Inside

Inside is a 2016 Puzzle Platformer from Playdead, and the pairing of an Intel Core i5-12400F with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 treats it accordingly: as a lightweight workload that never comes close to threatening either component. The measured data in this entry covers three resolutions and four preset tiers, and at every single combination tested the average frame rate sits above the 60 FPS playable threshold — often by a factor of two or three. The analysis below walks through which preset to pick at each resolution, how the CPU and GPU divide the work, where this exact combo ranks among all tested hardware pairings for Inside, and which nearby alternatives behave the same way.

Best Settings per Resolution

The rule applied here is simple: identify the most demanding preset that still holds at or above 60 FPS average, then recommend it. For this combination, that answer is Ultra at every resolution on the list.

At 1920x1080, Ultra averages 207.3 FPS. At 2560x1440, Ultra averages 152.3 FPS. At 3840x2160 — full 4K — Ultra still averages 92.9 FPS, comfortably above the threshold. In other words, there is no resolution-and-preset combination in the dataset where this hardware has to compromise. Ultra, the highest preset measured, is the best setting everywhere.

The headroom is worth spelling out. Even at 4K Ultra, the frame rate sits roughly 55% above the 60 FPS line in absolute terms — 92.9 versus 60. Drop from Ultra to High at 4K and the average climbs to 100.3; drop to Medium and it reaches 157.5; Low pushes it to 200.6. A player who wants a high-refresh 4K experience can simply lower the preset and more than double the frame rate. The same ladder exists at the lower resolutions, only shifted upward.

CPU and GPU Roles

The scaling data indicates that Inside, running on this combo, is GPU-bound in the classic sense: frame rates fall as resolution rises, which is the signature of a graphics-limited workload rather than a CPU-limited one.

Look at the Ultra numbers. Moving from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 drops the average from 207.3 to 152.3 FPS — a decline of about 27% for a pixel-count increase far larger than that. Moving from 2560x1440 to 3840x2160 drops it further, from 152.3 to 92.9, roughly 39% lower. If the CPU were the limiter, frame rates would stay flat across resolutions, because the i5-12400F does the same amount of game logic work regardless of output resolution. They do not stay flat; they scale with pixel count.

The preset scaling tells a complementary story. At 1920x1080, going from Ultra (207.3 FPS) to Low (317.1 FPS) buys about 53% more frames — a meaningful but modest gain for such a large drop in visual settings. At 4K the same comparison is 92.9 to 200.6 FPS, more than doubling. That asymmetry shows that at lower resolutions the CPU and game engine begin to cap the ceiling, while at 4K the RTX 3080 is doing the heavy lifting and settings changes translate directly into frames.

The CPU itself is no slouch for a 2016 title. The i5-12400F is a 6-core, 12-thread Alder Lake-S part on Intel's 10 nm process, with a 4.40 GHz boost clock and a 909-point 3DMark single-thread score. Inside predates this CPU by more than half a decade, and its engine simply does not demand modern multi-core throughput — the i5-12400F's 12380 Cinebench R23 multi-core score is largely idle headroom here. Single-thread responsiveness, where the chip scores 3481 in PassMark, matters more for a puzzle platformer, and it is abundant.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the database, this specific CPU-plus-GPU pairing ranks 1015th out of 3716 tested combinations for Inside. That places it in the top third of hardware combos for this game — a fair reflection of a mid-tier CPU (73rd percentile versus all CPUs in the database) paired with a GPU sitting at the 68th percentile of all GPUs.

The rank is respectable but not elite, which makes sense given Inside's age. A game released in 2016 does not separate a 10 GB GDDR6X Ampere card with 8704 shading units from much humbler hardware — the frame rate ceiling is reached by far weaker parts. Spending RTX 3080-class firepower on Inside does not buy a higher rank because the ranking compresses at the top. What the rank does tell you is that this combo is measured, verified hardware for the game, and that more than 2700 other tested pairings deliver less performance than it does.

Similar Performance Alternatives

On the CPU side, the nearest rivals by aggregate benchmark score are strikingly close. The AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS averages 19047 versus the i5-12400F's 19039 — a 0% delta. The Intel Core 3 201E sits at 19056, just 0.1% ahead. The Intel Core i5-1335U (18982) trails by 0.3%, and the AMD EPYC 7773X (18979) is also within 0.3%. Any of these processors would produce an essentially indistinguishable Inside experience when paired with comparable graphics hardware, since the game is GPU-bound at higher resolutions anyway. That a laptop chip like the 7535HS matches a desktop Alder Lake part on average score underlines how little of the i5-12400F's capability this game uses.

