Inside

The Intel Core i5-12400 and Intel Arc B570 combination delivers a wide range of performance in Inside, a 2016 puzzle platformer that is far more demanding at 4K than its art style suggests. The measured data shows a clear pattern: at 1080p and 1440p, the system has ample headroom for the highest settings, while at 4K, only the lower presets maintain the 60 FPS playability threshold. This analysis walks through the exact frame rates, settings, and system roles based solely on the measured benchmark results.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The benchmark data provides a full spectrum of performance across three resolutions and four quality presets. At 1920x1080, the system is never challenged. With Low settings, the average frame rate hits 240 FPS, which is the peak of the measured range. Moving to Medium, the average drops to 192 FPS, with a minimum of 163 FPS and a maximum of 221 FPS. High settings yield 120 FPS average, and even the demanding Ultra preset maintains a 114 FPS average. There is no scenario at 1080p where the system approaches the 60 FPS playable threshold; the lowest recorded average, 114 FPS at Ultra, is still 90% above the threshold.

At 2560x1440, the pattern continues but with lower absolute numbers. Low settings produce an average of 172 FPS. Medium averages 138 FPS, with a minimum of 117 FPS and a maximum of 159 FPS. High settings average 86 FPS. The Ultra preset, despite being the most demanding, still averages 82 FPS, which is comfortably above the 60 FPS target. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1440p is 90 FPS, indicating that the GPU is the primary scaling factor; however, even the Ultra preset leaves significant performance on the table relative to the playability threshold.

The most stress-inducing scenario is 3840x2160. Here, Low settings average 108 FPS, which is still playable. Medium averages 87 FPS, with a minimum of 74 FPS and a maximum of 100 FPS, representing the best 4K result for consistent frame times. High drops to an average of 54 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold, and Ultra falls further to 52 FPS. The delta between Low and Ultra at 4K is 56 FPS, showing a much steeper performance cliff than at lower resolutions. Notably, the 4K High setting is the only measured configuration (aside from 4K Ultra) that cannot sustain 60 FPS.

Best Settings per Resolution

For a 60 FPS target, the data identifies the most demanding preset that remains playable at each resolution. At 1920x1080, the best setting is Ultra, which achieves an average of 114 FPS. This resolution is effectively unconstrained by the hardware; all presets exceed the threshold by a significant margin.

At 2560x1440, the best setting is also Ultra, with an average of 82 FPS. This is 22 FPS above the 60 FPS minimum, providing a comfortable buffer for demanding scenes. The 82 FPS average is 36.7% higher than the High preset at 4K, highlighting that 1440p Ultra is the sweet spot for maximizing visual fidelity without sacrificing smoothness.

At 3840x2160, the situation reverses. The most demanding playable setting is Medium, which averages 87 FPS. While Low also clears the threshold (108 FPS), Medium offers improved visual quality with a sufficient frame rate. The High preset, at 54 FPS, and Ultra, at 52 FPS, are both below the 60 FPS playable threshold and therefore are not recommended for 4K play.

Similar Performance Alternatives

The nearest rivals for the Intel Core i5-12400 provide context for CPU scaling in this system. The CPU’s average benchmark score of 18683 is nearly identical to the AMD EPYC 7643, which scores 18697 (a delta of -0.1%), and the Intel Core i7-1355U, which scores 18730 (delta of -0.3%). The AMD Ryzen AI 5 330 is slightly higher at 18811 (delta of -0.7%), while the Intel Core i3-14100F scores 18519 (delta of +0.9%). These deltas are all within 1%, indicating that for games like Inside, which are not CPU-bound at these frame rates, any of these processors would deliver essentially identical performance.

For the Intel Arc B570, the nearest rivals show a similar clustering. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile scores 20534, a 0.1% delta from the B570’s 20556. The Intel Arc A750 scores 20582, a -0.1% delta. The NVIDIA Quadro M4000M (20480, +0.4%) and AMD Rodeon R9 M390X (20662, -0.5%) are also within 1%. This suggests that users with those GPUs would see nearly identical frame rates in Inside, all else equal. The Arc B570’s performance is effectively indistinguishable from these rivals, meaning any of the four alternative GPUs would produce the same playability verdicts in this game.

FAQ

Q: Can this PC run Inside at 1920x1080 with the highest settings?

A: Yes. The Ultra preset at 1080p averages 114 FPS, well above the 60 FPS threshold.

Q: What is the highest quality setting that stays at or above 60 FPS at 4K?

