Inside

The AMD Ryzen 5 2600 pairs a 6-core, 12-thread Zen architecture with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 3.90 GHz. For a puzzle platformer like Inside, the game’s logic, physics, and object interactions rely heavily on single-thread performance, yet the CPU’s multi-threaded headroom (a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 11186) ensures that background tasks do not interfere with frame pacing. The CPU’s single-core Cinebench R23 result of 1579 is modest by modern standards, but Inside is not a title that stresses complex AI or large simulation spaces—its 2D side-scrolling nature means the Ryzen 5 2600’s clock speeds are sufficient to feed the GPU without becoming a bottleneck. Notably, the CPU’s PassMark single-thread score of 2239 places it at the 77th percentile of all CPUs, indicating that while it is not a top-tier part, it holds its own in lightly threaded workloads. The processor’s 16 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel DDR4 memory support (46.9 GB/s bandwidth) provide adequate data throughput for the game’s asset streaming, which is minimal given the title’s atmospheric but geometrically simple environments. In essence, the Ryzen 5 2600 acts as a stable foundation—its 12 threads are largely idle during gameplay, but the 3.90 GHz boost clock ensures that the primary game thread never starves the render pipeline.

Settings Recommendations

The measured frame rate data reveals a clear hierarchy among presets, with the most balanced experience occurring at Medium settings across all resolutions. At 1920x1080, Medium produces an average of 190 FPS, which is only 14.4 FPS below the Low preset’s 204.4 FPS but a substantial 61 FPS above High’s 129.8 FPS. The Ultra preset at 1080p drops to 121 FPS, making it the least efficient choice for a game that gains little visual fidelity from its highest options. Moving to 2560x1440, Medium delivers 148.4 FPS, which is a 32.1 FPS improvement over High’s 90.7 FPS and nearly matches the Low preset’s 180.5 FPS while offering richer shadows and textures. At 3840x2160, the story changes: Medium yields 95.4 FPS, which is 39.1 FPS faster than High’s 56.3 FPS and 38.3 FPS faster than Ultra’s 57.1 FPS. The Low preset at 4K hits 117.5 FPS, but the visual degradation in a game known for its moody lighting is unnecessary. Given that Inside is a slow-paced puzzle title, the 60 FPS threshold is the practical target for smooth input response. Medium at 4K (95.4 FPS) and Medium at 1440p (148.4 FPS) both exceed this with ample margin, while High at 4K (56.3 FPS) falls just short. Therefore, the data strongly supports Medium as the optimal preset—it avoids the harsh visual compromises of Low while providing nearly double the frame rate of High at higher resolutions.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K demonstrates that this combo becomes increasingly GPU-bound as pixel count rises, but the Ryzen 5 2600 still holds the reins at lower resolutions. At 1080p Medium, the system produces 190 FPS; dropping to 1440p Medium reduces this to 148.4 FPS, a 21.9% decrease. Pushing further to 4K Medium yields 95.4 FPS, a 35.7% drop from 1440p and a 49.8% drop from 1080p. This scaling pattern indicates that the GPU’s pixel throughput (159.4 GPixel/s) becomes the limiting factor at 4K, as the Radeon RX 6600’s 224.0 GB/s memory bandwidth and 8 GB GDDR6 frame buffer are taxed by the four-times pixel count. Conversely, at 1080p, the frame rates (190 FPS Medium, 204.4 FPS Low) approach the CPU’s practical ceiling for draw-call submission; the Ryzen 5 2600’s 3.90 GHz boost clock and 12 threads are sufficient to drive these high numbers, but the scaling between Low and Medium at 1080p (14.4 FPS difference) is smaller than at 4K (22.1 FPS difference), confirming that the CPU is not the primary constraint at higher resolutions. The most telling data point is the High preset: at 1440p it hits 90.7 FPS, identically to Ultra at 1440p (90.7 FPS), suggesting that beyond a certain visual complexity, the GPU’s shader workload (8.928 TFLOPS FP32) saturates, and additional settings do not cost extra frames. At 4K, High (56.3 FPS) and Ultra (57.1 FPS) are nearly identical, reinforcing that the RX 6600’s compute resources are exhausted at this resolution regardless of preset. The 1080p to 4K scaling for Medium (190 to 95.4 FPS) represents a 49.8% performance retention, which is typical for a mid-range GPU paired with a 2018-era CPU—the system is balanced but leans on the GPU at higher resolutions.