The Medium

# The Medium with Intel Core i5-14600KF + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D

The Intel Core i5-14600KF paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D delivers a robust experience in The Medium, a horror title that stresses both visual fidelity and frame pacing. Benchmark measurements across four settings presets and three resolutions reveal a system that is overwhelmingly GPU-bound at higher quality levels, with the CPU providing ample headroom to push frame rates well above display refresh thresholds when settings are reduced. The combination ranks 19th out of 2,911 tested configurations in this game, placing it in the top 0.7% of all pairings, a position that reflects the raw strength of both components even though the game itself was released in early 2021.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate progression from 1080p to 4K follows a predictable pattern, but the magnitude of the drop varies significantly depending on the quality preset. At Medium settings, the most fully populated dataset, average FPS moves from 144 at 1920x1080 to 122 at 2560x1440, a reduction of 22 frames or approximately 15.3%. Moving further to 3840x2160, the average drops to 95, which is 34.0% below the 1440p figure and 49 frames lower than the 1080p result. This scaling behavior indicates that pixel throughput becomes the dominant constraint as resolution climbs, with the RTX 5090 D's 1.79 TB/s memory bandwidth being taxed heavily at 4K.

At High settings, the resolution scaling curve is steeper. The 1080p average of 103 FPS falls to 87 at 1440p (a 15.5% decrease), then to 68 at 4K (a 21.8% decrease from 1440p). The total drop from 1080p to 4K is 35 frames, or 34.0%. This steeper falloff at High compared to Medium suggests that the additional shading work scales superlinearly with pixel count, likely due to increased memory pressure from higher-quality textures and effects.

Low settings show the most dramatic resolution sensitivity. Starting at 178 FPS in 1080p, the average drops to 168 at 1440p (only 5.6% lower) but then falls sharply to 153 at 4K, an 8.9% decrease from 1440p. The relatively small 1440p penalty indicates that at this resolution, the CPU is still capable of feeding the GPU adequately, but the 4K figure reveals the point where even the RTX 5090 D's 32 GB of GDDR7 memory and 512-bit bus begin to feel the strain of filling 8.3 million pixels per frame.

Ultra settings produce the lowest frame rates across all resolutions, with 82 FPS at 1080p, 69 at 1440p, and 54 at 4K. The percentage drops are 15.9% from 1080p to 1440p and 21.7% from 1440p to 4K, mirroring the High preset's scaling pattern. The 4K Ultra result of 54 FPS sits just below the 60 FPS threshold that many players consider the minimum for smooth gameplay, indicating that this preset at this resolution pushes the GPU to its practical limit in this title.

The data collectively shows that the limiting component shifts with resolution. At 1080p, the gap between Low (178 FPS) and Ultra (82 FPS) is 96 frames, a 117% range that suggests the GPU is the primary bottleneck even at the lowest resolution, since a CPU-limited scenario would compress this spread. At 4K, the range narrows slightly to 99 frames (from 153 Low to 54 Ultra), but the absolute values remain high, confirming that the RTX 5090 D is the constraining factor throughout, with the i5-14600KF's 24 MB of shared L3 cache and 5.30 GHz boost clock providing sufficient instruction throughput.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured rows, Medium settings offer the best balance between visual quality and frame rate performance across all three resolutions. At 1080p, the Medium preset delivers 144 FPS average with a minimum of 123 and a maximum of 166, providing a wide margin above the 120 FPS threshold for high-refresh-rate displays. The 1440p Medium result of 122 FPS (min 103, max 140) still comfortably exceeds 100 FPS, making this the sweet spot for players with 1440p monitors who want smooth motion without sacrificing too much visual detail.

At 4K, Medium settings produce 95 FPS average with a minimum of 81 and a maximum of 110. This is the only 4K preset that consistently stays above 80 FPS, which is particularly relevant for horror games where sudden frame drops can be jarring. The 81 FPS minimum is still 35% above the 60 FPS baseline, providing a comfortable cushion against transient stutters during scene transitions or combat sequences.

High settings are a viable alternative for players who prioritize visual fidelity over raw frame rate. At 1080p, High yields 103 FPS, which is sufficient for 100 Hz displays. The 1440p High result of 87 FPS is playable but leaves less headroom for demanding scenes, while the 4K High figure of 68 FPS dips into the range where some players might notice minor judder. Ultra settings, despite offering the highest quality, only deliver 54 FPS at 4K, which falls below the 60 FPS standard and is not recommended for this resolution.

