The Medium

The Medium, a fixed-camera horror title, presents an unusual performance profile on the Intel Core i7-14700F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti combination. The measured data shows that the CPU is far ahead of what this game demands, while the GPU becomes the decisive factor at higher resolutions and settings. The interaction between the 20-core processor and the 12 GB graphics card produces a predictable scaling pattern across the tested presets, with the most balanced experience appearing at the Medium settings tier.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark results indicate that the Medium preset offers the best balance of visual fidelity and frame rate for this hardware combination. At 1920x1080, the Medium setting produces an average of 111.4 FPS, which is nearly double the 65.1 FPS seen at Ultra and comfortably above the 76.5 FPS of High. The jump from Medium to High costs 34.9 FPS at 1080p, while the jump from Low to Medium costs 65 FPS — a much steeper penalty that suggests the GPU is beginning to hit a throughput ceiling beyond Medium.

At 2560x1440, the Medium preset delivers 89.8 FPS, which remains well within smooth-playback territory. The High preset at this resolution drops to 67.8 FPS, and Ultra falls to 49.9 FPS — a figure that is exactly identical to the 4K High result, indicating a hard performance floor for this GPU in this title. The Low preset at 1440p reaches 150.1 FPS, but the visual degradation in a horror game with heavy atmosphere is not worth the 60 FPS gain over Medium.

For 3840x2160, the Medium preset is the only viable option for consistent playability, producing 72.9 FPS. High at 4K manages 49.9 FPS, which is borderline for a slow-paced horror title but will feel stuttery on high-refresh displays. Ultra at 4K is effectively unplayable at 44.1 FPS. The data supports a clear recommendation: use Medium for all resolutions, as it maintains a 72.9 FPS floor at 4K and exceeds 100 FPS at 1080p, while the visual jump to High does not justify the 30-35% frame rate penalty across every resolution tier.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti, built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with a 5 nm process, is the primary bottleneck in this pairing. Its 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus provides 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth, which appears sufficient for The Medium’s asset streaming at 1080p and 1440p but becomes strained at 4K Ultra. The GPU’s 40.09 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 60 RT cores are the raw resources that determine the preset scaling, and the data shows a consistent pattern: each step up in settings from Low to Ultra reduces average FPS by roughly 30-45% at every resolution.

The 2310 MHz base and 2610 MHz boost clocks are the operating points that drive these results. At 1080p Low, the combination achieves 176.4 FPS, which is nearly triple the 65.1 FPS at 1080p Ultra. This wide spread (111.3 FPS difference) indicates that the GPU is heavily utilized across all settings, and the CPU — with a 5.40 GHz boost clock and 33 MB of L3 cache — is never the limiting factor. The GPU’s 285 W TDP and 600 W suggested PSU are consistent with its role as the dominant power consumer in this configuration.

The benchmark data also shows that the RTX 4070 Ti sits at the 85th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 44900. Its nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Mobile, scores 45152 (a 0.6% delta), while the Intel Arc A730M is 1.5% behind and the AMD Radeon Pro 580 is 1.6% ahead. In The Medium specifically, the GPU’s 12 GB VRAM capacity is not exceeded at any tested setting, as the game’s fixed-camera scenes and modest texture budgets do not push beyond this allocation, even at 4K Ultra.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K follows a clear pattern that reveals the GPU-bound nature of this workload. At the Medium preset, 1080p yields 111.4 FPS, 1440p yields 89.8 FPS (a 19.4% drop), and 4K yields 72.9 FPS (a 34.6% drop from 1080p). The scaling is not linear — the step from 1440p to 4K costs 16.9 FPS, while the step from 1080p to 1440p costs 21.6 FPS — suggesting that pixel throughput becomes progressively more expensive as resolution increases.

The Low preset shows the most dramatic scaling: 176.4 FPS at 1080p, 150.1 FPS at 1440p (a 14.9% drop), and 118 FPS at 4K (a 33.1% drop from 1080p). The High preset drops from 76.5 FPS at 1080p to 67.8 FPS at 1440p (11.4% drop) and then to 49.9 FPS at 4K (34.8% drop from 1080p). The Ultra preset is the most constrained: 65.1 FPS at 1080p, 49.9 FPS at 1440p (23.3% drop), and 44.1 FPS at 4K (32.3% drop from 1080p).

