The Medium

The Medium, a fixed-camera horror title from 2021, presents an unusual stress profile: it demands both substantial GPU throughput and a CPU capable of maintaining consistent frame pacing. In this analysis of the Intel Core Ultra X7 368H paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, the measured data reveals a configuration that is heavily constrained by its mobile processor at lower resolutions, while the GPU becomes the dominant factor at 4K. The benchmark results show a system that can deliver playable frame rates, but the relationship between settings and resolution is anything but linear, offering a fascinating case study in hardware bottlenecking.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average frame rate this combo achieves at 1080p, and at what settings?

A: The highest recorded average FPS for this configuration is 157, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings. The next highest at this resolution is 98 FPS on Medium, followed by 70 FPS on High and 56 FPS on Ultra.

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

A: The Intel Core Ultra X7 368H has an average benchmark score of 40,518. Its closest rival, the Intel Core 7 253PE, scores 40,557, which represents a delta of -0.1%, meaning the rival is marginally faster. The AMD Ryzen 9 7940H is 0.2% slower, scoring 40,431.

Q: At 4K resolution, what is the frame rate difference between the Low and Ultra presets?

A: At 3840x2160, the Low preset delivers an average of 104 FPS, while the Ultra preset delivers only 37 FPS. This represents a significant 67 FPS drop, or roughly a 64% reduction in performance when moving from the lowest to the highest quality settings.

Q: Which component has a higher percentile ranking within its respective category?

A: The GPU, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, has a percentile rank of 92 among all GPUs, while the CPU, an Intel Core Ultra X7 368H, has a percentile rank of 87 among all CPUs. This indicates the graphics card is more dominant in its field than the processor is in its own.

Q: What is the minimum FPS recorded in the data, and under what conditions?

A: The lowest minimum FPS value recorded is 55, which occurs at 3840x2160 resolution with Medium settings. The only other preset with a reported minimum FPS is 70 at 2560x1440 Medium settings.

Q: How does the system's overall rank in The Medium compare to the total number of tested configurations?

A: This specific combination of CPU and GPU ranks 527th out of 2,911 tested combos in The Medium, placing it in the top 18.1% of all configurations tested for this game.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data for The Medium reveals a clear and consistent hierarchy across all three tested resolutions. The Low preset is the only setting that consistently achieves frame rates above 100 FPS, with 157 FPS at 1080p, 132 FPS at 1440p, and 104 FPS at 4K. This makes Low the only preset capable of fully utilizing a high-refresh-rate display at every resolution. However, the jump to Medium is substantial, with average FPS dropping to 98 at 1080p, 83 at 1440p, and 65 at 4K. These figures suggest that Medium is the optimal balance for a 60 FPS target, as it provides a significant visual upgrade over Low while remaining comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold at all resolutions.

The data implies that High and Ultra presets are less practical for this hardware. At 4K, the High preset averages just 47 FPS, and Ultra drops to 37 FPS, which are below the ideal smoothness threshold for a horror game reliant on atmosphere. At 1440p, High achieves 59 FPS, just under the 60 FPS mark, while Ultra sits at 47 FPS. Even at 1080p, the Ultra preset only manages an average of 56 FPS. For the best experience, the Medium preset offers the most compelling combination of visual fidelity and performance, maintaining an average FPS of 65 or higher across all resolutions and providing a minimum FPS of 55 at 4K and 70 at 1440p. Players who prioritize absolute smoothness over visuals should use Low, while those with G-SYNC or FreeSync displays might find High at 1080p acceptable, though the data shows it does not guarantee a locked 60 FPS.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is the undisputed performance leader in this pairing, evidenced by its 92nd percentile ranking among all GPUs. Its specifications are formidable, featuring 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, yielding a massive 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth. This memory configuration is critical for The Medium, a game known for its dual-world rendering mechanic, which can demand large frame buffers. The GPU's compute capabilities are equally impressive, with 104.8 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 170 RT cores, though the game's fixed-camera angles likely place less emphasis on real-time ray tracing than on raw fill rate and shader complexity.

The benchmark data shows that the GPU is the primary bottleneck at 4K resolution. The frame rate scales dramatically with settings, dropping from 104 FPS on Low to 47 FPS on High and 37 FPS on Ultra. This steep decline indicates that the game's higher presets introduce effects that are highly taxing on the GPU's shading units and texture mapping units. The 680 TMUs and 176 ROPs are being pushed hard at these higher settings, with the Ultra preset likely enabling volumetric effects and high-resolution shadows that saturate the GPU's processing capacity. Interestingly, the GPU's 1,636.8 GTexel/s texture rate and 423.6 GPixel/s pixel rate suggest it has the raw power for high-fidelity textures, but the data shows the game engine's implementation of Ultra settings is too demanding for even this flagship card to maintain high frame rates at 4K.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a comprehensive view of performance scaling. At 1920x1080, the average FPS ranges from 157 on Low to 56 on Ultra. The Medium preset yields 98 FPS (min 84, max 113), and High yields 70 FPS. Moving to 2560x1440, the averages are 132 on Low, 83 on Medium (min 70, max 95), 59 on High, and 47 on Ultra. At 3840x2160, the averages drop to 104 on Low, 65 on Medium (min 55, max 75), 47 on High, and 37 on Ultra.