Low settings produce the highest frame rates — 178 FPS at 1080p, 168 at 1440p, and 153 at 4K — but the visual degradation in a horror title like The Medium, which relies heavily on atmospheric lighting and shadow detail, likely undermines the intended experience. The data suggests that Medium is the default recommendation, with High as an alternative for those who prefer sharper textures, and Ultra reserved for players who prioritize image quality over frame rate and are willing to accept sub-60 FPS performance at 4K.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-14600KF and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D achieves a rank of 19 out of 2,911 tested combos in The Medium, placing it in the 99.3rd percentile of all configurations. This top-tier ranking is consistent with the individual component standings: the CPU sits at the 90th percentile among all processors, while the GPU ranks at the 92nd percentile among all graphics cards. The slight discrepancy between the combo's rank and the GPU's percentile suggests that the pairing is particularly well-suited to this game's engine, which appears to leverage the CPU's 14 cores and 20 threads effectively.

Looking at the CPU's nearest rivals, the i5-14600KF posts an average benchmark score of 49,394, which is nearly identical to the AMD Ryzen 9 7900's 49,228 (a 0.3% difference) and the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5755G's 49,196 (0.4% ahead). This clustering indicates that the CPU is not a differentiator at this performance tier — any of these processors would likely produce similar frame rates in The Medium, since the game is primarily GPU-bound. The Intel Core Ultra 5 245 trails by 0.8%, while the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 388 leads by 0.8%, but these margins are within measurement noise and do not translate into meaningful FPS differences.

For the GPU, the RTX 5090 D's average benchmark score of 77,712 places it 1.1% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 6650M XT and 1.6% behind the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT. The NVIDIA Tesla P100 variants trail by 2.1% and 2.4% respectively. These nearest rivals are all positioned within a tight 3.5% band, which is unusual for a GPU with such a high launch specification, suggesting that the benchmark average captures a mix of workloads where the RTX 5090 D's strengths are not always fully expressed. In The Medium specifically, the combo's 19th-place ranking out of 2,911 proves that this GPU excels in real-world gaming scenarios, even if synthetic averages show a more compressed field.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full range of settings produces the following average frame rates: Low 178, Medium 144 (min 123, max 166), High 103, and Ultra 82. The spread from Low to Ultra is 96 FPS, with each step up in quality costing approximately 20-40 FPS. The Medium preset's minimum of 123 FPS and maximum of 166 FPS bracket a 43 FPS range, indicating that frame time variance is moderate at this resolution. The High preset's 103 FPS average and Ultra's 82 FPS both stay above 60 FPS, so even the highest quality setting is playable at 1080p.

At 2560x1440, the averages are: Low 168, Medium 122 (min 103, max 140), High 87, and Ultra 69. The drop from Low to Medium is 46 FPS, while the step from Medium to High costs 35 FPS, and High to Ultra costs 18 FPS. The Medium preset's minimum of 103 FPS is still above 100, which is notable for a 1440p resolution. The Ultra average of 69 FPS is close to the 60 FPS threshold, and without a reported minimum, it is uncertain whether dips below 60 occur during intense scenes.

At 3840x2160, the averages are: Low 153, Medium 95 (min 81, max 110), High 68, and Ultra 54. The Medium preset provides the only 4K result with a reported minimum (81 FPS), and its maximum of 110 FPS shows that the GPU can occasionally reach high frame rates even at this resolution. The High preset's 68 FPS average is just above the 60 FPS baseline, while Ultra's 54 FPS average falls below it, making Ultra the only preset at any resolution that fails to maintain a 60 FPS average.

The pattern across all resolutions is consistent: Medium offers the most balanced performance with reported minimums that are 14-20% below the average, while Low and High presets lack min/max data, leaving frame pacing uncertainty. The lack of min/max values for most presets limits the analysis of frame time consistency, but the available data for Medium settings suggests that the RTX 5090 D maintains relatively stable frame delivery, with the 4K minimum of 81 FPS being particularly strong.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a 5 nm process node, featuring 92,200 million transistors on a 750 mm² die. Its 32 GB of GDDR7 memory operates at 1750 MHz (28 Gbps effective) across a 512-bit bus, yielding 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth. These specifications explain the GPU's ability to maintain high frame rates at 4K, where memory bandwidth becomes critical for texture streaming and framebuffer operations. The 1.79 TB/s bandwidth is the key enabler for the 95 FPS average at 4K Medium, as lower-bandwidth cards would likely see more severe degradation at this resolution.

The GPU's clock speeds are 2017 MHz base and 2407 MHz boost, with a TDP of 575 W and a suggested PSU of 950 W. The dual-slot cooler and 304 mm length indicate a large thermal solution, which is necessary given the power draw. In The Medium, the boost clock behavior likely sustains near-maximum frequencies during gameplay, as the horror genre typically doesn't trigger prolonged compute-heavy workloads that would cause thermal throttling. The 170 RT cores and 680 tensor cores provide hardware acceleration for ray tracing and DLSS, though the measured FPS data does not specify whether these features were enabled.

