The Medium

The Intel Core i7-14700F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER delivers a robust experience in The Medium, with benchmark results showing that the Medium preset provides the most balanced combination of visual fidelity and frame rate across all tested resolutions. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset achieves an average of 104.6 FPS, which is comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay while still offering a significant visual upgrade over the Low preset’s 165 FPS average. Moving to 2560x1440, Medium produces 85.4 FPS, and even at 3840x2160, it maintains a playable 69.1 FPS average. The High preset, while visually richer, drops to 73.3 FPS at 1080p, 65.1 FPS at 1440p, and 47.9 FPS at 4K, making it less suitable for high-refresh-rate displays but still viable for 60 FPS gaming at lower resolutions. The Ultra preset, by contrast, pushes the GPU hard, yielding 61.3 FPS at 1080p, 50.7 FPS at 1440p, and 40.2 FPS at 4K, which is below the ideal smoothness threshold for most users. For the best overall experience, Medium is the recommended preset, as it delivers high frame rates at every resolution without the steep performance penalty of High or Ultra.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER is the primary driver of performance in The Medium, and its memory configuration and clock speeds are central to understanding the measured results. The GPU features 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 504.2 GB/s, which is ample for the game’s asset streaming at 1080p and 1440p, though the 4K High and Ultra presets likely benefit from the 12 GB capacity to avoid stutter. The core clocks are set at a base of 1980 MHz and a boost of 2475 MHz, with memory running at 1313 MHz (21 Gbps effective). These specifications, combined with 7168 shading units, 224 texture mapping units, and 80 raster output units, explain the scaling observed across settings. The GPU’s Ada Lovelace architecture, built on a 5 nm process at TSMC with 35,800 million transistors, delivers a raw FP32 throughput of 35.48 TFLOPS, which is the computational backbone for the game’s fixed-camera rendering and lighting effects.

The RTX 4070 SUPER also includes 56 ray tracing cores and 224 tensor cores, which are relevant for The Medium’s use of ray-traced reflections and ambient occlusion, though the benchmark data does not isolate these effects. The GPU’s 84th percentile ranking among all tested GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 42576, places it in the upper mid-range tier. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA RTX A6000 (0.2% lower average score) and the AMD Radeon RX 7650 GRE (0.3% lower), indicating that the 4070 SUPER is competitive with professional-grade and newer mainstream cards, respectively. The deltaPct values show that the RTX 4070 SUPER slightly outperforms the RTX A6000 by 0.2% and the RX 7650 GRE by 0.3%, while the AMD Radeon Pro 580X trails by 1.4% and the NVIDIA Tesla M40 by 1.6%. This performance headroom is directly reflected in the FPS numbers, where the GPU’s compute and memory throughput determine the upper limits of frame rates at each settings level.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a clear pattern of resolution scaling that highlights the GPU as the limiting component. From 1920x1080 to 2560x1440, the average FPS drops by roughly 15-20% across all settings, and from 1440p to 3840x2160, the drop is even steeper, indicating that the RTX 4070 SUPER is increasingly constrained by pixel throughput at higher resolutions. For instance, at Low settings, the average FPS falls from 165 at 1080p to 137.7 at 1440p, a 16.5% reduction, and then to 112.5 at 4K, a further 18.3% reduction. At Medium settings, the decline is 18.4% from 1080p to 1440p (104.6 to 85.4 FPS) and 19.1% from 1440p to 4K (85.4 to 69.1 FPS). High settings show a similar trend: 73.3 FPS at 1080p drops 11.2% to 65.1 FPS at 1440p, then 26.4% to 47.9 FPS at 4K. Ultra settings exhibit the most severe scaling, with 61.3 FPS at 1080p falling 17.3% to 50.7 FPS at 1440p and then 20.7% to 40.2 FPS at 4K.

