Inside

Inside is a decade-old puzzle platformer with deliberately modest visual demands, and the measured results for the AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D + AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT combination reflect that. The data shows this pairing delivers exceptionally high frame rates across all tested configurations, with the most demanding preset at 4K still producing an average of 60 FPS. The bottleneck analysis is straightforward: at 1080p and 1440p, the CPU is the primary limiter, but at 4K, the GPU takes over, creating a clear performance hierarchy where the gap between Low and Ultra presets widens dramatically as resolution increases.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K reveals a system that transitions from CPU-bound to GPU-bound territory. At High settings, the average FPS falls from 140 at 1920x1080 to 101 at 2560x1440, a 27.9% reduction, and then further to 63 at 3840x2160, a 37.6% drop from 1440p. This scaling pattern indicates that the RX 6600 XT is the limiting factor at 4K, as the pixel count quadruples from 1080p while the frame rate only drops by 55%. The CPU, with its 6 cores and 12 threads, has ample headroom to feed the GPU at lower resolutions, but the GPU's 8 GB of GDDR6 memory and 256.0 GB/s bandwidth become the constraining resources at 2160p.

The Low preset tells a different story. At 1920x1080, the average FPS reaches 268, which drops to 202 at 2560x1440 (a 24.6% decline) and then to 127 at 3840x2160 (a 37.1% decline from 1440p). The absolute numbers are so high that even the 4K Low result exceeds the refresh rate of most monitors, but the percentage drops between resolutions are nearly identical to the High preset, suggesting that the GPU workload scaling is consistent regardless of visual complexity. The Ultra preset shows the steepest cliff: 134 FPS at 1080p, 96 at 1440p (a 28.4% drop), and 60 at 4K (a 37.5% drop from 1440p). This consistent ~28% and ~37% pattern across all presets indicates that Inside's rendering pipeline scales predictably with resolution, with the GPU becoming progressively more dominant as pixel count increases.

The Medium preset provides the only complete data with min and max FPS values. At 4K, the range is 86 to 117 FPS with a 101 average, while at 1440p it is 137 to 186 with a 161 average, and at 1080p it is 191 to 258 with a 225 average. The spread between min and max FPS is 31 at 4K, 49 at 1440p, and 67 at 1080p, which means the variance actually shrinks as resolution rises. This is counterintuitive but logical: at higher resolutions, the GPU becomes the bottleneck, smoothing out the frame pacing, whereas at 1080p, CPU-side frame generation introduces more variability.

CPU Role

The Ryzen 5 5500X3D is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture, with a base clock of 3.00 GHz and a boost clock of 4.00 GHz. Its defining feature is the 96 MB shared L3 cache, which is exceptionally large for a mainstream desktop chip and directly benefits games with large working sets. The PassMark single-thread score of 2941 and multithread score of 20363 place this CPU in the 85th percentile of all processors, with an average benchmark score of 37018. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen 5 5600F (scoring 36945, a 0.2% delta) and the Intel Core Ultra 5 225 (scoring 36938, also a 0.2% delta), which means the 5500X3D is at the very top of its performance tier but not significantly ahead of its closest competitors.

In Inside, the CPU role is most evident at 1080p. The Low preset at 1920x1080 produces 268 FPS, which is 2.0 times the 134 FPS of the Ultra preset at the same resolution. This gap of exactly 2.0x suggests that the Ultra preset introduces enough additional draw calls or physics calculations to strain the CPU, even with 6 cores available. However, the fact that the 5500X3D can sustain 134 FPS on Ultra at 1080p indicates that the game is not heavily multithreaded; a more thread-hungry title would show worse scaling with only 6 cores. The PassMark physics score of 2282 is notably lower than the integer math score of 60033, which hints that the CPU's raw physics throughput is not its strong suit, yet Inside's simple 2D side-scrolling physics do not stress this weakness.

The CPU's memory support for DDR4 at dual-channel with 51.2 GB/s bandwidth is adequate for this game, as the data shows no starvation issues even at 268 FPS. The 96 MB L3 cache is likely the reason why the 1080p Low preset achieves such high frame rates, as the entire game world state can reside in cache, avoiding slower main memory accesses. At 4K, the CPU's influence diminishes, as the GPU becomes the bottleneck; the 5500X3D's boost clock of 4.00 GHz is sufficient to keep up with the RX 6600 XT's demands at lower resolutions, but at 2160p, the GPU's 2048 shading units and 64 ROPs are simply overwhelmed by the pixel fill rate required.

FAQ

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

A: The data shows that 2560x1440 on High settings delivers 101 FPS, which is a balanced experience. At 1920x1080, the High preset reaches 140 FPS, but the 1440p result still exceeds 100 FPS, making it the highest resolution where the frame rate remains above the 100 FPS threshold. At 4K, the High preset drops to 63 FPS, which is playable but noticeably lower.

Q: How does the Ryzen 5 5500X3D compare to its nearest CPU rivals?

A: The 5500X3D has an average benchmark score of 37018, which is 0.2% higher than the AMD Ryzen 5 5600F (36945) and the Intel Core Ultra 5 225 (36938), and 0.2% lower than the AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 450 (37093). This places it in a dead heat with its competitors, with no meaningful performance separation.

Q: Does the RX 6600 XT bottleneck the CPU at any resolution?

A: At 3840x2160, the GPU is clearly the limiting factor. The High preset drops to 63 FPS, which is only 45% of the 140 FPS seen at 1080p. At 2560x1440 and below, the CPU has enough headroom, as evidenced by the 202 FPS Low preset at 1440p, which is close to the 268 FPS at 1080p, indicating the GPU is not yet saturated.

