Inside

Intel Core i7-14700KF paired with the Intel Arc B580 is a mismatched pairing for a game like Inside — but in the best possible way. Playdead's 2016 puzzle platformer is a lightweight, artistically driven title, and this combination of a 94th-percentile CPU and a 68th-percentile GPU pushes it to frame rates far beyond what the game demands. Measured data confirms the pairing clears the 60 FPS playable threshold at every resolution tested, up to and including 4K on the High preset. The only configuration that slips below the line is 4K Ultra, and even then only barely.

Measured FPS Breakdown

Starting at 1920x1080, the numbers are emphatic. On the Low preset the combo averages 271 FPS, Medium delivers 217 FPS with a minimum of 185 and a maximum of 250, High averages 136 FPS, and Ultra still posts 129 FPS. Even the slowest single frame recorded at this resolution — the 185 FPS minimum at Medium — sits more than three times above the 60 FPS threshold. There is no preset at 1080p where this hardware breaks a sweat.

At 2560x1440, performance scales down gracefully. Low averages 195 FPS, Medium averages 156 FPS with a floor of 133 and a ceiling of 180, High averages 98 FPS, and Ultra averages 93 FPS. Every preset remains comfortably playable, and even the maximum-detail Ultra result clears 60 FPS by more than fifty percent headroom. The Medium preset's minimum of 133 FPS indicates frame-time consistency is excellent at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the workload finally begins to register. Low averages 123 FPS and Medium averages 98 FPS, with Medium's frame range spanning a minimum of 83 to a maximum of 113. High averages 61 FPS — clearing the threshold by a single frame on average. Ultra is the lone failure case at 58 FPS average, two frames short of playable. That margin is narrow enough that a minor in-game tweak, such as dropping one demanding setting from Ultra, would likely close the gap, though the measured data stops at preset granularity.

A pattern worth noting: only the Medium preset produced minimum and maximum frame data at each resolution, and those ranges are tight. At 4K Medium, the spread runs from 83 to 113 FPS, a modest variance for a fourfold pixel-count increase over 1080p.

Best Settings per Resolution

The most demanding preset that stays at or above 60 FPS at each resolution, per the measured data:

• 1920x1080 — Ultra, 129 FPS average. Maximum detail with more than double the threshold in reserve.
• 2560x1440 — Ultra, 93 FPS average. Full detail remains the correct choice; nothing needs to be sacrificed.
• 3840x2160 — High, 61 FPS average. Ultra drops to 58 FPS at 4K, so High is the ceiling here. The step up from Medium's 98 FPS to High's 61 FPS is steep, indicating the High preset introduces the bulk of the visual cost at this resolution.

The practical takeaway is simple: at 1080p and 1440p, run everything maxed. At 4K, High is the highest preset that holds the 60 FPS line, with Medium as the safer pick for consistent frame times.

CPU and GPU Roles

The scaling data points clearly to a GPU-bound profile at higher resolutions, which is expected given the disparity between the two components. The Core i7-14700KF sits in the 94th percentile of all CPUs with an average benchmark score of 70163, while the Arc B580 occupies the 68th percentile of GPUs with an average score of 23021. Inside is not a demanding title either way, but the shape of the scaling tells the story.

Moving from 1080p Medium to 4K Medium drops the average from 217 to 98 FPS — a reduction tied almost entirely to pixel throughput, since the preset is held constant. Similarly, 1440p Medium's 156 FPS falls to the 98 FPS figure at 4K Medium. If the CPU were the limiting factor, resolution changes would barely move the needle. They move it substantially.

Conversely, at a fixed resolution the CPU has room to stretch. The 1080p Low result of 271 FPS is the highest figure in the dataset, and frame rates at that level in a physics-and-animation-heavy puzzle platformer are typically gated by single-thread throughput. The i7-14700KF's single-thread credentials are strong — 4480 in Passmark single-thread and 6235 in Cinebench R23 single-core — and its 2618-point R20 single-core score places it among the fastest desktop chips measured. Its multithreaded results (44167 in R23 multi, 52425 in Passmark multithread, 21462 in Geekbench multi across 20 cores and 28 threads) are largely irrelevant for this title; Inside simply doesn't need that parallelism.

