The Medium

The Medium, a fixed-camera horror title built on Unreal Engine 4, presents a unique load profile that stresses both the CPU and GPU heavily due to its dual-world rendering mechanic. The measured data for the Intel Core i7-13700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER combination reveals a configuration that is capable of high refresh rates at lower settings but requires careful tuning for a consistent experience at higher visual fidelity. This analysis breaks down the benchmark results to determine the optimal settings, the role of each component, and how this pairing ranks among other tested systems.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data provides a clear hierarchy of performance across four presets, with the most balanced experience found at the Medium setting. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset delivers an average of 109.4 FPS, which is a substantial 43.1 FPS improvement over the High preset's 76.3 FPS. This headroom is critical for maintaining smooth gameplay during the game's frequent scene transitions and fixed-camera angles, where frame pacing inconsistencies are more noticeable. While the Low preset at 1080p pushes the average to 176.6 FPS, the visual compromise in a game that relies heavily on atmospheric lighting and shadow detail is significant.

Moving to 2560x1440, the Medium preset again provides the best compromise, achieving an average of 92.9 FPS. This is only slightly below the 100 FPS threshold that many players consider ideal for a responsive experience, and it remains comfortably above the 63.4 FPS average of the High preset. The Ultra preset, which averages 53.4 FPS at 1440p, is difficult to recommend for consistent play, as the drop below 60 FPS introduces perceptible stutter in a genre where timing is less critical but immersion is paramount. The data suggests that the Medium preset is the "sweet spot" for this combo, offering a frame rate that is more than double the Ultra preset's output at 1080p and nearly double at 1440p.

At 3840x2160, the situation becomes more constrained. The Medium preset averages 71.6 FPS, which is playable, but the High preset's 51.4 FPS average dips below the 60 FPS target. For 4K gaming, the data indicates that Medium is the highest playable setting, providing a frame rate that is 66% higher than Ultra's 43.1 FPS. The jump from Low (117.8 FPS) to Medium (71.6 FPS) is a 46.2 FPS drop, showing that the game's rendering cost scales steeply with resolution and quality settings. Ultimately, the measured rows point to Medium as the definitive recommendation for this hardware, as it provides the best balance of visual quality and performance across all three resolutions.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER is the primary driver of frame rate in The Medium, given the game's heavy reliance on real-time rendering and its dual-world mechanic. The GPU's 16 GB of GDDR6X memory is a significant asset, as the game's high-resolution textures and the need to render two simultaneous perspectives can quickly consume video memory. The 256-bit memory bus and 672.3 GB/s of bandwidth ensure that texture streaming and geometry data are fed to the processing cores without bottlenecking, which is evident in the scaling from 1080p to 1440p. The GPU's base clock of 2340 MHz and boost clock of 2610 MHz provide the raw compute throughput necessary to maintain the high frame rates seen in the Low and Medium presets.

The GPU's compute capabilities, including 8448 shading units and 66 RT cores, are relevant even without ray tracing enabled, as the game's volumetric lighting and screen-space effects still require substantial shader work. The benchmark results show that the GPU is the limiting factor when moving from Medium to High settings. For instance, at 1440p, the transition from Medium (92.9 FPS) to High (63.4 FPS) represents a 29.5 FPS drop, a 32% reduction in performance. This indicates that the High preset introduces effects that heavily tax the GPU's FP32 throughput of 44.10 TFLOPS. The GPU's 86th percentile ranking among all tested GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 48704, confirms that it is a high-end part, but the data shows it must be paired with appropriate settings to avoid frame rate collapse in this specific title.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic GPU-bound scenario, but with an interesting nuance at the High and Ultra presets. At Medium settings, the FPS drops from 109.4 at 1080p to 92.9 at 1440p (a 16.5 FPS decrease) and then to 71.6 at 4K (a further 21.3 FPS decrease). This progressive decline is consistent with increasing pixel count, showing that the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER has enough headroom at 1080p to not be fully saturated. However, at High settings, the drop from 1080p (76.3 FPS) to 1440p (63.4 FPS) is 12.9 FPS, which is a 17% reduction, while the move from 1440p to 4K (51.4 FPS) is another 12 FPS loss. This suggests that the High preset is more demanding per pixel, likely due to higher-quality shadows and post-processing effects.

