The Medium

The Medium is a horror title that stresses both CPU and GPU heavily, and the combination of an Intel Core i5-9400 with an AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT produces a wide spread of frame rates depending on how the user balances resolution and quality settings. Measured data for this pairing shows a clear pattern: the GPU dominates performance scaling, while the six-core Coffee Lake processor provides a stable baseline that rarely becomes the primary constraint. Across the twelve tested configurations, the average frame rates range from a demanding 19.1 FPS at 4K Ultra to a fluid 87.5 FPS at 1080p Low, indicating that this system can handle the game, but only with deliberate settings choices.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and consistent across all quality presets, which points directly to the Radeon RX 6600 XT as the limiting component. At High settings, the average FPS falls from 38.4 at 1920x1080 to 35.5 at 2560x1440, then to 27.1 at 3840x2160. That is a 7.5% reduction from 1080p to 1440p, but a 29.4% reduction from 1440p to 4K, showing that the GPU’s pixel throughput becomes increasingly strained as resolution climbs. The same pattern appears at Low settings, where the system delivers 87.5 FPS at 1080p, 77.5 FPS at 1440p, and 60.6 FPS at 4K — the 4K figure still playable, but notably lower.

Medium settings tell a similar story: 57.6 FPS at 1080p, 51.1 FPS at 1440p, and 35.3 FPS at 4K. Ultra is the most punishing, with only 34.2 FPS at 1080p, 25.7 FPS at 1440p, and 19.1 FPS at 4K. The consistent downward slope across every preset indicates that the RX 6600 XT’s 8 GB of GDDR6 memory and 256.0 GB/s bandwidth are sufficient for the game’s assets, but the GPU’s compute resources — 2048 shading units and 32 ray accelerators — are overwhelmed when both resolution and quality scale upward. The Core i5-9400’s six threads do not appear to bottleneck the system at any tested point, as the frame rates continue to scale with resolution, which is a GPU-bound behavior.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average frame rate this combo achieves in The Medium?

A: The peak measured average is 87.5 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This is the only configuration in the dataset that exceeds 80 FPS.

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

A: Yes, but only at Low settings, where it averages 60.6 FPS. At Medium quality, the average drops to 35.3 FPS, and at High it falls to 27.1 FPS, making 4K viable only for users willing to sacrifice visual fidelity.

Q: How does the RX 6600 XT compare to its nearest rival in raw GPU benchmarks?

A: The Radeon RX 6600 XT has an average benchmark score of 27985, which is 0.1% ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti (27956) and 0.4% ahead of the AMD Radeon R9 M395X (27883). It sits 0.9% behind the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 (28238) and 1.5% behind the AMD FirePro S7150 (28409).

Q: What is the difference between Low and Ultra settings at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, Low settings produce an average of 77.5 FPS, while Ultra drops to 25.7 FPS. This represents a 51.8 FPS gap, or roughly a 66.8% reduction in frame rate when switching from the lowest to the highest quality preset.

Q: Does the Core i5-9400 hold back the GPU in this game?

A: The data does not indicate a CPU bottleneck. Frame rates scale consistently with resolution changes, which is characteristic of a GPU-limited scenario. The i5-9400’s Cinebench R23 multicore score of 7969 places it at the 50th percentile among all CPUs, and its nearest rival, the Intel Core i7-8809G, scores only 0.6% higher (2319 vs 2305 in average benchmark score).

Q: What is the combo’s overall ranking in this game?

A: This pairing ranks 1261 out of 1689 tested combos for The Medium, placing it below the midpoint of the database’s tested configurations.

How This Combo Ranks

With a combo rank of 1261 out of 1689 in The Medium, this system sits in the lower third of all tested pairings. That ranking is driven primarily by the GPU’s position: the RX 6600 XT has a percentile of 71 among all GPUs, meaning it outperforms roughly 71% of the graphics cards in the database, but it is far from top-tier. The CPU, meanwhile, sits at the 50th percentile, which is average for a desktop processor. In a game like The Medium, which relies heavily on ray-traced effects and high-resolution textures, the GPU’s mid-range standing becomes more pronounced, especially at higher quality presets.

