The Medium

The Medium, a fixed-camera horror title built on Unreal Engine 4, presents a unique stress profile that heavily taxes both the GPU and CPU depending on the resolution and preset. This analysis examines the measured performance of the Intel Core Ultra 7 265 paired with the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT, using the provided benchmark data to interpret the combination's strengths, weaknesses, and optimal configuration.

FAQ

Q: What is the best average frame rate this combo achieves at 1080p?

A: The highest average frame rate recorded at 1920x1080 is 161 FPS, which occurs at the Low settings preset. The Medium preset delivers 101 FPS, High delivers 72 FPS, and Ultra drops to 57 FPS.

Q: Does this combination maintain a playable frame rate at 4K Ultra settings?

A: At 3840x2160 with the Ultra preset, the average frame rate is 38 FPS. This is below the 60 FPS threshold typically considered smooth for action-oriented titles, indicating that the Ultra preset is not viable at this resolution for this hardware configuration.

Q: How does the CPU's multi-threaded performance compare to its closest rival?

A: The Intel Core Ultra 7 265 has an average benchmark score of 64640. Its nearest rival, the AMD EPYC 4464P, scores 64823, which is a 0.3% difference. This places the Ultra 7 265 essentially on par with the EPYC 4464P in multi-threaded workloads.

Q: Is there a significant performance gap between the High and Ultra presets at 1440p?

A: Yes, the data shows a substantial drop. At 2560x1440, the High preset averages 61 FPS, while the Ultra preset averages 48 FPS. This 13 FPS difference represents a 21% reduction in average frame rate for the upgrade from High to Ultra settings.

Q: What is the GPU's memory bandwidth, and how might it affect performance?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT features a 320-bit memory bus with a bandwidth of 800.0 GB/s. This high bandwidth is well-suited for the large textures and complex scenes often found in horror games, helping to maintain frame rates at higher resolutions.

Q: What is the combo's rank among all tested configurations for this game?

A: The combination of the Intel Core Ultra 7 265 and AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT ranks 451st out of 2911 tested combos for The Medium. This places it in the top 15.5% of all configurations in the database.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data reveals a clear hierarchy across presets and resolutions. For a balanced experience, the Medium preset is the most sensible choice. At 1920x1080, it delivers an average of 101 FPS, which is comfortably above the 60 FPS target and provides a 29 FPS advantage over the High preset. At 2560x1440, the Medium preset averages 85 FPS, ensuring smooth gameplay with a substantial visual upgrade over Low. Even at 3840x2160, the Medium preset is the only one that consistently breaks the 60 FPS barrier, averaging 67 FPS. The High preset, while offering better visuals, drops to 61 FPS at 1440p and 48 FPS at 4K, making it a risky choice for those with variable refresh rate monitors.

For users prioritizing maximum visual fidelity, the Ultra preset is only viable at 1080p, where it achieves an average of 57 FPS. At higher resolutions, the Ultra preset's performance degrades significantly, hitting 48 FPS at 1440p and 38 FPS at 4K, which are below the playable threshold for most users. The Low preset is not recommended as a primary choice, as the significant visual downgrade is not worth the frame rate increase over Medium, especially at 1080p where the Medium preset already provides a high frame rate. Therefore, the Medium preset offers the best balance of visual quality and performance across all three tested resolutions.

How This Combo Ranks

The benchmark data shows that this specific CPU-GPU pairing achieves a combo rank of 451 out of 2911 tested combinations in The Medium. This places it in the upper echelon of systems, indicating strong overall capability. However, it is not a top-tier ranking, which suggests that other combinations may offer higher frame rates, likely due to more powerful GPUs or CPUs that are better optimized for this specific game engine.

The rank is a holistic measure, combining both CPU and GPU performance in the context of this game. Given that the GPU has a percentile rank of 55 against all GPUs, and the CPU has a percentile rank of 93 against all CPUs, the combo's overall rank is likely constrained by the GPU. The CPU is clearly a high-performing component, but the GPU, while capable, is not in the top percentile. This indicates that in a GPU-intensive title like The Medium, the graphics card is the primary bottleneck, which aligns with the frame rate scaling observed across different resolutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a detailed view of the system's performance across nine different configurations. At 1920x1080, the frame rates are consistently high. The Low preset leads with an average of 161 FPS. The Medium preset follows with 101 FPS, showing a 60 FPS drop from Low, which is a substantial reduction. High yields 72 FPS, and Ultra trails at 57 FPS. The Medium preset has recorded minimum and maximum values of 86 and 116 FPS, respectively, indicating a 30 FPS variance during gameplay.

