The Medium

The Medium is a fixed-camera horror title that stresses both CPU and GPU in unusual ways, and the data for the Intel Core i7-14700K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 reveals a system that is far more capable at lower resolutions than at 4K Ultra. This combination ranks 192nd out of 3724 tested combos in this specific game, placing it in the top 5.2% of all configurations measured. The benchmark results show a clear pattern: the game becomes increasingly GPU-bound as resolution rises, but the CPU's strong single-thread performance keeps frame rates exceptionally high at 1080p.

FAQ

Q: What is the average frame rate at 1080p with Medium settings?

A: The measured average FPS is 120, with a minimum of 102 and a maximum of 138. This indicates a very consistent experience, as the minimum frame rate stays well above 100 FPS, suggesting no major stutters or drops.

Q: How does the 4K Ultra preset compare to the 1080p Low preset?

A: At 4K Ultra, the average FPS drops to 45, while at 1080p Low, it reaches 187. This represents a dramatic 76% reduction in average frame rate when scaling up resolution and increasing quality, highlighting the massive load placed on the GPU at 4K.

Q: What is the highest average FPS recorded in the entire dataset?

A: The highest average FPS is 187, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings. This shows the system's immense headroom at lower resolutions, likely limited more by the CPU's frame generation capability than the GPU.

Q: Is there a significant performance gap between High and Ultra settings at 1440p?

A: Yes, the gap is substantial. High settings yield an average of 72 FPS, while Ultra drops to 57 FPS. That is a 15 FPS difference, or roughly a 21% performance penalty for enabling the highest quality preset at this resolution.

Q: What are the minimum and maximum FPS at 4K Medium?

A: The data shows a minimum of 67 FPS and a maximum of 91 FPS, with an average of 79 FPS. This range is relatively tight, indicating that even at 4K, the system maintains playable performance without extreme volatility.

Q: How does the CPU's multi-core benchmark score compare to its closest rival?

A: The Intel Core i7-14700K has an average benchmark score of 69355, which is 0.1% higher than the AMD EPYC 9115's score of 69288. It also slightly outperforms the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X, which scores 69515, a -0.2% delta.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 is the primary driver of frame rates in The Medium, particularly at higher resolutions and quality settings. The data shows a clear scaling pattern that points to the GPU as the limiting factor. With 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus delivering 716.8 GB/s of bandwidth, the card has ample resources for the game's textures and effects. Its boost clock of 2505 MHz and base clock of 2205 MHz provide the raw throughput needed for the game's rendering demands.

The GPU's performance percentile of 86 against all GPUs, combined with an average benchmark score of 54247, places it in the upper echelon of graphics cards. However, the measured FPS data tells a more nuanced story. At 1080p Low, the RTX 4080 achieves 187 FPS, but this is likely not the GPU's limit; rather, the CPU or game engine may be the bottleneck at such high frame rates. As resolution increases to 1440p and 4K, the GPU's workload grows exponentially, and the average FPS drops accordingly. For instance, moving from 1080p Medium (120 FPS) to 1440p Medium (101 FPS) is a 16% reduction, while the jump to 4K Medium (79 FPS) is a further 22% reduction.

The 4K Ultra result of 45 FPS is particularly telling. This is the only preset where the average dips below 60 FPS, suggesting that the RTX 4080, despite its power, is fully saturated by the game's Ultra settings at 2160p. The GPU's closest rival, the RTX 4080 SUPER, has a nearly identical average benchmark score (54209 vs 54247, a 0.1% delta), indicating that in this game, the standard 4080 performs on par with its SUPER counterpart. The game's horror aesthetic, with its use of dynamic lighting and shadow effects, likely contributes to this heavy GPU load, but the data confirms that the RTX 4080 is a capable, yet not invincible, card for The Medium.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i7-14700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 achieves a combo rank of 192 out of 3724 tested combos in The Medium. This places it in the top 5.2% of all systems tested, which is a strong showing but not the absolute top tier. The ranking suggests that while this hardware is very fast, there are 191 other combinations that deliver higher average FPS across the tested settings and resolutions.

This rank is likely influenced by the game's specific engine characteristics. The Medium is not a typical first-person shooter; its fixed-camera angles and pre-rendered environments may respond differently to hardware than other titles. The CPU's power, evidenced by its 94th percentile ranking against all CPUs, helps ensure high minimum frame rates, but the GPU's 86th percentile ranking is slightly lower, which may cap overall performance in the most demanding scenarios. The nearest rival combos for the GPU, such as the AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB which scores 55698 (a -2.6% delta from the RTX 4080), do not appear in the top 192, suggesting that the RTX 4080's ray tracing and tensor core capabilities, 76 RT cores and 304 tensor cores respectively, provide a tangible benefit in this title.

The data implies that the combo's rank is not solely determined by peak FPS at 1080p, but by consistency across all resolutions. A system that hits 200 FPS at 1080p but drops to 30 FPS at 4K may rank lower than one with more balanced performance. Here, the measured FPS range from 45 to 187 shows a wide spread, but the average scores at each resolution are relatively stable, which likely contributes to the respectable 192nd rank.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS data, the best experience balances visual fidelity with a stable frame rate. For players with a 60 Hz display, the 4K Medium preset is the optimal choice, as it delivers an average of 79 FPS with a minimum of 67, ensuring no drops below the refresh rate. This preset offers a significant improvement over High settings at 4K, which averages 57 FPS, by staying comfortably above 60.

