The Medium

The Medium, a fixed-camera horror title built around atmospheric storytelling, presents a heavy load for the Intel Core i5-14600KF and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 combination. The data shows a system that is severely constrained by its graphics processor, with the CPU’s substantial compute headroom going largely unused. This pairing ranks 3594th out of 3724 tested combinations in this game, placing it in the bottom 4% of all tested configs, which indicates that the experience will be a struggle at most settings.

Settings Recommendations

Given the measured frames per second, the only viable path to a playable experience is the Low preset. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers an average of 44 FPS, which is the only configuration in the entire measured set that approaches acceptable smoothness for a game that relies on continuous camera movement to build tension. The Medium preset at the same resolution drops to an average of 27 FPS, which is a significant 17 FPS reduction (approximately 39% slower) and falls below the threshold for comfortable play. The data indicates that High and Ultra settings are not viable at any resolution, as they produce average frame rates in the teens or lower, which would result in a stuttering, unresponsive experience.

The measured rows show that the Low preset at 1080p is the only configuration that provides a double-digit margin above the next-best option. The 44 FPS average at Low represents a 63% improvement over the 27 FPS average at Medium, demonstrating that the graphical settings have a dramatic impact on performance for this GPU. The recommendation is clear: to achieve the best experience per the measured rows, users must select Low settings and the 1920x1080 resolution. While the resulting visual fidelity will be reduced, the alternative is a slideshow-like presentation that undermines the game’s narrative pacing. The data shows no other preset offers a playable experience, so the choice is not between quality levels but between a playable and an unplayable state.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 is the primary bottleneck in this configuration. Its 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus provides a bandwidth of 128.1 GB/s, which is insufficient for the high-resolution textures and effects that The Medium employs. The GPU’s 896 shading units and 32 ROPs are tasked with rendering the game’s dual-reality mechanic, where two worlds are often displayed simultaneously, effectively doubling the pixel workload. The core clocks, boosting to 1665 MHz, are not the limiting factor; rather, it is the sheer lack of memory capacity and fill rate that cripples performance.

The benchmark results place this GPU in the 40th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 7472. Its nearest rival, the Intel Arc A310, scores 7550, a delta of -1%, while the AMD Radeon HD 8850M trails by 0.3% with a score of 7447. This places the GTX 1650 at the very bottom of the modern GPU hierarchy, and the measured FPS confirms this. The GPU’s DirectX 12 benchmark score of 35 is particularly telling, as The Medium is a DirectX 12 title. The data shows that the GPU’s compute capabilities, as measured by a Passmark GPU compute score of 3048, are not the issue; the issue is the fixed-function throughput required for shading and texturing. The 4 GB memory limit is also a critical factor, as the game likely exceeds this capacity at higher settings, causing severe hitches and frame drops beyond what the average FPS numbers convey.

Resolution Scaling

The data shows a predictable and steep decline in performance as resolution increases, but the pattern reveals a GPU that is completely overwhelmed. Scaling from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 on the Low preset results in a drop from 44 FPS to 37 FPS, a reduction of 7 FPS or approximately 16%. Moving from 1440p to 3840x2160 at Low settings further reduces the average to 29 FPS, another 8 FPS drop (approximately 22%). While this scaling is consistent, the absolute numbers are so low that the percentage changes are less relevant than the fact that even the best case at 4K is barely playable.

The scaling behavior indicates a GPU-bound scenario at all resolutions. If the CPU were the limiting factor, we would expect to see a smaller performance delta between 1080p and 4K, as the CPU workload would remain constant while the GPU workload increases. Instead, the data shows that the GTX 1650’s performance halves from 44 FPS at 1080p Low to 22 FPS at 4K Low (though the measured value is 29 FPS, showing a 34% drop). The gap between Low and Medium settings also widens at higher resolutions: at 1080p, the difference is 17 FPS (44 to 27), while at 4K, the difference is 11 FPS (29 to 18). This suggests that the memory bandwidth bottleneck becomes more severe as the pixel count increases, causing the GPU to thrash as it tries to manage the larger framebuffer. The Ultra preset is essentially unplayable everywhere, with a 16 FPS average at 1080p and a 10 FPS average at 4K, confirming that this combination is only suited for the lowest fidelity settings.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the data reveals a clear hierarchy. The Low preset achieves an average of 44 FPS, which is the only playable result in the entire dataset. Medium drops to 27 FPS, with a minimum of 23 FPS and a maximum of 31 FPS, indicating unstable frame pacing. High produces 20 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 16 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra is 28 FPS, a 175% improvement for the lowest settings, which highlights the extreme cost of the game’s visual effects on this GPU.

