The Medium

The Intel Core i5-14400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 configuration in The Medium demonstrates a clear and predictable scaling pattern across resolutions. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 115.7 FPS, which drops to 95.1 FPS at 1440p Low and further to 77.1 FPS at 4K Low. This translates to a 33% performance loss from 1080p to 4K at Low settings. The scaling becomes more pronounced at higher quality presets; at High settings, the frame rate falls from 50.2 FPS at 1080p to 44.1 FPS at 1440p and 36.2 FPS at 4K, representing a 28% drop between 1080p and 4K. The Ultra preset shows the steepest decline, starting at 40.2 FPS at 1080p, falling to 36.7 FPS at 1440p, and bottoming out at 29.6 FPS at 4K — a 26% reduction from the lowest tested resolution.

The data reveals that the RTX 5060 becomes the limiting component as resolution climbs. At 1080p Low, the system delivers 115.7 FPS, but the same settings at 4K produce only 77.1 FPS, indicating that pixel throughput is the primary constraint. The gap between Low and Ultra at each resolution is substantial; at 1080p, Ultra delivers 40.2 FPS versus 115.7 FPS at Low, a 65% difference. This wide spread suggests that the GPU's 8 GB GDDR7 memory and 128-bit bus are adequate for lower settings but struggle with the memory demands of Ultra textures and effects at higher resolutions. The 4K Ultra result of 29.6 FPS sits below the 30 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, while 1440p Ultra at 36.7 FPS remains playable but not ideal.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a consistent pattern where performance degrades smoothly as resolution increases, but the rate of degradation depends heavily on the quality preset. At Low settings, the transition from 1080p to 1440p costs 20.6 FPS (115.7 to 95.1), while moving from 1440p to 4K costs another 18 FPS (95.1 to 77.1). This nearly linear scaling at Low settings indicates that the RTX 5060's 448.0 GB/s memory bandwidth is sufficient to feed the GPU at lower quality levels, where texture compression and shading complexity are reduced. The GPU's base clock of 2280 MHz and boost clock of 2497 MHz provide solid raw compute, but the 8 GB VRAM capacity becomes a bottleneck when higher resolution buffers demand more memory.

At Medium settings, the system delivers 70 FPS at 1080p, 60.6 FPS at 1440p, and 45.5 FPS at 4K. The 1080p to 4K drop of 35% is smaller than the Low preset's 33% drop, which suggests that the game's Medium preset begins to engage more GPU-intensive features that shift the balance toward compute rather than pure fill rate. The Ultra preset tells a different story: 40.2 FPS at 1080p, 36.7 FPS at 1440p, and 29.6 FPS at 4K. The relatively small 1080p-to-1440p delta of 3.5 FPS indicates that at Ultra, the GPU is already near its limits even at 1080p, and the additional resolution only marginally worsens the situation. This points to the RTX 5060's 19.18 TFLOPS FP32 compute being the limiting factor at Ultra settings, rather than memory bandwidth.

The 4K High result of 36.2 FPS versus the 4K Low result of 77.1 FPS shows that the High preset imposes a 53% performance penalty over Low at the same resolution. This is a larger penalty than the 29% penalty seen at 1080p (50.2 to 115.7 FPS), confirming that higher resolutions amplify the cost of each quality tier. The data strongly suggests that players targeting 60 FPS should use Low or Medium settings at 1440p, where the system delivers 95.1 and 60.6 FPS respectively, while 4K gaming requires Low settings to stay above 60 FPS.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14400F brings 10 cores and 16 threads to the system, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.70 GHz. This Raptor Lake-R architecture chip sits in the 88th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 32508. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core i7-12800H, scores 32513 with a 0% delta, while the AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 7645 trails by 0.2% at 32446. In multi-threaded workloads, the i5-14400F achieves 21914 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 9203 in Cinebench R20 multi-core, indicating robust parallel performance. Single-core results are equally strong: 3093 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 1299 in Cinebench R20 single-core.

For The Medium, a horror title with fixed camera angles and pre-rendered backgrounds, the CPU's role is primarily to manage the game's logic, AI, and streaming workloads. The 16 threads provide ample headroom for the game's multi-threaded tasks, and the 4.70 GHz boost clock ensures responsive single-threaded performance for frame pacing. The 20 MB shared L3 cache helps reduce memory latency for frequently accessed game data. Given that the system achieves 115.7 FPS at 1080p Low — a CPU-heavy scenario where the GPU is less burdened — the i5-14400F clearly does not bottleneck the RTX 5060 at lower resolutions. However, at 4K Ultra, where the GPU delivers only 29.6 FPS, the CPU is likely idle waiting for the GPU, as the render workload overwhelms the graphics card.

The benchmark results for the i5-14400F show a Passmark multithread score of 25783 and a Passmark single-thread score of 3723, placing it in the upper tier of desktop processors. The 65 W TDP and Intel Socket 1700 compatibility make it a mainstream choice, but its performance in this game is secondary to the GPU, as evidenced by the FPS scaling patterns. At 1080p Medium, the system hits 70 FPS, which suggests the CPU can feed the GPU effectively even with moderate graphics settings. The data from the measured FPS table shows no anomalies that would indicate CPU limitations, such as frame rate plateaus across different resolutions at the same settings.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 is the clear performance driver in this configuration. Built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a 5 nm process, the GPU features 3840 shading units, 120 TMUs, and 48 ROPs. Its 8 GB GDDR7 memory operates at 1750 MHz (28 Gbps effective) across a 128-bit bus, delivering 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU's boost clock of 2497 MHz enables a pixel rate of 119.9 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 299.6 GTexel/s. In synthetic benchmarks, the RTX 5060 scores 20891 in Passmark G3D and 120785 in Geekbench OpenCL, placing it in the 73rd percentile of all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 30109.

