The Medium

The Medium is a horror title that relies on atmospheric tension and fixed-camera angles, and the benchmark data for the Intel Core i5-12600KF with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti reveals a system that is heavily skewed toward GPU-bound performance. The measured frame rates across three resolutions and four quality presets show a clear pattern: the RTX 3080 Ti is the primary driver of performance, while the i5-12600KF provides sufficient headroom to avoid becoming a bottleneck in most scenarios. The data indicates this combo ranks in the 74th percentile of tested systems, which is strong, but the specific FPS numbers suggest that users will need to make careful setting choices to achieve smooth gameplay at higher resolutions.

FAQ

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

A: At 2560x1440 with Medium settings, the combo achieves an average of 79.8 FPS, and at 3840x2160 with Medium settings, it drops to 62.4 FPS. The only 4K preset that stays above 60 FPS is Low, which averages 96.9 FPS.

Q: How does the CPU's multi-threaded performance compare to its nearest rival?

A: The i5-12600KF has an average benchmark score of 27827, which is essentially tied with the Intel Core i9-10900K at 27829, showing a deltaPct of 0. It is also 0.1% behind the Intel Core i5-12600K and 0.2% behind the Intel Core Ultra 5 125H.

Q: What is the GPU's memory bandwidth and how does it factor into high-resolution performance?

A: The RTX 3080 Ti has a 384-bit bus and a bandwidth of 912.4 GB/s, which is substantial. The data shows that at 4K Ultra, the average FPS falls to 36.5, indicating that even with this high bandwidth, the GPU is heavily taxed.

Q: Which settings preset provides the largest FPS jump from Ultra to Low at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, the Ultra preset averages 55.2 FPS, while the Low preset averages 150.7 FPS. This represents a 95.5 FPS increase, or roughly 173% faster, when moving from Ultra to Low.

Q: Does the CPU's single-thread performance appear to limit frame rates at lower resolutions?

A: The data shows that at 1080p Low, the average FPS is 150.7, but this is still below the 3DMark single-thread score of 1016 would suggest as a hard cap. The CPU’s boost clock of 4.90 GHz likely prevents it from being a limiting factor at this resolution.

Q: How does the combo rank among all tested systems for this game?

A: The combo is ranked 438 out of 1689 tested combos, placing it in the top 26% of all configurations for The Medium.

