Inside

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Inside is a puzzle platformer that places surprisingly heavy demands on the GPU when pushed to its highest presets. The measured data for this AMD Ryzen 5 5500 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 combination reveals a clear sweet spot: the High preset delivers the most balanced experience across all three tested resolutions. At 1920x1080, High produces an average of 190.5 FPS, which is only 9.3 FPS below the Ultra preset's 181.2 FPS — wait, that math is inverted; rather, High is actually ahead of Ultra by 9.3 FPS, suggesting the Ultra preset introduces overhead without proportional visual gains.

The Medium preset also deserves attention. At 1080p, Medium reaches 257.1 FPS, a substantial 66.6 FPS improvement over High, while at 1440p it holds 218.1 FPS versus High's 136.3 FPS. For players with high-refresh displays, Medium at 1440p offers the best compromise between fluidity and visual fidelity. The Low preset, while achieving 280.8 FPS at 1080p and 251.6 FPS at 1440p, strips away the atmospheric lighting and shadow work that defines this game's somber aesthetic.

Ultra is the outlier. It consistently scores below High — at 4K, Ultra averages 81.4 FPS versus High's 83.7 FPS, and at 1440p the gap widens to 6.9 FPS. This suggests the Ultra preset may enable effects that stress the memory subsystem without adding perceivable detail in a 2.5D side-scroller. The recommendation is clear: High at 1080p or 1440p for most users, Medium at 4K for smooth gameplay, and Low only if chasing maximum frame rates becomes the priority.

How This Combo Ranks

Among 1,671 tested CPU-GPU combinations for Inside, this pairing holds position 733. That places it in the upper-middle tier of the database, roughly in the 56th percentile of all tested combos. The ranking reflects a balanced pairing: the Ryzen 5 5500's 6 cores and 12 threads, combined with the RTX 3070's 8 GB of GDDR6 memory, produce frame rates that are competitive but not class-leading.

The CPU's own benchmark percentile tells a similar story. The Ryzen 5 5500 sits at the 79th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 20,875. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core i5-12500, scores 20,897 — a delta of just -0.1%, meaning these two processors are effectively tied in synthetic workloads. The AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 4655GE also lands at 20,900, again within 0.1%. This near-parity suggests the 5500 is not the bottleneck in most scenarios.

The GPU, however, shows more variance. The RTX 3070's average benchmark score of 28,238 places it at the 72nd percentile among all GPUs. Its nearest competitor, the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT, scores 27,985 — a 0.9% delta in favor of the 3070. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti trails by 1% at 27,956. These small margins indicate that the 3070 is punching at its expected weight, but the combo's rank of 733 out of 1,671 suggests that other pairings with stronger CPUs achieve higher overall scores in this specific title.

GPU Role

The RTX 3070's specifications directly explain its performance characteristics in Inside. With 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, the card delivers 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This proves ample for a game with relatively modest texture sizes. The boost clock of 1725 MHz, paired with 5,888 shading units, yields an FP32 throughput of 20.31 TFLOPS. These figures translate into the measured frame rates: at 1080p High, the card produces 190.5 FPS, and even at 4K High it maintains 83.7 FPS.

The GPU's memory configuration becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions. At 4K Ultra, the card drops to 81.4 FPS, and at 4K High it only marginally improves to 83.7 FPS. The gap between 4K Medium (139.5 FPS) and 4K High (83.7 FPS) is striking — a 55.8 FPS difference that suggests the High preset at 4K triggers memory-intensive effects that the 8 GB frame buffer struggles to accommodate. The card's 96 ROPs and 184 TMUs handle pixel fill and texture filtering adequately, but the bandwidth ceiling becomes apparent when resolution scales.

Interestingly, the GPU's OpenCL benchmark score of 123,479 and Vulkan score of 120,664 indicate strong compute performance, yet Inside's DirectX 12 path appears well-optimized for this architecture. The PassMark G3D score of 22,214 places it above the RX 6600 XT's 0.9% gap, confirming that the 3070 delivers consistent rasterization performance across different workloads.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution to play Inside with this hardware?

A: The data shows 1440p High as the optimal balance, delivering 136.3 FPS. At 1080p High, the frame rate jumps to 190.5 FPS, while 4K High drops to 83.7 FPS. For a 60 Hz display, 4K is viable; for 144 Hz, 1440p Medium at 218.1 FPS is the safest choice.

Q: Why does the Ultra preset perform worse than High?

A: At every resolution, Ultra scores below High. At 1080p, Ultra averages 181.2 FPS versus High's 190.5 FPS; at 1440p, the gap is 6.9 FPS (129.4 vs 136.3); at 4K, it narrows to 2.3 FPS (81.4 vs 83.7). The Ultra preset appears to enable effects that burden the GPU without improving the game's art style.

Q: How does the RTX 3070 compare to its nearest rival in this game?

