Inside

Inside is a puzzle platformer that leans on atmosphere and precise timing, and the data shows this PC combination obliterates its performance demands at every measurable resolution. The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 delivers playable frame rates across all tested settings, with the most demanding preset — Ultra — still holding a comfortable 81 FPS at 4K. At 1080p and 1440p, the margin grows so large that the GPU becomes the limiting factor only at the highest settings, while the CPU’s headroom remains mostly untapped.

Best Settings per Resolution

At 3840x2160, the Ultra preset is the most demanding option that stays above the 60 FPS threshold, averaging 81 FPS. This is a rare outcome for such a high resolution; the data shows High settings run at 85 FPS, which is marginally faster, but Ultra remains perfectly viable. Medium settings reach 136 FPS, and Low pushes to 171 FPS, but none of these are necessary for smooth gameplay — Ultra is the clear choice for visual fidelity without sacrificing fluidity.

For 2560x1440, the Ultra preset again takes the crown, averaging 129 FPS. This is more than double the 60 FPS playable threshold, leaving substantial room for future driver overhead or background tasks. High settings run at 136 FPS, Medium at 217 FPS, and Low at 272 FPS, so the scaling is nearly linear across presets. The recommendation is unambiguous: enable Ultra and enjoy the game’s moody lighting and shadow work without compromise.

At 1920x1080, the Ultra preset averages 180 FPS, making it the definitive best setting. High settings hit 189 FPS, Medium reaches 302 FPS, and Low tops out at 378 FPS — but those lower presets offer no practical benefit on a 60 Hz or even 144 Hz display. The Ultra preset delivers more than triple the playable threshold, meaning the RTX 3070 is never the bottleneck at this resolution, even with every graphical feature enabled.

CPU and GPU Roles

The division of labor shifts dramatically across resolutions. At 1920x1080, the CPU’s dominance is evident: Low settings produce 378 FPS, which is 110% higher than the Ultra result of 180 FPS. This gap indicates that the RTX 3070 is fully fed by the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus, and the frame rate is limited by the GPU’s shading workload rather than the processor’s ability to issue draw calls. The 24-core, 24-thread Arrow Lake Refresh chip, with a 5.80 GHz boost clock, never appears to be the constraint.

Moving to 2560x1440, the GPU’s role becomes more pronounced. Low settings drop to 272 FPS (a 28% reduction from 1080p Low), while Ultra falls to 129 FPS (a 28% reduction from 1080p Ultra). The consistent scaling suggests that the RTX 3070’s 8 GB of GDDR6 memory and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth are handling the increased pixel count, but the CPU still has ample headroom — the frame rates remain far above any CPU-bound ceiling.

At 3840x2160, the GPU is unmistakably the primary constraint. Low settings yield 171 FPS, which is 37% lower than the 1080p Low result, and Ultra drops to 81 FPS, a 55% reduction from the 1080p Ultra figure. The RTX 3070’s 5888 shading units and 20.31 TFLOPS FP32 throughput are being pushed to their limits at 4K, while the CPU’s workload scales minimally with resolution. The data shows that the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus is never the bottleneck below 4K, and even at 4K it provides enough single-thread performance to keep the GPU fed.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 3840x2160, the measured results are consistent and playable across all presets. Low settings average 171 FPS, Medium averages 136 FPS with a minimum of 116 FPS and a maximum of 157 FPS, High averages 85 FPS, and Ultra averages 81 FPS. The lack of min/max data for Low, High, and Ultra suggests these runs were stable enough to record only the average, while Medium’s 41 FPS spread indicates some frame-time variance, though still far above the 60 FPS threshold.

At 2560x1440, the performance scales cleanly. Low hits 272 FPS, Medium averages 217 FPS with a minimum of 185 FPS and a maximum of 250 FPS, High averages 136 FPS, and Ultra averages 129 FPS. The Medium preset’s min/max range of 65 FPS is the widest in this resolution, but even the lowest recorded frame rate is over three times the playable threshold. High and Ultra are nearly identical, differing by only 7 FPS, which suggests that the Ultra preset’s extra effects are cheap to render at this pixel count.

At 1920x1080, the results are spectacular. Low averages 378 FPS, Medium averages 302 FPS with a minimum of 257 FPS and a maximum of 347 FPS, High averages 189 FPS, and Ultra averages 180 FPS. The Medium preset’s 90 FPS min/max spread is the largest in the entire dataset, but it remains irrelevant for practical play — no display can refresh fast enough to show the difference. High and Ultra are again close, with only 9 FPS separating them, meaning the RTX 3070’s pixel rate of 165.6 GPixel/s is sufficient to handle the game’s stylized visuals at 1080p without breaking a sweat.

The Verdict

This PC can absolutely run Inside, and then some. The verdict by resolution is unambiguous: every resolution and every preset clears the 60 FPS playable threshold. At 3840x2160, the Ultra preset averages 81 FPS — a 35% margin above the playable line — and even the most demanding settings never dip below 81 FPS on average. At 2560x1440, Ultra averages 129 FPS, which is more than double the threshold, and at 1920x1080, Ultra averages 180 FPS, tripling the requirement.

The data indicates that this combination is overkill for the game’s modest graphical demands. Inside was released in 2016, and its puzzle-platformer genre does not stress modern hardware. The RTX 3070, which sits at the 61st percentile of all GPUs, is more than sufficient, and the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus, at the 96th percentile of all CPUs, provides far more processing power than this title can utilize. Users should enable Ultra settings at any resolution and expect a flawless experience, with the only limitation being the refresh rate of their display.

Similar Performance Alternatives

For the CPU, the nearest rivals in average benchmark score are all within a tight band. The Intel Core Ultra 9 285K scores 83,807, which is 0.2% lower than the 290K Plus’s 84,003, making it a nearly identical performer for this game. The AMD EPYC 4584PX scores 83,090 (1.1% lower), and the AMD EPYC 9135 scores 82,980 (1.2% lower), both of which would deliver indistinguishable frame rates in Inside. The AMD EPYC 7F72 scores 85,072, which is 1.3% higher, but the difference is negligible for a game that is GPU-bound at 4K and CPU-bound only at absurdly high frame rates.

For the GPU, the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT scores 17,083, just 0.7% below the RTX 3070’s 17,208, making it a direct substitute for 1080p and 1440p play. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 scores 17,037 (1.0% lower) and the AMD Radeon HD 7970M scores 17,019 (1.1% lower), both of which would produce nearly identical results at 4K Ultra, though their older architectures may lack modern driver optimizations. The NVIDIA Tesla K40c scores 17,468 (1.5% higher), but its compute-oriented design makes it an unlikely gaming choice. In practice, any of these alternatives would hold 60 FPS at Ultra across all resolutions, given the game’s low requirements.

How This Combo Ranks

In the broader database of tested combinations, this pairing ranks 1317 out of 3716 combos, placing it in the top 35% of all systems. That rank is impressive given that the RTX 3070 is an end-of-life product with a 61st percentile GPU score, but the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus’s 96th percentile CPU score boosts the overall combination. For a game like Inside, which is not graphically intensive, the ranking is more than sufficient — the combo’s position reflects its balanced performance across synthetic benchmarks, not its ability to run this specific title.

The rank also contextualizes the system’s headroom. Many of the 2399 combos ranked below it would still run Inside flawlessly, but this pairing offers extra margin for future games or higher refresh-rate displays. The data shows that the CPU’s 51,731 Cinebench R23 multi-core score and the GPU’s 22,214 Passmark G3D score combine to create a system that is far more capable than this game demands, ensuring that Inside runs at maximum settings without any performance concerns.