The Medium

The Medium, a fixed-camera horror title from 2021, presents an interesting stress profile for the Intel Core i9-14900K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 combination. The measured data shows a system that is heavily constrained by the graphics card at higher presets, yet capable of delivering high frame rates when settings are reduced. This analysis breaks down the measured FPS rows to understand where the bottleneck lies and how the hardware responds to the game's demands.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and non-linear, pointing directly at the GPU as the primary limiting factor. At High settings, the average frame rate falls from 56.6 FPS at 1920x1080 to 43.9 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of 12.7 FPS. Moving to 3840x2160, the average drops further to 33.5 FPS, which is a 41% decrease from the 1080p result. This pattern indicates that the RTX 3070's 8 GB of GDDR6 memory and its 256-bit bus are being saturated as pixel count increases.

The scaling at Ultra settings tells a similar story. The average goes from 46.9 FPS at 1080p to 40.1 FPS at 1440p, then falls to 30.6 FPS at 4K. The difference between 1440p and 4K is only 9.5 FPS, suggesting that the game's visual complexity at Ultra is already pushing the GPU to its limits even before reaching the highest resolution. Conversely, the Low preset shows a much wider spread: 123.5 FPS at 1080p, 105 FPS at 1440p, and 79.6 FPS at 4K. This wider gap indicates that when the graphical load is light, the CPU has more headroom to feed frames, but the GPU still governs the final output.

The data suggests that 4K gaming with this combo is only viable at Low settings, where the 79.6 FPS average is playable. At Medium settings, the 53.1 FPS at 4K is borderline, while High and Ultra fall below the 60 FPS threshold. The 1440p resolution offers a more balanced experience, with Medium providing 67.4 FPS and High delivering 43.9 FPS. The scaling behavior confirms that the RTX 3070 is the bottleneck; the Intel Core i9-14900K, with its 24 cores and 32 threads, is not the constraining factor in this title.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured rows, the Medium preset at 2560x1440 provides the best balance between visual fidelity and performance. The 67.4 FPS average is above the standard 60 FPS target, and it represents a significant improvement over the High preset's 43.9 FPS at the same resolution. The jump from Medium to High costs 23.5 FPS, which is a substantial penalty for what is typically a marginal visual upgrade in this type of game.

At 1920x1080, the Medium preset delivers 77.3 FPS, which is smooth and leaves headroom for demanding scenes. The High preset at 1080p, at 56.6 FPS, is playable but does not consistently hit the 60 FPS mark. For users prioritizing frame rate over absolute visual quality, the Low preset at 1080p offers 123.5 FPS, which is more than sufficient for any display. However, the visual compromise is likely too severe for a horror game that relies on atmosphere.

For 4K displays, the only sensible option is the Low preset, which yields 79.6 FPS. The Medium preset at 53.1 FPS is playable but risks dropping below 50 FPS in busy scenes. The Ultra preset at 4K, with its 30.6 FPS average, is not recommended for anything other than static screenshots. The data indicates that the Medium preset is the sweet spot across all resolutions, offering the best compromise between image quality and playability for this specific hardware combination.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070, built on the Ampere architecture with an 8 nm process node, is the decisive component in these results. Its 8 GB of GDDR6 memory, running at 1750 MHz with a 14 Gbps effective rate, provides a bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s. This memory configuration is sufficient for 1080p and 1440p gaming but becomes a limiting factor at 4K, where the framebuffer demands exceed what the card can efficiently manage.

The GPU's boost clock of 1725 MHz and its 5888 shading units contribute to its raw compute capability. The measured 20.31 TFLOPS of FP32 performance is adequate for The Medium's fixed-camera rendering, but the game's use of volumetric effects and high-resolution textures appears to strain the memory subsystem. The fact that the Low preset at 4K achieves 79.6 FPS while the High preset drops to 33.5 FPS highlights how sensitive this title is to texture and shader complexity.