In short: the GPU is the deciding component at 1440p and 4K, and the CPU is never a bottleneck anywhere in this dataset. The Raptor Lake-R chip's boost clock of 5.60 GHz and 125 W TDP are specifications aimed at far heavier workloads than this.

Similar Performance Alternatives

For the CPU, the nearest rivals by aggregate score are tight enough that any of them would produce effectively identical results in Inside. The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F averages 69996 against the 14700KF's 70163 — a delta of just 0.2 percent. The AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX is 0.4 percent behind at 69875, the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X trails by 0.9 percent at 69515, and the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K actually scores 1 percent higher at 70879. A system built around any of these four processors paired with the same B580 would land within a frame or two of the numbers above.

For the GPU, the rival list is more eclectic. The AMD Radeon RX 580 2048SP scores 23061 — 0.2 percent above the B580's 23021 — making it a near-exact substitute in aggregate terms. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 sits 0.6 percent below at 22895, and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 is 0.7 percent above at 23172. The NVIDIA P106-100 rounds out the list 1 percent ahead at 23249. Given that Inside's measured spread between Low and Ultra at 1080p spans 271 to 129 FPS on the B580, any of these cards would deliver a broadly similar experience, with the caveat that aggregate scores blend compute and gaming tests — the B580's Geekbench Vulkan result of 109672 and 3DMark Steel Nomad score of 3068 reflect its Xe2-HPG architecture's strengths in modern APIs like DirectX 12 Ultimate and Vulkan 1.4, which is where a 2016 title's rendering path is best served.

Within this game specifically, the combo ranks 2764 out of 3716 measured CPU/GPU pairings — a middling overall rank that reflects the B580's mid-tier positioning rather than any problem running this particular title.

FAQ

Q: Can the i7-14700KF + Arc B580 run Inside at 4K?

A: Yes. At 3840x2160, the Low, Medium, and High presets all average at or above 60 FPS — 123, 98, and 61 FPS respectively. Only 4K Ultra falls short, averaging 58 FPS.

Q: What is the best settings configuration at 1080p?

A: Ultra, averaging 129 FPS — the highest-demanding preset available still delivers more than double the playable threshold.

Q: How much performance is lost going from 1440p to 4K?

A: On identical presets, the drop is significant but manageable: Ultra falls from 93 to 58 FPS, High from 98 to 61, Medium from 156 to 98, and Low from 195 to 123.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU more important for Inside on this build?

A: The GPU. Resolution scaling from 1080p to 4K cuts frame rates sharply at fixed presets, which is the signature of a GPU-bound scenario. The 94th-percentile CPU is never the limiting factor in the measured data.

Q: Are there cheaper or alternative CPUs that would perform the same?

A: The data shows four near-equivalents: the Ryzen 7 9700F (0.2 percent behind in aggregate score), Ryzen 9 7940HX (0.4 percent behind), Ryzen 9 7950X (0.9 percent behind), and Core Ultra 7 265K (1 percent ahead). All would yield effectively the same frame rates here.

Q: How stable are the frame rates?

A: Where minimum and maximum data was captured — the Medium preset — the ranges are tight: 185–250 FPS at 1080p, 133–180 at 1440p, and 83–113 at 4K. Minimums stay well above 60 FPS at every resolution on that preset.

The Verdict

Yes — this PC runs Inside without qualification at 1080p and 1440p, and with one caveat at 4K. At 1920x1080 and 2560x1440, every preset from Low through Ultra clears 60 FPS, with Ultra averaging 129 and 93 FPS respectively. At 3840x2160, Low, Medium, and High are playable — High averaging 61 FPS is the ceiling — while Ultra at 58 FPS is the single non-playable configuration in the entire dataset.

For a 2016 puzzle platformer, that is the expected outcome for hardware of this caliber. The Arc B580 with its 12 GB of GDDR6 and 456 GB/s of bandwidth handles the game's rendering load at any reasonable setting, and the Core i7-14700KF's single-thread performance ensures the CPU side never enters the equation. Players wanting maximum visual fidelity should simply cap resolution at 1440p and enable Ultra, or accept the High preset at 4K for the big-screen experience.