The Medium

The Medium, a fixed-camera horror title built on Unreal Engine, shows a distinct performance curve with the Intel Core i7-13700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090. The data indicates a system that scales predictably with resolution, where the GPU becomes the primary bottleneck at higher settings, while lower settings reveal the CPU's strong single-threaded headroom. This combination delivers a playable experience across all tested configurations, with the frame rate varying from a demanding 50.4 FPS at 4K Ultra to a fluid 179.1 FPS at 1080p Low.

Resolution Scaling

The performance drop from 1080p to 4K is substantial across all settings presets, confirming that the RTX 5090 is the limiting factor at higher resolutions. At High settings, the average frame rate falls from 96.3 FPS at 1920x1080 to 84.2 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of roughly 12.5%. The gap widens significantly when moving to 4K, where the average drops to 63.6 FPS — a 34% decrease from the 1080p figure. This pattern strongly indicates that the game's rendering load at 4K is taxing the GPU's immense 32 GB GDDR7 memory buffer and 512-bit bus, though the sheer pixel count is the dominant factor.

The scaling behavior changes with the preset. At Low settings, the frame rate goes from 179.1 FPS at 1080p to 168.4 FPS at 1440p, a mere 6% drop, before falling to 148 FPS at 4K — a 17.4% reduction from 1080p. This smaller delta suggests that at Low settings, the CPU's 16 cores and 24 threads, boosted by the 5.40 GHz clock, are able to feed the GPU more consistently, reducing the GPU's idle time. However, the 4K resolution still introduces a noticeable penalty, as the RTX 5090's pixel rate of 423.6 GPixel/s becomes a hard limit.

Ultra settings present the steepest curve. The average frame rate plummets from 78.4 FPS at 1080p to 67.3 FPS at 1440p (a 14.2% drop) and then to 50.4 FPS at 4K, which is a 35.7% decline from 1080p. The data shows that the gap between 1080p and 1440p is relatively consistent across presets, but the jump to 4K consistently costs over 30% of the frame rate. This indicates that The Medium's visual effects at Ultra, likely including heavy volumetric lighting and ray-traced reflections, scale non-linearly with resolution. The 4K Ultra result of 50.4 FPS is the only sub-60 FPS result in the entire dataset, marking the boundary of this combo's comfortable performance envelope.

Settings Recommendations

For a 60 FPS target, the data suggests that 4K High is the maximum viable configuration, delivering 63.6 FPS on average. Pushing to 4K Ultra drops below the threshold at 50.4 FPS, so players seeking the highest visual fidelity at 4K should be prepared for a compromise. At 1440p, the situation is more flexible: High settings yield 84.2 FPS, while Ultra still manages a solid 67.3 FPS, making it the optimal resolution for those who want to enable the highest preset without sacrificing smoothness.

The Medium setting at 1440p offers a strong balance, hitting 118.1 FPS, which is more than enough for a horror game where atmosphere matters more than competitive response times. For high-refresh-rate displays at 1080p, Medium provides 134.6 FPS, while High delivers 96.3 FPS. The Low preset at 1080p reaches 179.1 FPS, but given the game's fixed-camera perspective and detailed environments, the visual degradation is likely not worth the extra frames for most users. The sweet spot for overall experience appears to be 1440p High: it maintains a 60+ FPS average with a 33% headroom over the 4K High result, suggesting the GPU is not fully saturated and can handle scene complexity spikes.

GPU Role

The RTX 5090's specifications are central to understanding these results. With 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus providing 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth, the card has ample resources for The Medium's high-resolution textures. The benchmark data shows that the GPU's average benchmark score of 84,306 puts it in the 94th percentile of all GPUs, with its nearest rival being the RTX 5090 D at a 0.1% delta. This ranking aligns with the observed frame rates, which are consistently high but not extreme, suggesting the game's engine is not fully optimized to exploit the card's compute power.