This scaling behavior indicates that the CPU, the Intel Core i7-14700F, is not the bottleneck in this configuration. The i7-14700F, with 20 cores and 28 threads, has a boost clock of 5.40 GHz and a substantial L3 cache of 33 MB, which is more than sufficient to feed the GPU at these frame rates. The CPU’s 94th percentile ranking and average benchmark score of 54097 further confirm its capability; its nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X, is only 0.6% faster, while the Intel Xeon Phi 7290 is 1.2% slower. The consistent FPS drops with resolution, regardless of settings, are the signature of a GPU-bound workload, where the RTX 4070 SUPER’s fill rate and memory bandwidth become the limiting factors as pixel count increases. At 4K Ultra, the 40.2 FPS average underscores the GPU’s struggle, while the 112.5 FPS at 4K Low shows that the GPU can still deliver high frame rates when the render load is reduced.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the RTX 4070 SUPER delivers a wide range of performance depending on the preset. Low settings produce an average of 165 FPS, which is exceptionally high and suitable for 144 Hz or 165 Hz displays. Medium settings reduce the average to 104.6 FPS, still well above 60 FPS, while High settings yield 73.3 FPS, which is smooth but with less headroom. Ultra settings drop to 61.3 FPS, the minimum for a consistent 60 FPS experience, though any frame drops could push it below that threshold. The data shows that 1080p is not a challenge for this GPU, as even Ultra maintains a playable frame rate, but the difference between Low and Ultra is 103.7 FPS, highlighting the substantial cost of the highest quality settings.

At 2560x1440, the performance scales down proportionally. Low settings average 137.7 FPS, which is still excellent for high-refresh-rate gaming, while Medium produces 85.4 FPS, a strong result for 1440p. High settings average 65.1 FPS, which is just above 60 FPS, but the margin is thin, and Ultra drops to 50.7 FPS, making it less suitable for smooth gameplay. The transition from 1080p to 1440p costs roughly 15-20% of the frame rate at each setting, and the RTX 4070 SUPER’s 12 GB VRAM and 504.2 GB/s bandwidth are sufficient to maintain these numbers without hitting memory capacity limits. At 3840x2160, the GPU is clearly pushed harder. Low settings average 112.5 FPS, which is surprisingly high for 4K and indicates that the game’s lower-quality presets are not overly demanding. Medium settings average 69.1 FPS, which is comfortably playable, while High settings drop to 47.9 FPS, below the 60 FPS target, and Ultra falls to 40.2 FPS, which is borderline playable but not ideal. The 4K results show a 72.3 FPS difference between Low and Ultra, and the fact that Medium achieves 69.1 FPS suggests that this preset is the sweet spot for 4K gaming on this hardware.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i7-14700F and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER ranks 246th out of 1689 tested combos in The Medium, placing it in the top 14.6% of all configurations. This rank reflects the balanced nature of the pairing, where the CPU’s strong multi-threaded performance (20 cores, 28 threads) and the GPU’s high compute throughput (35.48 TFLOPS) work together effectively. The CPU’s 94th percentile standing, with an average benchmark score of 54097, ensures it does not bottleneck the GPU, while the GPU’s 84th percentile ranking, with an average score of 42576, provides the graphical horsepower. The rank of 246 out of 1689 is a strong result, indicating that this combo outperforms the vast majority of tested systems, though it is not at the very top tier, which is expected given the mid-range positioning of the RTX 4070 SUPER.

In the context of the GPU’s nearest rivals, the RTX 4070 SUPER’s performance in The Medium is consistent with its synthetic benchmarks. The RTX A6000 and the RX 7650 GRE are statistically tied with the 4070 SUPER (deltaPct of -0.2% and -0.3%, respectively), which suggests that these cards would produce nearly identical FPS numbers in this game. The AMD Radeon Pro 580X and NVIDIA Tesla M40, which trail by 1.4% and 1.6%, would likely be a few frames per second slower at each setting. The CPU’s rivals, such as the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X (0.6% faster) and the Ryzen 9 9900X3D (1.1% faster), would not meaningfully change the FPS results, as the game is clearly GPU-bound at the tested settings. Overall, the data indicates that this combo is well-matched for The Medium, delivering strong performance at Medium settings across all resolutions, with the rank of 246 out of 1689 confirming its position as a high-performing configuration within the benchmark database.