The Medium

The Intel Core i5-14600K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 secures the 23rd position out of 1,689 tested combinations for The Medium. This places the combo in the top 1.4% of all recorded systems, a position that reflects the substantial headroom of both components. The CPU, with its average benchmark score of 49,166, sits at the 93rd percentile against all processors, while the GPU’s average score of 66,473 places it at the 91st percentile against all graphics cards. Neither component is a weak link; the pairing is balanced at the extreme high end, where the performance ceiling is dictated by the game’s engine and optimization rather than hardware limitations.

How This Combo Ranks

The 23rd rank in a field of 1,689 combos is a strong indicator of top-tier performance, but the data reveals that this is not the absolute pinnacle. The CPU’s nearest rivals show how tightly packed the high-end field is: the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X trails by a mere 0.2% in average score, while the Intel Core i5-14600KF leads by 0.4%. These deltas are within the margin of measurement noise, suggesting that the processor choice has minimal impact on overall system ranking in this game. The GPU tells a similar story, with the NVIDIA Tesla T4 coming within 0.4% and the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 trailing by 0.9%. The system’s 23rd-place finish is therefore a function of the sum of its parts, and small variations in component silicon lottery or driver versions could easily shift the ranking by several positions.

The benchmark results indicate that this combo is firmly in the enthusiast tier. With a CPU percentile of 93 and a GPU percentile of 91, both components are performing near the top of their respective product stacks. The data shows a slight mismatch: the CPU is statistically stronger relative to its peers than the GPU, but the RTX 4090’s raw compute power (82.58 TFLOPS FP32) compensates for any minor imbalance. In practical terms, the 23rd rank means this system will handle The Medium with maximum settings at high resolutions, but it is not the definitive best—several configurations with newer or more specialized hardware edge it out.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data provides a clear hierarchy for the best experience per preset. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset delivers 134.7 FPS, which is a 43.8% improvement over High (93.7 FPS) and nearly double the Ultra setting’s 72.6 FPS. The 178.8 FPS Low preset is only 32.7% faster than Medium, indicating diminishing returns when dropping below Medium. For 2560x1440, Medium produces 112.4 FPS, which remains comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, while High drops to 82.2 FPS and Ultra falls to 62.1 FPS. At 3840x2160, Medium yields 90.1 FPS, which is the only preset besides Low that stays above 60 FPS; High manages 63.4 FPS, and Ultra falls to 50.3 FPS.

The data suggests that Medium is the optimal balance across all resolutions. It maintains a 30% or greater advantage over High at every resolution, and the visual fidelity loss from High is often imperceptible in a horror title like The Medium, where atmospheric lighting and shadow quality matter more than texture density. Ultra settings are only viable at 2560x1440, where the 62.1 FPS result is playable but not ideal for a game that relies on tense, deliberate pacing. For a locked 60 FPS experience, Medium at 4K is the safest choice; for high-refresh-rate monitors, Low at 1080p provides the highest headroom at 178.8 FPS, but the visual compromise is significant.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic GPU-bound scenario, but with some nuance. At Medium settings, the drop from 134.7 FPS (1080p) to 112.4 FPS (1440p) is a 16.6% reduction, while the further drop to 90.1 FPS (4K) is a 19.8% reduction from 1440p. This non-linear scaling suggests that the RTX 4090’s 24 GB of GDDR6X memory and 1.01 TB/s bandwidth are sufficient to handle the increased pixel count without hitting a memory wall, but the shading units are being pushed harder. The Low preset shows a similar pattern: 178.8 FPS at 1080p, 169.2 FPS at 1440p (a 5.4% drop), and 140.2 FPS at 4K (a 17.1% drop from 1440p). This indicates that at Low settings, the bottleneck shifts more toward the CPU’s single-thread performance (Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4,642), as the GPU has ample headroom.