At 2560x1440, the performance scales down as expected. The Low preset achieves 136 FPS, which is a 25 FPS decrease from the 1080p result. Medium averages 85 FPS, with a recorded range of 72 to 98 FPS. High drops to 61 FPS, and Ultra falls to 48 FPS. The transition from Medium to High at this resolution is a 24 FPS loss, making High a less attractive option for maintaining a high refresh rate experience.

At 3840x2160, the system's limits become apparent. The Low preset manages 107 FPS, which is still playable. Medium averages 67 FPS, with a range of 57 to 77 FPS. High drops significantly to 48 FPS, and Ultra is the only preset that falls below 40 FPS, averaging just 38 FPS. This data shows a clear pattern: the Medium preset is the only one that provides a consistent 60+ FPS experience at 4K, while the Low preset is the only one that provides a high refresh rate experience at this resolution.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT is the primary driver of frame rate in this configuration, particularly at higher resolutions. Its performance is defined by its architecture and memory subsystem. The GPU features 20 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 320-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 800.0 GB/s. This large memory pool and high bandwidth are crucial for handling the detailed textures and high-resolution assets in The Medium at 4K, preventing texture streaming issues that could cause stuttering.

The GPU's clock speeds are also a factor. It has a base clock of 1387 MHz and a boost clock of 2394 MHz, with a game clock of 2025 MHz. These clocks, combined with 5376 shading units and 192 ROPs, contribute to its raw compute power. The 84 RT cores are present, though the benchmark data does not specify whether ray tracing is enabled in the tested presets. The GPU's 51.48 TFLOPS of FP32 compute power is substantial, but the frame rate data suggests that the GPU is the limiting factor at 4K Ultra, where the average FPS drops to 38.

The GPU's percentile rank of 55 against all GPUs is interesting, as it places it in the middle of the pack. Its average benchmark score of 13745 is close to that of its nearest rivals, such as the AMD Radeon 660M, which scores 13812. This suggests that while the RX 7900 XT is a capable card, its raw benchmark scores are not exceptionally high compared to other GPUs in the database. Its performance in The Medium, however, is strong, indicating that the game is well-optimized for this architecture.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265 provides a robust foundation for this gaming system. With 20 cores and 20 threads, it offers substantial multi-threading capability, which is beneficial for modern games that can utilize multiple cores for physics, AI, and asset streaming. Its base clock of 2.40 GHz and boost clock of 5.30 GHz ensure strong single-threaded performance, which is critical for the main game logic and frame pacing.

The CPU's benchmark scores are impressive. It achieves a multi-core score of 42216 in Cinebench R23 and a single-core score of 5960. These scores place it in the 93rd percentile of all CPUs, indicating top-tier processing power. In comparison to its nearest rivals, it is essentially tied with the AMD EPYC 4464P, which has a 0.3% higher average score, and it is 0.3% ahead of the Intel Core Ultra 7 265F. This level of performance ensures that the CPU will not bottleneck the GPU in most gaming scenarios.

However, in The Medium, the CPU's role is likely secondary to the GPU. The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K shows a consistent drop, which is the signature of a GPU-bound workload. At 1080p Low, the CPU is able to push 161 FPS, indicating it is not a limiting factor at that resolution. The CPU's high single-thread score is particularly relevant for a game like The Medium, which uses fixed camera angles and may have a significant amount of single-threaded rendering logic.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS data across resolutions reveals a clear trend: performance scales inversely with resolution, confirming that the GPU is the primary bottleneck. At the Low preset, the average FPS drops from 161 at 1080p to 136 at 1440p (a 15.5% decrease) and then to 107 at 4K (a 21.3% decrease from 1440p). This scaling is typical of a GPU-bound scenario, where the rendering load increases with the number of pixels.

At the Medium preset, the scaling is similar. The average FPS goes from 101 at 1080p to 85 at 1440p (a 15.8% decrease) and then to 67 at 4K (a 21.2% decrease from 1440p). The consistency of these percentage drops across different presets suggests that the relative performance impact of resolution is independent of the graphics settings, which is a characteristic of a system where the GPU is the limiting factor.

The scaling at the High and Ultra presets is more severe. For High, the FPS drops from 72 at 1080p to 61 at 1440p (a 15.3% decrease) and then to 48 at 4K (a 21.3% decrease from 1440p). For Ultra, the drop is from 57 at 1080p to 48 at 1440p (a 15.8% decrease) and then to 38 at 4K (a 20.8% decrease from 1440p). These consistent percentage drops across all presets strongly indicate that the GPU is the sole limiting factor. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see smaller FPS differences at higher resolutions, as the CPU workload would remain constant while the GPU workload increased. The data shows the opposite, confirming that the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT is the component that determines the frame rate ceiling in this configuration.