The Medium

The pairing of the Intel Core i7-13700K with the AMD Radeon RX 570 in The Medium produces a dataset that is immediately revealing about the nature of the bottleneck. The benchmark results show a system where the GPU is clearly the limiting factor, with the CPU's substantial processing headroom going largely unused at every tested setting. The measured frames per second (FPS) across all resolutions and presets paint a consistent picture of a component mismatch, where the graphics card's age and memory configuration constrain the experience far more than the processor's capabilities.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is severe, but the pattern is not linear. At Low settings, the average FPS falls from 43.7 at 1920x1080 to 34.6 at 2560x1440, a reduction of 9.1 FPS, then further down to 28.6 at 3840x2160, another 6.0 FPS drop. This scaling indicates that even at the lowest settings, the GPU is working near its limits. The transition from 1440p to 4K is less punishing in absolute terms, but the relative performance loss is still substantial, suggesting that the RX 570 is being pushed past its comfortable operating range.

When moving to Higher presets, the scaling becomes even more telling. At High settings, the average FPS moves from 17.7 at 1080p to 14.3 at 1440p and finally to 11.5 at 4K. This is a total drop of 6.2 FPS from the lowest to highest resolution tested. The fact that the difference between Ultra and High is minimal at every resolution — for instance, 15.7 vs 17.7 at 1080p — hints that the GPU is hitting a hard performance ceiling that is not dictated by the quality preset alone. The data suggests that the limiting component is the graphics card's raw throughput, not the CPU or the game's engine logic at these resolutions.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination ranks 1647th out of 1689 tested combos in The Medium, placing it in the bottom 2.5% of all systems. This is a remarkably low rank for a CPU that sits in the 93rd percentile among all processors. The disconnect between the CPU's high percentile and the combo's poor rank underscores the GPU bottleneck. The i7-13700K is capable of far more, but the RX 570 holds the system back to near the bottom of the database.

The CPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks show how different this pairing could be. The Intel Core i7-13700KF is only 0.1% faster in average benchmark score, and the AMD EPYC 4364P is 0.3% behind. These are all high-end processors with scores clustered around 47,000 to 47,500. The RX 570, by contrast, has an average benchmark score of 30,158, which is 0.2% ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 and 0.2% behind the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT. Yet in this game, the GPU's percentile rank is 74, which is far lower than the CPU's 93. This gap in percentiles between the two components explains the combo's dismal placement; the GPU is simply not in the same class as the CPU it is paired with.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 570 is built on the GCN 4.0 architecture with a Polaris 20 chip, fabricated on a 14 nm process by GlobalFoundries. It has 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 224.0 GB/s. The memory clock runs at 1750 MHz, which translates to 7 Gbps effective. These specifications are modest by modern standards, and the data suggests they are a primary constraint in The Medium.

The GPU's base clock is 1168 MHz with a boost clock of 1244 MHz. The shading units number 2048, and there are 128 texture mapping units and 32 render output units. The pixel rate is 39.81 GPixel/s, and the texture rate is 159.2 GTexel/s. The FP32 performance is 5.095 TFLOPS. These numbers are all indicative of a mid-range card from 2017, and the benchmark results in this game confirm that the 4 GB VRAM and the older architecture struggle with the game's demands. The GPU's percentile rank of 74 among all GPUs is low, and it is end-of-life, with a successor in the Vega line. The benchmark scores for the GPU show a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 880, which is quite low, and the OpenCL score of 32,084 is similarly modest. These figures align with the poor in-game FPS measurements.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the resolution most likely to be playable, the results are still disappointing. Low settings produce an average of 43.7 FPS, which is the only setting that approaches a playable frame rate. Medium settings drop to 29.7 FPS, High to 17.7 FPS, and Ultra to 15.7 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium is 14.0 FPS, which is a significant jump, indicating that the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth are quickly overwhelmed as the quality increases.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance degrades further. Low settings average 34.6 FPS, which is a drop of 9.1 FPS from 1080p. Medium settings average 25.9 FPS, High averages 14.3 FPS, and Ultra averages 14.2 FPS. The near-identical scores between High and Ultra at this resolution suggest that the game is capping out at a certain level of complexity that the GPU cannot exceed. At 3840x2160, the situation is dire. Low settings only manage 28.6 FPS, Medium drops to 16.3 FPS, High to 11.5 FPS, and Ultra to 11.4 FPS. The difference between High and Ultra is just 0.1 FPS, showing that the GPU is completely saturated and cannot handle any additional load.

