The Medium

The Medium, a fixed-camera horror title built on Unreal Engine, shows a clear preference for GPU throughput in this configuration of the Intel Core i5-13400F and AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT. The measured data reveals a system that scales predictably with resolution, where the graphics card becomes the dominant constraint at higher pixel counts, while the CPU provides a robust foundation that never appears to bottleneck the frame rate. This analysis walks through the benchmark results, interpreting how the scores translate to playable settings and where the combination stands relative to other tested hardware pairings.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate progression from 1080p to 4K demonstrates a textbook GPU-bound scenario, with each resolution step imposing a consistent load on the Radeon RX 7800 XT. At High settings, the average FPS drops from 60.3 at 1920x1080 to 50.8 at 2560x1440, a decline of roughly 16% that aligns with the increased pixel count of 1440p. Moving to 3840x2160, the average falls further to 43.0, showing a 29% reduction from the 1440p figure. This steady erosion indicates that the rendering pipeline is heavily reliant on the graphics card’s fill rate and memory bandwidth, with the CPU’s 10 cores and 16 threads providing ample headroom to feed the GPU at all three resolutions.

The scaling pattern becomes more pronounced when examining the Low preset. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 132.5 FPS, which drops to 110.8 at 1440p and 91.5 at 4K. The percentage decline from 1080p to 4K here is about 31%, nearly identical to the High preset’s drop of 29% across the same range. This consistency suggests that the game’s engine places a fixed computational burden on the GPU regardless of quality level, and the RX 7800 XT’s 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus with 624.1 GB/s bandwidth is being utilized effectively without hitting a capacity wall. The Ultra preset tells a similar story, with 47.1 FPS at 1080p, 41.1 at 1440p, and 33.7 at 4K, confirming that the limiting component is the graphics card’s raw shading power rather than any memory or CPU constraint.

Settings Recommendations

For a smooth experience at 4K, the data points to Medium settings as the practical ceiling. The 57.6 FPS average at 3840x2160 Medium is comfortably above the 43.0 FPS seen at High, and it represents a 71% improvement over the 33.7 FPS at Ultra. This suggests that the Medium preset strikes a balance between visual fidelity and performance, allowing the RX 7800 XT to maintain a playable frame rate without sacrificing too much detail. At 1440p, High becomes viable with 50.8 FPS, but Medium at 71.7 FPS offers a more fluid experience that better suits action sequences or camera transitions common in horror games.

The Low preset is the only option that exceeds 60 FPS at 4K, hitting 91.5 FPS, which indicates that players prioritizing frame rate over visuals can achieve a very responsive experience. However, given that the Medium preset at 4K already delivers nearly 58 FPS, there is little reason to drop to Low unless targeting high refresh rates. At 1080p, the field opens up considerably: High achieves 60.3 FPS, Medium reaches 83.7 FPS, and Low tops out at 132.5 FPS, making even the most demanding settings playable on standard monitors. The data suggests that Medium is the sweet spot for this combo across all resolutions, offering the best trade-off between image quality and frame rate stability.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT, built on the RDNA 3.0 architecture with the Navi 32 chip, is the primary driver of these results. Its 16 GB of GDDR6 memory, clocked at 2438 MHz with an effective 19.5 Gbps, provides a bandwidth of 624.1 GB/s, which is sufficient for the textures and effects in The Medium at 4K without signs of memory pressure. The GPU’s boost clock of 2430 MHz and game clock of 2124 MHz contribute to a pixel rate of 233.3 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 583.2 GTexel/s, figures that align with the observed frame rates. The card’s 60 ray tracing cores and 3840 shading units handle the game’s fixed-camera angles and pre-rendered backgrounds efficiently, though the Ultra preset’s 33.7 FPS at 4K reveals the limits of its 37.32 TFLOPS FP32 throughput.

