The Medium

How This Combo Ranks

The pairing of the Intel Core i9-14900K with the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT lands at rank 2362 out of 3724 tested combos in The Medium. That places this configuration in the lower-middle tier of the database, meaning roughly 63% of tested system combinations deliver higher average frame rates in this title. The ranking reflects a substantial mismatch: the CPU sits in the 95th percentile among all processors, while the GPU sits in only the 60th percentile among all graphics cards. Benchmark results indicate the graphics card is the primary constraint, and the combo rank confirms that this system behaves like a mid-range GPU build rather than a flagship one.

The CPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks illustrate its standing. The Core i9-14900K scores 79097 on average, which is 0.3% behind the Core i9-14900KF (79371) and 0.6% behind the Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus (79574). It is 1.2% behind the AMD EPYC 7413 (80041) but 1.7% ahead of the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 (77740). These deltas are negligible for gaming, so the processor is not the factor holding this combo back.

On the GPU side, the RX 7600 XT averages 17083 in benchmark scores, sitting 0.3% above the GeForce GTX 690 (17037) and 0.4% above the Radeon HD 7970M (17019), while trailing the GeForce RTX 3070 by 0.7% (17208). The 60th percentile ranking for the GPU, combined with its position among these rivals, suggests the card delivers roughly last-generation enthusiast-class performance. In The Medium, that translates into a combo that can play the game but cannot push high refresh rates at demanding settings.

Settings Recommendations

Given the measured frame rates, the optimal experience balances visual quality with playability. At 1080p, the Medium preset delivers 60 FPS average with a minimum of 51 FPS and a maximum of 69 FPS, which is the sweet spot for smooth gameplay on a standard 60 Hz display. The High preset at 1080p drops to 43 FPS average, which is noticeably less fluid but still playable for a horror title where precise timing is less critical. The Ultra preset at 1080p falls to 34 FPS, which is too choppy for comfortable play. The Low preset at 1080p reaches 96 FPS, but the visual degradation in a game like The Medium, which relies heavily on atmosphere and lighting, is not worth the extra frames.

At 1440p, the Medium preset yields 51 FPS average (43 min, 58 max), which is acceptable for slower-paced exploration but marginal for action sequences. The High preset at 1440p drops to 36 FPS, and Ultra falls to 29 FPS — both too low for consistent enjoyment. The Low preset at 1440p hits 81 FPS, but again, the visual compromise is substantial.

At 4K, the picture is grim. Medium settings produce 40 FPS average (34 min, 46 max), which is borderline playable. High drops to 28 FPS, and Ultra to 23 FPS — both slideshows. Low at 4K reaches 64 FPS, but the game's atmospheric detail is largely lost.

The data suggests the best experience is Medium settings at 1080p. That configuration maintains a 60 FPS average with a minimum above 50 FPS, which meets the standard for smooth gameplay. If you have a 1440p monitor, Medium settings there are the highest you can realistically run, accepting a 51 FPS average. For 4K, Medium is the only viable preset, and even then, the 40 FPS average will feel sluggish during camera transitions and scripted sequences.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a clear GPU-bound scenario. At Medium settings, the average FPS drops from 60 at 1080p to 51 at 1440p (a 15% reduction) and then to 40 at 4K (a 33% reduction from 1440p). This pattern is typical for a graphics card with a 128-bit memory bus and 288.0 GB/s of bandwidth — the RX 7600 XT struggles as pixel count increases. The 16 GB of GDDR6 memory is ample for The Medium, but the narrow bus width limits fill rate at high resolutions.

The scaling gap is even more pronounced at High settings: 43 FPS at 1080p, 36 FPS at 1440p, and 28 FPS at 4K. That is a 35% drop from 1080p to 4K, which is steeper than the resolution's pixel count increase would suggest if the GPU were not the bottleneck. In contrast, the CPU's performance is essentially static across these resolutions — the Core i9-14900K with 24 cores and 32 threads is nowhere near saturated by this title's workload.

The Low preset scaling tells a similar story: 96 FPS at 1080p, 81 FPS at 1440p, and 64 FPS at 4K. Even at the lowest settings, the GPU cannot maintain high frame rates at 4K, confirming that the RX 7600 XT is the limiting component. The 6 nm Navi 33 chip, with its 2048 shading units and 64 ROPs, simply does not have the raw throughput for 4K gaming in this title. The data indicates that 1080p is the intended resolution for this combo, with 1440p as a stretch target at Medium settings.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full settings range was measured. Low settings produce 96 FPS average, which is excellent for high-refresh-rate monitors. Medium settings deliver 60 FPS average (51 min, 69 max), providing a stable baseline. High settings drop to 43 FPS average, and Ultra falls to 34 FPS. The 51 FPS minimum at Medium is the key metric — it indicates that even during the game's heavier scenes, the frame rate stays above the 50 FPS threshold, avoiding noticeable stutter.