The High preset shows the steepest scaling curve: 93.7 FPS at 1080p, 82.2 FPS at 1440p (a 12.3% drop), and 63.4 FPS at 4K (a 22.9% drop from 1440p). This steepening at higher resolutions confirms that the RTX 4090 is the limiting factor at 4K High, as the game’s rendering load—particularly the dual-reality mechanic that renders two scenes simultaneously—scales with pixel count. The Ultra preset follows the same trend, with 72.6 FPS at 1080p, 62.1 FPS at 1440p, and 50.3 FPS at 4K, showing a nearly linear 14-19% drop per resolution step. The data shows that the CPU is not a bottleneck until the GPU is severely underutilized, which only occurs at Low settings.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured FPS table offers a granular view of performance across all twelve configurations. At 1920x1080, the spread from Low (178.8 FPS) to Ultra (72.6 FPS) is 106.2 FPS, representing a 59.4% performance penalty for maximum visual quality. The Medium preset at 134.7 FPS is the standout, offering 43.8% more performance than High (93.7 FPS) while retaining most of the visual enhancements. At 2560x1440, the spread narrows to 107.1 FPS, from 169.2 FPS (Low) to 62.1 FPS (Ultra), but the relative deltas remain consistent: Medium (112.4 FPS) is 36.8% faster than High (82.2 FPS) and 81% faster than Ultra. The 4K results show the tightest relative spread, with Low at 140.2 FPS, Medium at 90.1 FPS, High at 63.4 FPS, and Ultra at 50.3 FPS—a range of 89.9 FPS.

The data shows that the RTX 4090 can deliver playable frame rates at every preset, but the experience varies dramatically. At 4K Ultra, the 50.3 FPS average is below the 60 FPS standard, which could cause noticeable stutter in a game that relies on smooth camera pans for horror tension. The 4K High result of 63.4 FPS barely clears the threshold, but the 4K Medium result of 90.1 FPS provides a 42% safety margin. For competitive or high-refresh-rate play, the 1080p Low result of 178.8 FPS is the only configuration that exceeds 144 Hz, making it suitable for 144 Hz monitors. The 1440p Low result of 169.2 FPS also exceeds 144 Hz, offering a resolution compromise for players who prioritize frame rate over pixel density.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is the dominant component in this combo, and its specifications explain the measured results. With 16,384 shading units, 512 texture mapping units, and 176 raster output pipelines, the GPU has the raw compute capacity to handle The Medium’s demanding rendering. The 128 ray tracing cores and 512 tensor cores are particularly relevant, as The Medium uses ray-traced reflections and ambient occlusion in its dual-reality scenes; these features are likely enabled in the High and Ultra presets, explaining the significant FPS drops compared to Medium. The GPU’s 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus provides 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth, which is more than sufficient for the game’s texture streaming at 4K, as evidenced by the lack of a memory-related performance cliff between 1440p and 4K.

The clock speeds are equally telling. The base clock of 2235 MHz and boost clock of 2520 MHz are high for a GPU with a 450 W TDP, and the data shows that the RTX 4090 maintains these clocks under load without throttling, given the consistent FPS numbers across multiple runs. The 21 Gbps effective memory clock is standard for GDDR6X, but the combination of high clocks and wide bus width results in the 1.01 TB/s bandwidth that prevents any memory bottleneck. The GPU’s 91st percentile ranking against all GPUs, with a Passmark G3D score of 38,194, confirms that it is performing near its theoretical maximum; the nearest rival, the NVIDIA Tesla T4, scores within 0.4%, but that is a professional compute card, not a gaming product.

The GPU’s role as the primary performance driver is clear from the resolution scaling data. When settings are held constant, the FPS drops proportionally with pixel count, indicating that the GPU’s shading units are the limiting factor. The CPU, with its 14 cores and 20 threads, provides sufficient single-thread performance (Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4,642) to feed the GPU at all settings, but it never becomes the bottleneck at High or Ultra. The RTX 4090’s 82.58 TFLOPS FP32 throughput is the engine that drives The Medium’s complex shaders, and the measured results show that this combo is a top-tier performer, but not the absolute best, leaving room for systems with even more powerful GPUs or newer architectures to claim the top spot.