The Medium

The Medium, a fixed-camera horror title, presents an unusual bottleneck profile for this pairing of an Intel Core i5-9400 with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090. The benchmark data shows that this combination, while capable of high frame rates, does not scale with resolution in the way typical for a GPU-bound scenario. The results suggest a significant CPU limitation that flattens the performance curve, making the experience more consistent across settings than one might expect from a flagship graphics card.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS data reveals an atypical scaling pattern. Moving from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 at High settings, the average FPS drops only marginally from 63.3 to 58.0, a change of roughly 8%. The jump to 3840x2160 at High yields an average of 58.4 FPS, which is virtually identical to the 1440p result. This near-flat line between 1440p and 4K is a clear indicator that the system is not GPU-bound at those resolutions; the frame rate is being capped by the processor's ability to feed the render thread.

The trend is consistent across all settings presets. At Low settings, the 1080p average is 89.6 FPS, dropping to 84.5 at 1440p and then to 78.5 at 4K. While the low preset does show a more linear decline, the gap between 1440p and 4K is still relatively small (6 FPS). At Ultra settings, the data shows a peculiar inversion: the 1080p average is 57.5 FPS, the 1440p average is 57.4 FPS, and the 4K average is 52.5 FPS. The extreme similarity between the 1080p and 1440p Ultra results strongly suggests that the CPU is the limiting factor, preventing the RTX 4090 from pushing higher frame rates even when the resolution is lowered.

This pattern indicates that the game's engine has a hard ceiling on performance with this six-core, six-thread processor. Moving from High to Ultra at 1080p costs only 5.8 FPS (63.3 to 57.5), while the same settings change at 4K costs 5.9 FPS (58.4 to 52.5). The consistency of these deltas across resolutions reinforces that the bottleneck is not the GPU's fill rate or memory bandwidth, but rather the CPU's ability to process the game's logic and draw calls for the fixed-camera scenes.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 brings immense raw resources to this game, with 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus providing 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth. The GPU's specifications—16,384 shading units and a boost clock of 2520 MHz—are far beyond what The Medium requires at these settings based on the measured FPS. The fact that the 4K High average of 58.4 FPS is nearly the same as the 1080p High average of 63.3 FPS confirms that the GPU is not being fully utilized.

The VRAM capacity is effectively a non-factor. With 24 GB available, the game's texture budgets at 4K Ultra place no pressure on the memory subsystem. The benchmark results show that the frame rate differences between Low and Ultra at 4K are only 26 FPS (78.5 to 52.5), which is a modest spread for a setting range that typically doubles or triples the load on a GPU. The RTX 4090's pixel rate of 443.5 GPixel/s and texture rate of 1,290.2 GTexel/s are more than sufficient to handle the game's visual effects, but the data shows these resources are idle while waiting for CPU instructions.

The GPU's role here is one of a cap-lifter that is never allowed to reach its potential. It is not the component dictating performance in The Medium; it is merely rendering the frames as fast as the CPU commands them. The 4K Low result of 78.5 FPS is the highest at that resolution, but it is still far below what the RTX 4090 could theoretically produce in a less CPU-constrained environment, based on its overall benchmark percentile of 91 among all GPUs.

FAQ

Q: Why does performance barely change between 1440p and 4K?

A: The measured data shows nearly identical average FPS at High settings for 2560x1440 (58.0 FPS) and 3840x2160 (58.4 FPS). This flat scaling indicates the Intel Core i5-9400 is the limiting factor, not the RTX 4090. The GPU has enough headroom at 4K to maintain the same frame rate as at 1440p because the CPU is delivering frames at a consistent rate.

Q: Is the RTX 4090 wasted in this build for this game?

A: The benchmark results suggest that the RTX 4090's potential is not fully realized. The 4K Ultra average of 52.5 FPS is only slightly lower than the 1080p Ultra average of 57.5 FPS, showing that the GPU is not being stressed by higher resolutions. The data implies a less powerful GPU would achieve similar results with this CPU in The Medium.

Q: What is the best setting to use for a smooth experience?

A: Based on the measured FPS, the Low preset at 1920x1080 offers the highest average at 89.6 FPS. At 2560x1440, the Low preset yields 84.5 FPS, and at 3840x2160, it delivers 78.5 FPS. For a target of around 60 FPS, the Ultra preset at 4K (52.5 FPS) is borderline, while High at 4K (58.4 FPS) is closer but still below 60.

