The Medium

The Medium, a fixed-camera horror title from 2021, presents an unusual load profile that heavily favors raw GPU throughput over CPU muscle. The measured results for the combination of the Intel Core Ultra 5 125H and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 reveal a system that is overwhelmingly bound by the graphics card at higher settings, while the processor’s limitations become apparent only at lower resolutions and settings. This analysis breaks down the measured FPS data to determine the optimal configuration, the role of each component, and how this specific pairing ranks against the broader database of tested combos.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data provides a clear hierarchy of performance across four quality presets—Low, Medium, High, and Ultra—at three resolutions. The objective is to find the sweet spot where visual quality is maximized without sacrificing playable frame rates. Based strictly on the measured average FPS, the Medium preset emerges as the most balanced choice for this specific combo.

At 1920x1080, the Medium preset delivers an average of 98 FPS, with a minimum of 84 FPS and a maximum of 113 FPS. This is a substantial drop from the 140 FPS achieved on Low, but it is also a massive improvement over the 70 FPS on High and 56 FPS on Ultra. The 84 FPS minimum ensures that the experience remains fluid even during demanding scenes, avoiding the stutter that could occur at lower frame rates. While High and Ultra offer more visual fidelity, their averages of 70 and 56 FPS respectively are less comfortable for a game that benefits from smooth camera transitions. The Low preset, while fast, likely sacrifices too much environmental detail for a horror game where atmosphere is key.

Moving to 2560x1440, the Medium preset again proves to be the most viable option. It averages 83 FPS, with a minimum of 70 FPS and a maximum of 95 FPS. This is more than double the 37 FPS seen at the 4K Ultra setting and remains well above the 59 FPS average of the High preset. The Low preset at this resolution hits 132 FPS, but the visual compromise is significant. The data indicates that at 1440p, the Medium preset is the performance-per-quality champion, maintaining a frame rate that is responsive and consistent.

At 3840x2160, the situation becomes more constrained. The Medium preset averages 65 FPS, with a minimum of 55 FPS and a maximum of 75 FPS. This is the only 4K setting that consistently stays in a playable range, as High drops to 47 FPS and Ultra falls to 37 FPS. The Low preset at 4K manages 104 FPS, but the graphical downgrade is severe. For a horror title reliant on shadow and lighting, the Medium preset at 4K is the recommended compromise, offering a stable experience that respects the game’s visual intent.

Across all resolutions, the Medium preset provides the most consistent and playable experience. It avoids the sub-60 FPS averages of High and Ultra while providing a substantial visual upgrade over Low. The minimum FPS figures for Medium are also the most stable, suggesting that this setting avoids the severe frame-time spikes that can plague higher presets. Therefore, the data strongly suggests that users of this combo should prioritize the Medium preset for a balanced experience, regardless of their target resolution.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is the dominant component in this pairing, and its specifications align perfectly with the performance scaling observed in The Medium. The GPU features a massive 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s. This memory configuration is critical, as The Medium’s fixed-camera angles often require loading large, high-resolution textures. The 32 GB capacity ensures that the game’s assets are fully resident in VRAM, eliminating any potential stuttering from texture swapping. The 1.79 TB/s bandwidth provides the throughput necessary to feed the GPU’s 21,760 shading units and 680 texture mapping units, which is essential for the game’s detailed environments.

The clock speeds of the RTX 5090—a base of 2017 MHz and a boost of 2407 MHz—are high, but the sheer scale of the chip matters more. The GPU’s 104.8 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is the raw power driving the frame rates. In The Medium, the GPU’s dominance is evident in the performance collapse as resolution increases. The game is not bottlenecked by the CPU at high settings; instead, it is the GPU’s ability to fill pixels that limits performance. The data shows that at 4K Ultra, the combo only manages 37 FPS, a figure that aligns with the GPU being fully saturated. The RTX 5090’s 176 ROPs are tasked with the final pixel output, and at 4K, the sheer number of pixels required for each frame overwhelms even this powerful chip.