The RTX 3070's 46 RT cores and 184 tensor cores are present but do not appear to be heavily utilized, as the game does not mandate ray tracing. The card's DirectX 12 Ultimate support is a technical asset, but the measured performance shows that rasterization is the primary workload. The GPU's position in the overall benchmark database, at the 72nd percentile among all GPUs, is consistent with its performance class. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT, which is 0.9% slower in average benchmark scores, and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti, which is 1% faster. These comparisons show that the RTX 3070 sits in a competitive middle tier, and its in-game performance reflects this positioning.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i9-14900K and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 achieves a rank of 752 out of 1689 tested combinations in The Medium. This places the combo in the 45th percentile of all tested systems, meaning roughly 55% of other hardware pairings deliver higher average frame rates in this specific game. Given the CPU's high-end positioning and the GPU's mid-range standing, this rank is expected.

The CPU alone sits in the 97th percentile among all processors, with an average benchmark score of 79824. Its nearest rival, the AMD EPYC 7413, scores 80041, which is only 0.3% higher. The Intel Core i9-14900KF is 0.7% slower, and the Intel Core Ultra 7 265KF is also 0.7% slower. These tiny margins confirm that the i9-14900K is near the top of the CPU hierarchy. The GPU, however, is in the 72nd percentile, with an average score of 28238. Its nearest rival, the AMD FirePro S7150, is 0.6% faster, while the RX 6600 XT is 0.9% slower.

The combination of a top-tier CPU with a mid-tier GPU results in a system that is clearly GPU-limited. The rank of 752 out of 1689 reflects this imbalance; systems with a slower CPU but a faster GPU would likely rank higher in this game. The data suggests that for The Medium, the GPU choice matters more than the CPU, and the RTX 3070's performance ceiling is the primary reason this combo does not rank higher.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i9-14900K, with its 24 cores (8 performance cores and 16 efficiency cores) and 32 threads, provides ample processing power for The Medium. Its boost clock of 6.00 GHz and base clock of 3.20 GHz ensure that single-threaded performance is excellent, which is critical for a game that relies on a single main rendering thread. The CPU's 36 MB of shared L3 cache and 2 MB L2 cache per core help reduce memory latency, though the game's fixed-camera design likely does not stress the cache hierarchy heavily.

The CPU's benchmark results are exceptional, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 49872 and a single-core score of 7040. These numbers indicate that the CPU is not a bottleneck in any scenario. In The Medium, the CPU's role is to feed the GPU with draw calls and manage game logic, and with 32 threads, it has more than enough headroom. The measured FPS differences between presets are almost entirely attributable to GPU load, not CPU limitations.

The CPU's nearest rivals in benchmark scores include the AMD EPYC 7413, which is 0.3% faster, and the Intel Core i9-14900KF, which is 0.7% slower. These differences are negligible in real-world gaming. The i9-14900K's 125 W TDP and support for DDR4 and DDR5 memory make it a flexible choice, but in this game, the CPU's performance is not the determining factor. The data shows that even at Low settings with high frame rates, the CPU does not become a limiting component, as evidenced by the 123.5 FPS result at 1080p.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves the highest average at 123.5 FPS, followed by Medium at 77.3 FPS, High at 56.6 FPS, and Ultra at 46.9 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium is 46.2 FPS, which is significant, while the gap between High and Ultra is only 9.7 FPS, indicating diminishing returns at the highest preset.

At 2560x1440, the Low preset delivers 105 FPS, which is still very smooth. The Medium preset drops to 67.4 FPS, High to 43.9 FPS, and Ultra to 40.1 FPS. The difference between High and Ultra at 1440p is just 3.8 FPS, suggesting that the Ultra preset offers little benefit over High for a substantial performance cost.

At 3840x2160, the Low preset averages 79.6 FPS, which is playable. The Medium preset falls to 53.1 FPS, High to 33.5 FPS, and Ultra to 30.6 FPS. The drop from Low to Medium at 4K is 26.5 FPS, the largest single-preset penalty across any resolution, highlighting the GPU's memory bandwidth limitations. The Ultra preset at 4K is barely playable, and the data suggests avoiding it entirely. Across all resolutions, the Medium preset offers the most consistent experience, with frame rates of 77.3 FPS at 1080p, 67.4 FPS at 1440p, and 53.1 FPS at 4K.