At 2560x1440, Low settings reach 81 FPS average, still very playable. Medium settings average 51 FPS (43 min, 58 max), which is borderline but workable for a game that does not demand twitch reflexes. High settings drop to 36 FPS, and Ultra to 29 FPS. The minimum of 43 FPS at Medium suggests occasional drops below 45 FPS, which can be perceptible during fast camera pans.

At 3840x2160, the numbers are sobering. Low settings average 64 FPS, which is playable but visually compromised. Medium settings average 40 FPS (34 min, 46 max), with the minimum dipping into the low 30s — this will produce visible judder during transitions. High settings average 28 FPS, and Ultra averages 23 FPS, both effectively unplayable for a game that requires any level of engagement.

The progression across all resolutions and settings shows a consistent pattern: Medium settings offer the best compromise between frame rate and visual fidelity, while High and Ultra are only viable at 1080p if you accept sub-45 FPS averages. The measured data does not include ray tracing results, but the GPU's 32 RT cores suggest that enabling any ray-traced effects would further degrade these numbers.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT is the decisive component in this combo's performance. Its 16 GB of GDDR6 memory is more than sufficient for The Medium, which was released in 2021 and does not require excessive VRAM even at 4K. The memory runs at 2250 MHz (18 Gbps effective) across a 128-bit bus, yielding 288.0 GB/s of bandwidth. That bandwidth figure is modest by modern standards and explains why the card's performance degrades significantly as resolution increases — the bus width limits how quickly textures and geometry can be fed to the 2048 shading units.

The GPU's clock behavior is notable: a base clock of 1980 MHz, a game clock of 2470 MHz, and a boost clock of 2755 MHz. The game clock is the realistic sustained frequency during gaming workloads, and at 2470 MHz, the card operates near its boost ceiling in this title. The 22.57 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is adequate for 1080p gaming but insufficient for 4K at high settings, as the measured FPS confirms.

The GPU's synthetic benchmark scores place it in the 60th percentile among all GPUs, with an average score of 17083. Its nearest rival, the GeForce RTX 3070, scores 17208 (0.7% higher), which is a useful reference point: the RX 7600 XT performs like a slightly slower RTX 3070 in general compute tasks. The card's DirectX 12 benchmark score of 65 and DirectX 11 score of 167 (from PassMark) are modest, reflecting the card's mid-range positioning. With a TDP of 190 W and a 450 W suggested PSU, the card is power-efficient for its class, but that efficiency does not translate into high frame rates at demanding settings.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i9-14900K is massively overqualified for this game. With 24 cores (8 performance and 16 efficiency cores), 32 threads, and a boost clock of 6.00 GHz, the processor is among the fastest desktop CPUs available. Its 95th percentile ranking among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 79097, places it far above what The Medium's engine can utilize. The game is not CPU-intensive; even at 1080p Low settings, where the GPU is least stressed, the CPU easily exceeds the frame rates the RX 7600 XT can produce.

The CPU's cache hierarchy — 80 KB of L1 per core, 2 MB of L2 per core, and 36 MB of shared L3 — provides ample bandwidth for game logic and asset streaming. The 125 W TDP (with boost behavior typical of Raptor Lake) and support for both DDR4 and DDR5 memory mean the platform can be paired with fast memory, though the GPU's memory bandwidth is the limiting factor in this title. The 10 nm process node and 257 mm² die size are immaterial to gaming performance here; what matters is that the CPU is never the bottleneck.

In synthetic benchmarks, the Core i9-14900K scores 39399.5 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 2262.5 in single-core, with a Geekbench multi-core score of 21697 and single-core of 2655. These numbers are far beyond what The Medium requires. The nearest rival comparisons — 0.3% behind the i9-14900KF and 0.6% behind the Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus — show that this CPU is at the top of its class, and any performance delta is within measurement noise. For this game, the CPU's role is purely to feed the GPU without constraint, which it does effortlessly. The measured FPS differences across settings and resolutions are entirely attributable to the GPU's capabilities.