A: The RTX 3070's average benchmark score of 28,238 is 0.9% higher than the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT's 27,985. Against the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti, the 3070 leads by 1.0% (28,238 vs 27,956). These margins are small, but the 3070 consistently edges out both competitors.

Q: Is the Ryzen 5 5500 holding back the RTX 3070 in this game?

A: The CPU's average benchmark score of 20,875 is within 0.1% of the Intel Core i5-12500 (20,897). Given that the combo ranks 733rd out of 1,671, the pairing is well-matched. The CPU's 6 cores and 12 threads at up to 4.20 GHz boost clock provide sufficient throughput for the game's physics and logic.

Q: Can this system handle 4K gaming in Inside?

A: Yes, but with caveats. At 4K Medium, the average FPS is 139.5, which is playable on high-refresh displays. At 4K High, the average drops to 83.7 FPS, still above 60 FPS. The Ultra preset at 4K yields 81.4 FPS, so the system remains playable across all presets at 4K.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals where the bottleneck shifts. At High settings, the progression is 190.5 FPS at 1080p, 136.3 FPS at 1440p, and 83.7 FPS at 4K. This represents a 28.5% drop from 1080p to 1440p, and a further 38.6% drop from 1440p to 4K. The GPU's rendering load scales predictably with pixel count, but the 4K figures suggest the memory bandwidth ceiling is being approached.

At Low settings, the scaling is more dramatic: 280.8 FPS at 1080p, 251.6 FPS at 1440p, and 172.2 FPS at 4K. The 1080p-to-1440p drop is only 10.4%, indicating the CPU is still feeding the GPU adequately. However, the 1440p-to-4K drop of 31.6% shows the GPU becoming the dominant constraint as fill rate and bandwidth demands increase.

The Medium preset tells a similar story: 257.1 FPS at 1080p, 218.1 FPS at 1440p, and 139.5 FPS at 4K. The consistent pattern — smaller drops at lower resolutions, larger drops at 4K — confirms that the RTX 3070's 8 GB frame buffer and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth are the limiting factors at 4K. The CPU, with its 16 MB L3 cache and 51.2 GB/s memory bandwidth, is not the constraint at any resolution tested.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500's specifications align well with Inside's requirements. Its 6 cores and 12 threads, based on the Zen 3 architecture on a 7 nm process, provide solid multi-threaded performance. The base clock of 3.60 GHz boosts to 4.20 GHz, and the 16 MB L3 cache helps with the game's streaming assets. In Cinebench R23, the CPU scores 16,429 multi-core and 2,319 single-core, indicating strong per-thread performance.

The CPU's nearest rival, the Intel Core i5-12500, achieves an average score of 20,897 versus the 5500's 20,875 — a negligible difference of -0.1%. This parity means the CPU choice has minimal impact on the game's frame rates. The PassMark multithread score of 19,330 and single-thread score of 3,058 further confirm that the 5500 handles the game's physics and AI workload without becoming a bottleneck.

The 65 W TDP and Socket AM4 compatibility make this an efficient pairing. The CPU's DDR4 memory support with dual-channel configuration and 51.2 GB/s bandwidth matches well with the GPU's 448.0 GB/s, ensuring no memory subsystem mismatch. The 3DMark scores — 5,386 for 16 threads and 836 for single thread — indicate that Inside's mostly single-threaded rendering pipeline still benefits from the boost clock.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full preset ladder shows a clear hierarchy: Low at 280.8 FPS, Medium at 257.1 FPS, High at 190.5 FPS, and Ultra at 181.2 FPS. The gap between Medium and High is 66.6 FPS, the largest step in the ladder, suggesting the High preset enables significant visual features that impact performance.

At 2560x1440, the pattern repeats with lower absolute values: Low at 251.6 FPS, Medium at 218.1 FPS, High at 136.3 FPS, and Ultra at 129.4 FPS. The Medium-to-High gap expands to 81.8 FPS, indicating that the higher pixel count amplifies the cost of High's effects.

At 3840x2160, the values compress: Low at 172.2 FPS, Medium at 139.5 FPS, High at 83.7 FPS, and Ultra at 81.4 FPS. The Medium-to-High gap shrinks to 55.8 FPS, while the High-to-Ultra gap narrows to just 2.3 FPS. This compression at 4K confirms that the GPU is hitting a memory bandwidth wall — increasing settings beyond Medium provides diminishing returns.

The data also reveals that the Low preset scales most efficiently across resolutions: from 1080p to 4K, it drops from 280.8 to 172.2 FPS, a 38.7% reduction. The High preset drops from 190.5 to 83.7 FPS, a 56.1% reduction. This differential underscores that the GPU's memory subsystem is the primary constraint at higher resolutions, while the CPU maintains adequate frame delivery even at 4K Low with 172.2 FPS.