The Medium

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data for The Medium with the Intel Core i7-14700KF and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 reveals a clear stratification across the four available presets. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers an average of 187 FPS, while Medium drops to 120 FPS, High to 86 FPS, and Ultra to 68 FPS. The jump from Low to Medium represents a 36% reduction in average frame rate, whereas the step from High to Ultra is a more moderate 21% reduction. This suggests that the Medium preset offers a balanced experience at 1080p, maintaining a 120 FPS average with a minimum of 102 FPS, which is still comfortably above common refresh rate thresholds.

At 2560x1440, the pattern shifts. Low yields 161 FPS, Medium 101 FPS, High 72 FPS, and Ultra 57 FPS. The Medium preset at 1440p shows a minimum of 86 FPS and a maximum of 116 FPS, indicating that frame pacing remains stable even as resolution increases. The High preset at 1440p, with its 72 FPS average, is still playable but begins to approach the lower boundary for smooth motion on high-refresh displays. The Ultra preset at 57 FPS average is borderline for competitive play but remains acceptable for a horror title where atmospheric pacing matters more than twitch response.

At 3840x2160, the data becomes more telling. Low produces 127 FPS, Medium 79 FPS, High 57 FPS, and Ultra 45 FPS. The Medium preset at 4K is the only one that combines a playable average (79 FPS) with a recorded minimum of 67 FPS, making it the only 4K preset that avoids frequent dips below 60 FPS. The High preset at 4K, at 57 FPS average, will occasionally drop below 60, which can be noticeable in a game that relies on tension and timing. The Ultra preset at 45 FPS average is the only one that falls below 50 FPS across all resolutions, marking it as the least optimal choice for this hardware combination.

For the best experience per the measured rows, the Medium preset is the recommended starting point across all resolutions. At 1080p it offers 120 FPS average with a 102 FPS minimum; at 1440p it delivers 101 FPS average with an 86 FPS minimum; at 4K it maintains 79 FPS average with a 67 FPS minimum. This preset consistently provides the highest average FPS while keeping the minimum above 60 FPS at every resolution. The Low preset is faster but sacrifices visual fidelity, while High and Ultra offer diminishing returns in image quality for significant frame rate penalties. The data indicates that Medium is the sweet spot where the RTX 4080's capabilities are fully utilized without overburdening the rendering pipeline.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 is the primary driver of these measured results, given its specifications and how they interact with The Medium's rendering demands. The GPU features 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, providing 716.8 GB/s of bandwidth. This memory configuration is notably generous for a game released in 2021, and benchmark results show that even at 4K Ultra, the 45 FPS average is not limited by memory capacity — rather, it appears constrained by the shading and ray tracing workload. The RTX 4080's 76 RT cores and 304 tensor cores are directly relevant to The Medium, which uses fixed camera angles and heavy volumetric effects that stress ray-traced lighting.

The GPU's clock behavior is equally important. The base clock of 2205 MHz and boost clock of 2505 MHz are relatively high for a flagship card, and the measured FPS scaling between Low and Ultra settings suggests that the boost clock is sustained under load. At 1080p Low, the 187 FPS average indicates the GPU is not bottlenecked by memory bandwidth, as the 716.8 GB/s figure is more than sufficient for 1920x1080 frame buffers. At 4K Ultra, the 45 FPS average points to a compute-bound scenario where the 48.74 TFLOPS FP32 throughput is being fully utilized by the game's particle and lighting systems.

The RTX 4080's 9728 shading units and 304 TMUs handle texture-heavy scenes with ease, as evidenced by the relatively modest FPS drop from Low to Medium at each resolution. At 1080p, Low to Medium costs 67 FPS (187 to 120), while at 4K the same transition costs 48 FPS (127 to 79). This non-linear scaling indicates that the GPU's texture rate of 761.5 GTexel/s becomes a more significant factor at higher resolutions where more texels must be processed per frame. The pixel rate of 280.6 GPixel/s also explains why 4K Ultra at 45 FPS is a hard ceiling — the ROPs are processing 3840x2160 pixels at nearly maximum output.

The data implies that the RTX 4080's 16 GB VRAM is not a limiting factor in any of the measured configurations. Even at 4K Ultra, the game's asset streaming fits within the memory pool, allowing the GPU to focus its resources on compute and pixel shading rather than memory swapping. The 22.4 Gbps effective memory speed further ensures that bandwidth is never the bottleneck, as the FPS differences between settings are more strongly correlated with shading complexity than with memory access patterns.

