The Medium

The Medium presents a significant challenge for the Intel Core i7-12700K and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 combination. The measured data shows this pairing is firmly in the lower quartile of tested systems, ranking 1424 out of 1689 combos. The bottleneck is almost entirely the GPU, which struggles to maintain playable frame rates at higher settings and resolutions. This analysis breaks down the optimal configuration, the hardware's respective roles, and what the performance scaling reveals about this pairing's limitations.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data for The Medium shows a clear trade-off between visual fidelity and playability for this specific hardware combination. Across all three tested resolutions, the "Low" preset provides the only consistently smooth experience, while "Ultra" proves to be essentially unplayable. The "Medium" preset offers a middle ground but still falls short of a 60 FPS target at any resolution.

At 1080p, the "Low" preset delivers an average of 78 FPS, which is the only measured configuration that comfortably exceeds the 60 FPS standard for smooth gameplay. The "Medium" preset drops to 46.6 FPS, which is playable but not fluid. "High" yields 35.6 FPS, and "Ultra" plummets to 25.2 FPS, making it a poor choice for any real-time interaction. For users who prioritize frame rate, "Low" is the only viable option.

At 1440p, the situation worsens. The "Low" preset achieves 60.7 FPS, which is technically playable but only just. Every other preset falls below 40 FPS: "Medium" hits 36.5, "High" drops to 28.7, and "Ultra" manages just 24.8. The data suggests that 1440p "Low" is the absolute ceiling for a decent experience, and even then, it is on the edge of the playable threshold.

At 4K, the GTX 1070 is completely overwhelmed. The "Low" preset produces 47.8 FPS, which is borderline, but "Medium" falls to 32.2, "High" to 23.3, and "Ultra" to a slideshow-like 15.9 FPS. No preset at this resolution provides a consistently smooth experience. The best recommendation for this combo is to run the game at 1080p with the "Low" preset to achieve a solid 78 FPS. If visual quality is non-negotiable, users must accept significant frame rate penalties, as "Medium" at 1080p is the highest quality preset that remains technically interactive.

How This Combo Ranks

The data places this configuration at rank 1424 out of 1689 tested combinations for The Medium, placing it in the bottom 15% of systems. This low ranking is a direct consequence of the GPU's age and performance class relative to the game's demands. The Intel Core i7-12700K is a high-end processor with an average benchmark score of 35684, placing it in the 89th percentile of all CPUs. Its nearest rivals, such as the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845 (-0.3%) and Intel Core i7-13700T (+0.6%), show that the CPU is not the limiting factor in this pairing.

However, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 is a different story. Its average benchmark score of 12331 places it in the 51st percentile of all GPUs, making it a strictly mid-range part by modern standards. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA Quadro K4200 (+0.7%) and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER (-1.4%), all of which are similarly positioned in the performance hierarchy. The combination of a top-tier CPU with a mid-tier GPU creates a massive imbalance, and in a GPU-bound title like The Medium, the overall combo rank suffers accordingly. The data indicates that this system is held back by its graphics card, not its processor, and its rank reflects the GPU's inability to keep up with the game's rendering demands.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 is the definitive performance bottleneck in this configuration. Its 8 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 256.3 GB/s of bandwidth, which is insufficient for the high-resolution textures and complex scenes in The Medium at higher presets. The GPU's base clock of 1506 MHz and boost clock of 1683 MHz are not enough to compensate for the architectural limitations of the Pascal design when facing this horror title's engine.

The measured FPS data confirms this. The game's performance scales almost linearly with resolution and settings, which is typical for a GPU-limited scenario. For instance, moving from 1080p "Low" (78 FPS) to 4K "Low" (47.8 FPS) represents a 39% drop in frame rate, a penalty directly attributable to the increase in pixel count that the GTX 1070 must process. Furthermore, the steep decline from 1080p "Low" to 1080p "Ultra" (78 FPS to 25.2 FPS) shows that the GPU's shading units, TMUs, and ROPs are quickly saturated by the game's effects. The GTX 1070’s 6.463 TFLOPS of FP32 performance is simply not competitive for this workload, and the data shows that even at 1080p, the card cannot maintain high frame rates at medium or higher presets. The GPU is the sole reason this combo ranks so poorly.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and settings combination for this system?

A: The data shows that 1920x1080 with the "Low" preset provides the highest average frame rate at 78 FPS, making it the only configuration that comfortably exceeds 60 FPS.

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

A: No. At 3840x2160, even the "Low" preset only achieves 47.8 FPS, and the "Ultra" preset drops to a very choppy 15.9 FPS, indicating that 4K is not a viable option for this hardware.

Q: How does the CPU performance compare to its rivals?

A: The Intel Core i7-12700K has an average benchmark score of 35684, which is 0.3% lower than the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845 and 0.6% higher than the Intel Core i7-13700T, showing it is a very competitive processor.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor in this game?

A: The GPU is the limiting factor. The GTX 1070's average benchmark score of 12331 places it in the 51st percentile, while the CPU is in the 89th percentile, indicating a significant bottleneck on the graphics side.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between 1080p and 1440p on the "Low" preset?

A: The average frame rate drops from 78 FPS at 1920x1080 to 60.7 FPS at 2560x1440, a decrease of 17.3 FPS, showing a substantial performance cost for the higher resolution.

Q: How does the GTX 1070's performance compare to the GTX 1650 SUPER?

A: The GTX 1070 has an average benchmark score of 12331, which is 1.4% lower than the GTX 1650 SUPER's score of 12504, indicating they are very close in overall performance.

Resolution Scaling

The performance data from 1080p to 4K highlights a severe scaling penalty that is characteristic of a GPU-bound system. The frame rates drop consistently as resolution increases, regardless of the quality preset. For example, on the "High" preset, the average FPS goes from 35.6 at 1080p to 28.7 at 1440p and then to 23.3 at 4K. This represents a 19% drop from 1080p to 1440p and a further 19% drop from 1440p to 4K.

This scaling behavior confirms that the GTX 1070's rendering pipeline is the primary constraint. The CPU, with its high single-thread and multi-thread performance, is not the limiting factor, as it can feed the GPU with data faster than the GPU can render it. The game's engine is clearly pushing more pixels and more complex shading work onto the GPU as resolution increases, and the GTX 1070's fixed hardware resources (shading units, texture units, and ROPs) cannot keep up. The most telling statistic is the drop from 1080p "Low" (78 FPS) to 4K "Low" (47.8 FPS), which shows a 39% reduction in performance from a 4x increase in pixel count. This non-linear scaling underscores that the GPU is operating at its absolute limit, and users must make drastic compromises in resolution to achieve playable frame rates. The system is demonstrably not future-proof for this title at higher display resolutions.