The Medium

The Intel Core i5-14400F paired with the AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT delivers a playable, though not flawless, experience in The Medium, a horror title that leans heavily on fixed-camera angles and dense atmosphere. Benchmark data shows this combo ranking 1093rd out of 1689 tested configurations, placing it in the lower-middle tier for this specific game. The numbers reveal a system that can hit smooth frame rates at lower settings, but one that struggles to maintain consistency as graphical fidelity and resolution increase, making settings management critical for a stable experience.

Resolution Scaling

The performance drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and clearly illustrates where the bottleneck lies. At 1080p with Low settings, the system achieves an average of 96.8 FPS. Moving to 1440p Low drops that to 78.2 FPS, a 19% reduction, and then to 4K Low it falls further to 62 FPS, a 21% drop from 1440p. This scaling pattern indicates that even at the lowest settings, the GPU is the primary limiting factor; the frame rate loss is directly proportional to the increase in pixel count, which is a classic sign of a graphics card operating near its maximum throughput.

The trend becomes more pronounced at higher presets. At High settings, the system delivers 43.3 FPS at 1080p, 36.1 FPS at 1440p, and 28.3 FPS at 4K. The relative drop from 1080p to 4K is about 35%, which is substantial. At Ultra settings, the situation is dire: 31.8 FPS at 1080p, 31.1 FPS at 1440p, and 22.9 FPS at 4K. The near-identical scores at 1080p and 1440p Ultra suggest that the game’s Ultra preset introduces effects that are computationally expensive regardless of resolution, likely taxing the GPU’s shading and memory subsystems equally at both pixel counts. The data strongly suggests that for 4K gaming, only the Low preset is viable, and even then, it barely holds above 60 FPS.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT is an 8 GB GDDR6 card with a 128-bit memory bus, providing 280.3 GB/s of bandwidth. Its boost clock is rated at 2635 MHz, with a game clock of 2410 MHz. These specifications position it as a capable 1080p performer, but the benchmark results in The Medium show its limits at higher resolutions. The card’s 64 ROPs and 2048 shading units are likely the reason why the Ultra preset, which probably adds heavy post-processing and shadow effects, crushes frame rates to 22.9 FPS at 4K.

The GPU’s performance relative to its peers is telling. It sits in the 72nd percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 29024. Its nearest rival in the database is the AMD Radeon RX 6800M, which scores 29011, a delta of 0%. The RX 470 is also close at 28996, a 0.1% delta. This means the RX 6650 XT is statistically tied with these cards in synthetic tests, yet in The Medium, the 8 GB VRAM capacity may become a limiting factor at 4K Ultra, where texture memory demands can exceed the available buffer, causing stutters and frame drops beyond what the raw compute scores suggest.

FAQ

*Q: Can this system run The Medium at 4K?*

A: Yes, but only at the Low preset, where it averages 62 FPS. At Medium, the average drops to 40.7 FPS, and at High it falls to 28.3 FPS, making both presets unsuitable for smooth 4K play.

Q: What is the best resolution for a 60 FPS experience?

A: The data shows that 1080p with Low settings is the only configuration that comfortably exceeds 60 FPS, achieving an average of 96.8 FPS. 1440p Low comes close at 78.2 FPS, while 1080p Medium falls short at 59.3 FPS.

Q: How does the RX 6650 XT compare to its closest rivals?

A: In synthetic benchmarks, the RX 6650 XT scores 29024, which is a 0% delta from the AMD Radeon RX 6800M (29011) and a 0.1% delta from the AMD Radeon RX 470 (28996). This indicates near-identical raw compute performance among these cards.

Q: Is the Ultra preset worth using?

A: No. The Ultra preset yields an average of 31.8 FPS at 1080p and 22.9 FPS at 4K. These frame rates are below the threshold for smooth gameplay, making the preset impractical for this hardware.

Q: What is the CPU’s role in these results?

A: The Intel Core i5-14400F has 10 cores and 16 threads, with a boost clock of 4.70 GHz. Its performance is sufficient to avoid bottlenecking the GPU at lower resolutions, as evidenced by the high frame rates at 1080p Low. However, the GPU limits performance at higher settings.

Q: Does the game favor a specific type of hardware?

A: The benchmark data indicates that the game is highly GPU-intensive, especially at higher resolutions and presets. The frame rate drops are more closely tied to pixel count and graphics settings than to CPU workload, suggesting the GPU is the primary constraint.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the frame rates range from a low of 31.8 FPS on Ultra to a high of 96.8 FPS on Low. The Medium preset provides 59.3 FPS, which is close to the 60 FPS target but slightly under. High settings yield 43.3 FPS, a significant step down from Medium, indicating a large performance cost for the visual improvements in that preset.

Moving to 2560x1440, the scores scale down uniformly. Low settings deliver 78.2 FPS, which is still playable, while Medium drops to 48.8 FPS. High is 36.1 FPS, and Ultra is 31.1 FPS. The gap between Medium and High at 1440p is 12.7 FPS, showing that the High preset is disproportionately demanding at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the system is clearly out of its depth for anything above Low. Low settings achieve 62 FPS, which is just above the 60 FPS mark. Medium falls to 40.7 FPS, High to 28.3 FPS, and Ultra to 22.9 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra at 4K represents a 63% drop in performance, highlighting the GPU’s inability to handle the combined load of high resolution and complex effects.

Settings Recommendations

For a consistent 60 FPS experience, the only viable option from the measured data is 1080p with Low settings, which averages 96.8 FPS. This leaves significant headroom, so players could potentially cap the frame rate to reduce power draw, but the data does not specify a cap. At 1440p, Low settings are also playable at 78.2 FPS, offering a higher resolution at the cost of visual fidelity.

If visual quality is a priority and a 30 FPS target is acceptable, 1440p Medium at 48.8 FPS is a reasonable middle ground, though it does not hit 60 FPS. 1080p Medium at 59.3 FPS is the closest to a balanced experience, but it just misses the 60 FPS mark. The Ultra preset should be avoided entirely, as even at 1080p it only produces 31.8 FPS. The data suggests that the High preset is also a poor trade-off, offering only a modest visual improvement over Medium while costing a significant number of frames.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14400F is a 10-core, 16-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake architecture, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.70 GHz. It supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration. Its synthetic benchmarks show strong performance, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 21914 and a single-core score of 3093, placing it in the 88th percentile of all CPUs.

In the context of The Medium, the CPU appears to be more than adequate. The fact that frame rates at 1080p Low reach 96.8 FPS suggests that the processor is not a limiting factor at that resolution. The CPU’s nearest rivals, such as the Intel Core i7-12800H with an average score of 32513 (0% delta) and the AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 7645 at 32446 (0.2% delta), show that the i5-14400F is competitive with higher-tier mobile and desktop parts. However, as resolution increases, the GPU becomes the bottleneck, and the CPU’s performance becomes less relevant to the final frame rate. The data indicates that the i5-14400F provides a solid foundation, but the RX 6650 XT is the component that determines playability in this title.