The Medium

The Medium, a horror title released in 2021, paired with an Intel Core i9-14900K and an AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT, lands squarely in the lower-mid field of the database's tested configurations. The measured combo rank of 1941 out of 3724 puts it slightly below the midpoint of all tested CPU/GPU pairings, a placement that reflects a strong, top-tier CPU (95th percentile among all CPUs) coupled with a more modest GPU (72nd percentile among all GPUs). Consequently, The Medium's performance in this setup is governed less by the processor's clear headroom and more by the graphics card's 12 GB of GDDR6 memory and 384.0 GB/s of bandwidth, as the frame-rate data across presets and resolutions demonstrates.

Settings Recommendations

The measured frame rates show that the Radeon RX 6700 XT, when driven by the Core i9-14900K, hits a comfortable 60 frames per second tipping point at 1080p with Medium settings. The average of 69 FPS, with a minimum of 58 FPS, keeps the experience smooth even through the game's worst hitches. Dropping to Low at 1080p yields an obviously higher 110 FPS average, but Medium retains most of the visual fidelity without sacrificing playability, so it stands as the sweet spot for this resolution.

At 2560×1440, Medium delivers an average of 58 FPS, just below the full 60 FPS floor, with a 49 FPS minimum. The difference from 1080p Medium is only 11 FPS, so for monitors with adaptive sync, Medium remains a practical choice. Low at 1440p, meanwhile, hits an average of 92 FPS, making it the only 1440p preset that clears 60 FPS by a clear margin. For a strictly performance-first target, Low at 1440p is the only viable preset. High at 1440p falls to a 41 FPS average, which is below standard refresh-rate comfort, and Ultra rests at 33 FPS.

Jumping to 3840×2160, only Low reaches a playable threshold: a 73 FPS average. Medium at 4K sits at 45 FPS, High at 32 FPS, and Ultra at 26 FPS, none of which can hold a 30 FPS minimum consistently. Thus the recommendation across the full resolution spectrum is to either settle for 1080p Medium for a balanced experience, or if 1440p is preferred, drop the preset to Low for a clearly responsive session. The measured FPS data shows that this GPU is a capable 1080p partner for The Medium at Medium settings, and only Low delivers similar responsiveness at higher pixel counts.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT is the hardware gatekeeper for most of The Medium. Its 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, with 384.0 GB/s of memory bandwidth, provides enough capacity to handle the game’s visuals without observing any memory-driven frame stutter in the measured data. The GPU's base clock of 2321 MHz and boost clock of 2581 MHz (with a 2424 MHz game clock) are typical of mid-generation RDNA 2 parts, and the 6700 XT’s 2560 shading units, 160 texture mapping units, and 64 render output units deliver a peak FP32 rate of 13.21 TFLOPS. On synthetic benchmarks, the card carries a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 2435 and a Passmark G3D score of 19786, translating to a 72nd percentile standing among all GPUs. Its nearest riviily, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090, sits just 0.5% below in synthetic GPU score — a high-class hint that the RX 6600 XT holds ground in raw compute, but that compute is not what dictates The Medium’s frame rate.

Against the CPU's 95th percentile, the GPU’s 72nd percentile seems the weaker link. But in The Medium, we measured CPU-bound behavior at low resolutions. For instance, at 1080p Low, the average is 110 FPS, while at 4K Low, it stands at 73 FPS — a change of 37 FPS, not the ~4x proportional drop expected from the 4x pixel count increase between 1080p and 4K. That holds for all three presets, which indicates that the 24-core, 32-thread Core i7 (base 3.20 GHz, boost 6.00 GHz, TDP 125W) and its UHD Graphics 770 integrated unit are not exempt from the frame rate, but the GPU’s 12 GB of VRAM and 384 GB/s of bandwidth have enough headroom to handle The Medium without stutters or bandwidth constriction.

FAQ

Q: What preset at 1080p provides a 60 frame-per-second experience?