Q: How does this combo compare to other tested configurations?

A: This specific pairing ranks 636 out of 1689 tested combos in The Medium. This places it in the upper-middle range of all combinations, despite featuring one of the fastest consumer GPUs available. The rank reflects the CPU's limiting effect on the overall score.

Q: Does the game use more than six threads?

A: The Intel Core i5-9400 has 6 cores and 6 threads, with no hyper-threading. The benchmark data, showing a performance plateau across resolutions, strongly suggests that the game's workload is constrained by the CPU's thread count or single-thread speed, as the frame rate does not improve when the GPU load is reduced.

Q: Will lowering the resolution help increase FPS?

A: The data shows that lowering resolution provides a modest FPS increase. From 4K Low (78.5 FPS) to 1080p Low (89.6 FPS), the gain is 11.1 FPS. This is a smaller improvement than expected, confirming that the CPU is the primary bottleneck rather than the GPU's rendering capabilities.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the frame rates are consistent but unspectacular for this GPU. The Low preset averages 89.6 FPS, which is the highest result in the entire dataset. Medium averages 70.4 FPS, High averages 63.3 FPS, and Ultra averages 57.5 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 32.1 FPS, showing that settings do have an impact, but the ceiling is clearly defined by the CPU.

Moving to 2560x1440, the averages tighten. Low produces 84.5 FPS, Medium produces 66.3 FPS, High produces 58.0 FPS, and Ultra produces 57.4 FPS. The difference between High and Ultra at this resolution is negligible at 0.6 FPS. This compression of performance between settings is a hallmark of a CPU bottleneck, as the GPU is not the constraining factor.

At 3840x2160, the pattern continues. Low averages 78.5 FPS, Medium averages 64.1 FPS, High averages 58.4 FPS, and Ultra averages 52.5 FPS. The 4K results are remarkably close to the 1440p results, with the largest gap being only 6 FPS (Low preset). This data confirms that the game is not scaling with GPU load; it is scaling with CPU capability. The average FPS across all 4K settings is 63.4, which is nearly identical to the 1080p High result of 63.3 FPS.

How This Combo Ranks

This combination of the Intel Core i5-9400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 holds a rank of 636 out of 1689 tested combos in The Medium. This places it in the 62nd percentile of all configurations, meaning roughly 62% of tested systems perform better in this specific title. This is a surprisingly low rank for a GPU that sits in the 91st percentile of all GPUs by its average benchmark score.

The rank suggests that the CPU is dragging the system down significantly. The i5-9400's average benchmark score of 2305 places it in the 50th percentile of all CPUs, and its nearest rivals—such as the Intel Core i3-10305 and Intel Xeon E-2134—have similar average scores within 0.4% of this chip. When paired with a GPU of the RTX 4090's caliber, the CPU's mid-range standing becomes the defining factor for the overall combo rank. The data indicates that many other combos with more balanced processors achieve better results in this game, even if their GPUs are less powerful.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 is a 6-core, 6-thread processor from the Coffee Lake generation, with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.10 GHz. It has a 9 MB shared L3 cache and supports dual-channel DDR4 memory with a bandwidth of 42.7 GB/s. In synthetic benchmarks, its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 7969 and single-core score of 1125 demonstrate a modest capability that is now considered entry-level for modern gaming.

In The Medium, this CPU is the clear performance limiter. The benchmark results show that the frame rate is nearly independent of resolution, which is the definitive signature of a CPU bottleneck. The game's fixed-camera angles often require significant CPU work to cull and render geometry, and with only six threads available, the processor struggles to feed the RTX 4090 enough data to saturate its capabilities. The processor's memory bandwidth of 42.7 GB/s is also a potential constraint, as the GPU waits for data to be transferred from system memory.

The data shows that the CPU's single-thread performance is likely the key factor. The Cinebench R20 single-core score of 472 and R23 score of 1125 are not exceptional, and The Medium's engine appears to have a heavy reliance on one or two main threads. This explains why the 4K Ultra score of 52.5 FPS is so close to the 1080p Ultra score of 57.5 FPS; the CPU simply cannot generate frames faster than roughly 58 FPS in the most demanding scenes, regardless of the GPU's output capability. Upgrading this processor would be the primary way to unlock the RTX 4090's full potential in this title.