Inside

The AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti combination delivers a playable experience in Inside primarily through the Low settings preset. Across all three tested resolutions, the Low preset yields the highest average frame rates, ranging from 51.2 FPS at 3840x2160 up to 108.8 FPS at 1920x1080. While the Medium preset offers a substantial visual upgrade, it comes at a significant performance cost, reducing frame rates by roughly 24-25% compared to Low at each resolution. For users prioritizing smoothness in this puzzle platformer, Low is the recommended starting point, with Medium being viable only for those with 1080p displays who can tolerate frame rates in the mid-80s.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data clearly indicates that the Low preset provides the optimal balance for this hardware pairing. At 1920x1080, Low achieves an average of 108.8 FPS, which is more than double the 51.5 FPS seen at Ultra settings. This substantial headroom makes Low the only preset that comfortably exceeds 100 FPS at 1080p. At 2560x1440, Low still maintains a highly playable 78.1 FPS average, while the Medium preset drops to 64.4 FPS. The gap widens dramatically at 3840x2160, where Low produces 51.2 FPS compared to Medium's 38.6 FPS.

For users seeking higher visual fidelity, Medium at 1080p (84.6 FPS) is the only other preset that maintains frame rates above 60 FPS. The High preset at 1080p (54.4 FPS) falls below this threshold, and Ultra at any resolution fails to reach 40 FPS. Given the puzzle platformer genre, where precise input timing matters more than graphical flourish, the data suggests that Low settings offer the most consistent experience. The jump from Low to Medium costs 24.2 FPS at 1080p, 13.7 FPS at 1440p, and 12.6 FPS at 4K—a consistent penalty that may not justify the visual improvements for most players.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti ranks 1636 out of 1671 tested combos for Inside, placing it in the bottom 2% of all configurations. This low ranking is primarily attributable to the GPU's modest capabilities, as the processor itself performs admirably in synthetic benchmarks. The Ryzen 5 3600 sits at the 76th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 18129. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core i5-11400, scores 18150, a negligible 0.1% difference, while the AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS trails by just 0.2%.

The GTX 1050 Ti, conversely, ranks at the 30th percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 5316. Its closest competitor, the NVIDIA GeForce 930A, scores 5317, showing a 0% delta, while the NVIDIA GeForce 940M is only 0.4% behind. This stark contrast between a mid-range CPU and an entry-level GPU creates a significant bottleneck, explaining why the combo performs so poorly relative to other tested pairings. The data indicates that this system is heavily GPU-limited in Inside, meaning that upgrading the graphics card would yield far greater performance gains than upgrading the processor.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti is the primary limiting factor in this configuration. Built on the Pascal architecture with a 14 nm process, this GPU features 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus, providing 112.1 GB/s of bandwidth. Its base clock of 1291 MHz boosts to 1392 MHz, which is modest by modern standards. The card's 768 shading units and 32 ROPs are sufficient for older titles like Inside but struggle with higher settings at elevated resolutions.

The benchmark results reflect this limitation. The GPU's DirectX 11 score of 45 and DirectX 12 score of 26 in Passmark indicate that it handles legacy APIs reasonably well but falters with more demanding workloads. Its 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 305 further confirms its entry-level positioning. The memory configuration is particularly telling: 4 GB of GDDR5 at 7 Gbps effective is adequate for 1080p gaming but becomes a constraint at higher resolutions. The pixel rate of 44.54 GPixel/s and texture rate of 66.82 GTexel/s are the underlying factors that cap performance, especially when settings are increased.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full range of settings produces the following averages: Low achieves 108.8 FPS, Medium reaches 84.6 FPS, High drops to 54.4 FPS, and Ultra falls to 51.5 FPS. The transition from Low to Medium costs 24.2 FPS, while moving from Medium to High costs another 30.2 FPS. The difference between High and Ultra is a mere 2.9 FPS, suggesting that Ultra offers no meaningful benefit over High at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the pattern repeats with lower absolute numbers: Low produces 78.1 FPS, Medium achieves 64.4 FPS, High drops to 41.9 FPS, and Ultra falls to 39.2 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium narrows to 13.7 FPS, while the High-to-Ultra difference shrinks to just 2.7 FPS. At 3840x2160, the results are: Low at 51.2 FPS, Medium at 38.6 FPS, High at 21.5 FPS, and Ultra at 25.6 FPS. Notably, High performs worse than Ultra at 4K, with a 4.1 FPS deficit, which may indicate a driver or optimization quirk rather than a systematic trend.

Resolution Scaling

The performance drop from 1080p to 4K is substantial across all settings, but the pattern reveals important insights about the limiting component. At Low settings, moving from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 costs 30.7 FPS (from 108.8 to 78.1), and further moving to 3840x2160 costs an additional 26.9 FPS (from 78.1 to 51.2). This represents a total drop of 57.6 FPS, or approximately 53%, when going from 1080p to 4K. At Medium settings, the corresponding drops are 20.2 FPS (84.6 to 64.4) and 25.8 FPS (64.4 to 38.6), totaling 46.0 FPS or 54%.

The High preset shows even more dramatic scaling: from 54.4 FPS at 1080p to 41.9 FPS at 1440p (a 12.5 FPS drop) and further to 21.5 FPS at 4K (a 20.4 FPS drop), for a total loss of 32.9 FPS or 60%. This steeper decline at High settings confirms that the GPU is the primary bottleneck. As resolution increases, the pixel fill rate requirements grow exponentially, and the GTX 1050 Ti's 44.54 GPixel/s pixel rate simply cannot keep up. The CPU, with its 6 cores and 12 threads from the Zen 2 architecture, has ample headroom even at 4K, as evidenced by its strong Cinebench R23 multicore score of 15045 and single-core score of 2124. The data conclusively shows that resolution scaling in Inside is governed entirely by GPU performance, with the Ryzen 5 3600 never becoming a limiting factor even at the lowest settings.