The GPU's nearest rival is the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT, which scores 30097 with a 0% delta, while the NVIDIA RTX 5070 Mobile scores 29928 with a 0.6% delta. This places the RTX 5060 in a competitive position for 1080p and 1440p gaming. In The Medium, the GPU's performance is directly reflected in the measured FPS: at 1080p Low, it produces 115.7 FPS, which drops to 70 FPS at Medium and 50.2 FPS at High. The 8 GB VRAM is sufficient for 1080p and 1440p at most settings, but the 4K Ultra preset's 29.6 FPS result suggests that memory capacity and bandwidth are stressed at that resolution. The 128-bit bus, while adequate for the GDDR7 memory's 448.0 GB/s throughput, limits the GPU's ability to handle large texture sets at 4K.

The RTX 5060's 19.18 TFLOPS FP32 compute is the key specification for The Medium's rendering workload. The game's fixed-camera design means that many scenes are rendered as full-screen effects, which heavily tax both the shading units and the ROPs. The 48 ROPs deliver 119.9 GPixel/s, which translates to the observed frame rates at 4K. The GPU's DirectX 12 Ultimate support (12_2) ensures compatibility with the game's modern rendering features, while the 30 RT cores provide hardware acceleration for any ray-traced effects the game may use. The data shows that the RTX 5060 is the limiting factor at 4K, where even Low settings produce only 77.1 FPS, indicating that the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth are the primary constraints.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data for The Medium with the i5-14400F and RTX 5060 covers four resolutions and four quality presets. At 1920x1080, the system delivers 115.7 FPS at Low, 70 FPS at Medium, 50.2 FPS at High, and 40.2 FPS at Ultra. The 1080p results show a clear hierarchy: Low is nearly twice as fast as Ultra, with a 75.5 FPS difference. The 1080p Medium result of 70 FPS is notable because it exactly matches the 60 FPS target for smooth gameplay, providing a comfortable margin. At 1080p High, the 50.2 FPS result falls below the 60 FPS threshold, suggesting that players may need to adjust settings to maintain fluid motion.

At 2560x1440, the results are 95.1 FPS at Low, 60.6 FPS at Medium, 44.1 FPS at High, and 36.7 FPS at Ultra. The 1440p Medium result of 60.6 FPS is just above the 60 FPS mark, making it the recommended setting for 60 FPS gameplay at this resolution. The 1440p High result of 44.1 FPS is 12% lower than the 1080p High result of 50.2 FPS, showing a moderate resolution penalty. The 1440p Ultra result of 36.7 FPS is 8.7% lower than the 1080p Ultra result, indicating that the GPU's compute capabilities are the limiting factor at this quality level.

At 3840x2160, the system produces 77.1 FPS at Low, 45.5 FPS at Medium, 36.2 FPS at High, and 29.6 FPS at Ultra. The 4K Low result of 77.1 FPS is the only 4K setting that exceeds 60 FPS, while the 4K Medium result of 45.5 FPS offers playable but not ideal performance. The 4K High result of 36.2 FPS and the 4K Ultra result of 29.6 FPS both fall below 60 FPS, with the latter dipping below 30 FPS, which is generally considered the minimum for playable frame rates. The 4K results show a 61.6% drop from Low to Ultra, the largest spread of any resolution, highlighting the GPU's memory and compute limits at this resolution.

The overall combo rank in The Medium is 832 out of 1689 combinations, placing this configuration in the top half of tested systems. The data shows that the RTX 5060 is best suited for 1080p gaming at High or Ultra settings, and for 1440p gaming at Medium settings, while 4K gaming requires Low settings to maintain acceptable frame rates.

FAQ

*Q: What is the best resolution and settings for 60 FPS in The Medium?*

A: The data shows that 1080p Medium delivers 70 FPS and 1440p Medium delivers 60.6 FPS, both exceeding the 60 FPS target. For higher quality, 1080p High produces 50.2 FPS, which is below 60 FPS but playable.

Q: How much performance is lost when moving from 1080p to 4K at the same settings?

A: At Low settings, the frame rate drops from 115.7 FPS at 1080p to 77.1 FPS at 4K, a 33% reduction. At Ultra settings, the drop is from 40.2 FPS to 29.6 FPS, a 26% reduction.

*Q: Is the RTX 5060's 8 GB VRAM sufficient for The Medium at 4K?*

A: The 4K Ultra result of 29.6 FPS suggests memory capacity is stressed, but the 4K Low result of 77.1 FPS indicates that the GPU can handle 4K if settings are reduced. The 448.0 GB/s bandwidth is the more likely bottleneck at high resolutions.

Q: How does the i5-14400F compare to its nearest rivals in CPU benchmarks?

A: The i5-14400F scores 32508 in average benchmark, matching the Intel Core i7-12800H at 32513 with a 0% delta. It leads the AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 7645 by 0.2% and trails the AMD Ryzen 7 250 by 0.2%.

Q: What settings should be used for 4K gaming with this configuration?

A: At 4K, Low settings produce 77.1 FPS, Medium produces 45.5 FPS, High produces 36.2 FPS, and Ultra produces 29.6 FPS. Only Low settings maintain a frame rate above 60 FPS at 4K.

Q: How does the RTX 5060's performance compare to its nearest GPU rivals?

A: The RTX 5060 scores 30109 in average benchmark, nearly identical to the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT at 30097 with a 0% delta. It leads the NVIDIA Tesla M60 by 0.5% and the RTX 5070 Mobile by 0.6%, while trailing the AMD Radeon RX 570 by 0.2%.