The clock speeds are notable: a base of 2017 MHz and a boost of 2407 MHz. These clocks, combined with the Blackwell 2.0 architecture on a 5 nm process, drive the observed performance. The card's FP32 throughput of 104.8 TFLOPS is substantial, but The Medium's reliance on fixed-camera angles means the rendering load is more about pixel shading and memory bandwidth than raw geometry. The 176 ROPs and 680 TMUs are likely the key players here, as the resolution scaling data points to fill-rate limitations at 4K Ultra.

Interestingly, the GPU's passmark G3D score of 39,650 and DirectX 12 score of 185 suggest that the card's raw compute does not always translate to frame rate in this title. The 4K Ultra result of 50.4 FPS is lower than what the card's theoretical pixel rate of 423.6 GPixel/s would suggest, indicating that the game's visual effects at Ultra are creating a bottleneck elsewhere, possibly in shader complexity or memory access patterns. The VRAM capacity is not a limiting factor, as even at 4K Ultra, the game is unlikely to exceed 32 GB of usage, leaving headroom for future patches or mods.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for a consistent 60 FPS experience?

A: The data shows that 4K High achieves 63.6 FPS, while 4K Ultra drops to 50.4 FPS. For a guaranteed 60+ FPS average with high visual quality, 2560x1440 High is the safest option, delivering 84.2 FPS with room to spare.

Q: Does the RTX 5090's 32 GB VRAM matter for The Medium?

A: The 32 GB GDDR7 memory provides a 1.79 TB/s bandwidth, but the frame rate data does not indicate any VRAM capacity issues. The performance drop from 1440p to 4K is more attributable to pixel shading load than memory pressure, as the card maintains high frame rates even at 4K Low with 148 FPS.

Q: How does the CPU affect performance at lower settings?

A: At 1080p Low, the combo reaches 179.1 FPS, which is only 6.3% higher than the 1440p Low result of 168.4 FPS. This small gap suggests the i7-13700K's 5.40 GHz boost clock and 24 threads are sufficient to keep the GPU fed, even at high frame rates where CPU overhead typically becomes a bottleneck.

Q: Is 4K Ultra playable with this combo?

A: The measured average of 50.4 FPS is below the 60 FPS threshold, but it is still playable for a slow-paced horror title. The game's fixed camera angles reduce the need for rapid camera movement, so the lower frame rate may be acceptable for some players, though 4K High at 63.6 FPS is a safer choice.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between High and Ultra settings?

A: At 1080p, the difference is 17.9 FPS (96.3 vs 78.4). At 1440p, it is 16.9 FPS (84.2 vs 67.3). At 4K, the gap narrows to 13.2 FPS (63.6 vs 50.4), showing that Ultra's additional effects become relatively more expensive at lower resolutions, but the absolute frame rate cost remains consistent.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested configurations?

A: The combo ranks 11th out of 1,689 tested combinations in The Medium. This top 1% placement is consistent with the high frame rates observed across all settings and resolutions.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i7-13700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 combination ranks 11th out of 1,689 tested combos in The Medium, placing it in the top percentile of all configurations. This high ranking is driven by the RTX 5090's position as the 94th percentile GPU, paired with the i7-13700K's 93rd percentile CPU performance. The CPU's average benchmark score of 47,282 is nearly identical to its nearest rival, the Intel Core i7-13700KF, which scores 47,334 with a 0.1% delta, showing that the two are effectively interchangeable in this title.

The GPU's average benchmark score of 84,306 compares closely to the RTX 5090 D at 84,241 (0.1% delta) and the RTX 5050 Mobile at 84,171 (0.2% delta), though the latter is a mobile part that would likely perform differently in sustained gaming loads. The ranking of 11th suggests that only a handful of combos, likely those with slightly faster CPUs or more specialized configurations, can outperform this setup. Given the measured frame rates, the combo's 11th place is well-earned: it achieves a 63.6 FPS average at 4K High, which is a demanding scenario that would challenge most other systems. The data indicates that this pairing is near the top of the performance hierarchy for The Medium, with the GPU being the primary driver of the high ranking, as evidenced by the significant frame rate drops at 4K Ultra that still remain playable.