FAQ

*Q: What is the best resolution to play The Medium with this hardware?*

A: The data shows that 2560x1440 on the Medium preset provides the best balance, with 101 FPS average and an 86 FPS minimum. At 4K, the Medium preset still delivers 79 FPS average with a 67 FPS minimum, making it viable for high-refresh displays. The 1080p Medium preset at 120 FPS average is the highest frame rate that stays above 100 FPS while maintaining visual quality.

Q: Why does the Ultra preset at 4K only achieve 45 FPS?

A: The 45 FPS average at 3840x2160 Ultra represents a compute-bound scenario where the RTX 4080's 48.74 TFLOPS FP32 throughput is saturated by the game's volumetric effects and ray-traced lighting. The data shows a consistent pattern: Ultra settings at every resolution cost roughly 60% of the Medium preset's frame rate, indicating that the extra effects are exponentially more expensive at higher pixel counts.

*Q: Is the RTX 4080's 16 GB VRAM sufficient for The Medium?*

A: Yes, based on the measured results. The 16 GB GDDR6X memory with 716.8 GB/s bandwidth is never a limiting factor, as evidenced by the smooth FPS progression across Low, Medium, High, and Ultra settings. At 4K Ultra, the 45 FPS average is due to compute load, not memory capacity, since the game's assets fit comfortably within the 16 GB pool.

Q: How does the RTX 4080 compare to its closest rival in terms of GPU benchmark scores?

A: The RTX 4080 has an average benchmark score of 54247, which is 0.1% higher than the RTX 4080 SUPER's score of 54209. It trails the AMD Radeon Pro W5700X by 1.1% (54828) and the AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB by 2.6% (55698). These deltas are minimal, but the measured game FPS shows the RTX 4080 excels in The Medium due to its specific feature set.

Q: What is the minimum FPS recorded for this combo?

A: The only min FPS values recorded are on the Medium preset: 102 FPS at 1080p, 86 FPS at 1440p, and 67 FPS at 4K. No min FPS data is available for Low, High, or Ultra presets, but the Medium preset's minimums all stay above 60 FPS, indicating stable frame pacing.

*Q: Does this hardware support ray tracing in The Medium?*

A: The RTX 4080 features 76 RT cores and supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), which is the API that The Medium uses for its ray-traced effects. The measured FPS at Ultra settings reflects the performance cost of these effects, with the 45 FPS at 4K Ultra being the lowest result across all configurations.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full range of settings shows a wide spread. The Low preset achieves 187 FPS average, making it the highest frame rate in the entire dataset. Medium drops to 120 FPS with a minimum of 102 FPS and maximum of 138 FPS, providing a stable baseline. High yields 86 FPS average, and Ultra falls to 68 FPS average. The difference between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 119 FPS, a 64% reduction, which highlights how demanding the Ultra preset is even at the lowest resolution.

Moving to 2560x1440, the same settings produce lower but still robust numbers. Low delivers 161 FPS, a 14% drop from 1080p. Medium shows 101 FPS average with an 86 FPS minimum and 116 FPS maximum. High achieves 72 FPS, and Ultra drops to 57 FPS. The Medium preset at 1440p is notable for its consistency, as the 30 FPS range between minimum and maximum is the tightest among all 1440p settings.

At 3840x2160, the scaling becomes more aggressive. Low produces 127 FPS, which is still highly playable. Medium reaches 79 FPS average with a 67 FPS minimum and 91 FPS maximum, representing the only 4K setting that stays above 60 FPS at all times. High falls to 57 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 45 FPS. The 4K Ultra result is the lowest average FPS in the entire dataset, indicating that this resolution and setting combination exceeds what the RTX 4080 can comfortably handle.

The data also reveals that the gap between High and Ultra settings is relatively constant across resolutions: 18 FPS at 1080p (86 to 68), 15 FPS at 1440p (72 to 57), and 12 FPS at 4K (57 to 45). This suggests that Ultra adds a fixed overhead that does not scale linearly with resolution, likely due to specific effects that are resolution-independent. Conversely, the gap between Low and Medium widens with resolution: 67 FPS at 1080p, 60 FPS at 1440p, and 48 FPS at 4K, indicating that Medium's additional effects are more pixel-bound.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K follows a clear pattern that reveals the system's limiting component. At Low settings, 1080p yields 187 FPS, 1440p yields 161 FPS (86% of 1080p), and 4K yields 127 FPS (68% of 1080p). This scaling is more gradual than pure pixel count would suggest, because at Low settings the game is likely draw-call bound or CPU limited at lower resolutions, allowing the GPU to maintain high utilization even as pixel count increases.

