The Medium

The Medium, a fixed-camera horror title built around dual-reality rendering, presents a distinctive load profile for the Intel Core i5-12400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti combination. The measured frame rates across resolutions and presets reveal a system that is heavily constrained by the graphics card at high settings but shows surprising headroom at lower presets. The data indicates a pairing where the CPU is rarely the limiting factor, allowing the GPU’s capabilities to define the experience.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 demonstrates a steep performance curve that is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario. At the High preset, the average frame rate falls from 59.7 FPS at 1080p to 47.9 FPS at 1440p, a reduction of 19.8% that reflects the increased pixel count. Moving to 4K, the average drops further to 40.1 FPS, which is 32.8% lower than the 1080p result. This consistent decline highlights that the RTX 3070 Ti’s rendering throughput is the primary constraint, as the i5-12400’s six cores are sufficient to feed the GPU at these resolutions.

The scaling pattern shifts dramatically when examining the Low preset. At 1080p, the combo achieves 127.5 FPS, which is more than double the High preset’s 59.7 FPS. At 1440p Low, the average is 107.8 FPS, and even at 4K Low, the system maintains 84.5 FPS. The fact that 4K Low outperforms 1080p High by 41.5% indicates that the game’s visual effects, not resolution, are the dominant performance factor. The jump from Low to Medium at 1080p costs 36.3% of the frame rate (127.5 to 81.2 FPS), while the jump from Medium to High costs another 26.5% (81.2 to 59.7 FPS). This non-linear scaling suggests that specific settings within the Medium and High presets trigger expensive rendering features, likely related to the game’s volumetric lighting and shadow quality.

At 4K, the Ultra preset produces a barely playable 29.8 FPS, while High yields 40.1 FPS and Medium reaches 50.6 FPS. The difference between High and Ultra at 4K is 25.7%, which is larger than the 13.5% gap between Medium and High at the same resolution. This indicates that Ultra introduces a disproportionately heavy load, likely from increased texture detail that stresses the 8 GB VRAM buffer. The 1440p results follow a similar pattern: Ultra at 42.2 FPS, High at 47.9 FPS, and Medium at 71.1 FPS. The data consistently shows that resolution scaling is smooth and predictable, but preset scaling is steep and uneven, pointing to a game engine where quality settings have an outsized impact on the GPU’s compute and memory subsystems.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo to maintain a 60 FPS average?

A: At 1920x1080 with the High preset, the combo achieves 59.7 FPS, which is just below the 60 FPS mark. To comfortably exceed 60 FPS, the Medium preset at 1080p delivers 81.2 FPS. At 1440p, the Low preset hits 107.8 FPS, but the Medium preset drops to 71.1 FPS, which is still above 60 FPS.

Q: How much performance is lost when moving from 1080p to 4K at the same settings?

A: At the High preset, the average frame rate declines from 59.7 FPS at 1080p to 40.1 FPS at 4K, representing a 32.8% reduction. At the Low preset, the drop is from 127.5 FPS to 84.5 FPS, a 33.7% loss. The scaling is consistent across presets, indicating a uniform pixel-throughput limitation.

Q: Is the Intel Core i5-12400 a bottleneck for the RTX 3070 Ti in this game?

A: Benchmark results indicate the CPU is not a limiting factor. The frame rate drops steadily with increasing resolution and settings, which is the signature of a GPU-bound workload. The i5-12400’s 12 threads and 18 MB of shared L3 cache provide ample headroom, as evidenced by the 127.5 FPS result at 1080p Low, which does not show a CPU-imposed ceiling.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between the Low and Ultra presets at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the Low preset averages 107.8 FPS, while the Ultra preset averages 42.2 FPS. This is a 60.9% reduction in frame rate, highlighting the extreme cost of the Ultra settings. The Medium preset at 71.1 FPS sits roughly midway between these extremes.

Q: Does the 8 GB VRAM capacity of the RTX 3070 Ti affect performance at 4K?

A: The data shows a significant drop from High (40.1 FPS) to Ultra (29.8 FPS) at 3840x2160, a 25.7% decline. While this could be attributed to VRAM pressure from Ultra textures, the game’s memory bus width of 256 bit and bandwidth of 608.3 GB/s suggest the card has sufficient throughput. The bottleneck appears to be the GPU’s raw shader and RT core performance rather than memory capacity alone.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested systems for The Medium?

