The Medium

The Medium, a fixed-camera horror title built on Unreal Engine, presents a unique stress profile. When paired with the Intel Core i7-14700KF and AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, the benchmark data reveals a system that scales predictably with resolution, but the frame rate deltas between settings tiers expose a significant dependence on GPU load. This analysis examines the measured FPS data, the combo’s standing among tested configurations, and the specific hardware characteristics that drive these results.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 demonstrates a classic GPU-bound scaling pattern, but the magnitude of the drop varies sharply depending on the quality preset. At High settings, the average frame rate falls from 80.8 FPS at 1080p to 67.8 FPS at 1440p, a reduction of 16.1%, and then to 53.6 FPS at 4K, a further 20.9% drop from 1440p. This results in an overall 33.7% decrease in performance from 1080p to 4K, indicating that the GPU is the primary limiter, but the CPU still has ample headroom to feed the renderer.

The Low preset tells a different story. At 1080p, the system achieves a very high 173 FPS, dropping to 148 FPS at 1440p (a 14.5% decrease) and then to 112.3 FPS at 4K (a 24.1% decrease from 1440p). The absolute drop from 1080p to 4K is 60.7 FPS, or 35.1%. The fact that 4K Low still delivers over 112 FPS suggests that even at this resolution, the workload is not fully saturating the RX 7900 XTX, and the CPU is able to maintain a high instruction throughput.

The Medium and Ultra settings show the most dramatic resolution sensitivity. At Medium, the frame rate drops from 105.5 FPS at 1080p to 93.1 FPS at 1440p, and then to 70.4 FPS at 4K. This 33.3% reduction from 1080p to 4K is substantial. Ultra is the most demanding, starting at 63.9 FPS at 1080p, falling to 51.3 FPS at 1440p, and bottoming out at 41.2 FPS at 4K. The 4K Ultra result, a 35.5% drop from the 1080p figure, confirms that the highest quality settings place a massive load on the GPU’s compute and memory subsystems, making the resolution the dominant factor in performance.

The scaling pattern indicates that the i7-14700KF, with its 20 cores and 28 threads, is never the bottleneck in this title. The largest performance gap between the lowest and highest resolutions occurs at Ultra (22.7 FPS difference between 1080p and 4K), while the smallest gap is at High (27.2 FPS difference). This suggests that as settings increase, the GPU’s shading rate, texture fill, and pixel throughput become the critical path, and the CPU’s role in managing draw calls and game logic becomes less significant.

FAQ

Q: What is the average frame rate at 2560x1440 with Medium settings?

A: The measured average FPS for this combo at 1440p Medium is 93.1 FPS. This places it comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, indicating that the system has significant performance reserves at this common gaming resolution.

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

A: At 4K Ultra, the system produces an average of 41.2 FPS, which is 22.7 FPS lower than the 63.9 FPS achieved at 1080p Ultra. This represents a 35.5% performance penalty, demonstrating that the Ultra preset’s effects, likely including high-resolution shadows and post-processing, scale heavily with pixel count.

Q: Is the frame rate higher at 1080p Low or 4K High?

A: The 1080p Low preset achieves an average of 173 FPS, while the 4K High preset achieves 53.6 FPS. The difference is stark, with the lower resolution and simpler settings providing more than triple the frame rate, underscoring how resolution and settings independently impact the rendering load.

Q: What is the lowest average FPS recorded in the data set?

A: The lowest measured average FPS is 41.2, which occurs at the maximum resolution of 3840x2160 with the Ultra settings preset. This is the only configuration in the data that dips below the 45 FPS mark, suggesting that 4K Ultra may be too demanding for a consistent high-refresh experience.

Q: Does the CPU or GPU appear to be the limiting factor at 1080p Low?

A: The 1080p Low result of 173 FPS is exceptionally high. Given that the GPU is a high-end Radeon RX 7900 XTX, the data suggests that the frame rate is likely constrained by the game engine’s single-threaded performance or the CPU’s front-end, rather than the GPU’s raw fill rate. The i7-14700KF’s boost clock of 5.60 GHz helps maintain this high throughput.

