The Medium

The Intel Core i5-9400 paired with the AMD Radeon RX 580 produces a combination that struggles significantly in The Medium, a horror title that clearly favors GPU throughput. The measured data places this combo at rank 3394 out of 3724 tested combinations, placing it in the bottom tier of all systems tested. Across all resolutions and settings, the average frame rates remain low, with the system only achieving playable numbers at the lowest settings and resolution. The following analysis breaks down the exact performance metrics, the roles of each component, and the scaling behavior observed in the benchmark data.

FAQ

*Q: What is the best average FPS this combo can achieve in The Medium?*

A: The highest average frame rate recorded is 49 FPS, which occurs at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings. This is the only configuration in the measured data that approaches a smooth experience, and it still falls short of a locked 60 FPS.

Q: How does the combo rank among all tested systems?

A: The combo ranks 3394 out of 3724 tested combinations (comboRankInGame). This places it in the bottom 9% of all tested systems, indicating that a substantial majority of other hardware pairings deliver better performance in this game.

Q: What is the performance difference between the CPU and its nearest rivals?

A: The Intel Core i5-9400 has an average benchmark score of 2254. Its closest rival, the Intel Core i7-1068NG7, scores 2259, which is a 0.2% difference. The AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 1500 scores 2246, placing it 0.4% behind the i5-9400. The Intel Core i3-10305 scores 2264, which is 0.4% ahead.

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

A: The AMD Radeon RX 580 has an average benchmark score of 12928. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Mobile scores 12940, a 0.1% difference, while the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER scores 12986, which is 0.4% higher. The AMD Radeon 740M scores 12870, placing it 0.5% behind the RX 580.

Q: What is the FPS drop from Low to Ultra settings at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, the average FPS drops from 49 FPS on Low settings to 17 FPS on Ultra settings. This represents a 65% performance reduction when moving from the lowest to the highest quality preset.

Q: Does the system maintain consistent frame times at Medium settings?

A: The data shows that at Medium settings, the minimum FPS is consistently lower than the average. At 1920x1080, the average is 31 FPS with a minimum of 26 FPS. At 2560x1440, the average is 26 FPS with a minimum of 22 FPS. At 3840x2160, the average is 20 FPS with a minimum of 17 FPS.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 580 is the primary driver of frame rate in The Medium, and the data shows it is heavily taxed by this title. The GPU has 8 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing 256.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The memory operates at 2000 MHz with 8 Gbps effective speed. The GPU core has a base clock of 1257 MHz and a boost clock of 1340 MHz, which are relatively modest figures that limit its raw throughput.

The benchmark results indicate that the GPU’s 6.175 TFLOPS of FP32 performance is insufficient for high-quality rendering in this game. The GPU’s percentile ranking of 53 against all GPUs places it in the middle of the pack, but its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER, which scores 0.4% higher on average. This narrow margin in synthetic benchmarks does not translate to playable performance in The Medium.

At 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the average FPS falls to 11, which is effectively a slideshow. Even at 1920x1080 with High settings, the average is only 22 FPS. The GPU’s 32 ROPs and 144 TMUs are likely the limiting factors, as the game’s rendering demands exceed what this Polaris 20 chip can deliver. The GPU’s 5,700 million transistors on a 14 nm process from GlobalFoundries represent an older architecture that struggles with modern game engines.

The VRAM capacity of 8 GB is not the bottleneck, as the game does not appear to run out of memory at any tested setting. Instead, the core compute and memory bandwidth limits are exposed. The data shows that dropping from High to Low settings at 1080p more than doubles the frame rate from 22 FPS to 49 FPS, indicating that the GPU is the primary constraint and that reducing graphical load has a direct, substantial impact on performance.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a clear pattern of performance degradation as resolution increases, which confirms that the GPU is the limiting component. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 49 at 1920x1080 to 41 at 2560x1440, a 16% reduction, and further to 32 at 3840x2160, a 22% reduction from the 1440p figure. This scaling is consistent with a GPU-bound scenario where pixel count directly impacts rendering time.

