The Medium

The Intel Core i5-12400F and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER combination occupies a position deep in the lower tier of tested systems for The Medium, ranking 1500th out of 1689 total combos. This places the pairing in the 11th percentile of all tested configurations, indicating that it is not a setup suited for high-refresh-rate or high-fidelity play in this title. The data suggests that while the CPU is a modern, capable six-core part, the GPU is the overwhelming constraint, struggling to maintain playable frame rates at higher settings and resolutions. This is a classic case of a balanced mainstream build falling short of a demanding, fixed-camera horror game’s optimization profile.

How This Combo Ranks

The measured performance places this combo in a position where it is outperformed by the vast majority of the 1689 tested configurations. With a rank of 1500, the system sits ahead of only 189 other setups, meaning roughly 89% of tested hardware combinations deliver higher average frame rates in The Medium. This low standing is primarily attributable to the GPU’s age and class. The GTX 1660 SUPER, while a capable 1080p card in many titles, is demonstrably outclassed here, as the game’s rendering demands appear to scale aggressively with both resolution and quality presets. The CPU, in contrast, holds its own in synthetic benchmarks, but its contribution is largely negated by the graphics bottleneck. The data indicates that users with this combo should expect a sub-60 FPS experience at all but the lowest settings, making it a poor fit for the game’s intended atmospheric experience.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER is the primary determinant of this combo’s performance, and its specifications explain the observed bottlenecks. The GPU is built on the Turing architecture with a TU116 chip, featuring 1408 shading units, 88 texture mapping units, and 48 raster output units. Its memory configuration consists of 6 GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 336.0 GB/s. The base clock is 1530 MHz, with a boost clock of 1785 MHz. These specifications, while respectable for a 1080p card from its generation, are insufficient for the demands of The Medium at higher presets. The average benchmark scores place the GPU in the 55th percentile of all GPUs, with a Passmark G3D score of 12699 and an average benchmark score of 14286. Its nearest rivals, such as the AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 and Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics, have nearly identical average scores, with delta percentages of -0.2% and -0.2% respectively, confirming that the GTX 1660 SUPER is positioned at a performance tier where even integrated graphics solutions are competitive in raw compute, though they lack the dedicated memory bandwidth of this card.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate data shows a steep and consistent decline as resolution increases, a clear indicator of GPU-bound performance. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo achieves an average of 72.9 FPS, which is the only measured configuration to cross the 60 FPS threshold. Moving to 1440p Low drops the average to 58.2 FPS, a reduction of 14.7 FPS. At 4K Low, the average falls further to 47.3 FPS. This pattern is consistent across all quality presets. For example, at High settings, the average frame rate drops from 30.4 FPS at 1080p to 26.7 FPS at 1440p and then to 23.7 FPS at 4K. The scaling from 1080p to 4K at High settings represents a 22% reduction in performance, while at Low settings the reduction is 35%. This disproportionate scaling at lower settings suggests that the GPU’s fillrate and memory bandwidth become increasingly stressed as pixel count grows, while the CPU’s ability to feed the GPU is not the limiting factor, as the frame rate differences are relatively modest compared to the massive increase in rendering load.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a granular look at the combo’s capabilities across twelve distinct configurations. At 1920x1080, the results are as follows: Low settings produce an average of 72.9 FPS, Medium produces 43.8 FPS, High produces 30.4 FPS, and Ultra produces 25 FPS. This represents a dramatic drop of 47.9 FPS from Low to Ultra, indicating that the game’s quality settings have a profound impact on the GPU load. At 2560x1440, the averages are 58.2 FPS for Low, 36.5 FPS for Medium, 26.7 FPS for High, and 20.5 FPS for Ultra. The gap between Low and Ultra narrows to 37.7 FPS, but the absolute numbers are lower across the board. At 3840x2160, the averages are 47.3 FPS for Low, 26.6 FPS for Medium, 23.7 FPS for High, and 15.8 FPS for Ultra. The Ultra preset at 4K is the slowest configuration measured, yielding a mere 15.8 FPS, which is not viable for gameplay. The data indicates that for a smooth 60 FPS experience, the user is restricted to 1080p Low settings, and for a more visually rich experience, they would need to accept frame rates in the 30-40 FPS range at 1080p Medium or 1440p Low.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Alder Lake architecture, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. It features 80 KB of L1 cache per core, 1.25 MB of L2 cache per core, and 18 MB of shared L3 cache. Its synthetic benchmark scores are solid, with a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 16518 and a single-core score of 2332, placing it in the 77th percentile of all CPUs. Its average benchmark score of 19221 is nearly identical to its nearest rival, the Intel Core i7-8700K, which scores 19210 with a delta of 0.1%. This indicates that the CPU has ample processing power for gaming workloads. However, in The Medium, the CPU’s role is secondary. The benchmark results show that frame rates are consistently low even at 1080p High and Ultra, where CPU load is typically higher. The fact that the FPS scales more with resolution and quality settings than with any CPU-bound scenario suggests that the GTX 1660 SUPER is the definitive bottleneck. The CPU is not the limiting component here; it has sufficient headroom to handle the game’s logic and rendering calls, but the GPU simply cannot execute the shader and pixel work fast enough to keep up.