A notable observation is the diminishing returns and increasing costs at higher resolutions. The difference between Low and Medium at 1080p is 59 FPS, but at 4K, the same settings gap is only 39 FPS. This suggests that the CPU is limiting the Low preset's performance at lower resolutions, preventing it from scaling fully. Conversely, the gap between High and Ultra widens from 14 FPS at 1080p to 10 FPS at 4K, showing that the GPU is becoming the sole limiting factor at these demanding settings. The provided minimum FPS values for Medium settings (84 at 1080p, 70 at 1440p, 55 at 4K) indicate that the game has moments of significant frame dips, likely during scene transitions or when both worlds are rendered simultaneously. These dips are more pronounced at higher resolutions, reinforcing the GPU-bound nature of the game at 4K.

How This Combo Ranks

In the grand scheme of The Medium's performance database, this combination of the Intel Core Ultra X7 368H and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 achieves a rank of 527 out of 2,911 tested combos. This places it in the 82nd percentile of all configurations, which is a strong showing, but not a top-tier result. The rank is likely dragged down by the CPU's performance, as the RTX 5090 is in the top 8% of all GPUs (92nd percentile), while the CPU is in the top 13% (87th percentile). The 527th rank suggests that while the GPU is elite, the processor's limitations prevent this combo from breaking into the top 500.

The data indicates that this combo outperforms the vast majority of systems, but it is not the best possible pairing for this game. The gap between the GPU's high percentile and the combo's overall rank suggests that other combos with slightly weaker GPUs but significantly stronger CPUs might achieve higher frame rates in The Medium, especially at lower resolutions where the CPU bottleneck is most apparent. The combo's rank relative to its components implies that The Medium is not purely a GPU-bound title; it has a CPU component that is sensitive to single-thread performance and cache latency, areas where the 368H, despite its 16 cores, may not excel.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra X7 368H is a 16-core, 16-thread mobile processor based on the Panther Lake architecture. It has a base clock of 2.00 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz, with 18 MB of shared L3 cache. In synthetic benchmarks, it scores 28,221 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 3,984 in single-core, indicating strong multi-threaded performance but moderate single-thread capability. The CPU's percentile rank of 87 is respectable, but its nearest rivals, such as the Intel Core 7 253PE, are virtually identical in performance, with a delta of -0.1%.

In The Medium, the CPU's role becomes evident when examining the FPS scaling across resolutions. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 157 FPS, but this is likely a CPU-limited ceiling. The RTX 5090 is capable of far more, but the CPU cannot feed the GPU data fast enough to exceed this frame rate. Evidence of this is the relatively small FPS drop from 1080p Low (157 FPS) to 1440p Low (132 FPS) and 4K Low (104 FPS). If the GPU were the bottleneck at 1080p Low, we would see a much more significant drop when moving to 4K. Instead, the 34% drop from 1080p to 4K at Low settings suggests the CPU is still partially limiting performance even at 4K. The game's reliance on a single main thread for rendering logic likely means the CPU's 5.00 GHz boost clock and 192 KB of L1 cache per core are more critical than the total core count. The data shows that despite having 16 cores, the game doesn't fully utilize them, as the FPS gains from higher resolutions are not linear, indicating a per-core performance limit.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K provides a clear picture of where the bottleneck lies. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 157 at 1080p to 132 at 1440p and 104 at 4K. This represents a 16% drop from 1080p to 1440p and a 21% drop from 1440p to 4K. This scaling is relatively gentle, suggesting that the CPU is the primary limiter. If the GPU were the sole bottleneck, we would expect a more dramatic drop, closer to 50% or more for a 4x pixel increase.

At Medium settings, the FPS drops from 98 at 1080p to 83 at 1440p (a 15% drop) and then to 65 at 4K (a 22% drop from 1440p). The scaling pattern is similar, but the absolute FPS is lower, indicating a more balanced load. At High and Ultra settings, the scaling becomes steeper. High drops from 70 at 1080p to 59 at 1440p (16% drop) and then to 47 at 4K (20% drop). Ultra drops from 56 at 1080p to 47 at 1440p (16% drop) and then to 37 at 4K (21% drop). The consistent ~20% drop from 1440p to 4K across all settings, compared to a ~16% drop from 1080p to 1440p, suggests that the GPU becomes more of a limiting factor at 4K, but the CPU is still significantly involved. The data implies that the Intel Core Ultra X7 368H, with its 16 threads and 18 MB of L3 cache, is just barely sufficient to keep the RTX 5090 fed at 1080p, but at higher resolutions, the GPU's workload increases enough to mask some of the CPU's limitations. The result is a system that scales better than a purely CPU-bound one, but worse than a purely GPU-bound one, indicating a balanced but not ideal pairing for maximizing The Medium's frame rates.