The Medium

The Medium is a demanding title, and this pairing of an Intel Core i5-14600K with a GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER creates a system where the GPU is clearly the limiting factor. The benchmark data shows a predictable pattern of performance degradation as resolution increases, but the results are surprisingly consistent across settings, indicating that the game's engine places a heavy load on the graphics pipeline regardless of visual fidelity.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a stark drop-off as resolution scales from 1080p to 4K. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combo achieves 72.3 FPS, which is the highest average recorded in the entire dataset. Dropping to 2560x1440 at the same Low settings reduces this to 59.2 FPS, a 13.1 FPS decrease. Moving further to 3840x2160 Low yields 46 FPS, showing a continued but less severe decline.

The pattern becomes more pronounced at higher settings. At Medium settings, the frame rate falls from 46.2 FPS at 1080p to 38.4 FPS at 1440p, then to 30.6 FPS at 4K. The High preset shows a similar trend: 32.3 FPS at 1080p drops to 25.8 FPS at 1440p and 23 FPS at 4K. The Ultra preset is the most demanding, starting at 26 FPS at 1080p, dropping to 21.5 FPS at 1440p, and bottoming out at 19.1 FPS at 4K.

These numbers indicate that the GTX 1660 SUPER's 6 GB of GDDR6 memory and 192-bit bus are being saturated at higher resolutions. The gap between Low and Ultra settings at 1080p is 46.3 FPS, but at 4K this gap narrows to just 26.9 FPS. This compression of performance at higher resolutions suggests that the GPU is hitting a hard computational limit rather than a memory bandwidth bottleneck alone. The pixel rate of 85.68 GPixel/s and texture rate of 157.1 GTexel/s are simply insufficient to maintain smooth frame rates at 4K, regardless of how much the settings are lowered.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination ranks 1448 out of 1689 tested combos in The Medium. This places it in the bottom 14.3% of all systems tested, which is a poor showing for a CPU that ranks in the 93rd percentile among all processors. The i5-14600K's benchmark average of 49166 is only 0.2% behind the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, indicating that the CPU is not the bottleneck here.

The GPU, by contrast, sits in the 55th percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 14286. This places it just 0.2% behind the AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 and 0.7% behind the AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT. The GTX 1660 SUPER's modest ranking relative to the CPU's top-tier position explains why this combo ends up so far down the list. The system's overall performance in this game is dragged down by the graphics card, which is operating near the bottom of the mid-range segment.

The rank of 1448 out of 1689 means that 241 other combinations performed worse. While this is not the worst result possible, it is far below what the CPU alone would suggest. The i5-14600K has a passmark multithread score of 38682 and a single-thread score of 4270, both of which are excellent, but these strengths cannot compensate for the GPU's limitations in a game that is heavily dependent on pixel pushing.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER uses the TU116 chip on a 12 nm process, with a die size of 284 mm² and 6,600 million transistors. Its base clock of 1530 MHz and boost clock of 1785 MHz are respectable for its generation, but the memory configuration is where the limitations become apparent. The 6 GB of GDDR6 memory runs at 1750 MHz, which translates to 14 Gbps effective, delivering 336.0 GB/s of bandwidth across a 192-bit bus.

These specifications place the GPU in the 55th percentile overall, which is a mid-pack position. In DirectX 11 benchmarks, it scores 104, but this drops to 50 in DirectX 12 tests and 65 in DirectX 10. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1278 and Geekbench OpenCL score of 62664 further illustrate its mid-range positioning. The GPU's 1408 shading units, 88 TMUs, and 48 ROPs are clearly not enough to handle The Medium's visual demands at high resolutions.

The data shows that the GTX 1660 SUPER is the primary constraint in this system. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 72.3 FPS, which is playable, but at 4K Ultra, it falls to 19.1 FPS, which is not. The GPU's 5.027 TFLOPS of FP32 performance is simply too low for a game that pushes complex shaders and lighting effects. Even with the CPU's strong performance, the GPU cannot keep up, resulting in the low overall ranking.

FAQ

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

A: The highest recorded average is 72.3 FPS at 1920x1080 with Low settings.

Q: Is this combo capable of 4K gaming in The Medium?

A: At 3840x2160, the best result is 46 FPS on Low settings. Ultra settings drop to 19.1 FPS, which is not playable.

Q: How does the GPU compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The GTX 1660 SUPER scores 14286 on average, which is 0.2% behind the AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 and 0.7% behind the AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT.

Q: How does the CPU compare to other processors?

A: The i5-14600K has an average benchmark score of 49166, putting it 0.2% ahead of the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and 1% ahead of the Intel Xeon Gold 5318H.

Q: What is the largest FPS difference between settings at a single resolution?

A: At 1920x1080, the difference between Low (72.3 FPS) and Ultra (26 FPS) is 46.3 FPS.

Q: What is the smallest FPS difference between resolutions at a single setting?

A: At Ultra settings, the difference between 2560x1440 (21.5 FPS) and 3840x2160 (19.1 FPS) is only 2.4 FPS.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the results are as follows: Low settings deliver 72.3 FPS, Medium drops to 46.2 FPS, High further reduces to 32.3 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 26 FPS. The 1080p resolution provides the widest range of performance, from a playable Low setting to a barely playable Ultra.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates decrease across the board: Low achieves 59.2 FPS, Medium delivers 38.4 FPS, High manages 25.8 FPS, and Ultra falls to 21.5 FPS. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is most pronounced at Low settings, where the 13.1 FPS loss represents an 18.1% reduction.

At 3840x2160, the performance becomes marginal for most settings: Low yields 46 FPS, Medium produces 30.6 FPS, High reaches 23 FPS, and Ultra drops to 19.1 FPS. The 4K results show that even the lowest settings cannot maintain a smooth 60 FPS, and the difference between Medium and High is only 7.6 FPS, indicating that the GPU is fully saturated at this resolution.

The overall pattern is consistent: Lowering settings provides the biggest gains at 1080p, while at 4K, the GPU's raw throughput limits improvements. The data shows that the GTX 1660 SUPER is best suited for 1080p gaming in this title, where it can achieve playable frame rates on Low and Medium settings.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14600K is a 14-core, 20-thread processor from the Raptor Lake architecture, built on a 10 nm process at Intel. It features a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz, with a 125 W TDP. The CPU's cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 2 MB of L2 per core, and 24 MB of shared L3 cache.

In synthetic benchmarks, the i5-14600K demonstrates strong performance: Cinebench R23 multicore scores 32881, single-core scores 4642, and Geekbench multicore reaches 15846 with a single-core score of 2803. The Passmark multithread score of 38682 and single-thread score of 4270 reinforce its top-tier status. The CPU's 93rd percentile ranking places it among the best processors available, with an average benchmark score of 49166.

Despite this computational power, the CPU cannot overcome the GPU's limitations in The Medium. The game's performance is clearly GPU-bound, as evidenced by the fact that the combo ranks 1448 out of 1689. The CPU's nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, which scores 49062 (0.2% behind), and the Intel Core i5-14600KF, which scores 49367 (0.4% ahead). This indicates that the i5-14600K is performing exactly as expected, but the GTX 1660 SUPER holds the system back.

The CPU's 14 cores and 20 threads provide ample processing power for the game's logic and AI, but The Medium's visual demands are what determine the measured FPS. The data suggests that upgrading the GPU would yield far larger performance gains than any CPU change, as the i5-14600K is already operating near the top of its class.