At Medium settings, the average FPS at 1920x1080 is 31, dropping to 26 at 2560x1440 and 20 at 3840x2160. The frame time increases are proportional to the pixel count increase, which is a classic sign of fill-rate limitation. The GPU’s pixel rate of 42.88 GPixel/s is simply not enough to maintain higher frame rates as resolution scales up.

The High and Ultra settings show even steeper degradation. At High settings, the average FPS goes from 22 at 1080p to 18 at 1440p and 14 at 4K. At Ultra settings, the average FPS goes from 17 at 1080p to 15 at 1440p and 11 at 4K. The diminishing returns at Ultra settings suggest that the game’s highest preset introduces effects that are particularly expensive on this GPU, such as advanced lighting or post-processing that cannot be offset by resolution reduction alone.

The scaling behavior indicates that the CPU is not the limiting factor in most scenarios. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see similar FPS numbers across different resolutions at the same settings. Instead, the FPS drops consistently with each resolution increase, confirming that the RX 580’s rendering pipeline is saturated. The only scenario where the CPU might become more relevant is at the lowest settings and resolution, where the 49 FPS result approaches the CPU’s potential frame delivery limit, but even then, the GPU is still the primary constraint.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete dataset of measured FPS provides a detailed picture of performance across all resolution and settings combinations. At 1920x1080, the lowest resolution tested, the system achieves an average of 49 FPS on Low settings, which is the only playable result in the entire dataset. The Medium preset at 1080p yields an average of 31 FPS, with a minimum of 26 FPS and a maximum of 35 FPS, showing noticeable frame time variance. High settings at 1080p produce an average of 22 FPS, and Ultra settings drop to 17 FPS.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance decreases further. Low settings deliver an average of 41 FPS, which is still technically playable but below the 60 FPS target. Medium settings average 26 FPS, with a minimum of 22 FPS and a maximum of 30 FPS. High settings average 18 FPS, and Ultra settings average 15 FPS. The frame time variance at Medium settings becomes more pronounced at this resolution, with the minimum being 15% lower than the average.

At 3840x2160, the system is overwhelmed. Low settings produce an average of 32 FPS, which is below the playable threshold for most users. Medium settings average 20 FPS, with a minimum of 17 FPS and a maximum of 23 FPS. High settings average 14 FPS, and Ultra settings average 11 FPS. These numbers indicate that 4K gaming is not viable with this hardware combination, even at the lowest quality settings.

The data shows a consistent pattern: each preset step down from Ultra to Low approximately doubles the frame rate at a given resolution. At 1080p, moving from Ultra (17 FPS) to Low (49 FPS) is a 2.9x improvement. At 1440p, the same move from Ultra (15 FPS) to Low (41 FPS) is a 2.7x improvement. At 4K, the move from Ultra (11 FPS) to Low (32 FPS) is a 2.9x improvement. This consistent scaling suggests that the graphical settings have a predictable impact on GPU load, with the most substantial gains coming from reducing the quality preset.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo ranking of 3394 out of 3724 tested combinations places this system in a very low percentile of all tested hardware. This rank indicates that the vast majority of other systems—over 91%—deliver better performance in The Medium. The ranking is a holistic measure that accounts for both the CPU and GPU performance, and the low rank is primarily driven by the GPU’s inability to handle the game’s rendering demands.

In the context of the nearest rival GPUs, the RX 580’s performance is competitive with similarly aged hardware in synthetic benchmarks, but this does not translate to a good gaming experience in The Medium. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER, which scores 0.4% higher on average, would likely achieve a marginally higher rank, but the difference would be negligible in real-world gameplay given the low absolute FPS numbers.

The CPU’s rank of 47th percentile against all CPUs is not the primary issue. The i5-9400’s performance is adequate for most games, and its nearest rivals show very small performance differences (within 0.4%). The bottleneck is clearly the GPU, as evidenced by the fact that even at the lowest settings and resolution, the system only achieves 49 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS target for smooth gameplay.

