The Medium

# FAQ

Q: What is the average FPS of this combo at 1080p with High settings?

A: The Intel Core i5-13400F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D delivers an average of 103 FPS at 1920x1080 on High settings.

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

A: This combination ranks 75th out of 2911 tested combos, placing it in the top percentile of systems for this game.

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

A: At 2560x1440, the Low preset achieves 144 FPS while the Ultra preset drops to 69 FPS — a difference of 75 FPS between the two settings.

Q: Which resolution produces the highest frame rate for this combo?

A: The 1920x1080 Low preset yields the highest measured average at 152 FPS, followed closely by 2560x1440 Low at 144 FPS.

Q: Does this CPU fall into the mid-range or top-tier category?

A: The Intel Core i5-13400F sits at the 77th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 25292 — placing it above the majority but not at the very top.

Q: What is the GPU's percentile ranking among all graphics cards?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D holds the 92nd percentile overall, with an average benchmark score of 77712.

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GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D is the dominant component in this pairing, built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a 5 nm process from TSMC. It carries 32 GB of GDDR7 memory across a 512-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s. The memory clock runs at 1750 MHz with 28 Gbps effective speed, while the base clock sits at 2017 MHz and boosts to 2407 MHz. These specifications translate to a substantial rendering capability: 21760 shading units, 680 TMUs, and 176 ROPs handle pixel throughput at 423.6 GPixel/s, while texture rate reaches 1,636.8 GTexel/s. The FP32 compute throughput of 104.8 TFLOPS provides the raw arithmetic power needed for The Medium's fixed-camera horror rendering.

In this game, the GPU's memory configuration becomes particularly relevant. The Medium is known for its dual-world rendering mechanic, which effectively doubles the scene complexity — the 32 GB frame buffer ensures that both worlds can be held in memory simultaneously without texture thrashing. The measured FPS data confirms the GPU's headroom: at 1080p Low, the system reaches 152 FPS, but the more demanding Ultra preset at 4K drops to 54 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra at the same resolution is stark — at 4K, Low produces 133 FPS while Ultra produces only 54 FPS, a 79 FPS swing that demonstrates how the GPU's workload scales with settings.

The RTX 5090 D's 170 RT cores and 680 tensor cores are present but not heavily exercised in this title, as The Medium's benchmark rows show no ray tracing-specific presets. The GPU's PassMark G3D score of 44065 and 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 14326 place it well ahead of the CPU's contribution in most scenarios. Notably, the GPU's nearest rivals in average benchmark score are the AMD Radeon RX 6650M XT (1.1% behind), AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (1.6% ahead), and NVIDIA Tesla P100 variants (2.1-2.4% ahead) — though those are aggregate benchmark comparisons, not game-specific results.

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Settings Recommendations

For the best balance of visual quality and frame rate, the Medium preset at 1920x1080 delivers 127 FPS with a minimum of 108 FPS, making it the safest choice for smooth gameplay on standard monitors. At 2560x1440, the Medium preset holds 120 FPS with a minimum of 102 FPS — still comfortably above the 100 FPS threshold for high-refresh displays. The High preset at 1080p drops to 103 FPS, which remains playable but offers diminishing returns over Medium given the 24 FPS gap.

For users prioritizing maximum visual fidelity, the Ultra preset at 1080p produces 82 FPS, which is acceptable for slower-paced horror gameplay. However, the Ultra preset at 1440p falls to 69 FPS, and at 4K it bottoms out at 54 FPS — both below the 60 FPS target that most players prefer. The data suggests that Medium is the sweet spot: it maintains frame rates above 95 FPS at all resolutions up to 4K, with the 4K Medium result of 95 FPS being notably higher than the 4K High result of 68 FPS.

The Low preset, while achieving the highest frame rates (152 FPS at 1080p, 144 FPS at 1440p, 133 FPS at 4K), sacrifices visual quality unnecessarily given the GPU's capability. Since this combo ranks 75th out of 2911 configurations, the hardware can afford higher settings — the Medium preset at 1440p delivers 120 FPS, which is likely the best experience for most users. At 4K, Medium at 95 FPS is the recommended starting point, with High at 68 FPS as an alternative if visual fidelity takes precedence over frame rate.

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Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average frame rates span from 82 to 152 FPS across the four presets. The Low preset achieves 152 FPS, Medium reaches 127 FPS (with a minimum of 108 and maximum of 146), High produces 103 FPS, and Ultra drops to 82 FPS. The scaling from Low to Ultra represents a 70 FPS reduction, or roughly 46% of the Low preset's performance.

At 2560x1440, the pattern continues with slightly lower absolute numbers. Low hits 144 FPS, Medium averages 120 FPS (minimum 102, maximum 138), High achieves 87 FPS, and Ultra settles at 69 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra here is 75 FPS, and the Medium preset's minimum of 102 FPS indicates good frame time consistency.

At 3840x2160, the GPU begins to feel the resolution pressure. Low still produces 133 FPS, but Medium drops to 95 FPS (minimum 81, maximum 110), High falls to 68 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 54 FPS. The delta between Low and Ultra at 4K is 79 FPS, the largest absolute spread across all resolutions. The 4K Medium result of 95 FPS with a minimum of 81 FPS remains the only 4K preset that clears the 60 FPS floor with margin to spare.

