The Medium

The Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti delivers a playable but demanding experience in The Medium, with performance heavily dictated by the graphics preset and resolution. The data indicates that the RTX 3070 Ti is the primary performance limiter, as the CPU provides ample headroom across all tested configurations. The measured frame rates show a clear trade-off between visual fidelity and smoothness, with the Medium preset emerging as the most balanced choice for consistent gameplay.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data for The Medium shows that the Medium preset offers the best balance between visual quality and performance. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset achieves an average of 81 FPS, which drops to 68 FPS at 2560x1440 and further to 53 FPS at 3840x2160. These figures represent a substantial improvement over the High preset, which averages 58 FPS at 1080p and 49 FPS at 1440p, while maintaining a far more stable experience than the Ultra preset, which falls to 46 FPS at 1080p and 30 FPS at 4K.

The Low preset provides the highest frame rates—129 FPS at 1080p, 109 FPS at 1440p, and 85 FPS at 4K—but it likely sacrifices significant visual detail in a game known for its atmospheric horror presentation. The Medium preset, by contrast, retains more graphical features while still delivering frame rates above 50 FPS even at 4K. For players targeting a 60 FPS experience at 1440p, the Medium preset is the only tested option that consistently meets this threshold, as the High preset falls short at 49 FPS and Ultra at 39 FPS.

At 1080p, the Medium preset's 81 FPS average provides a comfortable margin above 60 FPS, with minimum frame rates of 69 FPS ensuring smooth gameplay during demanding scenes. The jump from Medium to High at 1080p costs 23 FPS (from 81 to 58), which is a significant penalty for what is likely a modest visual improvement. The data strongly suggests that Medium is the optimal preset for this combination, offering the best compromise between fluidity and fidelity across all resolutions.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus is a 24-core, 24-thread processor based on the Arrow Lake Refresh architecture, built on a 3 nm process by TSMC. Its base clock of 3.70 GHz can boost up to 5.50 GHz, and it carries a 36 MB shared L3 cache. In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU achieves a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 44253 and a single-core score of 2439, with a Passmark multithread score of 68574 and a single-thread score of 5068. These results place the processor in the 96th percentile among all CPUs, indicating top-tier performance.

The CPU's role in The Medium appears to be secondary to the GPU, as the measured frame rates scale predictably with resolution. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo achieves 129 FPS, but this drops to 109 FPS at 1440p and 85 FPS at 4K, suggesting that the GPU becomes increasingly strained as pixel count rises. The CPU's 24 cores and high boost clock provide substantial headroom, as even at the lowest tested settings and resolution, the frame rates do not indicate a CPU bottleneck. The Passmark data compression score of 804322 and floating-point math score of 229491 suggest strong computational capabilities that are unlikely to hinder gaming performance in this title.

The processor's nearest rivals in average benchmark score include the Intel Xeon 6520P with a deltaPct of 0, the AMD EPYC 4564P at -1.5%, the AMD EPYC 9175F at -1.9%, and the AMD EPYC 4565P at -2.1%. These comparisons show that the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus performs nearly identically to the Xeon 6520P and slightly ahead of the EPYC server processors, though these are workstation-class chips rather than direct gaming competitors. The CPU's high single-thread score is particularly relevant for The Medium, which likely relies on a few heavily loaded threads for game logic and rendering commands.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is built on the Ampere architecture with the GA104 chip, fabricated on Samsung's 8 nm process. It features 6144 shading units, 192 texture mapping units, and 96 raster operation units, along with 48 RT cores and 192 tensor cores. The GPU operates at a base clock of 1575 MHz with a boost clock of 1770 MHz, and its 8 GB of GDDR6X memory runs at 19 Gbps effective on a 256-bit bus, delivering 608.3 GB/s of bandwidth. The card's FP32 performance is rated at 21.75 TFLOPS, and its Passmark G3D score of 23356 places it in the 75th percentile among all GPUs.

The RTX 3070 Ti's performance in The Medium shows clear signs of being the limiting component. At 1080p with Low settings, the GPU delivers 129 FPS, but this drops dramatically to 46 FPS at Ultra settings—a 64% reduction. The same pattern holds at 1440p, where Low yields 109 FPS and Ultra only 39 FPS. At 4K, the gap widens further, with Low at 85 FPS and Ultra at just 30 FPS. This scaling indicates that the GPU's rendering workload, particularly at higher settings and resolutions, outstrips its 8 GB VRAM capacity and raw compute power.

The GPU's nearest rivals in average benchmark score include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Mobile at +0.1%, the AMD Radeon RX 6800 at -0.5%, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti at +0.5%, and the AMD Radeon RX 6700 at -1.6%. These comparisons place the RTX 3070 Ti in a competitive position against its peers, though the measured frame rates in The Medium suggest that the game's specific demands—likely involving high-resolution textures and ray-traced effects—push the GPU to its limits. The 8 GB VRAM, while adequate for 1080p and 1440p gaming, may become a constraint at 4K with higher presets, as evidenced by the steep drop from 53 FPS at Medium to 38 FPS at High.

FAQ

Q: What is the best preset for 60 FPS gaming at 1440p?

A: The Medium preset achieves an average of 68 FPS at 2560x1440, with minimum frame rates of 58 FPS. The High preset falls short at 49 FPS, and Ultra drops to 39 FPS, making Medium the only tested option that consistently exceeds 60 FPS at this resolution.