The rank of 3394 suggests that this combo is suitable for older or less demanding titles, but for The Medium, it falls short of providing a satisfactory experience. The data indicates that users with this hardware would need to accept significant compromises in visual quality and resolution to achieve playable frame rates, and even then, the experience would be suboptimal compared to a majority of other tested systems.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 is a 6-core, 6-thread processor from the Coffee Lake architecture, with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.10 GHz. It has a 65 W TDP and supports DDR4 memory on a dual-channel bus, providing a memory bandwidth of 42.7 GB/s. The CPU’s cache configuration includes 64 KB of L1 per core, 256 KB of L2 per core, and 9 MB of shared L3 cache.

In synthetic benchmarks, the i5-9400 scores 668 in Cinebench R15 multicore and 94 in single-core. Its Cinebench R20 scores are 2784 for multicore and 392 for single-core. More recent Cinebench R23 results show 6629 for multicore and 935 for single-core. Geekbench scores are 5141 for multicore and 1389 for single-core. These scores place the CPU at the 47th percentile of all CPUs, which is a mid-range position.

The CPU’s role in The Medium is secondary to the GPU, as the measured FPS data shows that reducing resolution does not improve frame rates proportionally, which is a classic sign of a GPU bottleneck. At 1080p Low settings, the system achieves 49 FPS, which is close to the limit that the GPU can deliver. The CPU’s 6 threads and 4.10 GHz boost clock are sufficient to feed the GPU in most scenarios, as evidenced by the fact that the FPS scales with resolution rather than staying flat.

However, the CPU’s performance is still a factor at lower settings. The single-core score of 935 in Cinebench R23 suggests that the CPU can handle the game’s main thread, but the multicore score of 6629 indicates that it may struggle with heavily threaded workloads. In The Medium, which is a horror game that likely uses multiple threads for rendering and physics, the CPU’s 6 threads without hyper-threading could become a limitation at higher frame rates, but the GPU’s low output prevents this from being observable in the data.

The CPU’s nearest rivals show very small performance differences, with the i7-1068NG7 being 0.2% faster and the Ryzen 5 PRO 1500 being 0.4% slower. This indicates that the i5-9400 is well-positioned among its peers, and the low combo rank is not attributable to CPU performance. The CPU is capable of supporting higher frame rates, but the RX 580 cannot deliver them.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS data, the optimal configuration for this hardware combination is 1920x1080 with Low settings, which produces an average of 49 FPS. This is the only setting that approaches a playable frame rate, though it still falls short of a consistent 60 FPS. For users who prioritize smoothness over visual quality, this is the recommended preset.

If visual quality is more important than frame rate, the Medium preset at 1920x1080 offers an average of 31 FPS, with a minimum of 26 FPS and a maximum of 35 FPS. This provides a more visually appealing experience but introduces noticeable stuttering during intense scenes. The frame time variance at this setting is significant, and users may find the experience inconsistent.

The High and Ultra presets are not recommended for any resolution, as they produce average frame rates below 22 FPS at 1080p and below 18 FPS at higher resolutions. These settings are only suitable for static screenshots or very slow-paced exploration, and they would likely cause frustration in a game that requires quick reactions.

For 2560x1440, the Low settings preset is the only viable option, with an average of 41 FPS. However, this is still below the 60 FPS target, and users should be prepared for a less responsive experience. The Medium preset at 1440p averages 26 FPS, which is borderline playable for some users but generally too low for a horror game that relies on atmosphere and timing.

At 3840x2160, none of the presets are playable. The Low settings preset averages 32 FPS, which is below the 30 FPS minimum for most users, and the Medium preset averages 20 FPS. Users with this hardware should avoid 4K resolution entirely and stick to 1080p with Low settings for the best possible experience. The data clearly shows that the RX 580 is not capable of handling The Medium at higher resolutions or quality settings, and the recommended approach is to prioritize frame rate over visual fidelity.