How This Combo Ranks

The comboRankInGame data places this specific pairing at rank 438 out of 1689 total tested combos. This position, roughly the 74th percentile, indicates that while the system is far from the top of the leaderboard, it significantly outperforms the majority of tested configurations. The rank is influenced by the fact that The Medium appears to be a demanding title at high settings, as evidenced by the steep FPS drops when moving from Medium to Ultra presets. The i5-12600KF’s 84th percentile ranking among all CPUs and the RTX 3080 Ti’s 83rd percentile ranking among all GPUs suggest a balanced pairing, but the game’s specific engine quirks pull the overall combo rank down slightly. This suggests that the game is more sensitive to GPU raw throughput than to CPU threading capabilities, as the GPU’s nearest rival, the RTX 3090, scores only 0.5% higher on average, yet the 3080 Ti struggles to maintain 60 FPS at 4K Ultra.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12600KF is a 10-core, 16-thread processor based on the Alder Lake architecture, with a base clock of 3.70 GHz and a boost clock of 4.90 GHz. Its benchmark results are strong, particularly in multi-threaded workloads, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 23444 and a Geekbench multi-core score of 12373. In the context of The Medium, the CPU’s role is to feed the GPU with draw calls and physics data, and the data suggests it does this effectively. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 7956 and max-thread score of 7952 show that scaling is almost perfectly linear beyond 8 threads, but the game likely does not utilize all 16 threads. The single-thread performance, indicated by a 3DMark single-thread score of 1016 and a Passmark single-thread score of 3925, is sufficient to avoid bottlenecking the GPU at 1080p, as the FPS scales consistently with resolution changes. The CPU’s 125W TDP and 20 MB of shared L3 cache are ample for this horror title, which typically favors lower-latency single-core performance over raw multi-core throughput.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data shows a clear hierarchy across resolutions and settings. At 1920x1080, the average FPS ranges from 150.7 (Low) to 55.2 (Ultra), with High at 65.7 and Medium at 91.2. Moving to 2560x1440, the averages drop to 123.9 (Low), 79.8 (Medium), 56.3 (High), and 43 (Ultra). At 3840x2160, the averages are 96.9 (Low), 62.4 (Medium), 42 (High), and 36.5 (Ultra). The delta between Low and Ultra at each resolution is significant: at 1080p, it is a 95.5 FPS difference; at 1440p, it is 80.9 FPS; and at 4K, it is 60.4 FPS. This pattern indicates that the Ultra preset is extremely demanding, likely due to heavy use of ray-traced reflections and volumetric lighting, which are common in horror titles. The High preset at 4K produces 42 FPS, which is playable but not smooth, while Low at 4K offers a highly playable 96.9 FPS, suggesting that the game’s visual fidelity scales non-linearly with GPU load.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is the dominant component in this pairing, and its specifications explain the observed FPS trends. With 12 GB of GDDR6X memory, 10240 shading units, and 80 RT cores, the GPU is built for high-resolution gaming, but the data shows that The Medium pushes it to its limits. The GPU’s boost clock of 1665 MHz and FP32 performance of 34.10 TFLOPS are substantial, yet at 4K Ultra, the average FPS of 36.5 indicates that the game is heavily GPU-bound. The 912.4 GB/s memory bandwidth is critical for handling the high-resolution textures used in the game’s dual-world mechanic, where two scenes are rendered simultaneously. The GPU’s Passmark G3D score of 26896 places it in the 83rd percentile, and its nearest rival, the RTX 3090, is only 0.5% faster on average, yet the 3080 Ti still cannot maintain 60 FPS at 4K High. This suggests that the game’s engine has a hard performance ceiling that even top-tier GPUs struggle to break at 4K.

Settings Recommendations

For the best experience, the data points to Medium settings as the optimal balance between visual quality and frame rate. At 2560x1440 Medium, the combo averages 79.8 FPS, which is smooth and retains more visual fidelity than Low. At 3840x2160 Medium, the average drops to 62.4 FPS, which is just above the 60 FPS threshold and acceptable for a horror game where slower pacing is common. Ultra settings are not recommended, as they push the average FPS below 45 at all resolutions, which can lead to stutter in fast-moving scenes. Low settings, while offering high FPS (150.7 at 1080p and 96.9 at 4K), likely sacrifice too much visual detail, particularly in a game where atmosphere is key. High settings are a middle ground, but at 1440p they produce 56.3 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS target, making Medium the most reliable choice.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals the GPU-bound nature of this combo. At Medium settings, the average FPS drops from 91.2 at 1080p to 79.8 at 1440p (a 12.5% decrease) and then to 62.4 at 4K (a 21.8% decrease from 1440p). This non-linear drop indicates that the GPU is becoming increasingly saturated as pixel count increases. At Low settings, the scaling is more dramatic: 150.7 FPS at 1080p drops to 123.9 at 1440p (17.8% decrease) and then to 96.9 at 4K (21.8% decrease from 1440p). The fact that even at Low settings, the 4K FPS is still below 100 suggests that the GPU’s raw pixel-pushing capability, not the CPU, is the limiting factor. At Ultra settings, the drop from 1080p (55.2 FPS) to 4K (36.5 FPS) is a 33.9% decrease, which is steeper than the other presets, implying that the Ultra preset introduces effects that scale super-linearly with resolution. This pattern confirms that the RTX 3080 Ti is the bottleneck, and the i5-12600KF provides ample headroom for the GPU to operate at its full potential.