The Medium

The Medium is a demanding horror title, and the data for the Intel Core Ultra 5 245 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 combination shows a clear hierarchy of playable settings. The benchmark results indicate that the Medium preset is the sweet spot for this hardware, offering a stable experience across all tested resolutions. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset delivers an average of 72 FPS, which is a significant jump from the 52 FPS average at High settings. The frame time data for this preset is also solid, with a minimum of 61 FPS and a maximum of 83 FPS, indicating consistent performance without major hitches. Moving up to 2560x1440, the Medium preset maintains a playable average of 61 FPS, with a minimum of 52 FPS, making it the only preset besides Low that can sustain a smooth experience at this resolution. At 3840x2160, the Medium preset drops to a 48 FPS average, which is playable but begins to show the strain on the GPU. The Low preset is the only option that provides a consistently high frame rate, hitting 116 FPS at 1080p, 97 FPS at 1440p, and 76 FPS at 4K. While High and Ultra settings offer better visual fidelity, the performance cost is steep, with Ultra dropping to 41 FPS at 1080p and 27 FPS at 4K.

Settings Recommendations

The data strongly suggests that the Medium preset provides the best balance of visual quality and performance for this specific CPU and GPU pairing. It is the highest settings tier that maintains a 60+ FPS average at 2560x1440, which is often considered the target for a smooth gaming experience. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset’s 72 FPS average leaves ample headroom, ensuring that demanding scenes with complex lighting and shadow effects, common in horror games, will not cause the frame rate to dip into uncomfortable territory. The measured minimum of 61 FPS at 1080p confirms this stability. While the Low preset offers higher frame rates, the visual downgrade is usually significant in a game like The Medium, which relies heavily on its atmospheric fixed-camera angles and lighting to build tension. The jump from Low to Medium yields a 56 FPS increase at 4K (from 76 to 48 FPS? No, it's a decrease), but more importantly, it provides a much more visually coherent world.

The High preset is not recommended for this hardware if a consistent 60 FPS is desired. The data shows that enabling High settings over Medium results in a substantial performance penalty across all resolutions: a 20 FPS drop at 1080p, a 17 FPS drop at 1440p, and a 14 FPS drop at 4K. This suggests that the High preset introduces rendering features that are too demanding for the RTX 5060 to handle alongside the CPU’s capabilities. For users with a 144Hz or higher refresh rate monitor at 1080p, the Low preset is the only option that can approach those higher refresh rates, but the visual compromise is considerable. Ultimately, the Medium preset is the recommended choice for a stable and visually satisfying experience, offering the best measured performance per settings tier.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 is the primary driver of performance in The Medium, as evidenced by the significant frame rate scaling with resolution. The GPU’s 8 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 128-bit bus provides a bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s. In a game with The Medium’s detailed textures, this memory configuration is sufficient for 1080p and 1440p gaming at Medium settings, but the data suggests it becomes a limiting factor at higher settings and resolutions. The benchmark results show a clear pattern: as the settings increase from Low to Ultra, the average frame rate drops consistently at every resolution. This indicates that the GPU’s rendering pipeline is the bottleneck, as the CPU’s workload does not change as dramatically with graphical settings.

The GPU’s clock speeds, with a base of 2280 MHz and a boost of 2497 MHz, are the engine that drives these results. The RTX 5060’s architectural features, including its 30 RT cores and 120 tensor cores, are likely utilized by The Medium’s rendering techniques. However, the raw computational throughput of 19.18 TFLOPS FP32 is what determines the baseline performance. The data shows that the GPU can handle the game at Low settings with ease, achieving a 116 FPS average at 1080p. However, the transition to High settings, which likely enables more advanced lighting and post-processing effects, reveals the GPU's limits. The 4K Ultra result of 27 FPS is particularly telling, as it shows the GPU is overwhelmed by the combination of high resolution and maximum graphical features. This makes the RTX 5060 a capable card for 1080p and 1440p gaming in this title, but not a high-end 4K performer. The passmark_g3d score of 20891 places it in the 72nd percentile of all GPUs, indicating it is a solid mid-range performer, but the measured data in The Medium shows that it needs to be paired with reasonable settings to shine.

Resolution Scaling

The performance scaling from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 is a textbook example of a GPU-bound workload. When moving from 1080p to 1440p on the Medium preset, the average frame rate drops from 72 FPS to 61 FPS, a decrease of 11 FPS. This is a moderate drop, which indicates that while the GPU is working harder, it still has enough headroom to maintain a playable frame rate. The more dramatic drop occurs when moving from 1440p to 4K, where the Medium preset falls from 61 FPS to 48 FPS, a 13 FPS decrease. The Low preset shows a similar pattern, with a 19 FPS drop from 1080p to 1440p (116 to 97 FPS) and a 21 FPS drop from 1440p to 4K (97 to 76 FPS). These drops are larger in absolute terms because the starting frame rates are higher, but the percentage decrease is significant.

The data reveals that the gap between settings narrows as resolution increases. At 1080p, the difference between Low and Ultra is 75 FPS (116 vs 41). At 4K, that difference shrinks to 49 FPS (76 vs 27). This is because at lower resolutions, the CPU has a more significant role in determining the maximum achievable frame rate, but as resolution increases, the GPU becomes the sole limiting factor. The pixel count at 4K is over four times that of 1080p, and the RTX 5060’s processing power is simply not sufficient to maintain high frame rates with high-quality settings at that resolution. The data strongly indicates that for a consistent 60+ FPS experience, 1440p with Medium settings is the ceiling for this hardware. The 4K results are only playable at Low settings, and even then, the 76 FPS average is far from a locked experience in more intense scenes.

