The Medium

The Intel Core Ultra 9 185H paired with the AMD Radeon 880M places at rank 2843 out of 2911 tested combos in The Medium. This position places the combo in the bottom percentile of all tested configurations, indicating that this hardware pairing struggles significantly with this specific title. The rank reflects the cumulative performance ceiling imposed by the integrated graphics solution, which is the primary constraint in this configuration.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo rank of 2843 out of 2911 tested combinations places this system in the bottom 2.3% of all results for The Medium. This is a decisive indicator that the hardware is not suited for a smooth gaming experience in this title, regardless of the settings chosen. The rank is a direct consequence of the AMD Radeon 880M's position in the GPU hierarchy, where it sits at the 43rd percentile against all GPUs. This means that more than half of all GPUs tested outperform it, and in a demanding horror title like The Medium, that deficit becomes critical.

The CPU component of this combo, the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H, is a high-end mobile processor that ranks at the 85th percentile against all CPUs. This creates a significant imbalance in the system. The data shows a processor that is capable of handling complex calculations and physics, but it is paired with a graphics solution that cannot translate that processing power into frame rates. The benchmark results indicate that the GPU becomes the bottleneck at every resolution and settings combination tested, making the CPU's raw power largely irrelevant for this game's performance metrics.

When examining the nearest rival GPUs, the AMD Radeon 880M has an average benchmark score of 8436. Its closest competitor, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675MX, scores 8427, showing a delta of just 0.1%. This effectively places the 880M in the same performance tier as a mobile GPU from a previous generation. The NVIDIA GeForce MX330 is only 0.3% slower, and the AMD Radeon HD 8870M is also 0.3% behind. This comparison underscores that while the 880M is a modern integrated solution, its absolute performance is comparable to older discrete entry-level graphics cards, which is a poor match for the demands of The Medium.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon 880M is an integrated graphics processor based on the RDNA 3.5 architecture. Its performance in The Medium is the single most important factor determining the system's overall capability. The GPU has a base clock of 400 MHz and a boost clock of 2900 MHz. These clocks are the operational speeds at which the GPU attempts to render frames, but the architecture's limited resources are the real constraint.

The GPU features 768 shading units, 48 texture mapping units, and 16 raster output pipelines. These are the core components responsible for pixel and texture processing. With only 16 ROPs, the GPU is severely limited in its ability to finalize pixels for display, which directly impacts fill rate and high-resolution performance. The pixel rate is 46.40 GPixel/s, and the texture rate is 139.2 GTexel/s. These figures, while measurable, are far below what is needed to maintain fluid gameplay in a game with the visual complexity of The Medium.

The memory configuration is "System Shared," meaning the GPU uses the system's main memory rather than dedicated VRAM. The memory bus width and bandwidth are listed as "System Shared" and "System Dependent," respectively. This architecture means that the GPU's performance is also tied to the speed of the system's DDR5 memory and the memory controller. The system memory bandwidth is listed as 89.6 GB/s, which is shared between the CPU and GPU. This shared bandwidth can become a contention point, especially at higher resolutions where the GPU needs to access larger textures and framebuffers. The FP32 performance of 4.454 TFLOPS provides a theoretical ceiling for compute work, but the memory system and ROP limitations prevent this from being realized in practice.

FAQ

Q: Why is the performance so low at 4K resolution?

A: At 3840x2160, the average frame rates range from 10 FPS at Ultra settings to 28 FPS at Low settings. The GPU's limited ROP count of 16 and the shared memory bandwidth are insufficient to handle the pixel fill rate required at this resolution, making it unplayable.

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo?

A: The data shows that 1920x1080 provides the highest average frame rates. At Low settings, the system achieves 43 FPS, which is the only settings and resolution combination that approaches a playable frame rate.

Q: How does the CPU's performance compare to its rivals?

A: The Intel Core Ultra 9 185H has an average benchmark score of 35670. Its closest rival, the AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 350, scores 35719, showing a negligible delta of -0.1%. The CPU is competitive with its peers, but this does not translate to gaming performance in this title.

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

A: The benchmark results indicate the AMD Radeon 880M is the definitive bottleneck. The CPU's percentile rank is 85, while the GPU's is 43. The frame rates scale with resolution and settings changes in a way that is typical of a GPU-bound scenario.

Q: Can this system run The Medium at a stable 30 FPS?

A: No. The only measured result that exceeds 30 FPS is at 1920x1080 with Low settings, which averages 43 FPS. However, at Medium settings, the average drops to 27 FPS. There is no configuration that provides a stable 30 FPS with a margin for error.

