The Medium

The Medium is a fixed-camera horror title that leans heavily on pre-rendered environments and layered scene composition, and the benchmark data for the Intel Core i5-12600KF with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 shows a clear pattern of GPU-bound scaling across resolutions. At 1080p, the combo pushes average frame rates from 68 FPS on Ultra to 164 FPS on Low, while at 4K the same settings span drops to 45 FPS and 127 FPS respectively. The measured results indicate that this pairing is consistently limited by graphics workload rather than processor throughput, with the gap between Low and Ultra settings widening as resolution increases.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate progression from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 reveals how the RTX 4080 responds to pixel count stress in The Medium. At 1080p High, the system averages 86 FPS; moving to 1440p High drops that to 72 FPS, and at 4K High it falls to 57 FPS. That represents a 34% reduction from 1080p to 4K at High settings. The Medium setting tells a similar story: 120 FPS at 1080p, 101 FPS at 1440p, and 79 FPS at 4K—a 34% drop across the same resolution span. Low settings show the least relative scaling, with 164 FPS at 1080p, 155 FPS at 1440p, and 127 FPS at 4K, a 23% decline from the lowest to highest resolution.

Ultra settings produce the steepest curve: 68 FPS at 1080p, 57 FPS at 1440p, and 45 FPS at 4K. That 34% reduction from 1080p to 4K mirrors the High and Medium patterns, suggesting the game’s GPU load scales nearly linearly with pixel count once the CPU overhead is saturated. The data indicates that at 1080p, the RTX 4080 is still the primary limiter—even at Low settings the frame rate does not approach the CPU’s potential ceiling, as evidenced by the 164 FPS cap. At 4K, the GPU workload dominates entirely, with the gap between Low (127 FPS) and Ultra (45 FPS) representing a 2.8x performance spread.

The resolution scaling behavior points to a system where the i5-12600KF provides ample headroom for this title. The 10-core processor with a 4.90 GHz boost clock does not appear to bottleneck the RTX 4080 at any tested setting, as frame rates consistently rise with lower graphical loads rather than plateauing due to CPU limits. The 4K Medium result of 79 FPS with a 67 FPS minimum and 91 FPS maximum shows reasonable consistency, while the 1440p Medium range of 86 to 116 FPS indicates smooth pacing under moderate load.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 brings 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering 716.8 GB/s of bandwidth. The Ada Lovelace architecture, built on a 5 nm process at TSMC, features a base clock of 2205 MHz and a boost clock of 2505 MHz. For The Medium, which uses fixed camera angles and layered scene rendering, the GPU’s memory capacity proves sufficient even at 4K Ultra, where the average frame rate drops to 45 FPS—playable but not smooth. The 16 GB frame buffer is not taxed by this game’s requirements, as the measured results show no signs of memory-related stutters or drops below the reported minimums.

The RTX 4080’s 9728 shading units and 76 RT cores contribute to its compute capacity, but The Medium’s visual style relies more on traditional rasterization than ray tracing. The GPU’s 48.74 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 761.5 GTexel/s texture rate handle the game’s pre-baked lighting and shadow maps efficiently. At 1440p Medium, the combo achieves 101 FPS average, suggesting the GPU has headroom for higher settings at that resolution. The 4K Low result of 127 FPS indicates that even at maximum pixel count, the card can deliver high refresh rates when graphical complexity is reduced.

The nearest rivals in the GPU benchmark database show the RTX 4080’s position: the RTX 4080 SUPER scores 0.1% higher, while the AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB is 2.6% behind. The RTX 4080’s percentile rank of 86 among all GPUs places it firmly in the high-performance tier. In The Medium specifically, the card’s 4K Medium average of 79 FPS and 1440p Ultra average of 57 FPS demonstrate that it can handle the game’s most demanding presets at standard resolution, though 4K Ultra dips below the 60 FPS threshold.

FAQ

Q: Does the RTX 4080 maintain 60 FPS at 4K in The Medium?

A: At 4K Medium, the average frame rate is 79 FPS, and at 4K High it drops to 57 FPS. Ultra settings fall to 45 FPS, so only Medium and lower presets stay above 60 FPS at 3840x2160.

Q: How does the i5-12600KF perform relative to its CPU rivals?

A: The i5-12600KF has an average benchmark score of 27799, which is 0.3% lower than the Intel Core i9-10900K and 0.3% higher than the AMD Ryzen 5 8500GE. It sits at the 79th percentile among all CPUs.

Q: What is the best settings preset for smooth 1440p gameplay?

A: At 2560x1440, Medium settings deliver 101 FPS average with a 86 FPS minimum, while High yields 72 FPS. Ultra runs at 57 FPS, making Medium the highest preset that comfortably exceeds 100 FPS.