FAQ

Q: What is the best settings preset for 1920x1080 gaming on this hardware?

A: The Medium preset provides the best experience. It achieves a 72 FPS average with a 61 FPS minimum, which is a smooth and stable performance. The High preset drops to 52 FPS, and Ultra falls to 41 FPS, making them less ideal for consistent gameplay.

Q: Can this system handle 4K gaming in The Medium?

A: Yes, but only at the Low settings preset, which yields a 76 FPS average. The Medium preset at 4K drops to a 48 FPS average, and High and Ultra become unplayable at 44 FPS and 27 FPS, respectively. For a better 4K experience, lower settings are mandatory.

Q: How much of a performance difference is there between Medium and High settings?

A: The benchmark data shows a significant penalty for High settings. At 1080p, the average frame rate drops from 72 FPS on Medium to 52 FPS on High. At 1440p, it drops from 61 FPS to 44 FPS. This is a substantial cost for the visual upgrades provided by the High preset.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the main bottleneck in this game?

A: The GPU is the primary bottleneck. This is evident from the performance scaling, where increasing the resolution and settings consistently reduces the frame rate. The CPU’s role is less impactful, as its workload is less affected by these graphical changes. The Intel Core Ultra 5 245 has a high benchmark score, but it is the RTX 5060 that determines the frame rates here.

Q: What is the highest settings preset that can maintain a 60 FPS average at 2560x1440?

A: The Medium preset is the highest that achieves this goal, with a 61 FPS average and a 52 FPS minimum. The High preset falls short at 44 FPS, and the Low preset is the only other option that exceeds 60 FPS, hitting 97 FPS.

Q: How does the RTX 5060 compare to its nearest rivals in terms of benchmark scores?

A: The RTX 5060’s average benchmark score of 26331 is very close to its nearest rivals. It is nearly identical to the AMD Radeon 860M (26401) and NVIDIA GeForce MX550 (26421), with a delta of -0.3% for both. It is 1.2% faster than the AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT (26011), but 0.8% slower than the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary (26553).

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 245 is a 14-core, 14-thread processor based on the Arrow Lake architecture, with a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.10 GHz. In The Medium, the CPU’s role is to feed the GPU with data and handle the game’s logic, AI, and physics. The benchmark results show that the CPU is not the primary bottleneck, as the frame rates are heavily influenced by resolution and graphics settings. However, the CPU's performance is still a critical factor in ensuring that the GPU can operate at its full potential. The CPU’s strong single-thread performance, as evidenced by its Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4648, is important for a game that may have a primary game thread.

The data does not show a scenario where the CPU is limiting performance, as the frame rates scale predictably with GPU load. At 1080p Low, the 116 FPS average is a high frame rate that could potentially be limited by the CPU in some games, but it is likely that the GPU is still the limiting factor here. The processor’s 24 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel DDR5 memory support with a bandwidth of 102.4 GB/s provide a solid foundation for gaming. The CPU’s average benchmark score of 48995 places it in the 90th percentile of all CPUs, indicating it is a very capable processor. It performs nearly identically to its nearest rivals, with a -0.4% delta compared to the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5755G (49196) and a 0.8% delta versus the Intel Core i5-14600K (48618).

For this specific pairing, the CPU is more than adequate to handle the demands of The Medium. The bottleneck is clearly the GPU, especially at higher resolutions. The data suggests that even a more powerful CPU would not yield significantly higher frame rates, as the RTX 5060 is already maxed out. The CPU’s 65W TDP and efficient 3nm process also mean it won't create excessive heat, but that is a secondary consideration. In summary, the Intel Core Ultra 5 245 provides a solid platform that does not hinder the RTX 5060’s performance in this title.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The following table details the exact average frame rates measured for the Intel Core Ultra 5 245 with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 in The Medium. All data is from the measured FPS results.

| Resolution | Settings | Average FPS | Minimum FPS | Maximum FPS |

| :--------- | :------- | :---------- | :---------- | :---------- |

| 3840x2160 | High | 34 | - | - |

| 3840x2160 | Low | 76 | - | - |

| 3840x2160 | Medium | 48 | 41 | 55 |

| 3840x2160 | Ultra | 27 | - | - |

| 2560x1440 | High | 44 | - | - |

| 2560x1440 | Low | 97 | - | - |

| 2560x1440 | Medium | 61 | 52 | 70 |

| 2560x1440 | Ultra | 35 | - | - |

| 1920x1080 | High | 52 | - | - |

| 1920x1080 | Low | 116 | - | - |

| 1920x1080 | Medium | 72 | 61 | 83 |

| 1920x1080 | Ultra | 41 | - | - |

The data shows a clear and consistent performance hierarchy. The Low preset is the fastest at every resolution, followed by Medium, High, and finally Ultra. The Medium preset is the only tier that provides both a 60+ FPS average at 1080p and 1440p, with its minimum frame rates also staying above 50 FPS. The High and Ultra presets struggle to maintain playable frame rates at higher resolutions, with the 4K Ultra result of 27 FPS being the lowest recorded. The frame time data for the Medium preset at 1080p and 1440p shows a narrow band between the minimum and maximum, indicating good frame pacing. This makes the Medium preset the most reliable choice for a smooth experience, while the Low preset is the fallback for those who prioritize frame rate above all else, especially at 4K.