For 1440p users, High settings at 72 FPS average is acceptable, but Medium at 101 FPS provides a smoother experience with only a moderate visual compromise. The data suggests that Ultra at 1440p (57 FPS) is not worth the performance hit, as it brings the frame rate below the 60 FPS threshold. Similarly, at 1080p, Medium at 120 FPS is the sweet spot, offering high frame rates for fast-paced sequences while maintaining quality. Low settings at 1080p reach 187 FPS, which is only beneficial for competitive play or if the user has a 144 Hz or higher refresh rate monitor.

The Ultra preset is uniformly problematic across all resolutions, yielding 68 FPS at 1080p, 57 FPS at 1440p, and 45 FPS at 4K. These numbers suggest that Ultra settings introduce rendering effects that are disproportionately expensive on this hardware. Therefore, the recommendation is to avoid Ultra unless the player prioritizes graphics over frame rate and has a VRR display to mitigate the sub-60 FPS dips at 4K. The Medium preset offers the best balance of performance and visual quality across all three resolutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The dataset provides twelve distinct measurement points, covering four settings presets across three resolutions. At 1920x1080, the average FPS ranges from 187 on Low to 68 on Ultra. Specifically, Low averages 187 FPS, Medium averages 120 FPS with a minimum of 102 and maximum of 138, High averages 86 FPS, and Ultra averages 68 FPS. This shows a steep drop-off from Low to High, with a 54% reduction in frame rate between the lowest and highest quality settings.

At 2560x1440, the pattern continues but with lower absolute numbers. Low averages 161 FPS, Medium averages 101 FPS (min 86, max 116), High averages 72 FPS, and Ultra averages 57 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 104 FPS, indicating that the GPU is working harder at this resolution. The Medium preset's minimum of 86 FPS is still well above the 60 FPS target, making it a solid choice for high-refresh-rate gaming.

At 3840x2160, the performance takes a significant hit. Low averages 127 FPS, which is still very playable, but Medium drops to 79 FPS (min 67, max 91). High averages 57 FPS, and Ultra averages 45 FPS. The jump from Low to Medium is a 38% reduction, and from Medium to Ultra is a 43% reduction. The 4K Medium data is the most complete, with a min/max spread of 24 FPS, suggesting some variability in complex scenes. Overall, the data shows that the RTX 4080 can handle 4K, but only at Medium settings or lower for a consistent 60+ FPS experience.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700K is a 20-core, 28-thread processor with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz. Its high boost clock is crucial for gaming, as it ensures strong single-thread performance, which is often the bottleneck in game engines. The CPU's benchmark scores reflect this: it achieves a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2160 and a multi-core score of 33440.5, with a PassMark single-thread score of 4472. These numbers place it in the 94th percentile of all CPUs.

In The Medium, the CPU's role is most evident at lower resolutions. At 1080p Low, the average FPS is 187, which is remarkably high and suggests that the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU with enough data to reach near its maximum output. However, the lack of data points for very high refresh rates, such as 240 FPS, implies that the CPU may be limiting the absolute maximum frame rate. The CPU's nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X, has a delta of -0.2% in average benchmark score, meaning the i7-14700K is slightly faster overall, which could translate to a few extra FPS in CPU-bound scenarios.

At higher resolutions, the CPU's influence wanes. The frame rate drops are consistent with GPU-bound limitations, as the RTX 4080 struggles to render at 4K. The CPU's 20 cores and 28 threads are more than sufficient for the game's AI and scene management, as evidenced by the stable minimum FPS at 1080p Medium (102 FPS) and 1440p Medium (86 FPS). The L3 cache of 33 MB shared and L2 cache of 2 MB per core provide efficient data access, reducing latency in scene transitions. The data suggests that the i7-14700K is not a bottleneck in this game, except potentially at the extreme high end of 1080p performance.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic GPU-bound curve, but with some interesting nuances. At Medium settings, the average FPS drops from 120 at 1080p to 101 at 1440p, a 15.8% decrease, and then to 79 at 4K, a further 21.8% decrease. This non-linear drop indicates that the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth become increasingly taxed as pixel count grows. The RTX 4080's 716.8 GB/s of bandwidth is sufficient for 1440p but is stretched at 4K.

For High settings, the scaling is steeper: 86 FPS at 1080p drops to 72 FPS at 1440p (a 16.3% decrease) and then to 57 FPS at 4K (a 20.8% decrease). The 4K High result of 57 FPS is just below the 60 FPS target, showing that the GPU's compute capacity is nearly exhausted. The Low settings show a similar trend, with 187 FPS at 1080p, 161 FPS at 1440p (a 13.9% decrease), and 127 FPS at 4K (a 21.1% decrease). The fact that even Low settings at 4K cannot reach 144 FPS suggests that the GPU is the primary limiter.

The Ultra preset exhibits the most dramatic scaling, from 68 FPS at 1080p to 57 FPS at 1440p (a 16.2% decrease) and 45 FPS at 4K (a 21.1% decrease). This consistent pattern of roughly 15-20% drops per resolution step indicates that the RTX 4080's performance is scaling predictably with pixel count. The implication is that the CPU and GPU are well-matched, as no resolution shows a sudden collapse that would indicate a CPU bottleneck. Instead, the steady decrease points to the GPU's rendering pipeline, particularly its 112 ROPs and 48.74 TFLOPS of FP32 compute, being the limiting factor at 4K. The system is clearly capable of high frame rates, but 4K Ultra remains an unrealistic target for 60 FPS on this hardware.