The Low preset shows the most linear scaling, going from 176.6 FPS at 1080p to 149.7 FPS at 1440p and then to 117.8 FPS at 4K. This indicates that at Low settings, the GPU is not the sole bottleneck, allowing the CPU to play a larger role. The fact that the 4K Low score (117.8 FPS) is still higher than the 1080p Ultra score (62.6 FPS) is telling; it demonstrates that the Ultra preset's rendering costs are so high that they dwarf the impact of resolution. The data strongly implies that the limiting component at Medium and above is the GPU, as the frame rate drops are proportional to the pixel throughput increase. Conversely, at Low, the CPU's capabilities become more apparent, as the frame rate does not scale down as aggressively with resolution.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete dataset shows a consistent pattern across all resolutions, with the Low preset providing the highest frame rates and Ultra the lowest. At 1920x1080, the averages are 176.6 FPS (Low), 109.4 FPS (Medium), 76.3 FPS (High), and 62.6 FPS (Ultra). The step from Low to Medium is a 67.2 FPS drop, which is a massive 38% reduction in performance, highlighting the significant cost of the Medium preset's additional effects. The gap between Medium and High is 33.1 FPS, and the gap between High and Ultra is 13.7 FPS, showing diminishing returns as settings increase.

At 2560x1440, the averages are 149.7 FPS (Low), 92.9 FPS (Medium), 63.4 FPS (High), and 53.4 FPS (Ultra). The drop from Low to Medium is 56.8 FPS, which is a 38% reduction, mirroring the 1080p trend. The High to Ultra gap narrows to 10 FPS, indicating that the Ultra preset's additional features are less impactful at this resolution. At 3840x2160, the averages are 117.8 FPS (Low), 71.6 FPS (Medium), 51.4 FPS (High), and 43.1 FPS (Ultra). The Low to Medium drop is 46.2 FPS (39% reduction), while the High to Ultra drop is only 8.3 FPS. This data shows that the Medium preset is the most efficient, offering a frame rate that is 66% higher than Ultra at 4K, while the visual difference between Medium and High is often less noticeable in a game with fixed camera angles.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i7-13700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER combination ranks 159th out of 1689 tested configurations in The Medium, placing it in the top 9.4% of all systems. This is a strong result, confirming that the pairing is well-suited for this game. The CPU's 93rd percentile ranking among all processors, with an average benchmark score of 47282, and the GPU's 86th percentile ranking, with a score of 48704, combine to produce a system that is more than capable of handling the game's demands. The rank of 159 places this combo ahead of the vast majority of systems, but also indicates that there are a significant number of higher-end configurations (likely with RTX 4090-class GPUs) that can push the Ultra preset to higher frame rates.

The data shows this combo is not just a mid-range performer; it is a high-tier configuration. The fact that it can achieve 71.6 FPS at 4K Medium reflects its strength, as many systems would struggle to maintain 60 FPS at that resolution. The rank also suggests that the CPU is not holding the GPU back, as the combo's performance is consistent with what the GPU's own percentile ranking would predict. The nearest rival for the CPU is the Intel Core i7-13700KF with an average score of 47334, a delta of -0.1%, which is negligible in real-world gaming. For the GPU, the nearest rival is the NVIDIA CMP 50HX with a score of 49071, a delta of -0.7%, showing the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER is very closely matched to its peers.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-13700K, with its 16 cores and 24 threads, provides a strong foundation for The Medium's CPU demands. The game's dual-world rendering mechanic requires substantial single-thread performance for the main game logic and multi-threaded performance for streaming and physics. The CPU's boost clock of 5.40 GHz is critical for maintaining high frame rates in the Low and Medium presets, where the GPU is not fully saturated. The benchmark scores support this: a 3DMark single-thread score of 1136 and a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 5505 indicate excellent per-core performance, which is essential for avoiding frame hitches.

The multi-threaded performance is also strong, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 39000 and a Passmark multi-thread score of 45887. However, the measured FPS data suggests that the CPU is not the primary bottleneck in most settings. For example, at 1080p Low, the CPU must keep up with the GPU's 176.6 FPS output, but the fact that this is the highest score in the dataset shows that the CPU is up to the task. The CPU's 30 MB of shared L3 cache helps with data locality, and its support for DDR5 memory ensures high bandwidth for the game's asset streaming. The 125 W TDP and 10 nm process node from Intel indicate a power-hungry but capable chip. The data shows that while the GPU dictates the performance ceiling at higher settings, the CPU's robust single-thread and multi-thread capabilities prevent it from becoming a limiting factor, ensuring that the system maintains its high combo rank.