The Medium

The Medium, a fixed-camera horror title built around atmosphere and deliberate pacing, presents a demanding workload that scales steeply with resolution and quality settings. For the combination of an Intel Core i5-9400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, the measured frame rates reveal a system that is capable of smooth play at lower presets but struggles to maintain playable performance at the highest visual fidelity, particularly at 4K. The data indicates a configuration where the GPU's raw compute is the primary bottleneck at higher resolutions, while the CPU's six-core layout proves sufficient to avoid major frame pacing issues at lower settings.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is severe, highlighting the RTX 2070 SUPER’s limits under heavy pixel throughput. At the High preset, the average frame rate falls from 45.4 FPS at 1920x1080 to 39.2 FPS at 2560x1440, a modest reduction of roughly 14%. However, the transition to 3840x2160 is brutal, with the average plummeting to 30.2 FPS. This 23% drop from 1440p to 4K demonstrates that the graphics card's memory bandwidth and shading power are being saturated, as the resolution increase demands exponentially more GPU work.

The scaling pattern is consistent across all presets. At Low settings, the system delivers 87.2 FPS at 1080p, 84 FPS at 1440p, and 67.2 FPS at 4K. The relatively small penalty between 1080p and 1440p (only 3.7%) suggests that at Low, the workload is still partially CPU-bound at 1080p, but the GPU begins to take over as the resolution climbs. The 4K Low result is still 20% slower than 1080p Low, confirming that even with reduced graphical complexity, the rasterization load at 4K is significant.

At the Ultra preset, the story is bleaker. The system manages 35.3 FPS at 1080p, 33 FPS at 1440p, and a nearly unplayable 26.7 FPS at 4K. The difference between 1080p and 4K Ultra is a 24% reduction, but the absolute numbers are more telling: the card cannot maintain a 30 FPS floor at 4K Ultra. The Medium’s use of high-resolution textures and complex lighting effects appears to be the culprit, as the 8 GB GDDR6 frame buffer and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth are pushed to their limits.

Benchmark results indicate that 1440p is the practical ceiling for this combo at Medium or High settings. The gap between Medium and High at 1440p is 15.7 FPS (54.9 vs 39.2), which is a significant visual quality trade-off for smoothness. At 1080p, the card has enough headroom to offer a choice between High (45.4 FPS) and Medium (60.7 FPS), with the latter providing a much safer margin for the fixed-camera scenes that often feature sudden load-in stutters.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 is a six-core, six-thread processor based on the Coffee Lake architecture, with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.10 GHz. Its 9 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel DDR4 memory support provide adequate bandwidth for gaming workloads, but its performance in synthetic tests places it squarely in the mid-range. The Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 7969 and single-core score of 1125 show a capable but not exceptional part, especially when compared to modern chips with higher thread counts.

In The Medium, the CPU’s role is secondary to the GPU at higher resolutions, but it still matters at 1080p. The fact that the 1080p Low result (87.2 FPS) is only slightly higher than the 1440p Low result (84 FPS) suggests that the CPU is not the limiting factor at these settings. If the i5-9400 were bottlenecking, the 1080p frame rate would be much closer to the 1440p figure, as the GPU would have less work to do. The 3.2 FPS difference indicates that the GPU is still the primary constraint, even at 1080p.

However, the CPU’s thread count could be a concern in specific scenes. The Medium uses a fixed-camera perspective with heavy occlusion culling, which typically reduces CPU draw-call overhead. The i5-9400’s six physical cores without hyper-threading are sufficient for this engine, as the frame pacing at Medium settings (60.7 FPS at 1080p) shows no signs of CPU-induced stutter. The processor’s 65 W TDP and 14 nm process node are dated, but they do not impede performance in this title.

The CPU’s percentile ranking of 50 against all CPUs places it at the median, and its nearest rivals show a tight cluster of performance. The Intel Core i3-10305 is just 0.2% faster, while the Intel Core i7-8809G is 0.6% slower. This suggests that the i5-9400 is not a meaningful differentiator in this game; the RTX 2070 SUPER is doing the heavy lifting. For a horror game with a slow pace, the lack of high core counts is not a penalty, as the engine does not appear to scale with more than six threads.

FAQ

Q: Can this system run The Medium at 4K?