Q: What is the performance difference between Low and Ultra settings at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, the average frame rate drops from 43 FPS at Low settings to 15 FPS at Ultra settings. This is a 28 FPS reduction, or a 65% performance loss, when moving to the highest quality preset.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data provides a clear picture of the performance envelope for this combo. The only configuration that achieves an average frame rate above 30 FPS is 1920x1080 with Low settings, which yields 43 FPS. This is the only viable option for a playable experience, though it will still have moments of frame rate dips. The Medium setting at 1080p averages 27 FPS, which is on the border of playability but may feel inconsistent. For a more stable experience, the Low preset at 1080p is the clear choice.

At 2560x1440, the performance is worse across the board. The Low setting averages 36 FPS, which is still technically below the 60 FPS target and is only slightly better than the 1080p Medium setting. The 4K resolution is not viable for any settings preset, with the highest average being 28 FPS at Low. The data suggests that users should not attempt to play at 4K or 1440p with higher quality presets, as the frame rates will be in the single digits or low twenties. The Ultra preset is effectively a slideshow at all resolutions, with the highest average being 15 FPS at 1080p. Based on the measured rows, the best experience is achieved by setting the resolution to 1920x1080 and the quality preset to Low.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the performance profile shows a steep drop as settings increase. The Low preset delivers an average of 43 FPS. Moving to Medium reduces the average to 27 FPS, with a minimum of 23 FPS and a maximum of 31 FPS. The High preset further reduces the average to 19 FPS. The Ultra preset brings the average down to 15 FPS. This progression shows a 28 FPS difference between the lowest and highest settings at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the same pattern is observed but with lower absolute numbers. The Low preset averages 36 FPS. The Medium preset averages 22 FPS, with a minimum of 19 FPS and a maximum of 26 FPS. The High preset averages 16 FPS. The Ultra preset averages 13 FPS. The delta between Low and Ultra here is 23 FPS.

At 3840x2160, the performance is critically low. The Low preset averages 28 FPS. The Medium preset averages 18 FPS, with a minimum of 15 FPS and a maximum of 20 FPS. The High preset averages 13 FPS. The Ultra preset averages 10 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra at this resolution is 18 FPS. The data shows that the frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is significant, even at the same settings.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 9 185H is a high-performance mobile processor with 16 cores and 22 threads. Its base clock is 3.90 GHz, and it can boost up to 5.10 GHz. The CPU is based on the Meteor Lake architecture and is manufactured on a 7 nm process. It has a large cache configuration, including 24 MB of shared L3 cache. In synthetic benchmarks, this CPU performs strongly, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 17984.5 and a single-core score of 1810.5.

However, the CPU's role in The Medium is secondary to the GPU. The benchmark results show that the CPU is not the limiting factor. The CPU's percentile rank of 85 is significantly higher than the GPU's rank of 43. This suggests that the CPU is more than capable of feeding the GPU with draw calls and processing game logic. The CPU's nearest rivals, such as the AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 350 and the Intel Core 7 250H, have average scores that are within 0.2% of the Core Ultra 9 185H. This indicates that the CPU is performing as expected and is not a source of performance shortfall in this specific game. The bottleneck is clearly the integrated graphics solution.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K is a critical indicator of the system's limiting component. At Low settings, the average frame rate drops from 43 FPS at 1080p to 36 FPS at 1440p and finally to 28 FPS at 4K. This represents a 35% reduction in performance when moving from 1080p to 4K. At Medium settings, the drop is from 27 FPS to 22 FPS to 18 FPS, a 33% reduction from 1080p to 4K. At High settings, the numbers are 19 FPS, 16 FPS, and 13 FPS, a 32% reduction.

The consistent percentage drop across all settings is a classic sign of a GPU-bound scenario. If the CPU were the bottleneck, the frame rates would remain more constant across resolutions because the CPU's workload does not change significantly with resolution. Instead, the data shows that as the pixel count increases, the GPU must work harder, and the frame rates drop accordingly. The 4K resolution requires processing four times the number of pixels as 1080p. The fact that the frame rate does not drop by a factor of four, but rather by roughly a third, suggests that the GPU is already so saturated at 1080p that the additional workload at higher resolutions has a diminishing impact on the overall frame time. This further confirms that the AMD Radeon 880M is the definitive limiting component in this configuration, and no amount of CPU performance can compensate for its limited graphics processing power.