A: The combination ranks 653rd out of 1689 tested combos, placing it in the 61st percentile. This indicates it outperforms a majority of systems tested, though it is not in the top tier.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data provides a clear hierarchy for optimizing the experience. For users targeting a smooth 60 FPS baseline at 1920x1080, the High preset’s 59.7 FPS is borderline, while the Medium preset’s 81.2 FPS offers a comfortable margin. The Medium preset is the recommended starting point, as it provides a 36% performance uplift over High while likely retaining most of the visual fidelity that matters in a horror game, such as lighting and shadow complexity. The Low preset at 1080p hits 127.5 FPS, which is excessive for a game of this genre, where atmospheric tension is more important than raw frame rate.

At 2560x1440, the Medium preset is the sweet spot, delivering 71.1 FPS. This is above the 60 FPS threshold and represents a 48.4% improvement over the High preset’s 47.9 FPS. The Ultra preset at 1440p drops to 42.2 FPS, which is likely too low for a title that relies on smooth camera movement. The High preset at 1440p is not recommended, as it falls below 60 FPS, making Medium the clear choice for quality and performance balance.

For 4K gaming, the data suggests that the Ultra preset is not viable, with a 29.8 FPS average that would feel sluggish. The High preset at 40.1 FPS is also below the 60 FPS target, but the Medium preset at 50.6 FPS is playable for a slower-paced horror title. The Low preset at 4K achieves 84.5 FPS, but this sacrifices too much visual quality for a game that relies on environmental storytelling. The optimal 4K configuration is the Medium preset, which balances the frame rate at 50.6 FPS with acceptable detail levels. Users prioritizing a locked 60 FPS should consider 1440p Medium, as the 4K Medium result falls short of that mark.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i5-12400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti combination holds a rank of 653 out of 1689 tested combos for The Medium. This places it in the upper-middle tier of the tested pool, meaning it outperforms roughly 61% of all systems evaluated. The ranking reflects the balance of this pairing: the RTX 3070 Ti is a strong performer, but it is not a flagship card, and the i5-12400 is a mid-range CPU. The combo’s position suggests that it will handle the game well at 1080p and 1440p, but it will struggle with the highest settings at 4K.

Looking at the individual components, the CPU’s average benchmark score of 19850 puts it nearly identical to the Intel Core i7-9700, which scores 19831, a delta of 0.1%. It is also within 0.4% of the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5995WX, which scores 19928, and 0.2% behind the Intel Core i7-8700 at 19894. This indicates that the i5-12400’s processing power is squarely in the middle of its peer group, with no significant advantage or disadvantage. The GPU’s average benchmark score of 30849 is similarly clustered with its rivals: the AMD Radeon RX 590 GME scores 30755 (0.3% behind), the AMD Radeon RX 6700 scores 31112 (0.8% ahead), and the NVIDIA Quadro M5000 scores 31142 (0.9% ahead). This tight grouping means the RTX 3070 Ti’s performance in The Medium is representative of its class, and the combo’s rank is driven more by the game’s specific engine demands than by any outlier behavior from either component.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is the dominant component in this pairing for The Medium. Its 8 GB of GDDR6X memory, paired with a 256-bit bus and 608.3 GB/s of bandwidth, provides the data throughput necessary for the game’s high-resolution textures. The GPU’s 6144 shading units and 48 RT cores are directly relevant, as The Medium uses ray-traced reflections and ambient occlusion. The benchmark data supports this: the frame rate scales almost linearly with pixel count at a fixed preset, which is a hallmark of GPU-bound rendering.

The GPU’s boost clock of 1770 MHz, with a base of 1575 MHz, is modest by modern standards, but the Ampere architecture’s efficiency compensates. The card’s 21.75 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is the raw horsepower that drives the High and Ultra presets. However, the measured results show that the Ultra preset at 4K (29.8 FPS) is nearly half the speed of the Medium preset at 4K (50.6 FPS). This suggests that the Ultra preset’s additional draw calls and texture filtering demands overwhelm the GPU’s texture units (192 TMUs) and ROPs (96), rather than the memory system. The 8 GB capacity is sufficient, as evidenced by the fact that the Low preset at 4K achieves 84.5 FPS, which would be impossible if the card were thrashing due to VRAM overflow. The GPU’s role is clear: it is the primary bottleneck at all resolutions above 1080p Medium, and users should adjust settings, not resolution, to achieve their target frame rate.