Comparing across resolutions at the same preset: Low goes from 152 FPS at 1080p to 144 FPS at 1440p to 133 FPS at 4K — a relatively gentle degradation. Medium goes from 127 to 120 to 95 FPS, showing a more pronounced drop at 4K. High goes from 103 to 87 to 68 FPS, and Ultra goes from 82 to 69 to 54 FPS. The Ultra preset at 4K is the only measured configuration that falls below 60 FPS, indicating that the combination of highest settings and maximum resolution exceeds what this system can sustain smoothly.

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Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals how the workload shifts between CPU and GPU as resolution increases. At the Low preset, the frame rate drops from 152 FPS at 1080p to 133 FPS at 4K — a 19 FPS reduction, or roughly 12.5%. This relatively mild decline suggests that at Low settings, the CPU is still a meaningful contributor to performance, as the GPU has ample headroom even at 4K.

At the Medium preset, the drop is more pronounced: 127 FPS at 1080p falls to 95 FPS at 4K, a 32 FPS reduction (about 25%). The High preset shows a similar relative decline, from 103 to 68 FPS (34%). The Ultra preset demonstrates the steepest absolute fall, from 82 to 54 FPS (28 FPS, or 34%). These patterns indicate that as settings increase, the GPU becomes the primary limiting factor — the higher-resolution render targets and more complex shading workloads scale directly with pixel count.

The data reveals that the GPU is well-equipped for resolution scaling in The Medium. Even at 4K with Medium settings, the system maintains 95 FPS, which would be considered strong performance for a horror title. The 32 GB VRAM capacity ensures that the 4K textures do not cause memory spills, and the 1.79 TB/s bandwidth handles the increased data throughput without bottlenecking. The fact that 4K Low (133 FPS) is only slightly behind 1440p Low (144 FPS) suggests that the GPU's compute resources are not fully saturated until the settings are raised.

From a bottleneck perspective, the transition from 1080p to 1440p at Low settings costs only 8 FPS, while 1440p to 4K costs 11 FPS — this proportional scaling indicates that the RTX 5090 D has sufficient bandwidth and fill rate to manage the pixel count increase. The larger FPS drops at Higher settings (Medium and above) point to the GPU's shading and texture units becoming the limiting factor, rather than memory bandwidth or CPU overhead.

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CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-13400F provides the processing backbone for this configuration, featuring 10 cores and 16 threads based on the Raptor Lake architecture on a 10 nm process. It runs at a 2.50 GHz base clock with a 4.60 GHz boost clock, and its 65 W TDP places it in the efficient mainstream segment. The cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 1.25 MB of L2 per core, and 20 MB of shared L3 — a configuration that supports the thread scheduling demands of modern games.

In synthetic benchmarks, this CPU demonstrates balanced performance: Cinebench R23 multicore scores 22604 and singlecore scores 3191, while Geekbench multicore reaches 11068 and singlecore 1996. The 3DMark multi-threaded tests show scaling from 1880 (2 threads) to 7314 (16 threads), indicating that the processor leverages its thread count effectively. The PassMark multithread score of 25032 and single-thread score of 3634 place it at the 77th percentile among all CPUs.

For The Medium specifically, the CPU's role is less demanding than the GPU's. The game's fixed-camera angles and slower pacing reduce the need for high physics thread counts, but the dual-world rendering does require simultaneous scene management. The measured FPS data shows that at 1080p Low, the system achieves 152 FPS, which suggests the CPU can feed the GPU at high frame rates without becoming a bottleneck. The relatively small FPS drop from 1080p to 4K at Low settings (152 to 133 FPS) implies that the CPU maintains its performance even as GPU load increases.

The CPU's nearest rivals in aggregate benchmark score include the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS (0% delta) and AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D (-0.3% delta), indicating that the i5-13400F sits in a competitive performance tier. However, for this game, the CPU's 16 threads and 4.60 GHz boost clock provide sufficient headroom — the frame rate differences across presets are primarily driven by GPU settings, not CPU limitations. The single-thread performance (Cinebench R23 singlecore of 3191) is adequate for the game's main thread, and the multicore capability (22604) ensures background tasks do not interfere with gameplay.

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How This Combo Ranks

This configuration — the Intel Core i5-13400F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D — ranks 75th out of 2911 tested combos for The Medium. This places it in the top 2.6% of all tested systems, which is a strong result for a mid-range CPU paired with a flagship GPU. The ranking suggests that the GPU's performance dominates the combo's standing, as the RTX 5090 D's 92nd percentile GPU ranking is higher than the CPU's 77th percentile.

The GPU's average benchmark score of 77712, compared to its nearest rivals (AMD Radeon RX 6650M XT at 76904, AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT at 78940, NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB at 79396), shows that the RTX 5090 D is competitive but not the absolute top performer in aggregate benchmarks. However, in The Medium specifically, the measured FPS results demonstrate that this combo delivers playable frame rates across all tested presets except 4K Ultra (54 FPS).

The rank of 75 out of 2911 indicates that there are 74 other combos that perform better in this title, likely featuring even higher-end CPUs or more optimized pairings. However, the gap between rank 75 and the top configurations is unlikely to be large in practical terms — the difference between 95 FPS at 4K Medium and, say, 100 FPS at 4K Medium is marginal for gameplay experience. The CPU's 77th percentile ranking suggests that a stronger processor might improve the combo's standing slightly, but the GPU is clearly the primary driver of performance in this game.

Given that this combo outperforms 97.4% of tested configurations, it represents a high-performing setup for The Medium. The measured data confirms that the system can handle 4K gaming at Medium settings with frame rates above 95 FPS, and at 1440p it exceeds 120 FPS on Medium. For a horror game that relies on atmosphere and pacing rather than competitive frame rates, this combo provides more than adequate performance across all but the most extreme settings.