Benchmark scores place this GPU in the 76th percentile of all graphics cards, with an average benchmark score of 32619. Its nearest rivals include the AMD FirePro S9300 X2 with a delta of 0.2% and the NVIDIA P104-100 at -0.4%, indicating that the RX 7800 XT sits in a competitive mid-range tier. In the context of this game, the GPU’s role is decisive: the FPS differences between settings are directly proportional to the shading load, and the card’s 16 GB capacity never appears to be a limiting factor, even at 4K Ultra. The absence of min or max FPS data means we cannot assess frame time spikes, but the average scores suggest a stable output under sustained load.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested combinations for The Medium, this pairing of the Intel Core i5-13400F and AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT ranks 600th out of 1689 combos, placing it in the 64.5th percentile of all tested systems. This rank reflects a configuration that is capable but not top-tier, which is consistent with the mid-range positioning of both components. The CPU’s percentile against all processors is 82, while the GPU’s is 76, so the combo’s rank is slightly lower than either component’s individual standing, suggesting that the game’s engine does not fully utilize the CPU’s multi-threaded capabilities.

The CPU’s nearest rivals include the Intel Core i7-13620H with a delta of 0.1% and the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D at -0.5%, showing that the i5-13400F is statistically equivalent to these alternatives in synthetic benchmarks. The GPU’s nearest rivals, such as the AMD FirePro S9300 X2 and NVIDIA T600 Mobile, have deltas of 0.2% and -0.7% respectively, which means the RX 7800 XT is also closely matched to its direct competitors. The combo rank of 600 suggests that while the hardware is well-balanced, there are 599 other combinations that achieve higher frame rates in this specific title, likely due to more powerful GPUs or faster memory configurations.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-13400F, with 10 cores and 16 threads, provides the computational backbone for this setup. Its base clock of 2.50 GHz and boost clock of 4.60 GHz, combined with a 20 MB shared L3 cache, deliver strong single-threaded performance that is critical for the game’s scripting and AI logic. In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU scores 3004 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 21279 in multi-core, placing it in the 82nd percentile of all processors. The 3DMark results show a scaling from 960 in single-thread to 7307 in max-threads, indicating that the 10-core design scales well with workload, though The Medium appears to benefit more from GPU throughput than from CPU core count.

The CPU’s nearest rival, the Intel Core i7-13620H, has a delta of 0.1%, meaning the two are virtually identical in average benchmark scores. The AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D trails by 0.5%, while the AMD EPYC 9474F leads by 0.5%, all within a narrow performance band. This suggests that the i5-13400F is not a bottleneck in this configuration; the frame rates are dictated by the GPU’s rendering capabilities. The fact that FPS scales consistently with resolution and settings, without any anomalous drops that would indicate CPU stalls, confirms that the processor’s 65 W TDP and dual-channel memory support (DDR4 or DDR5) are sufficient for the game’s demands.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full range of settings is playable, with Medium achieving 83.7 FPS and High hitting 60.3 FPS. Low reaches 132.5 FPS, while Ultra drops to 47.1 FPS, still above the 30 FPS threshold for cinematic play. At 2560x1440, the averages are 110.8 FPS on Low, 71.7 FPS on Medium, 50.8 FPS on High, and 41.1 FPS on Ultra. The 1440p High result is borderline for fast-paced gameplay, but Medium offers a clear upgrade in smoothness. At 3840x2160, the scores are 91.5 FPS on Low, 57.6 FPS on Medium, 43.0 FPS on High, and 33.7 FPS on Ultra. The 4K High figure is playable for slower horror pacing, while Medium is the recommended target for a consistent experience.

The data shows a clear hierarchy: each settings tier at a given resolution yields a roughly 30-40% improvement over the next tier down, with Low being the outlier at over 90 FPS across all resolutions. The transition from 1080p to 4K reduces performance by approximately 31% at Low, 31% at Medium, 29% at High, and 28% at Ultra, indicating that the GPU’s compute units are the limiting factor rather than memory bandwidth or CPU throughput. This consistency across presets reinforces the conclusion that the RX 7800 XT is the primary performance driver, with the i5-13400F providing a stable platform that never introduces a frame rate ceiling.