A: At 1080p, the Medium preset averages 69 FPS with a minimum of 59 FPS. This is the only preset above 60 FPS The Medium has, and it does so with only a small CPU cost; the lowest setting (Low) runs at 110 FPS, but Medium offers a far better visual profile for only a 40% frame deduction.

Q: Can this hardware maintain 1440p at 60 FPS?

A: No. At 2560×1440p, the Medium setting averages 58 FPS, missing the 60 FPS target, with a minimum of 49 FPS. Low presets bring the average to 92 FPS, making Low the only 1440p setting that clears 50 FPS. If 1440p at 60 FPS is a requirement, the only measured setting that satisfies it is Low.

Q: What is the frame rate at 4K Ultra?

A: At 3840×2160 Ultra, the average is 26 FPS, with no stated minimum, and this is the weakest for any resolution/setting pair in the database. Each higher quality step from High (32 FPS) to Ultra (26 FPS) causes a proportional loss.

Q: Which is the weakest component in this build?

A: The data points to the GPU. The RX 6700 XT ranks at the 75th percentile globally and its synthetic Steam (average benchmark score 27425) is only 0.5% higher than its nearest rival, the older AMD Radeon Pro Vega 20. The i9-14900K, on the contrary, sits in the 91st percentile among all CPUs. Therefore the 6700 XT is the dominant limit designation when pushing those detail levels.

Q: How many video memory frames does this GPU have?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT includes 12 GB of GDDR6 memory, with a memory clock running at 3000 MHz effective (i.e., 16 Gbps effective). That capacity is large for a 2022-era game, and the measured frame output never indicates a shortage.

Q: What does the 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score say about game performance?

A: The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 2435 reflects a typical mid-tier all-around performance. Its nearest rival, the RTX High Mobile, scores 27435, 0.3% higher, meaning this GPU is within 0.3% of that chip in compute, so the differential are almost latency from game-specific tuning. Game FPS in the Medium correlates strongly with that score, as the GPU is usually the limiting element.

How This Combo Ranks

The pairing of the Intel Core i9-14900K and AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT occupies the 1941st position out of 3724 total measured combinations for The Medium. That means only 1783 pair have a higher average FPS, while 1940 combos perform worse, placing this rig just below the median of the tested database. The single benchmark percentile is 95 CPU and 72 GPU, which makes this result inferior to mixed pairings like the Arc A770 or the RTX 3060 Ti when combined with a lower-end CPU. In the CPU landscape, the i9-14900K’s nearest synthetic rivals (by average G3D score) are the i9-14900KF (79571, -0.3% delta) and the Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus (79574, -0.6%), so its compute capability is essentially at the top of the saved models bundle. For the RX 6700 XT, the nearest rivals are only 0.5=1% different 3DMark - the NVIDIA RTX 3090 (27565, -0.5%) and the Radeon Pro Vega 0 (27839, -1.5%) – and it stays in that narrow window.

The data thus paintings the GPU is the main determinant of The Medium’s rank. With a 24-core CPU holding a 95th percentile placement and the 12 GB GPU achieving a 72th percentile, the expected lower percentile of the whole combo correlates with the GPU’s position. The difference between Frames used at 1080p and 4K is modest: for the Medium preset, the 1080p to 4K FPS drop goes from 69 to 45, only a 24% decline, which is far less than the 4x pixel count increase. That indicates the CPU—with its 6 GHz boost and 32 threads—prevents any CPU-bound dips in a good frame rate, but the RX 6700 XT cannot push The Medium into the higher echelon; its mid-pack percentile is the entire reason for a middle-of-the-pack rank. For anyone viewing this as a baseline: the GPU is the fundament.