At Medium settings, the scaling is steeper: 120 FPS at 1080p, 101 FPS at 1440p (84%), and 79 FPS at 4K (66%). The High settings show a similar pattern: 86 FPS at 1080p, 72 FPS at 1440p (84%), and 57 FPS at 4K (66%). The Ultra settings exhibit the most pronounced scaling: 68 FPS at 1080p, 57 FPS at 1440p (84%), and 45 FPS at 4K (66%). The consistent 84% and 66% ratios across settings indicate that the limiting component is the GPU's pixel throughput, as the RTX 4080's pixel rate of 280.6 GPixel/s becomes the bottleneck at higher resolutions.

The data implies that the Intel Core i7-14700KF is not the limiting factor in this game, because the FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K is nearly identical across all settings. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see a smaller FPS drop at lower resolutions where the GPU has more headroom. Instead, the 34% FPS reduction from 1080p to 4K at Low settings (187 to 127) and the 34% reduction at Ultra settings (68 to 45) suggest that the rendering workload scales proportionally with pixel count, which is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario.

The 1440p to 4K transition is particularly revealing. At every setting, moving from 1440p to 4K costs roughly 22% of the 1080p FPS, while moving from 1080p to 1440p costs roughly 16%. This non-linear scaling indicates that the RTX 4080's 16 GB memory bandwidth of 716.8 GB/s is sufficient at 1440p but becomes a more significant constraint at 4K, where the larger frame buffers and increased texture fetches tax the memory subsystem more heavily.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700KF plays a supporting role in these results, as indicated by the resolution scaling analysis. The CPU features 20 cores and 28 threads, with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz. Its 33 MB of shared L3 cache provides ample capacity for game logic and asset management. The CPU's benchmark scores confirm its strength: a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 44167 and single-core score of 6235, placing it in the 94th percentile of all CPUs.

In The Medium, the CPU's role is primarily to feed the GPU with draw calls and manage the game's fixed camera system. The 1080p Low result of 187 FPS is likely near the CPU's practical limit for this game engine, as higher resolutions at Low settings do not see proportional FPS increases. The fact that 1080p Low achieves 187 FPS while 4K Low achieves 127 FPS suggests that the CPU can generate frames faster than the GPU can render them at 1080p, but at 4K the GPU becomes the limiting factor.

The CPU's 10 nm process node and Raptor Lake architecture provide strong single-thread performance, which is critical for The Medium's primarily single-threaded game logic. The 628 Cinebench R15 single-core score and 2618 Cinebench R20 single-core score indicate that the CPU can handle the game's physics and scripting without becoming a bottleneck. The 28 threads ensure that background tasks and streaming do not interfere with frame pacing, as evidenced by the stable minimum FPS values on the Medium preset.

The nearest rival comparison shows the i7-14700KF's avg benchmark score of 70163 is within 1% of the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (69515) and 0.2% of the AMD Ryzen 7 9700F (69996), but slightly behind the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K (70879) by 1%. These small deltaPct values indicate that the CPU is well-positioned among high-end processors, and the measured FPS data shows no signs of CPU-induced stuttering or frame drops in The Medium.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i7-14700KF + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 combination ranks 192nd out of 3724 tested combos for The Medium, placing it in the top 5% of all configurations. This rank reflects the hardware's overall capability, though the game's specific demands mean that the combo performs better at lower settings and resolutions than at the extremes.

The combo's rank is influenced by both components' individual strengths. The CPU's 94th percentile ranking among all CPUs and the GPU's 86th percentile ranking among all GPUs suggest that this is a high-tier pairing, but not the absolute best available. The 192nd rank out of 3724 combos indicates that many higher-end configurations (such as those with RTX 4090 or newer GPUs) achieve better results, particularly at 4K Ultra where the RTX 4080's 45 FPS is below the 60 FPS threshold.

The data reveals that this combo is best suited for 1440p gaming, where it can maintain high frame rates at Medium settings (101 FPS) and still achieve playable results at High (72 FPS). At 1080p, the combo is overkill for Low settings (187 FPS) but excels at Medium (120 FPS) and High (86 FPS). At 4K, the combo is only fully playable at Low (127 FPS) and Medium (79 FPS), with High (57 FPS) and Ultra (45 FPS) falling short of smooth gameplay.

The rank of 192 also reflects the game's optimization profile. The Medium is known for its heavy use of volumetric effects and fixed camera angles, which create unusual scaling patterns. The fact that the combo ranks in the top 5% despite not being the newest hardware suggests that the CPU's 20 cores and the GPU's 16 GB VRAM are well-matched to the game's requirements. The 0.1% deltaPct between the RTX 4080 and RTX 4080 SUPER in GPU benchmarks indicates that this combo's performance is near the ceiling for its GPU class, meaning the rank is likely limited by the GPU rather than the CPU.