A: Yes, but only at Low settings, where it averages 67.2 FPS. At Medium, the average drops to 40.2 FPS, and at High it falls to 30.2 FPS. Ultra is not playable, averaging just 26.7 FPS.

Q: What is the best resolution for a smooth 60 FPS experience?

A: The data shows that 1080p Medium delivers 60.7 FPS on average. At 1440p, the highest preset that approaches 60 FPS is Low, which averages 84 FPS. For 1440p, you would need to accept Medium at 54.9 FPS.

Q: How does the RTX 2070 SUPER compare to its nearest rivals in this game?

A: The GPU’s average benchmark score is 22206, which is 0.5% lower than the NVIDIA RTX A400 (22307) and 2.5% higher than the AMD Radeon RX 5700 (21670). The RTX 2070 SUPER also sits 0.9% above the GeForce GTX TITAN Z (22006).

Q: Is the Intel Core i5-9400 a bottleneck for the RTX 2070 SUPER?

A: No. The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K shows a steady decline that is consistent with GPU-bound performance. The 1080p Low result (87.2 FPS) is not dramatically higher than 1440p Low (84 FPS), indicating the CPU can keep up with the GPU’s output.

Q: What is the difference between High and Ultra settings at 1080p?

A: High averages 45.4 FPS, while Ultra drops to 35.3 FPS. The 10.1 FPS difference (a 22% reduction) is a significant cost for the extra visual fidelity, which includes more demanding shadow and lighting effects.

Q: Does the i5-9400’s performance ranking affect The Medium?

A: The CPU’s percentile rank of 50 means it is average among all tested CPUs. Its nearest rivals are within 0.6% of its score, so any differences in game performance would be negligible.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-9400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER ranks 1048 out of 1689 tested combos for The Medium. This places it in the lower 38th percentile of all configurations, which is a sobering result for a GPU that was once a high-end part. The ranking reflects that while the RTX 2070 SUPER is capable in isolation, its age and the demanding nature of this title prevent it from competing with modern configurations that feature newer architectures and faster memory.

The combo’s rank is not surprising given the GPU’s percentile of 65 against all GPUs. The RTX 2070 SUPER’s average benchmark score of 22206 is respectable, but the game’s specific workload appears to punish its 9.062 TFLOPS of FP32 performance. The nearest rival, the NVIDIA RTX A400, scores 22307, which is only 0.5% higher, yet the combo ranking suggests that other pairings with similar GPU scores achieve better frame rates, likely due to more capable CPUs.

For context, the i5-9400’s average benchmark score of 2305 is nearly identical to its nearest rivals, including the Intel Core i3-10305 (2300) and Intel Xeon E-2134 (2295). This indicates that the CPU is not dragging the combo down; the bottleneck is purely the GPU’s inability to maintain high frame rates at Ultra settings. The data suggests that users with this combo should prioritize lower presets to achieve playable performance, as the hardware cannot be pushed further without sacrificing visual fidelity.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured frame rates, the optimal experience for this combo is the Medium preset at 1920x1080, which delivers an average of 60.7 FPS. This provides a smooth baseline for a game that relies on camera movement and environmental storytelling, without the risk of frame drops below 60 FPS that plague the High preset (45.4 FPS). For users with 1440p displays, the Medium preset at 54.9 FPS is acceptable, but the High preset at 39.2 FPS is too inconsistent for a comfortable experience.

The Low preset is the only viable option for 4K, with an average of 67.2 FPS. While this sacrifices most of the game’s visual polish, it ensures that the horror atmosphere is not ruined by stuttering. The Ultra preset should be avoided entirely, as it fails to reach 30 FPS at any resolution above 1080p (35.3 FPS at 1080p, 33 FPS at 1440p, 26.7 FPS at 4K). The gap between Medium and High is often larger than the gap between High and Ultra, suggesting that Medium is the sweet spot for balancing image quality and responsiveness.

For a fixed-camera game where action is slow, a 30 FPS lock at High settings (30.2 FPS at 4K) might be tolerable, but the benchmark data shows that the system cannot hold that target consistently. The recommended configuration is 1080p Medium for a locked 60 FPS experience, or 1440p Low if you prefer higher resolution over detail. The RTX 2070 SUPER’s 8 GB of memory is sufficient for these settings, but its bandwidth is the limiting factor at higher resolutions.