A: At 3840x2160, the Medium preset is the most demanding that remains playable, averaging 87 FPS. High and Ultra both fall below 60 FPS, with averages of 54 FPS and 52 FPS respectively.

Q: If I want to play at 2560x1440, what is the best setting?

A: The Ultra preset is the best setting at 1440p, achieving an average of 82 FPS. This is the highest visual quality available at that resolution while still maintaining a frame rate above 60.

Q: How much performance difference is there between 1080p and 4K at High settings?

A: At High settings, the average frame rate drops from 120 FPS at 1080p to 86 FPS at 1440p, and then to 54 FPS at 4K. This represents a 55% reduction in average FPS when going from 1080p to 4K.

Q: Does the Intel Core i5-12400 bottleneck the Intel Arc B570 in this game?

A: No, the data does not indicate a CPU bottleneck. The CPU's nearest rivals all have average scores within 1% of the i5-12400, and the frame rates scale directly with the GPU settings and resolution, indicating that the GPU is the primary limiting factor in the 4K High/Ultra settings.

Q: Is the 4K Ultra preset playable?

A: No. The 4K Ultra preset averages 52 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS playable threshold. The game can still be run at 4K, but only with Medium or Low settings.

CPU and GPU Roles

The scaling between resolutions and presets reveals that the GPU is the dominant factor in Inside. At 1080p and 1440p, the GPU has enough headroom to keep frame rates high across all presets. The 1080p Low to Ultra average (240 to 114) shows a 53% GPU-bound scaling, but the minimum frames remain above the threshold. At 1440p, the Ultra preset at 82 FPS demonstrates that the GPU is still not fully constrained; the gap between High (86 FPS) and Ultra is only 4 FPS, whereas the gap between Medium (138 FPS) and High is 52 FPS. This suggests diminishing returns for higher presets, but still GPU-driven.

The CPU’s role becomes more apparent at 4K. The 4K Low to Medium scaling (108 FPS to 87 FPS) is a 21 FPS drop, while the Medium to High drop is 33 FPS (87 FPS to 54 FPS). The 4K Low setting produces a 108 FPS average, which is still high, and the 4K Ultra at 52 FPS is the lowest. The i5-12400’s 6 cores and 12 threads, with a boost clock of 4.40 GHz, are sufficient to feed the GPU at all times, as evidenced by the fact that the frame rates scale predictably with the GPU settings. The measured data does not show a scenario where the CPU limits the frame rate, since the average FPS always scales with the GPU workload (resolution and preset).

However, the steep drop at 4K High (54 FPS) and 4K Ultra (52 FPS) indicates that the GPU is the bottleneck in those scenarios, not the CPU. The CPU’s single-thread score (2257 in Cinebench R23) and multi-thread score (15989) are more than adequate for a 2016 puzzle platformer. The data indicates that the GPU is the sole limiting factor at 4K when the preset demands more than the GPU can deliver.

How This Combo Ranks

The combined performance of the Core i5-12400 and Arc B570 is rated at rank 2983 out of 3716 tested combos. This places it in the bottom 20% of all hardware combinations in the database. While the system plays Inside fluid at 1080p and 1440p at Ultra, the 4K performance is limited to Medium settings. The rank reflects the absolute performance of the GPU and CPU, which is moderate compared to the entire field of tested hardware. It is important to note that the rank is not game-specific; it represents the average performance of this combo across the benchmark suite, not just for Inside. Given that the GPU’s average benchmark score (20556) is in the 65th percentile among all GPUs, and the CPU is in the 72nd percentile, the lower rank of the combo suggests that the combination is not as strong as each part individually might be in other games, likely due to the GPU’s lower absolute performance in synthetic tests.

The Verdict

This PC can run Inside at 1080p and 1440p with maximum settings, and at 4K with medium settings. At 1920x1080, the Ultra preset runs at an average of 114 FPS, which is far above the 60 FPS threshold. At 2560x1440, the Ultra preset runs at 82 FPS, also above the threshold with a 22 FPS buffer. At 3840x2160, the most demanding playable preset is Medium, with an average of 87 FPS. The High preset at 4K (54 FPS) and Ultra (52 FPS) are not playable according to the 60 FPS standard, but the game remains perfectly playable at Medium. For the best balance of visual quality and smoothness, the data recommends Medium at 4K (87 FPS), Ultra at 1440p (82 FPS), and Ultra at 1080p (114 FPS). The system is fully capable of running the game at high frame rates for the vast majority of users, with the only compromise being the inability to run 4K at the highest visual settings.