The GPU’s role is further highlighted by the significant FPS jumps when moving from Ultra to Low settings. At 1080p, the difference between Ultra (56 FPS) and Low (140 FPS) is a 150% increase, demonstrating that the graphics card is the primary constraint. The RTX 5090’s architecture, Blackwell 2.0, is built for rasterization brute force, which is exactly what The Medium demands. The 170 RT cores are largely irrelevant here, as the game does not heavily utilize ray tracing. Instead, the traditional shader and texture units do the heavy lifting. In summary, the RTX 5090 is the engine of this system, and its massive compute and memory resources are what allow the game to run at all, but its limits are clearly visible at higher resolutions and settings.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a clear and predictable pattern of performance degradation as resolution increases from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160. This scaling is a direct indicator of the system’s bottleneck, which is unambiguously the GPU. When the CPU is capable of feeding the graphics card, the frame rate is dictated by the pixel fill rate and shading complexity, both of which are GPU functions.

At the Medium preset, the average FPS drops from 98 at 1080p to 83 at 1440p, a 15% decrease. Moving from 1440p to 4K, the average drops further to 65 FPS, a 22% decrease. This non-linear drop is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario where the number of pixels quadruples from 1080p to 4K, but the frame rate does not quarter. This suggests that while the GPU is the main limiter, there is some headroom in other parts of the pipeline.

The Low preset tells a similar story. At 1080p, the combo achieves 140 FPS. At 1440p, it drops to 132 FPS, a minor 6% reduction. At 4K, it falls to 104 FPS, a 21% drop from 1440p. The relatively small penalty at 1440p suggests that at Low settings, the CPU is still able to keep up, and the GPU is not yet fully saturated by the pixel count. The larger drop at 4K indicates that the GPU is finally hitting its limits even at Low settings.

The High and Ultra presets show the most dramatic scaling. For High, the FPS goes from 70 (1080p) to 59 (1440p) to 47 (4K). For Ultra, it goes from 56 (1080p) to 47 (1440p) to 37 (4K). These settings impose a heavier shading load, meaning that even at 1080p, the GPU is working hard. The scaling from 1080p to 4K for Ultra is a 34% reduction (56 to 37 FPS), which is less than the 50% reduction seen at Medium (98 to 65 FPS). This is because at Ultra, the GPU is already so overloaded at 1080p that the relative impact of increasing resolution is smaller.

The data clearly indicates that the limiting component is the GPU. The CPU’s performance is relatively constant across resolutions, as it is processing the same game logic and draw calls. As the resolution increases, the GPU’s workload expands, and the frame rate falls. The fact that the frame rate does not drop linearly with pixel count at lower settings suggests that the CPU is providing a sufficient frame budget, but the GPU is the wall that performance hits. For this combo, players who want higher resolutions must accept lower settings, as the GPU cannot maintain high frame rates at 4K Ultra.

Measured FPS Breakdown

This section details the exact measured average FPS, with minimum and maximum values where available, for every resolution and settings combination in the data.

1920x1080:

• Low: The average FPS is 140. No minimum or maximum values are provided.
• Medium: The average FPS is 98, with a minimum of 84 and a maximum of 113. This is the most stable and recommended setting at this resolution.
• High: The average FPS is 70. No minimum or maximum values are provided.
• Ultra: The average FPS is 56. No minimum or maximum values are provided. This setting dips below the critical 60 FPS threshold.

2560x1440:

• Low: The average FPS is 132. No minimum or maximum values are provided.
• Medium: The average FPS is 83, with a minimum of 70 and a maximum of 95. The minimum remains above 60 FPS, ensuring smooth gameplay.
• High: The average FPS is 59. No minimum or maximum values are provided. This is just shy of the 60 FPS target.
• Ultra: The average FPS is 47. No minimum or maximum values are provided. This is a significant drop from Medium.

3840x2160:

• Low: The average FPS is 104. No minimum or maximum values are provided. This is the only 4K setting that offers high refresh rate potential.
• Medium: The average FPS is 65, with a minimum of 55 and a maximum of 75. The minimum FPS of 55 indicates occasional dips below 60 FPS but remains playable.
• High: The average FPS is 47. No minimum or maximum values are provided. This is below the playable threshold for many users.
• Ultra: The average FPS is 37. No minimum or maximum values are provided. This is the most demanding setting and yields the lowest performance.

