The Medium

The Medium presents a demanding fixed-camera horror experience, and the combination of the Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and AMD Radeon RX 9060 produces a specific performance profile that requires careful settings management. The measured data indicates that this pairing is capable of delivering playable frame rates, but the experience is heavily dependent on resolution and quality presets, with the GPU emerging as the primary constraint in most scenarios. This analysis breaks down the benchmark results to provide a clear picture of what this hardware combo can achieve in this title.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in The Medium?

A: Based on the measured FPS data, 1920x1080 provides the most consistently playable experience, with an average of 63 FPS at Medium settings and 101 FPS at Low settings. At 2560x1440, the Medium preset drops to 53 FPS, while at 3840x2160, even the Medium preset only achieves 42 FPS, indicating that 1080p is the safest target for smooth gameplay.

Q: How does the combo's rank in this game compare to other tested systems?

A: The combo ranks 1648 out of 2911 tested combinations, placing it in the 56th percentile of all systems tested in this game. This suggests it is a mid-pack performer, capable of running the game but not at the highest end of the performance spectrum.

Q: Which settings preset offers the best balance between visual quality and performance?

A: The Medium preset at 1920x1080, delivering 63 FPS average with a minimum of 53 FPS, offers the best balance. It provides a significant improvement over the High preset’s 45 FPS while maintaining a frame rate that is more than adequate for this genre.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU more of a limiting factor in this game?

A: The data strongly indicates the GPU is the limiting factor. As resolution increases from 1080p to 4K, the average FPS at Medium settings drops from 63 to 42, a pattern typical of GPU-bound scenarios. The CPU’s high core count and clock speeds are more than sufficient, as evidenced by its 96th percentile ranking among all CPUs.

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

A: Yes, but only with significant compromises. At 3840x2160, the Low preset achieves 67 FPS, while the High preset drops to 30 FPS and Ultra to 24 FPS. The Medium preset offers a playable 42 FPS, but it is the only mid-range option that crosses the 40 FPS threshold at this resolution.

Q: How does the RX 9060 compare to its nearest rivals in terms of raw GPU score?

A: The RX 9060’s average benchmark score is 16014, which is 0.7% lower than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti’s score of 16129. It is also 1% higher than the AMD Radeon R9 370X and 1% higher than the AMD Radeon RX 7700, placing it in a very tight competitive cluster.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and AMD Radeon RX 9060 combination secures the 1648th position out of 2911 tested combos in The Medium. This rank places it firmly in the middle of the performance distribution, indicating that while it is not a top-tier enthusiast setup, it is also far from a low-end configuration. The rank suggests that a significant portion of tested systems outperform this combo in this specific game, which is a direct consequence of the GPU’s performance ceiling.

Examining the CPU’s standing provides context for the combo’s overall rank. The Core Ultra 7 270K Plus achieves a 96th percentile ranking among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 93785. Its nearest rival, the Intel Xeon 6520P, has a nearly identical average score of 93786 with a 0% delta, indicating the CPU’s performance is at parity with that specific server chip. The AMD EPYC 4564P is 1.5% ahead, and the AMD EPYC 9175F is 1.9% ahead, showing the CPU is not holding the system back.

In contrast, the GPU’s percentile ranking is 59th among all GPUs, with an average score of 16014. The combination of a top-4% CPU with a mid-pack GPU creates a bottleneck where the graphics card limits the system’s overall potential in this game. The combo’s 1648th rank out of 2911 is a direct reflection of this imbalance, as the CPU has far more headroom than the GPU can utilize. The data suggests that the system’s position in the rankings is almost entirely dictated by the RX 9060’s capabilities.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 9060 is the central component determining frame rates in The Medium. With 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, the GPU provides a memory bandwidth of 288.0 GB/s. This memory configuration is a key factor in the game’s performance scaling, as higher resolutions and texture loads increase the demand on the memory subsystem. The GPU’s boost clock of 2990 MHz and game clock of 2400 MHz are the speeds at which it operates during typical gaming loads, directly influencing its processing throughput.

The GPU’s raw compute capabilities, measured at 21.43 TFLOPS for FP32 operations, are the foundation of its rendering performance. The 1792 shading units and 64 ROPs determine how quickly it can process pixels. The measured FPS data shows a clear correlation between the GPU’s workload and frame rates. At 1920x1080 with the Low preset, the GPU achieves 101 FPS, but this drops to 36 FPS at the Ultra preset. This 65% reduction in performance from Low to Ultra highlights how the GPU’s resources are taxed by the game’s higher-quality effects.

The GPU’s position relative to its rivals reinforces its mid-range status. Its average benchmark score of 16014 is nearly identical to the RTX 3060 Ti’s 16129, with a delta of -0.7%. This indicates that in synthetic tests, the RX 9060 is essentially on par with that older NVIDIA card. In game-specific results, the performance at 2560x1440 Medium (53 FPS) and 3840x2160 Medium (42 FPS) shows that the GPU can handle the game, but it requires settings adjustments to maintain a stable frame rate. The 8 GB VRAM capacity may also become a limiting factor at Ultra settings with high-resolution textures, as the data shows a significant FPS drop at those settings.

Settings Recommendations

The optimal settings for this combo depend heavily on the target resolution. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset provides the best experience, with an average FPS of 63 and a minimum of 53. This preset offers a substantial improvement over High (45 FPS) and Ultra (36 FPS) while maintaining a frame rate that is well-suited for a horror game, where smooth camera movement is crucial. The Low preset at 101 FPS is available for those seeking maximum fluidity, but it sacrifices significant visual fidelity.