FAQ

Q: What is the best playable setting for this combo at 1080p?

A: The data shows that Low settings at 1920x1080 produce an average FPS of 43.7, which is the only preset that exceeds 40 FPS. Medium settings drop to 29.7 FPS, which is below the threshold for smooth gameplay.

Q: Does the CPU bottleneck the GPU in this game?

A: No, the benchmark results indicate the opposite. The i7-13700K has a high percentile rank of 93, while the combo ranks 1647th out of 1689, showing that the GPU is the limiting component.

Q: How much performance is lost when going from 1080p to 4K at Low settings?

A: The average FPS drops from 43.7 at 1920x1080 to 28.6 at 3840x2160, a loss of 15.1 FPS, or roughly 35% of the initial performance.

Q: Are the High and Ultra presets worth using at any resolution?

A: No, the measured data shows that High and Ultra presets never exceed 17.7 FPS at any resolution, making them unplayable. At 1440p and 4K, both presets are in the 11 to 15 FPS range.

Q: What is the GPU's memory configuration and how does it relate to the results?

A: The RX 570 has 4 GB of GDDR5 memory with a 224.0 GB/s bandwidth. The low FPS at higher settings suggests that the memory capacity and bandwidth are insufficient for The Medium's demands.

Q: How does the GPU's benchmark score compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The GPU has an average benchmark score of 30,158, which is 0.2% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 and 0.2% lower than the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT, yet its in-game performance is far worse than these rivals would suggest.

Settings Recommendations

The only viable preset for this combination is Low at 1920x1080, which yields an average FPS of 43.7. This is the sole configuration that offers a frame rate above 30 FPS. Every other setting at every resolution falls below 30 FPS, with most presets in the 11 to 29 FPS range. The data indicates that Medium settings at 1080p produce 29.7 FPS, which is borderline but still below the 30 FPS threshold often considered the minimum for playable performance. At 1440p, Low settings average 34.6 FPS, which is technically playable, but the visual quality is so low that it may not be worth the resolution increase. For the best experience per the measured rows, users should select Low at 1080p. The jump to Medium at 1080p results in a 14.0 FPS drop, which is too steep to justify the visual improvements. Higher presets are not recommended under any circumstances, as the frame rates are consistently below 20 FPS, rendering the game largely unresponsive.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-13700K is a 16-core, 24-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake architecture, built on a 10 nm process. It has a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.40 GHz. The cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 2 MB of L2 per core, and 30 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration. Its integrated graphics are UHD Graphics 770. The CPU's average benchmark score is 47,282, and it ranks in the 93rd percentile among all CPUs. In Cinebench R23, it scores 39,000 in multicore and 5,505 in single-core. The PassMark multithread score is 45,887, and the single-thread score is 4,333.

Despite these impressive numbers, the CPU's role in The Medium is minimal. The game's performance is dictated by the GPU, as evidenced by the combo's rank of 1647th out of 1689. The CPU is never the limiting factor, as even at the lowest settings and resolution, the FPS is constrained by the RX 570's capabilities. The CPU's high core count and clock speeds provide no benefit in this scenario because the GPU cannot render frames fast enough to utilize the available processing power. The data implies that this CPU is wasted in this pairing, as it has the potential to drive a much more powerful GPU, but its performance is capped by the graphics card. The benchmark results across all resolutions show no significant difference in FPS that could be attributed to the CPU, confirming that the processor is idle for most of the workload.