The Medium

The Medium presents a demanding fixed-camera horror experience where the combination of an Intel Core i7-12700KF and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 delivers a wide performance envelope, ranging from highly playable at lower settings to a slideshow at maximum quality in 4K. The measured data reveals a system that is consistently GPU-bound, with the CPU providing ample headroom across all tested configurations.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate progression from 1080p to 4K clearly identifies the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 as the primary performance limiter in this pairing. At Low settings, the average frame rate drops from 122.3 FPS at 1920x1080 to 101.7 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of approximately 17%. Moving further to 3840x2160 yields 80.4 FPS, which is a 34% decrease from the 1080p result. This scaling is relatively mild, indicating that at Low settings, the game still has some headroom even at 4K.

The scaling pattern becomes more aggressive as graphical fidelity increases. At Medium settings, the transition from 1080p (77.3 FPS) to 1440p (63.2 FPS) represents an 18% drop, while the jump to 4K (53.6 FPS) shows a 31% reduction from the 1080p baseline. This trend intensifies at High settings, where the 1080p result of 55.7 FPS falls to 44.9 FPS at 1440p (a 19% decrease) and further to 35.1 FPS at 4K (a 37% drop from 1080p).

The Ultra preset demonstrates the most pronounced scaling behavior. The 1080p average of 43.8 FPS declines to 37 FPS at 1440p, a 16% reduction, and then plummets to 28.3 FPS at 4K, which is 35% lower than the 1080p figure. The data shows that the gap between 1440p and 4K widens consistently with higher settings, confirming that the GPU's 8 GB of GDDR6 memory and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth become increasingly strained as resolution and texture complexity rise. The relatively small differences between 1080p and 1440p at every preset suggest that the CPU is never the bottleneck, as the i7-12700KF's 12 cores and 20 threads provide sufficient processing power to keep the GPU fully occupied.

Settings Recommendations

For users targeting a smooth 60 FPS experience, the Medium preset at 1920x1080 delivers an average of 77.3 FPS, providing a comfortable margin above the threshold. At 2560x1440, Medium drops to 63.2 FPS, which remains playable but closer to the edge. The High preset at 1080p produces 55.7 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS target but may be acceptable for those prioritizing visual quality over absolute smoothness.

At 4K resolution, the options become more limited. The Low preset achieves 80.4 FPS, making it the only 4K configuration that clears 60 FPS. Medium at 3840x2160 yields 53.6 FPS, which is borderline, while High drops to 35.1 FPS and Ultra falls to 28.3 FPS, both of which are likely too low for comfortable gameplay in a horror title where timing and atmosphere matter.

The data suggests that the optimal balance for this combination is Medium at 1440p, which offers 63.2 FPS and a substantial visual upgrade over Low settings. For 4K users, the choice is stark: either accept the Low preset at 80.4 FPS or step down to 1440p for higher fidelity. The Ultra preset appears to be a poor trade-off at all resolutions, as it only delivers 43.8 FPS at 1080p, which is significantly lower than Medium at the same resolution while offering diminishing returns in visual quality.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 is built on the Ampere architecture with a GA104 chip manufactured on an 8 nm process from Samsung. The card features 5888 shading units, 184 texture mapping units, and 96 raster operation pipelines, along with 46 ray tracing cores and 184 tensor cores. Its 8 GB of GDDR6 memory operates across a 256-bit bus, providing 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is a critical factor in The Medium's performance at higher resolutions.

The GPU's boost clock of 1725 MHz and base clock of 1500 MHz contribute to its peak FP32 performance of 20.31 TFLOPS. In the benchmark results, the card achieves a Passmark G3D score of 22214 and a Passmark GPU Compute score of 11195, placing it in the 72nd percentile among all GPUs. Its average benchmark score of 28238 puts it in close competition with the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT, which scores 27985, a delta of 0.9%. The RTX 3070 also leads the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti by 1% in average score.

The measured frame rates in The Medium reflect this mid-to-high tier positioning. The card's 8 GB VRAM capacity is sufficient for 1080p and 1440p at most settings, but the 4K Ultra result of 28.3 FPS suggests that memory capacity and bandwidth become limiting factors at extreme resolutions. The GPU's 220 W TDP and dual-slot design indicate a power-hungry part, but the data does not reveal any thermal throttling behavior that would otherwise explain performance drops.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the four presets produce a clear hierarchy: Low at 122.3 FPS, Medium at 77.3 FPS, High at 55.7 FPS, and Ultra at 43.8 FPS. The difference between Low and Medium is 45 FPS, while the gap between Medium and High is 21.6 FPS, and High to Ultra narrows to 11.9 FPS. This diminishing return pattern suggests that each step up in quality imposes a smaller relative cost as the settings become more demanding.

Moving to 2560x1440, the values shift to 101.7 FPS for Low, 63.2 FPS for Medium, 44.9 FPS for High, and 37 FPS for Ultra. The percentage drop from 1080p to 1440p is consistent across presets, ranging from 16% at Ultra to 19% at High, indicating that resolution scaling is uniform regardless of quality level.

At 3840x2160, the results are 80.4 FPS for Low, 53.6 FPS for Medium, 35.1 FPS for High, and 28.3 FPS for Ultra. The transition from 1440p to 4K shows a steeper decline, with Low dropping 21%, Medium 15%, High 22%, and Ultra 24%. This pattern confirms that the GPU's memory subsystem and shading resources are progressively overwhelmed as pixel count increases.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i7-12700KF and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 combination ranks 784th out of 1689 tested combos in The Medium, placing it in the 54th percentile of all systems evaluated. This mid-pack ranking is somewhat surprising given the individual performance characteristics of both components, but it reflects the game's specific rendering demands.

The CPU's average benchmark score of 35355 places it in the 89th percentile of all processors, with nearest rivals including the Intel Core i5-14400 at 35336 (a delta of 0.1%) and the Intel Core i9-12900HX at 35289 (a delta of 0.2%). These close margins indicate that the i7-12700KF is not a performance outlier in synthetic tests, and its real-world gaming performance is consistent with its position.

The GPU's average score of 28238 places it in the 72nd percentile, with the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT at 27985 (a delta of 0.9%) and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti at 27956 (a delta of 1%). The 784th overall rank suggests that while this combo is capable, it is not optimized for The Medium's specific engine characteristics, which appear to favor systems with more balanced memory bandwidth and shading throughput.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700KF is a 12-core, 20-thread processor based on the Alder Lake-S architecture, manufactured on Intel's 10 nm process. It features a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz, with a 125 W TDP. The CPU includes 80 KB of L1 cache per core, 1.25 MB of L2 cache per core, and 25 MB of shared L3 cache, which helps feed the RTX 3070's demanding workloads.

In synthetic benchmarks, the processor achieves a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 28979 and a single-core score of 4091, along with a Geekbench multicore score of 13596 and single-core score of 2526. These figures demonstrate strong multi-threaded performance, which is relevant for The Medium's dual-reality rendering that can leverage additional threads.

The measured FPS data shows no evidence of CPU bottlenecking, as frame rates scale consistently with GPU load. At 1080p Low, the 122.3 FPS result is likely constrained by the GPU's geometry and pixel processing, not the CPU's instruction throughput. The 20-thread configuration provides ample headroom for the game's background tasks, and the 5.00 GHz boost clock ensures that single-threaded workloads, such as game logic and physics, are handled swiftly. The CPU's nearest rivals show negligible performance differences, with the Intel Core i5-14400 trailing by just 0.1% in average score, indicating that the i7-12700KF is not a differentiating factor in this combo's overall ranking.