For 2560x1440, the Medium preset remains the most balanced choice, delivering 53 FPS average with a minimum of 45 FPS. The High preset drops to 38 FPS, which begins to feel less smooth, and the Ultra preset falls to 30 FPS, which is playable but not ideal. The data suggests that at 1440p, users should stick to Medium to ensure a consistent experience. The Low preset at 85 FPS is an option for competitive play, but it undermines the game’s atmospheric visuals.

At 3840x2160, the situation becomes more challenging. The Medium preset offers a playable 42 FPS, which is the only preset above the 40 FPS mark that provides moderate visual quality. The Low preset achieves 67 FPS but is visually barren. The High preset at 30 FPS and Ultra at 24 FPS are not recommended for a smooth experience. For 4K, the Medium preset is the clear recommendation, as it balances the game’s visual demands with the GPU’s capabilities. The measured data indicates that the Medium preset is the "sweet spot" for this hardware combination across all resolutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the benchmark results show a clear progression across quality presets. The Low preset delivers the highest average of 101 FPS, followed by Medium at 63 FPS (with a minimum of 53 and maximum of 72), High at 45 FPS, and Ultra at 36 FPS. The difference between Low and Medium is 38 FPS, while the gap from Medium to High is 18 FPS, and from High to Ultra is 9 FPS. This indicates diminishing returns as settings increase, with the most significant performance hit occurring when moving from Low to Medium.

At 2560x1440, the same pattern emerges but with lower overall numbers. Low averages 85 FPS, Medium 53 FPS (minimum 45, maximum 61), High 38 FPS, and Ultra 30 FPS. The drop from 1080p to 1440p at Medium settings is 10 FPS (from 63 to 53), showing a moderate performance penalty. The minimum FPS at Medium (45) is still above the 30 FPS threshold, suggesting a stable experience. At High and Ultra, the frame rates of 38 and 30 FPS respectively are approaching the edge of playability.

At 3840x2160, the GPU is pushed to its limits. Low averages 67 FPS, Medium 42 FPS (minimum 35, maximum 48), High 30 FPS, and Ultra 24 FPS. The Medium preset’s minimum of 35 FPS is the lowest recorded across all resolutions for that setting, indicating potential stutters in demanding scenes. The gap between Low and Medium is 25 FPS, while the gap between Medium and High is 12 FPS, and High to Ultra is 6 FPS. The performance at 4K Ultra is the worst case, at 24 FPS, which is not a playable experience for most users. The data clearly shows that 4K requires the Low or Medium presets for acceptable performance.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus is a high-end processor that provides ample headroom for this game. With 24 cores and 24 threads, it offers substantial multi-threading capabilities. Its base clock of 3.70 GHz and boost clock of 5.50 GHz ensure high single-threaded performance, which is often critical for game logic and physics. The CPU’s large cache hierarchy, including 36 MB of shared L3 cache, helps reduce memory latency and improve data access speeds.

The CPU’s benchmark scores confirm its strength. It achieves a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 44253 and a single-core score of 2439. In Passmark tests, it scores 68574 in multi-thread and 5068 in single-thread. These results place it in the 96th percentile of all CPUs, indicating it is among the top performers. Its average benchmark score of 93785 is nearly identical to the Intel Xeon 6520P’s 93786, showing that it performs at a similar level to that server-grade processor.

In the context of The Medium, the CPU’s role is to feed the GPU with data and process the game’s logic. The benchmark data shows that the CPU is not a bottleneck, as the FPS scales directly with GPU load. The fact that the combo ranks 1648th out of 2911, while the CPU ranks in the 96th percentile, proves that the GPU is the limiting factor. The CPU’s high core count and clock speeds are more than adequate for this title, and it is unlikely that upgrading the CPU would yield any noticeable performance gains in this game, as the GPU is already at its maximum output.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS data across resolutions reveals a clear scaling pattern that points to the GPU as the primary bottleneck. At Medium settings, the average FPS drops from 63 at 1920x1080 to 53 at 2560x1440, a reduction of 15.9%. Moving from 1440p to 3840x2160, the average FPS drops from 53 to 42, a reduction of 20.8%. The overall drop from 1080p to 4K is 33.3% at Medium settings, indicating a substantial performance penalty as pixel count increases.

This scaling behavior is typical of a GPU-bound system. When the CPU is the bottleneck, frame rates tend to remain more consistent across resolutions, as the CPU’s workload does not increase proportionally with resolution. In this case, the frame rate drops significantly at higher resolutions, which directly corresponds to the increased pixel rendering workload on the RX 9060. The 8 GB VRAM and 288.0 GB/s bandwidth are likely being pushed to their limits at 4K, especially at higher quality presets.

The data for the Low preset shows a similar trend, with FPS dropping from 101 at 1080p to 85 at 1440p and then to 67 at 4K. The difference between 1080p and 4K is 34 FPS, a 33.7% reduction. This consistent pattern across presets confirms that the GPU’s computational and memory resources are the determining factor for performance. The CPU’s high clock speeds and core count are not being saturated, as evidenced by the fact that the FPS scales almost linearly with the number of pixels being rendered. This analysis indicates that users should prioritize resolution over settings to maintain a target frame rate, as lowering resolution provides the most direct path to higher FPS with this hardware combination.