Resolution Scaling

From 1080p to 1440p and up to 4K, The Medium exhibits notable falloffs, but the magnitude of these drops is remarkably consistent across all presets. At Medium settings, FPS drops from 69 to 58 at 1440p (–11 FPS, –16%), and then to 45 at 4Kp (–13 FPS, –22%). At Low settings, the progression is 120–92–73 for the same 1080p3 triple –57 FPS from 1080p to 4K. Likewise, High settings taper from 49 at 1080p to 41 at 1.4K (nearly –16%) then to 32 at 4K (–22%). Ultra spans 39 → 33 → 26. The proportional delta between 1080p and 4K ranges from 1490p to 0.667 (73/110), 0.652 (45/69), 0.653 (32/49), and 0.667 (26/39) – across all four settings, the 4K frame is always about two-thirds of the 1080 plane, regardless of the quality preset.

This constant ratio within a percent or two across settings reveals that The Medium’s rendering engine is not pixel-bound at resolutions below 61 pixels per row. If the GPU were the hard limiter, the 4K rendering would produce embarrassingly decompressed output (e.g., a 4–7x frame loss). Instead, the 1,200-fold increase in pixel count does not proportionally damage the FPS; the 14900K boots the single/physical such that the bottleneck at 1080p is the game thread itself, not the GPU. When the GPU workload rises with resolution, the drop is modest and even across the board. At 4K Ultra and 4K High, the 14900K core hold the processor headroom, but the RX 6700 XT’s 384.0 GB/s memory and 2560 shading units plateau at the second the frame. Therefore, resolution scaling in The Medium is seen as the GPU moving from ‘plenty of headroom’ at 1–1/2 pixels up to 12 GB, to ‘exhausted’ at 4K, but only at 72%–, so the per-pixel costs are low at every preset. For a heavier GPU in this game the 780% increase to the 4K assumes nearly 66% fewer rate, but for this GPU it makes only a 33% difference.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The following table lists all 12 measured data points for The Medium with the Intel Core i9-14900K and AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT configuration. The min and max columns exist only for Medium settings.

| Resolution | Settings | Average FPS | Min FPS | Max FPS |

|---|---|---|---|---|

| 3840×2160 | High | 32 | — | — |

| 3840×2160 | Low | 73 | — | — |

| 3840×2160 | Medium | 45 | 39 | 52 |

| 3840×2160 | Ultra | 26 | — | — |

| 2560×1440 | High | 41 | — | — |

| 2560×1440 | Low | 92 | — | — |

| 2560×1440 | Medium | 58 | 49 | 66 |

| 2560×1440 | Ultra | 33 | — | — |

| 1920×1080 | High | 41 | — | — |

| 1920×1080 | Low | 110 | — | — |

| 1920×1080 | Medium | 69 | 58 | 79 |

| 1920×1080 | Ultra | 39 | — | — |

Across this range, the smallest delta between Low and Medium remains consistent: at most resolutions Medium is 37-35% slower than Low, whereas the difference between Medium and High compresses; the grid remains sparse. The most comprehensively bounded recorded are the Medium ones: at 1080p Medium, the minimum of 58 ensures that even the heaviest GPU scenes won’t fall under the common 50 FPS level; the same layer steps at 1440p and 4K show a 49 and 39 FPS floor on minimums. For the rest of the quality presets, the fluctuations are unmodified by data collection, so an average FPS is the only available metric. The Ultra average at 4K of 26 FPS versus the Low 73 FPS gives an absolute spread of 47 FPS at 4K. The clear implication is that the Medium preset is the most stable territory for when frame spikes matter; the min/max band – 9 FPS at 1080p, 7 FPS at 1440p, 13 FPS at 4K – shows that the engine’s frame pacing is hardest to maintain at the largest scene. Theverages themselves are not a complete story: The mode and the min deltas above matrix.

The data covers all configurable combinations, from 1080p Ultra (39 FPS) to 4K Low (73 FPS). The latter is noteworthy: at 4K Low, the 12 GB RX 6600 XT gives more than enough bandwidth and the CPU’s 792-width stores won’t droop below 70 FPS. Thus, for someone who prioritizes frames trends above drama, the military conclusion is set that the 4K Ultra preset is unusable, whereas 4K Low under 1440P shows the best balance of frame-rate and ambiguity. All readings match the expectation that The Medium rewards broadly available hardware, and the 6600 XT is the part that decides the result.