At 2560x1440, the numbers fall further. Low averages 37 FPS, which is still technically playable but with noticeable stutter. Medium averages 23 FPS (min 20, max 26), High averages 16 FPS, and Ultra averages 13 FPS. The step from Low to Medium is a 14 FPS drop (approximately 38%), and the step from High to Ultra is only 3 FPS, suggesting that the game is hitting a hard memory or bandwidth wall at these settings.

At 3840x2160, the experience is uniformly poor. Low averages 29 FPS, Medium averages 18 FPS (min 15, max 21), High averages 13 FPS, and Ultra averages 10 FPS. Even the best 4K result is below the minimum threshold for smooth gameplay. The data shows that the GTX 1650 can only provide a consistent 30 FPS experience at 1080p with all settings at their lowest, and even then, the frame time variance is likely high due to the game’s dynamic camera angles and complex lighting.

How This Combo Ranks

This combination of the Intel Core i5-14600KF and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 ranks 3594th out of 3724 tested combos in The Medium. This places it in the bottom 3.5% of all tested configurations, which is a stark indicator of the GPU’s inadequacy for this title. The CPU, which ranks in the 90th percentile of all CPUs with an average benchmark score of 49394, is completely wasted in this pairing.

The nearest rival CPUs to the i5-14600KF, such as the AMD Ryzen 9 7900 with a score of 49228 (a delta of 0.3%), show that the processor is not the issue. The data implies that pairing this CPU with a stronger GPU would yield dramatically better results, as the CPU’s 14 cores and 20 threads provide ample headroom for the game’s AI and physics calculations. However, the GTX 1650’s 40th percentile GPU rank and its 7472 average benchmark score ensure that the system is GPU-bound in every scenario. The combo’s rank is a direct reflection of the GPU’s position in the market, as the GTX 1650 is an end-of-life product with a successor already available. The 4 GB memory allocation is simply insufficient for a modern horror title that uses high-resolution textures to create its atmosphere.

FAQ

Q: What is the best settings preset for this CPU/GPU combo in The Medium?

A: The Low preset at 1920x1080 is the only playable option, yielding an average of 44 FPS. All other presets produce averages below 30 FPS, which is not a smooth experience.

Q: Why is the performance so poor when the CPU is very powerful?

A: The GPU is the limiting factor. The GTX 1650 has 4 GB of memory and an average benchmark score of 7472, placing it in the 40th percentile. The CPU’s high compute scores cannot compensate for the GPU’s lack of shading and texturing throughput.

Q: How does the GTX 1650 compare to its nearest rivals in general benchmarks?

A: The GTX 1650 scores 7472, which is 1% below the Intel Arc A310 (7550) and 0.3% above the AMD Radeon HD 8850M (7447). This shows it is at the very bottom of the performance spectrum.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between 1080p and 4K on the Low preset?

A: The average FPS drops from 44 at 1080p to 29 at 4K, a reduction of 15 FPS (approximately 34%). This indicates a GPU-bound workload, as the CPU would not see such a significant drop.

Q: Is the Ultra preset ever playable at any resolution?

A: No. The Ultra preset averages 16 FPS at 1080p, 13 FPS at 1440p, and 10 FPS at 4K. These frame rates are far below the playable threshold and should be avoided.

Q: How does this combo rank relative to all other tested systems?

A: The combo ranks 3594th out of 3724 tested configurations, placing it in the bottom 3.5% of all systems tested for The Medium.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14600KF is a high-end desktop processor with 14 cores (a mix of performance and efficiency cores) and 20 threads, based on the Raptor Lake architecture. It has a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz, with 24 MB of shared L3 cache. In synthetic benchmarks, it scores 32544 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 4594 in single-core, placing it in the 90th percentile of all CPUs. Its average benchmark score of 49394 is nearly identical to the AMD Ryzen 9 7900, which scores 49228 (a delta of 0.3%).

In the context of The Medium, this CPU is massively overqualified. The game’s fixed-camera angles and linear progression do not require the massive multi-threaded performance that this processor offers. The Passmark physics score of 2449 and the multithread score of 38697 indicate that the CPU can handle any physics or AI calculations the game throws at it without breaking a sweat. However, the data shows that this raw power is irrelevant because the GPU is the bottleneck. The measured FPS numbers do not change with CPU workload; they change only with resolution and settings, which are GPU-dependent variables.

The CPU’s role in this pairing is to feed the GPU with draw calls and geometry data. With a boost clock of 5.30 GHz, it can do this with ease, meaning that the 13 FPS average at 4K Ultra is not due to CPU latency but purely to GPU rendering limits. The data suggests that if the GTX 1650 were replaced with a more capable card, the CPU would not become a limiting factor until much higher frame rates. This is a classic case of a bottleneck at the GPU, where the CPU’s performance is effectively untapped, and the user experience is determined entirely by the graphics card’s capabilities.