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the benchmark database’s tested configurations, the AMD Ryzen 5 2600 + AMD Radeon RX 6600 combination ranks 1385th out of 1671 total combos for Inside, placing it in the bottom 17% of all systems tested. This low percentile is surprising given the playable frame rates, but it reflects the fact that Inside is an older title (released in 2016) that favors high-frequency, high-core-count processors from newer generations; the Ryzen 5 2600’s average benchmark score of 19616 is only 0.4% below the Intel Core i5-1345U and 0.6% above the AMD Ryzen 5 7530U, indicating that it competes with modern laptop chips but lacks the single-thread advantage of desktop parts like the Intel Core i5-11600KF (which scores 0.6% higher). The GPU’s average benchmark score of 25235 places it in the 69th percentile of all GPUs, with its nearest rival being the AMD Radeon 890M (0% delta) and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti (0.5% faster), showing that the RX 6600 is a solid mid-range performer. However, the combo’s rank is dragged down by the CPU’s age—the 12 nm process and Zen+ architecture (Pinnacle Ridge) limit its ability to push frame rates in a game that responds to raw IPC. In contrast, the GPU’s PassMark G3D score of 15096 is respectable, but the CPU’s PassMark multithread score of 13160 is modest. The data suggests that this combo is not a top contender for Inside because the game’s engine rewards newer CPU architectures; however, the measured FPS (e.g., 190 FPS at 1080p Medium) shows that the rank is more a reflection of the database’s diverse hardware pool than a condemnation of real-world playability. The combo outperforms 286 other tested configurations, many of which likely pair weaker CPUs with similarly capable GPUs, but it falls behind systems with newer Ryzen 5000 series or Intel 12th/13th gen processors.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6600, built on the RDNA 2.0 architecture with a 7 nm process, is the dominant component in this pairing for Inside’s visual output. Its boost clock of 2491 MHz (with a base of 1626 MHz and a game clock of 2044 MHz) allows the 1792 shading units to process the game’s simple 2D sprites and lighting effects with ease, as evidenced by the 204.4 FPS result at 1080p Low. The GPU’s 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus provides 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is ample for Inside’s texture sizes—the game’s art style uses low-resolution, stylized textures that do not require high memory capacity. The 64 ROPs and 112 TMUs deliver a pixel rate of 159.4 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 279.0 GTexel/s, respectively, which explains why the GPU can maintain 56.3 FPS at 4K High despite the resolution demand. The RX 6600’s PassMark G3D score of 15096 places it in the 69th percentile of all GPUs, and its nearest rival, the AMD Radeon 890M, has identical average benchmark scores (0% deltaPct), while the RX 580 2048SP is 0.2% slower and the RX 6700M is 0.2% faster. In Inside, the GPU’s role becomes critical at 4K, where the frame rate drops from 190 FPS (1080p Medium) to 95.4 FPS (4K Medium), a 49.8% reduction that directly correlates with the fourfold increase in pixel count. The GPU’s 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1492 and Geekbench Vulkan score of 80492 confirm that it is a capable DirectX 12 performer, but Inside is not a demanding API workload. The GPU’s TDP of 132 W and 1x 8-pin power connector are modest, and its 7 nm process node (11,060 million transistors on a 237 mm² die) allows for efficient power delivery. The data shows that while the CPU handles the game logic, the RX 6600 is solely responsible for the visual fidelity scaling—from the Low preset’s 117.5 FPS at 4K to the Ultra preset’s 57.1 FPS at 4K, the GPU’s compute units are the bottleneck, and its performance headroom is best utilized at Medium settings where it delivers 95.4 FPS at 4K without compromising the game’s atmospheric presentation.