium to High at 1080p costs 9.8 FPS (from 41.3 to 31.5), indicating that the higher texture qualities and shadow effects are directly taxing the GPU's TMUs and ROPs. The card's pixel rate of 55.68 GPixel/s and texture rate of 111.4 GTexel/s are simply not high enough to maintain fluid frame rates at higher settings.

The GPU's 16 RT cores and 64 tensor cores are present but do not provide meaningful assistance in this title, as the data shows no indication of upscaling or ray tracing benefits. The card's 90 W TDP and 250 W suggested PSU are modest, but the performance ceiling is clearly defined by the memory bandwidth. The 192.0 GB/s bandwidth is a severe bottleneck at resolutions above 1080p, which is corroborated by the 4K Low result of 43 FPS being only 33% lower than the 1080p Low result of 64.3 FPS, despite the 4x increase in pixel count.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400 provides a foundation that is not the limiting factor in this analysis. With 6 cores and 12 threads, the processor runs at a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. The Alder Lake architecture, built on Intel's 10 nm process, delivers strong single-threaded performance, evidenced by its 3DMark single-thread score of 910 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2249. The processor's 18 MB of shared L3 cache and 1.25 MB per-core L2 cache are ample for gaming workloads.

The CPU's benchmark scores place it in the 77th percentile among all CPUs, indicating that it is a well-above-average processor. Its average benchmark score of 19850 is nearly identical to the Intel Core i7-9700, which scores 19831 with a deltaPct of 0.1, and the Intel Core i5-11600K, which scores 19771 with a deltaPct of 0.4. The processor outperforms the Intel Core i7-8700 by a negligible 0.2% margin, showing that the i5-12400 is squarely in the performance tier of older i7 processors.

In the context of The Medium, the CPU's role is to feed the GPU with draw calls and handle the game's logic. The data shows that the CPU is not the bottleneck, as the frame rates scale directly with resolution. If the CPU were the limiting factor, the 1080p and 4K results would be much closer. The fact that the 1080p Low result of 64.3 FPS is the highest recorded in the entire dataset, and that it drops to 43 FPS at 4K Low, confirms that the GPU is the sole constraint. The processor's passmark multithread score of 18747 and 3DMark max-threads score of 5890 indicate that it has ample headroom for this game's threading requirements.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a comprehensive picture of the combo's capabilities across all settings and resolutions. At 1920x1080, the results are as follows: Low yields 64.3 FPS, Medium yields 41.3 FPS, High yields 31.5 FPS, and Ultra yields 23.4 FPS. This shows a clear linear degradation as settings increase, with a difference of 40.9 FPS between the lowest and highest presets.

At 2560x1440, the frame rates drop to 57.1 FPS on Low, 36.5 FPS on Medium, 26.5 FPS on High, and 19.2 FPS on Ultra. The delta between 1080p and 1440p at each setting is roughly 7 FPS across the board, except for Ultra where the difference is only 4.2 FPS, suggesting that the GPU is already hitting a hard performance floor.

The 3840x2160 results are the most telling: Low produces 43 FPS, Medium produces 29.6 FPS, High produces 19.4 FPS, and Ultra produces 14.2 FPS. The Ultra preset at 4K yields a frame rate that is 77.9% lower than the 1080p Low result, which is a catastrophic drop. The data clearly shows that the only viable configuration for this combo is 1080p with Low or Medium settings, as anything above that results in an unplayable experience.

The min FPS values are not provided in the data, but the average FPS figures are sufficient to draw conclusions about playability. A 64.3 FPS average at 1080p Low is acceptable, but the 23.4 FPS at 1080p Ultra would result in stuttering and visual tearing. The 4K results are uniformly below 30 FPS, which is the minimum threshold for a playable frame rate in a horror title that relies on atmosphere and smooth camera movement.

How This Combo Ranks

This combination of the Intel Core i5-12400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 4 GB ranks 1513 out of 1689 tested combos in The Medium. This places it in the bottom 10.4% of all configurations, which is a poor result for a system built around a modern 12th-gen processor. The rank is directly attributable to the GPU's limitations, as the CPU is clearly capable of supporting much higher frame rates.

The CPU's nearest rivals provide context for the processor's performance, but the GPU's lack of benchmark data and nearest rivals in the FACT PACK means that the comparison must be made through the measured FPS results. The RTX 3050 4 GB is in the 50th percentile among all GPUs, but this is a misleading statistic because the percentile is based on a broader set of games and benchmarks, not this specific title.

In The Medium, the combo's rank reflects a fundamental mismatch. The CPU is a solid mid-range performer, but the GPU is an entry-level card that struggles with modern titles. The 1080p Low result of 64.3 FPS is the only configuration that approaches a smooth experience, and even then, it is not a high-refresh-rate outcome. The data indicates that users of this combo would need to significantly lower their expectations or upgrade the GPU to achieve a satisfactory experience in The Medium. The rank of 1513 out of 1689 is a clear signal that this combination is not well-suited for this game, and the bottleneck is overwhelmingly the graphics card.