Q: Is the 16 GB VRAM sufficient for The Medium at 4K?

A: The measured data shows no VRAM-related performance degradation at 3840x2160. The 4K Ultra result of 45 FPS is consistent with GPU compute limits rather than memory capacity issues, and lower presets scale predictably.

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

A: The combination ranks 255th out of 3724 tested combos, placing it in the top 7% of all configurations evaluated in The Medium.

Q: What frame rate can I expect at 1080p with High settings?

A: The average FPS at 1920x1080 High is 86, with Ultra at 68 FPS and Medium at 120 FPS. Low settings reach 164 FPS, indicating the CPU is not the limiting factor at this resolution.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its highest frame rates across all settings. Low averages 164 FPS, Medium averages 120 FPS with a minimum of 102 and maximum of 138, High averages 86 FPS, and Ultra averages 68 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 96 FPS, showing a wide range of performance depending on graphical fidelity.

Moving to 2560x1440, Low remains smooth at 155 FPS, Medium drops to 101 FPS with a 86–116 FPS range, High falls to 72 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 57 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra at this resolution is 98 FPS, nearly identical to the 1080p spread, indicating that the GPU handles the additional pixel count without disproportionate losses.

At 3840x2160, the results show the RTX 4080’s limits. Low still manages 127 FPS, Medium averages 79 FPS with a 67–91 FPS range, High drops to 57 FPS, and Ultra reaches only 45 FPS. The Low-to-Ultra gap expands to 82 FPS, which is narrower than at lower resolutions because Ultra becomes heavily GPU-bound. The Medium preset at 4K provides the best balance, offering 79 FPS average with a minimum above 60 FPS.

The data across all resolutions shows consistent behavior: Low settings always deliver more than double the frame rate of Ultra settings, and Medium provides a 50–70% improvement over Ultra depending on resolution. The 1080p Medium result of 120 FPS and 1440p Medium of 101 FPS suggest that players seeking high refresh rates should choose Medium, while those prioritizing visual quality at 4K will need to accept sub-60 FPS performance on Ultra.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i5-12600KF with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 combination ranks 255th out of 3724 tested combos in The Medium, placing it in the top 6.8% of all configurations. This ranking reflects the strong GPU performance, as the RTX 4080 sits at the 86th percentile among all GPUs, while the CPU is at the 79th percentile. The combo’s high rank is driven primarily by the graphics card, which outperforms nearly all other GPUs in the database.

The CPU’s nearest rivals include the Intel Core i9-10900K, which scores 0.3% higher on average benchmarks, and the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, also 0.3% higher. The AMD Ryzen 5 8500GE scores 0.3% lower. These small deltas indicate that the i5-12600KF is well-matched to its performance tier, and in The Medium, the processor does not hinder the GPU’s output. The GPU’s nearest rivals show a similar tight grouping, with the RTX 4080 SUPER 0.1% ahead and the AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB 2.6% behind.

For a horror title with fixed camera angles, the 255th rank out of 3724 combos is impressive, especially considering that many configs with newer or more expensive hardware would be expected to score higher. The data indicates that the RTX 4080’s 16 GB memory and high bandwidth are well-suited to The Medium’s rendering demands, and the i5-12600KF’s 10 cores and 16 threads provide sufficient processing power for the game’s CPU overhead.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12600KF is a 10-core, 16-thread processor from the Alder Lake architecture, with a base clock of 3.70 GHz and a boost clock of 4.90 GHz. Its 20 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel memory support for DDR4 and DDR5 provide solid bandwidth for gaming workloads. In The Medium, the CPU’s role is secondary to the GPU, as evidenced by the scaling patterns: at 1080p Low, the frame rate reaches 164 FPS, which is well below the processor’s theoretical ceiling based on its 3DMark single-thread score of 1016 and multi-thread score of 7952.

The i5-12600KF’s Cinebench R23 results show a multicore score of 23391 and single-core score of 3302, placing it in the upper tier of desktop processors. Its PassMark multithread score of 27575 and single-thread score of 3925 further confirm its capability. However, in The Medium, the game’s reliance on GPU rendering means the CPU rarely becomes the bottleneck, even at 4K Ultra where the frame rate drops to 45 FPS—a clear sign that the graphics card is fully saturated.

The processor’s 125 W TDP and Intel Socket 1700 compatibility make it a practical choice for high-end gaming builds. Its nearest CPU rivals include the Intel Core i9-10900K and AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, both scoring within 0.3% on average benchmarks. The i5-12600KF’s performance in The Medium is sufficient to keep the RTX 4080 fed at all tested resolutions and settings, as no measurement shows a CPU-induced plateau. The 4K Low result of 127 FPS, which is still above 120 FPS, indicates that even at high pixel counts, the processor can support rapid frame delivery when the GPU load is light.