The data shows a clear pattern: the Medium preset is the only one that provides a consistent experience across all resolutions, with the minimum FPS figures staying relatively close to the average. The High and Ultra presets suffer from a lack of headroom, leading to averages that are too low for comfortable play. The Low preset, while fast, is not the focus of this analysis. The provided minimum and maximum values for the Medium preset allow for a precise understanding of frame time consistency, which is crucial for a game that relies on atmospheric tension.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the benchmark database, this specific combination of the Intel Core Ultra 5 125H and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 playing The Medium is ranked 556th out of 2,911 tested combos. This places it in the top 19% of all systems tested for this game, which is a strong showing. The high ranking is almost entirely attributable to the GPU’s immense power, as the CPU is a mid-range mobile part.

The rank of 556 out of 2,911 indicates that this combo outperforms the vast majority of systems. A higher rank means better performance, and this position suggests that the RTX 5090 is able to overcome the limitations of the Intel Core Ultra 5 125H in this specific title. The game’s reliance on GPU resources means that the powerful graphics card can compensate for the CPU’s relatively modest performance. In many other games, a weaker CPU might drag the combo down, but The Medium’s engine appears to be less sensitive to CPU performance.

However, the rank also reveals that there are 555 other combos that perform better. These are likely systems with more powerful desktop CPUs paired with the RTX 5090, or possibly even more extreme GPU configurations. The fact that this combo, which pairs a mobile CPU with a flagship GPU, is not higher confirms the CPU’s role as a secondary bottleneck. The data implies that if the CPU were stronger, the combo might rank even higher, as the GPU has more headroom to be utilized. The percentile standing of the GPU (92nd) and CPU (79th) individually confirms this; the GPU is a top-tier part, while the CPU is solidly above average but not elite. The combo’s rank of 556 is a synthesis of these two factors, weighted heavily toward the GPU because of the game’s nature.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 125H is a 14-core, 18-thread mobile processor based on the Meteor Lake architecture. It has a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 4.50 GHz, with an 18 MB shared L3 cache. While these are respectable specifications for a mobile chip, they are not in the same league as the desktop processors typically paired with an RTX 5090. In The Medium, the CPU’s role is to feed the GPU with draw calls and process game logic, but the data shows that it is not the primary bottleneck at high settings.

The CPU’s benchmark scores, such as a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 12804.5 and a single-core score of 1647.5, place it in the 79th percentile of all CPUs. Its average benchmark score of 27507 is nearly identical to that of the AMD Ryzen 7 5800 (27535) and Intel Core i5-12600K (27578), with delta percentages of -0.1% and -0.3% respectively. This means that in general computing tasks, the Ultra 5 125H is on par with those older desktop chips. However, in a gaming scenario like The Medium, the difference between a mobile and desktop chip can be more pronounced due to power and thermal constraints.

In The Medium, the CPU’s influence is most visible at lower resolutions and settings. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 140 FPS. This is likely close to the CPU’s limit in terms of frame generation. If the GPU were less powerful, this number might be lower, but the RTX 5090 is so fast that it is waiting for the CPU to provide frames. The L3 cache of 18 MB is adequate for the game’s data, but not exceptionally large. The 14 cores and 18 threads provide ample parallelism for game threads, but The Medium is not a highly multi-threaded title.

The CPU’s boost clock of 4.50 GHz is important for single-threaded tasks, which are common in game engines. However, the data suggests that the CPU is not the limiting factor at 4K Ultra, where the GPU is clearly maxed out. The CPU’s role is to ensure that the GPU is never starved of data. At 4K Medium, the 65 FPS average suggests that the CPU is keeping up, but the GPU is struggling with the pixel load. The conclusion is that the Core Ultra 5 125H is a capable partner for the RTX 5090 in this game, but it does hold the system back from achieving the absolute maximum frame rates that the GPU could theoretically produce at lower resolutions. The system is well-balanced for high-resolution gaming, but a stronger desktop CPU would likely push the combo higher in the rankings at 1080p.