The Medium

The Medium is a demanding horror title, and the benchmark data for the Intel Core i5-14400F paired with the AMD Radeon RX 570 shows a system that is firmly constrained by its graphics card. The measured frame rates across all resolutions and presets indicate that this combination struggles to deliver a consistently smooth experience, with playability hinging almost entirely on the user's willingness to compromise on visual fidelity.

Settings Recommendations

The data reveals a stark reality: this hardware combination is not capable of maintaining high frame rates at high or ultra settings. At 1080p, the Ultra preset yields an average of 14.9 FPS, while High improves this only marginally to 21.1 FPS. Both are below the threshold for comfortable play. The Medium preset at 1080p produces an average of 30.1 FPS, which is a significant jump from High but still represents a compromise. The Low preset at 1080p is the only configuration that approaches acceptable performance, delivering an average of 41.3 FPS.

For a playable experience, the Low preset is the only viable choice at 1080p. The leap from Medium to Low at 1080p (30.1 to 41.3 FPS) represents a 37% increase in average frame rate, which is substantial. While 41.3 FPS is not ideal for fast-paced action, it is the only setting that consistently breaks past the 40 FPS mark. Choosing Low sacrifices visual detail but provides the best chance of maintaining a stable frame rate. The Medium preset, while more visually appealing, risks dipping into the high 20s, which can feel stuttery in a game that relies on atmosphere and timing. The data strongly suggests that the Low preset at 1080p is the "best experience" because it is the only one that provides a frame rate high enough to be considered reliably playable.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 570 is the primary bottleneck in this configuration. With 4 GB of GDDR5 memory and a 256-bit bus, the card offers a memory bandwidth of 224.0 GB/s. However, its compute capabilities, rated at 5.095 TFLOPS, are clearly insufficient for The Medium's demands at higher settings. The card's boost clock of 1244 MHz and its 2048 shading units are simply overwhelmed when the game's visual effects are scaled up.

The evidence for this GPU-bound scenario is clear in the performance scaling. At 1440p, the average frame rate on Low is 39.5 FPS, which is only slightly below the 41.3 FPS seen at 1080p on Low. This small delta suggests that the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU enough data, but the GPU is unable to process it any faster. When the resolution increases to 4K on Low, the frame rate drops to 30.7 FPS, showing that the GPU is now hitting its raw pixel-pushing limits. The 4 GB VRAM capacity is also a likely contributor to the severe performance collapse at higher settings, as the game may be forced to swap textures, leading to significant frame time spikes. The card's architecture, based on GCN 4.0, lacks modern features like dedicated ray tracing cores, which are absent from its spec sheet, putting it at a disadvantage in a game that may use such effects.

How This Combo Ranks

The benchmark results for this specific combination are placed at rank 1618 out of 1689 tested combos in this game. This puts it in the bottom 4.2% of all systems tested, confirming its status as a low-performance configuration. This ranking is a direct consequence of the RX 570's age and performance class. The GPU's overall benchmark percentile versus all GPUs is 74, but this is misleading in the context of a modern, demanding title like The Medium.

Looking at the GPU's nearest rivals based on average benchmark score, the data shows an interesting anomaly. The RX 570's average score is 30158, which is within 0.2% to 0.8% of cards like the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 and AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT. However, these are vastly more powerful cards in real-world gaming. This discrepancy suggests that the RX 570's average benchmark score is inflated by tests that do not reflect modern gaming workloads. In The Medium, the combo's rank of 1618 tells the true story: it is a very low-performing configuration for this specific title. The CPU, while ranking in the 88th percentile, cannot compensate for the GPU's limitations.

FAQ

Q: What is the best average frame rate this combo can achieve in The Medium?

A: The highest average FPS recorded is 41.3, which is achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with the Low settings preset.

Q: Is this system capable of running The Medium at 4K resolution?

A: Technically yes, but not at a playable level. At 4K, the average frame rates are 30.7 FPS on Low, 17.1 FPS on Medium, 14.8 FPS on High, and 7.3 FPS on Ultra. Only the Low setting approaches a playable frame rate.

Q: How does the performance change from 1080p to 1440p on the Low preset?

A: The average frame rate drops from 41.3 FPS at 1080p to 39.5 FPS at 1440p. This is a relatively small decrease, indicating that the graphics card is the limiting factor even at 1080p.

Q: What is the impact of switching from the Medium preset to the Ultra preset at 1080p?

A: The average frame rate falls from 30.1 FPS on Medium to 14.9 FPS on Ultra. This represents a performance reduction of more than 50%, making the Ultra preset unplayable.

Q: What is the overall performance rank of this CPU and GPU combination for this game?

A: This combo is ranked 1618 out of 1689 tested combinations, placing it in the bottom 4.2% of all systems tested for The Medium.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the main reason for the low frame rates?

A: The data suggests the GPU is the bottleneck. For example, at 1080p Low, the system achieves 41.3 FPS, but raising the resolution to 1440p Low only drops the frame rate to 39.5 FPS. This small drop indicates the GPU is already saturated and cannot handle a significantly larger workload.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K clearly illustrates where the bottleneck lies. On the Low preset, the average FPS goes from 41.3 at 1080p, to 39.5 at 1440p, and then down to 30.7 at 4K. The minimal difference between 1080p and 1440p (a 1.8 FPS drop) is a classic sign of a GPU bottleneck. The system is not gaining any performance at 1080p because the GPU is already working at its maximum capacity; lowering the resolution does not free up enough headroom to increase the frame rate. The CPU, with its 10 cores and 16 threads, is more than capable of handling the game's logic at these frame rates.

The drop becomes more pronounced when moving to 4K, with the average FPS falling by 8.8 from the 1440p figure. This is because the GPU is now burdened with rendering four times the number of pixels as 1080p, and its raw fillrate and memory bandwidth (224.0 GB/s) are overwhelmed. The pattern repeats across all presets. For instance, on the High preset, the frame rate is 21.1 FPS at 1080p, 16.9 FPS at 1440p, and 14.8 FPS at 4K. The performance cliff at 4K on Ultra is particularly stark, with an average of just 7.3 FPS. This data confirms that the AMD Radeon RX 570 is the definitive limiting component, and its performance is the single factor preventing this system from achieving playable frame rates in The Medium at any resolution above 1080p with Low settings.