The ranking reflects the practical experience: the combo can produce playable frame rates at 1080p and even 1440p, but it falls behind more balanced high-end pairings when pushing 4K or Ultra settings. For reference, the RX 6600 XT’s nearest GPU rival, the RTX 3070, averages only 0.9% higher in synthetic benchmarks, yet the measured results in The Medium show that this combo struggles to maintain 30 FPS at 4K High (27.1 FPS). This suggests that the game’s specific rendering demands, possibly its use of fixed-function ray tracing, penalize the RX 6600 XT more than synthetic tests would predict.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The dataset provides average frame rates for four resolutions and four quality presets, with no minimum or maximum values recorded. At 1920x1080, Low settings yield 87.5 FPS, Medium 57.6 FPS, High 38.4 FPS, and Ultra 34.2 FPS. The step from Low to Medium is a 29.9 FPS reduction, while the step from Medium to High is 19.2 FPS, and from High to Ultra is only 4.2 FPS. This indicates diminishing returns — the game’s Ultra preset adds little performance cost over High at 1080p, but the baseline is already low.

At 2560x1440, the numbers fall to 77.5 FPS for Low, 51.1 FPS for Medium, 35.5 FPS for High, and 25.7 FPS for Ultra. The gap between Low and Medium is 26.4 FPS, Medium to High is 15.6 FPS, and High to Ultra is 9.8 FPS. The 1440p results show a more balanced scaling pattern, with each preset tier costing a similar percentage of performance. At 3840x2160, Low produces 60.6 FPS, Medium 35.3 FPS, High 27.1 FPS, and Ultra 19.1 FPS. The medium-to-high drop is only 8.2 FPS, but the high-to-ultra drop is also 8.0 FPS, showing that 4K Ultra is simply beyond this hardware’s capabilities.

Comparing across resolutions, 1080p Low to 4K Low loses 26.9 FPS, while 1080p Ultra to 4K Ultra loses 15.1 FPS. The absolute frame rate at 4K Low (60.6) is higher than the frame rate at 1080p Ultra (34.2), which is a key takeaway: users seeking smooth gameplay should prioritize resolution over quality, as the GPU has more headroom to render pixels than to apply advanced effects.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT is the decisive component in this pairing. Its 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus delivers 256.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is adequate for The Medium’s texture streaming at 1080p and 1440p but becomes stressed at 4K, where the frame rates drop sharply. The GPU’s boost clock of 2589 MHz and game clock of 2359 MHz are high for its class, but the underlying Navi 23 chip has only 2048 shading units and 64 ROPs, which limits its fillrate in a game that renders complex scenes with multiple camera perspectives.

The measured FPS data shows that the GPU’s performance scales almost linearly with resolution, which is typical for a rasterization-bound workload. However, the game’s horror genre relies heavily on lighting and shadow effects, and the RX 6600 XT’s 32 ray accelerators do not appear sufficient to maintain playable frame rates when quality presets enable ray-traced effects. This is evident in the Ultra preset, where the frame rate at 1080p (34.2 FPS) is lower than the Low preset at 4K (60.6 FPS), indicating that the quality settings impose a greater performance penalty than the resolution increase.

The GPU’s percentile of 71 places it in the upper mid-range, and its passmark G3D score of 16461 confirms it can handle modern games, but The Medium’s specific requirements push it to its limits at higher settings. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1804 further suggests that the GPU’s raw compute is moderate, and the game’s engine seems to favor NVIDIA architectures, as evidenced by the RTX 3070’s slightly higher synthetic score translating to better frame rates in this title.

Settings Recommendations

For users targeting a smooth 60 FPS experience, the only viable configurations are 1080p Low (87.5 FPS), 1440p Low (77.5 FPS), and 4K Low (60.6 FPS). The Low preset is clearly the most efficient, as it delivers the highest frame rates at every resolution. If the user prefers higher visual fidelity, Medium settings at 1080p (57.6 FPS) or 1440p (51.1 FPS) are borderline playable, but they will experience occasional dips below 60 FPS. High settings are not recommended for any resolution, as even 1080p High only averages 38.4 FPS, which is below the threshold for smooth gameplay in a horror title where quick reactions matter.

Ultra settings are effectively unusable on this combo, with a maximum average of 34.2 FPS at 1080p and a minimum of 19.1 FPS at 4K. The data suggests that users should prioritize resolution over quality: a 4K Low presentation at 60.6 FPS is objectively smoother than a 1080p Ultra presentation at 34.2 FPS. For the best balance, 1440p Medium at 51.1 FPS offers a moderate visual upgrade over Low while maintaining playable performance, but the drop from 60 FPS may be noticeable. Ultimately, the system’s sweet spot is 1080p Medium (57.6 FPS) or 1440p Low (77.5 FPS), depending on whether the user values sharpness or detail.