On the GPU side, the nearest rivals are the NVIDIA P106-100 at 23249 average score (0.3% behind the RTX 3080's 23172), the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16 at 23250 (0.3% ahead), the AMD Radeon RX 6600M at 23273 (0.4% ahead), and the AMD Radeon R9 M290X at 23276 (0.4% ahead). These aggregate-score neighbors are a diverse bunch — a mining card, a professional mobile part, and a gaming laptop GPU — but the takeaway for Inside is straightforward: because the game's demands are modest, GPUs clustering near the RTX 3080's database average of 23172 would deliver broadly similar frame rates. The PassMark G3D score of 25086 for the 3080 and its 4407 in 3DMark Steel Nomad describe far more capability than Inside can consume.

Measured FPS Breakdown

All figures below are measured averages; minimum and maximum frame rates were not recorded for this entry, so the analysis rests on averages alone.

At 1920x1080:

| Preset | Avg FPS |

|---|---|

| Low | 317.1 |

| Medium | 292.3 |

| High | 222.9 |

| Ultra | 207.3 |

At 2560x1440:

| Preset | Avg FPS |

|---|---|

| Low | 284.7 |

| Medium | 252.2 |

| High | 158.9 |

| Ultra | 152.3 |

At 3840x2160:

| Preset | Avg FPS |

|---|---|

| Low | 200.6 |

| Medium | 157.5 |

| High | 100.3 |

| Ultra | 92.9 |

Three patterns stand out. First, the Low-to-Medium gap is small at every resolution — roughly 25 FPS at 1080p and 4K, about 32 FPS at 1440p — while the Medium-to-High step is the expensive one, costing 69.4 FPS at 1080p, 93.3 FPS at 1440p, and 57.2 FPS at 4K. High-to-Ultra is nearly free by comparison: only 15.6 frames at 1080p, 6.6 at 1440p, and 7.4 at 4K. Practically, once a player is at High, Ultra costs almost nothing with this hardware.

Second, the 4K Low figure of 200.6 FPS exceeds the 1440p Ultra figure of 152.3 and nearly matches 1080p High at 222.9. Resolution and preset quality trade off almost linearly on this GPU.

Third, even the single worst data point in the entire table — 4K Ultra at 92.9 FPS — clears the 60 FPS threshold by a wide margin. There is no fragile edge case hiding in the data.

The Verdict

Yes, unambiguously. The Intel Core i5-12400F plus NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 runs Inside at every tested resolution and every tested preset above 60 FPS average. The verdict data confirms playable settings of High, Low, Medium, and Ultra at 1920x1080, 2560x1440, and 3840x2160 alike, with best settings of Ultra across the board — 207.3 FPS at 1080p, 152.3 at 1440p, and 92.9 at 4K.

For a game in this genre, released in 2016, that result was never in serious doubt given hardware of this class. A player with this configuration should simply set Ultra at whatever monitor resolution they own and play. The launch MSRP context — $174 for the CPU and 699 USD for the GPU — describes hardware designed for far heavier workloads than this.

FAQ

Q: Can the i5-12400F + RTX 3080 run Inside at 4K?

A: Yes. At 3840x2160 the combo averages 92.9 FPS on Ultra, 100.3 on High, 157.5 on Medium, and 200.6 on Low — all above the 60 FPS playable threshold.

Q: What are the best settings for Inside on this PC?

A: Ultra at every resolution. It is the most demanding preset tested and still clears 60 FPS everywhere: 207.3 FPS average at 1080p, 152.3 at 1440p, and 92.9 at 4K.

Q: Is Inside CPU-bound or GPU-bound with this hardware?

A: GPU-bound. Average frame rates fall as resolution rises — 207.3 to 152.3 to 92.9 FPS on Ultra going from 1080p to 1440p to 4K — which indicates the graphics card, not the i5-12400F, sets the performance ceiling.

Q: How does this combo rank against other hardware tested with Inside?

A: It ranks 1015 out of 3716 tested combinations, placing it in the top third for this game.

Q: Which preset costs the most performance?

A: The step from Medium to High. At 1080p it costs 69.4 FPS, at 1440p 93.3 FPS, and at 4K 57.2 FPS — far more than the High-to-Ultra step, which costs only single digits at 1440p and 4K.

Q: Were minimum frame rates recorded?

A: No. Minimum and maximum FPS are not available for this entry; the analysis is based on measured average frame rates only, all of which are data from direct measurement.