*Q: Can this combination run The Medium at 4K?*

A: Yes, but only at lower settings. At 3840x2160, the Low preset averages 85 FPS, and the Medium preset averages 53 FPS. The High preset drops to 38 FPS, and Ultra averages just 30 FPS, which may be borderline for playable frame rates.

Q: How does the RTX 3070 Ti compare to its closest rivals?

A: The RTX 3070 Ti's average benchmark score of 29945 is nearly identical to the RTX 5070 Mobile (29928, +0.1%), the RX 6800 (30095, -0.5%), and the RTX 2080 Ti (29783, +0.5%). It trails the RX 6700 by a small margin (30433, -1.6%).

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

A: The GPU is the clear bottleneck. Frame rates drop significantly as resolution increases—from 129 FPS at 1080p Low to 85 FPS at 4K Low—while the CPU's high benchmark scores (Cinebench R23 multi-core 44253) indicate it has ample headroom for this title.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between 1080p and 4K at Medium settings?

A: At Medium settings, the average frame rate drops from 81 FPS at 1920x1080 to 68 FPS at 2560x1440 and then to 53 FPS at 3840x2160. This represents a 34.6% reduction from 1080p to 4K.

Q: Does the Ultra preset provide a playable experience?

A: At 1080p, the Ultra preset averages 46 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold but still playable. At 1440p it drops to 39 FPS, and at 4K it falls to 30 FPS, making the Ultra preset suitable only for players who prioritize visual quality over smoothness.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a consistent pattern of performance degradation as resolution increases, which strongly indicates that the GPU is the limiting component. At Low settings, the average frame rate drops from 129 FPS at 1080p to 109 FPS at 1440p (a 15.5% decrease) and then to 85 FPS at 4K (a 22% decrease from 1440p). This scaling is less severe than at higher settings, suggesting that at Low settings, the game's rendering workload is less demanding on the GPU's memory bandwidth and compute units.

At Medium settings, the frame rate falls from 81 FPS at 1080p to 68 FPS at 1440p (a 16% drop) and then to 53 FPS at 4K (a 22% drop from 1440p). The High settings show a steeper decline, with 58 FPS at 1080p dropping to 49 FPS at 1440p (a 15.5% decrease) and then to 38 FPS at 4K (a 22.4% decrease). The Ultra settings exhibit the most dramatic scaling, falling from 46 FPS at 1080p to 39 FPS at 1440p (a 15.2% decrease) and then to 30 FPS at 4K (a 23.1% decrease).

This consistent pattern of roughly 15-16% drops from 1080p to 1440p and 22-23% drops from 1440p to 4K across all settings indicates that the GPU's pixel throughput is the primary constraint. The RTX 3070 Ti's 608.3 GB/s memory bandwidth and 21.75 TFLOPS FP32 performance are being taxed by the increasing pixel count, while the CPU's high single-thread score of 2439 in Cinebench R23 ensures it is not a limiting factor in this resolution scaling.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the benchmark results show a clear hierarchy across settings. The Low preset delivers the highest average at 129 FPS, followed by Medium at 81 FPS with minimum and maximum frame rates of 69 and 93 FPS respectively. The High preset achieves 58 FPS, and the Ultra preset falls to 46 FPS. This represents a 64.3% reduction from Low to Ultra, indicating that the RTX 3070 Ti's performance is heavily influenced by the graphical settings at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the same pattern persists but with lower overall frame rates. The Low preset averages 109 FPS, Medium averages 68 FPS (with min/max of 58/78 FPS), High averages 49 FPS, and Ultra averages 39 FPS. The reduction from Low to Ultra is 64.2%, nearly identical to the 1080p scaling, suggesting that the GPU's relative performance across settings remains consistent regardless of resolution.

At 3840x2160, the frame rates drop further. The Low preset averages 85 FPS, Medium averages 53 FPS (with min/max of 45/61 FPS), High averages 38 FPS, and Ultra averages 30 FPS. The reduction from Low to Ultra is 64.7%, showing that the GPU's performance scaling is remarkably stable across all tested resolutions. The Medium preset's 4K performance of 53 FPS is the most notable result, as it remains above the 30 FPS threshold often considered the minimum for playable frame rates, while the High and Ultra presets fall below 40 FPS.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti combination ranks 978th out of 2911 tested combos in The Medium, placing it in the 66.4th percentile of all tested systems. This ranking reflects a solid mid-to-upper tier position, indicating that while the combo is capable of running the game, it does not achieve the top-tier performance of the highest-end configurations.

The CPU's 96th percentile ranking among all CPUs (with an average benchmark score of 93785) is notably higher than the combo's overall game ranking, confirming that the processor is not the limiting factor. The GPU's 75th percentile ranking (with an average score of 29945) is more closely aligned with the combo's game performance, further supporting the conclusion that the RTX 3070 Ti's capabilities define the system's overall gaming experience in this title.

The combo's position at 978th out of 2911 means that approximately 66% of tested systems perform better in The Medium, while 34% perform worse. This places the combo in the upper-middle range of the performance distribution, consistent with the measured frame rates that show playable performance at 1080p and 1440p with Medium settings, but struggle at 4K with higher presets. The data suggests that this combination is well-suited for 1080p and 1440p gaming in The Medium with balanced settings, while 4K gaming is only viable at Low or Medium presets.