Q: What is the difference in FPS between the Low and Ultra presets at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the Low preset yields 148 FPS, while the Ultra preset yields 51.3 FPS. This is a difference of 96.7 FPS, showing that the Ultra preset is approximately 65% slower than Low at this resolution.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the benchmark database, this specific combination of the Intel Core i7-14700KF and AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX achieves a rank of 172 out of 1689 tested combos for The Medium. This places the system in the top 10.2% of all configurations tested, a strong showing that reflects the high-performance nature of both components. However, the rank is not at the absolute top, which indicates that other pairings, likely with more powerful GPUs or different CPU architectures, can yield higher frame rates in this specific title.

The CPU’s own percentile ranking is 96, meaning it outperforms 96% of all processors in the database on average. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core i7-14700K, has an average score that is effectively identical (a deltaPct of 0), confirming that the unlocked "KF" variant offers no performance advantage in synthetic tests, only the lack of integrated graphics. The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X is 0.4% faster, while the Intel Xeon Platinum 8270 is 1.3% slower. This CPU performance is more than sufficient to drive the GPU, as evidenced by the high frame rates at lower resolutions.

The GPU’s percentile rank is 85, and its average benchmark score is 44019. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon Pro 580 (0.4% faster) and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile (0.8% slower). The fact that the RX 7900 XTX is ranked 172nd overall suggests that while it is a very capable card, the game’s engine may favor other architectures, or the CPU combination is not optimal for extracting the absolute maximum frame rate. The combo rank, relative to the individual component percentiles, suggests that the pairing is well-balanced but not perfectly optimized for this title’s specific demands.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured data provides a clear matrix of performance across three resolutions and four quality settings. At 1920x1080, the system delivers an average of 173 FPS on Low, 105.5 FPS on Medium, 80.8 FPS on High, and 63.9 FPS on Ultra. These figures show a smooth, predictable decline as settings increase, with the gap between Low and Ultra being 109.1 FPS. The 1080p results are all playable, even at Ultra, which is a positive indicator for high-refresh-rate monitors.

Moving to 2560x1440, the averages are 148 FPS on Low, 93.1 FPS on Medium, 67.8 FPS on High, and 51.3 FPS on Ultra. The performance drop from 1080p is consistent across all settings, with an average reduction of approximately 18%. The 1440p Low and Medium settings remain excellent for competitive play, while High and Ultra are still suitable for immersive single-player experiences, with the latter barely maintaining a 50 FPS average.

At 3840x2160, the system produces 112.3 FPS on Low, 70.4 FPS on Medium, 53.6 FPS on High, and 41.2 FPS on Ultra. The 4K Low result is impressive, showing the GPU’s raw compute power. However, the 4K Ultra result is below the 60 FPS target, indicating that users seeking a locked 60 FPS experience at 4K will need to compromise on settings, likely using High or Medium. The scaling from 1080p to 4K is steepest at Medium (33.3% reduction) and Ultra (35.5% reduction), highlighting the increased memory bandwidth and shading requirements at higher pixel densities.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, built on the RDNA 3.0 architecture with the Navi 31 chip, plays the dominant role in this game’s performance, particularly at higher resolutions and settings. The card features a substantial 24 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 384-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 960.0 GB/s. This memory configuration is critical for The Medium, which is known for its dual-reality rendering technique that can demand large texture pools and high memory usage. The high bandwidth ensures that texture streaming and frame buffer operations do not become a bottleneck, as evidenced by the smooth scaling from Medium to High settings.

The GPU’s clock speeds are also a factor. The base clock is 1929 MHz, with a game clock of 2365 MHz and a boost clock of 2498 MHz. These high frequencies, combined with 6144 shading units and 192 ROPs, allow for a pixel rate of 479.6 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 959.2 GTexel/s. This raw throughput directly translates to the high frame rates seen at 1080p Low and Medium. However, the FP32 performance of 61.39 TFLOPS is less relevant here, as The Medium is not a compute-heavy title; it relies more on traditional rasterization and pixel shading.

The data shows that the GPU’s performance ceiling is tested at 4K Ultra, where the average FPS falls to 41.2. This is likely due to the combination of high pixel count and the Ultra preset’s effects, which increase the shading complexity per pixel. The 24 GB VRAM is not fully utilized at 1080p or 1440p, but it provides a safety margin for 4K textures. The GPU’s end-of-life production status and its benchmark percentile of 85 indicate that it is a high-end part, but not the absolute fastest available. The measured results confirm that it is a capable partner for the i7-14700KF, delivering a playable experience at most settings, with the exception of the most demanding 4K Ultra configuration.