The consistent 32-35% reduction from 1080p to 4K across all presets indicates that the RTX 4070 Ti’s 504.2 GB/s memory bandwidth is the limiting resource. The CPU’s 28 threads and 5.40 GHz boost clock are irrelevant to this scaling — the frame rate drops are almost entirely attributable to the GPU’s fill rate and memory subsystem. At 4K, even the Low preset cannot exceed 118 FPS, which is well below the 176.4 FPS at 1080p Low, confirming that resolution scaling is the dominant factor in this game’s performance envelope.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i7-14700F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti combination ranks 152nd out of 1689 tested combos in The Medium, placing it in the top 9% of all configurations. This rank is somewhat surprising given the GPU’s 85th percentile standing and the CPU’s 94th percentile standing — the combo performs slightly below what each component’s individual percentile would suggest, indicating that The Medium does not fully utilize the CPU’s capabilities.

The CPU’s nearest rivals provide context for its headroom. The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X scores 54450 on average, which is 0.6% higher than the i7-14700F’s average of 54097. The Ryzen 9 9900X3D is 1.1% ahead, while the Intel Xeon Phi 7290 is 1.2% behind and the AMD EPYC 7313P is 1.7% behind. These small deltas (all within 2%) confirm that the i7-14700F is not a performance outlier in either direction — it is a mid-pack high-end CPU that easily feeds the GPU in this game.

The GPU’s ranking is similarly tight. The RTX 4070 Ti’s average benchmark score of 44900 is just 0.6% below the RTX 5090 Mobile’s 45152, and 1.5% below the Arc A730M’s 45592. The AMD Radeon Pro 580 is 1.6% behind, and the Radeon Pro 5500 XT is 1.6% behind. This clustering of scores within 2% suggests that the RTX 4070 Ti is at a performance plateau where small architectural differences, not raw compute, determine the outcome.

In game-specific terms, the 152nd rank out of 1689 combos means this pairing is comfortably above the median but not near the top. The data shows that the CPU could support a stronger GPU — the i7-14700F’s 20 cores and 28 threads are far more than The Medium needs, as evidenced by the fact that even at 1080p Low (176.4 FPS), the frame rate is still rising with GPU headroom. The combo’s rank is therefore limited by the RTX 4070 Ti, not the i7-14700F.

FAQ

Q: Why does the Medium preset perform so much better than High at all resolutions?

A: The measured data shows a 34.9 FPS drop at 1080p (111.4 to 76.5), a 22 FPS drop at 1440p (89.8 to 67.8), and a 23 FPS drop at 4K (72.9 to 49.9) when moving from Medium to High. This consistent reduction across all resolutions indicates that the High preset introduces rendering workloads that the RTX 4070 Ti’s 40.09 TFLOPS cannot sustain without a significant frame rate penalty.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor in this game?

A: The GPU is clearly the limiting factor. The Intel Core i7-14700F has 20 cores, 28 threads, and a 5.40 GHz boost clock, placing it at the 94th percentile of all CPUs. The RTX 4070 Ti is at the 85th percentile. The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K (e.g., 111.4 to 72.9 FPS at Medium) follows GPU resolution scaling patterns, not CPU-bound behavior.

Q: Can this combo achieve 60 FPS at 4K?

A: Yes, but only at the Medium preset, which produces 72.9 FPS. The High preset at 4K drops to 49.9 FPS, and Ultra drops to 44.1 FPS. Low reaches 118 FPS at 4K, but Medium is the highest preset that maintains a comfortable margin above 60 FPS.

Q: How does the RTX 4070 Ti compare to its nearest GPU rivals?

A: The RTX 4070 Ti has an average benchmark score of 44900. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Mobile scores 45152 (0.6% higher), the Intel Arc A730M scores 45592 (1.5% higher), and the AMD Radeon Pro 580 scores 44195 (1.6% lower). All rivals are within a 1.6% delta, indicating very close overall performance.

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in The Medium?

A: The data supports 2560x1440 at Medium settings as the sweet spot, yielding 89.8 FPS. This provides a 17 FPS improvement over 4K Medium while still delivering a high-resolution experience. At 1080p Medium, the 111.4 FPS result is excellent but does not take advantage of the GPU’s 4K capability.

Q: Does the 12 GB VRAM ever become a limitation?

A: The measured FPS data shows no evidence of VRAM-related stutters or crashes at any resolution or preset. The 12 GB GDDR6X memory, with 504.2 GB/s bandwidth, is sufficient for all tested configurations, as the frame rate drops from 1080p to 4K are consistent and predictable, rather than showing sudden collapses that would indicate memory exhaustion.