The GPU's benchmark scores reinforce its gaming capability: a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 14,326 and a Passmark G3D score of 44,065. The Geekbench OpenCL score of 310,674 and Vulkan score of 376,915 show strong compute performance, which translates to the GPU's ability to handle the asynchronous workloads often present in horror games with dynamic lighting and particle effects. The 104.8 TFLOPS FP32 throughput is double the FP16 rate (104.8 TFLOPS 1:1), indicating that the GPU does not sacrifice single-precision performance for half-precision, which benefits games that rely on FP32 shaders.

The 32 GB memory capacity is more than sufficient for The Medium's requirements, and the 512-bit bus ensures that memory is fed efficiently. The pixel rate of 423.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 1,636.8 GTexel/s are exceptionally high, allowing the GPU to fill 4K frames quickly even at Ultra settings. The fact that Ultra at 4K still manages 54 FPS despite the game's demanding visuals reflects the GPU's raw throughput capabilities.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS achieved at 4K with this combo?

A: The highest 4K average is 153 FPS, achieved at Low settings. This is followed by 95 FPS at Medium, 68 FPS at High, and 54 FPS at Ultra.

Q: How does the Medium preset perform at 1440p in terms of frame consistency?

A: At 2560x1440 with Medium settings, the combo delivers an average of 122 FPS with a minimum of 103 FPS and a maximum of 140 FPS, showing a tight 37 FPS range that indicates good frame pacing.

Q: Does the RTX 5090 D maintain 60 FPS at 4K across all quality presets?

A: No. At 4K, Low (153), Medium (95), and High (68) averages all exceed 60 FPS, but Ultra drops to 54 FPS, which falls below the 60 FPS threshold.

Q: What is the combo's rank among all tested configurations in The Medium?

A: The combo ranks 19th out of 2,911 tested combinations, placing it in the top 0.7% of all configurations for this game.

Q: How does the i5-14600KF compare to its nearest CPU rival in average benchmark score?

A: The i5-14600KF scores 49,394, which is 0.3% higher than the AMD Ryzen 9 7900's 49,228. The difference is negligible for gaming purposes.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between 1080p and 4K at Medium settings?

A: At Medium settings, the average FPS drops from 144 at 1080p to 95 at 4K, a decrease of 49 frames or 34.0%.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14600KF is a 14-core, 20-thread processor from the Raptor Lake Refresh generation, built on Intel's 10 nm process. Its 3.50 GHz base clock and 5.30 GHz boost clock provide high single-thread performance, as evidenced by a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4,594 and a Geekbench single-core score of 2,445. In The Medium, which is primarily GPU-bound, the CPU's single-thread capabilities are what matter most for frame pacing and draw call submission. The 5.30 GHz boost clock ensures that the game's main thread has sufficient processing headroom to avoid becoming a bottleneck, even when the GPU is pushing 178 FPS at 1080p Low.

The CPU's multi-threaded performance, highlighted by a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 32,544 and a Passmark multi-thread score of 38,697, demonstrates that the 14 cores can handle background tasks and any multi-threaded game workloads without contention. The 24 MB of shared L3 cache, combined with 2 MB L2 per core, provides ample cache capacity for game assets and instructions, reducing memory latency. The CPU's average benchmark score of 49,394 places it at the 90th percentile of all processors, and its nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen 9 7900, scores 49,228 — a difference of only 0.3%, indicating that these CPUs are effectively equivalent in general compute.

In the context of The Medium, the CPU's role is to feed the GPU with sufficient draw calls and geometry data. The measured FPS data shows that even at 1080p Low (178 FPS), the CPU does not limit performance, as the frame rate is still well below the theoretical maximum of a processor capable of 32,544 points in Cinebench R23 multi-core. The fact that the 4K Low result (153 FPS) is only 14% lower than the 1080p Low result (178 FPS) while the 4K Ultra result (54 FPS) is 34% lower than the 1080p Ultra result (82 FPS) confirms that resolution scaling is entirely GPU-driven, with the CPU maintaining consistent performance across all settings.

The processor's memory support for DDR4 and DDR5, with dual-channel configuration, offers flexibility for system builders, though the FPS data does not specify which memory type was used. The CPU's 125 W TDP and ECC memory support indicate a desktop-oriented design that prioritizes stability. The 5.30 GHz boost clock is particularly important for horror games, where frame time spikes can break immersion; the CPU's ability to maintain high clock speeds under load helps ensure consistent frame delivery, as evidenced by the Medium preset's minimum FPS values being only 14-20% below averages.