Q: What is the frame time variance like at Medium settings?

A: The Medium preset is the only one with min and max FPS data. At 1080p, the range is 191 to 258 FPS (a 67 FPS spread), at 1440p it is 137 to 186 FPS (a 49 FPS spread), and at 4K it is 86 to 117 FPS (a 31 FPS spread). The variance decreases as resolution increases, meaning higher resolutions produce steadier frame pacing.

Q: How does the GPU's performance rank against other graphics cards?

A: The RX 6600 XT has an average benchmark score of 24442, placing it in the 70th percentile of all GPUs. It is 0.7% ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1630 (24277) and 0.8% ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti (24236), but 0.8% behind the Intel Arc A350M (24647) and 1.1% behind the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER (24170).

Q: Is the 4K Ultra setting worth using?

A: No. The Ultra preset at 3840x2160 produces an average of 60 FPS, which is exactly the same as the High preset's 63 FPS (a difference of only 3 FPS). Given that High at 4K achieves 63 FPS, the Ultra preset offers no meaningful visual benefit for a 4.8% performance cost, making High the superior choice.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the performance envelope is extremely wide. The Low preset achieves an average of 268 FPS, the Medium preset averages 225 FPS with a range of 191 to 258 FPS, the High preset averages 140 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 134 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium is 43 FPS (a 19.1% reduction), while the gap between Medium and High is 85 FPS (a 37.8% reduction). The difference between High and Ultra is only 6 FPS (a 4.3% reduction), which is negligible, suggesting that the High to Ultra step adds minimal visual complexity but still costs some performance.

At 2560x1440, the same pattern holds with lower absolute numbers. Low averages 202 FPS, Medium averages 161 FPS (range 137 to 186), High averages 101 FPS, and Ultra averages 96 FPS. The Low to Medium gap is 41 FPS (a 20.3% reduction), the Medium to High gap is 60 FPS (a 37.3% reduction), and the High to Ultra gap is 5 FPS (a 5.0% reduction). The percentage reductions are nearly identical to 1080p, confirming that the settings scaling is resolution-independent.

At 3840x2160, the numbers compress significantly. Low averages 127 FPS, Medium averages 101 FPS (range 86 to 117), High averages 63 FPS, and Ultra averages 60 FPS. The Low to Medium gap is 26 FPS (a 20.5% reduction), the Medium to High gap is 38 FPS (a 37.6% reduction), and the High to Ultra gap is 3 FPS (a 4.8% reduction). The High to Ultra gap shrinks to just 3 FPS, making the Ultra preset at 4K essentially identical to High in performance terms.

The data reveals a consistent trend: the Medium to High transition is the most expensive settings step, costing roughly 37-38% of performance at every resolution. In contrast, the High to Ultra step costs only 4-5%, which is so small that it could be considered a free upgrade if visual fidelity is desired. The Low to Medium step costs about 20% at all resolutions, making it the second most impactful change.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT is built on the RDNA 2.0 architecture with the Navi 23 chip, featuring 2048 shading units, 128 texture mapping units, and 64 render output units. Its base clock is 1968 MHz, with a game clock of 2359 MHz and a boost clock of 2589 MHz. The GPU has 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, providing 256.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The pixel rate of 165.7 GPixel/s and texture rate of 331.4 GTexel/s are the key specs for Inside's 2D rendering, as the game relies heavily on fill rate rather than complex geometry.

In Inside, the GPU's role becomes dominant at 4K. The 3840x2160 resolution requires 8.3 million pixels per frame, and the RX 6600 XT's 64 ROPs are tasked with writing all of them. The data shows that at 4K High, the average FPS is 63, which is exactly half of the 1440p High result of 101 FPS (a 50.5% reduction, close to the 2.25x pixel count increase). This near-linear scaling indicates that the GPU is purely fill-rate limited at 2160p, with no other bottleneck interfering. The 4K Ultra result of 60 FPS is only 3 FPS lower than High, which further confirms that the GPU is saturated and cannot extract additional performance from lower settings.

The GPU's 8 GB of VRAM is sufficient for Inside, as the game's art assets are relatively simple. The fact that the 4K Low preset still achieves 127 FPS shows that even at maximum resolution, the GPU can handle the workload when shading complexity is reduced. The RX 6600 XT's PassMark G3D score of 16461 and DirectX 12 score of 61 (the lowest among its DirectX tests) suggest that the GPU is more optimized for older APIs, which aligns with Inside's 2016 release date. The GPU's 10.60 TFLOPS of FP32 performance is ample for this title, and the 70th percentile ranking among all GPUs indicates it is a mid-to-upper tier card that pairs well with the 85th percentile CPU.

Settings Recommendations

The best experience per the measured rows is the High preset at 2560x1440, which delivers 101 FPS. This configuration balances visual quality with performance, staying well above the 60 FPS threshold while offering a significant resolution upgrade over 1080p. The High preset at 1920x1080 achieves 140 FPS, which is better for high-refresh-rate monitors, but the 1440p result is the sweet spot for most displays. At 4K, the High preset at 63 FPS is the most playable option, as the Ultra preset only manages 60 FPS, a difference of 3 FPS that is imperceptible.

For users prioritizing frame rate above all else, the Low preset at 1920x1080 produces 268 FPS, which is ideal for 240 Hz monitors. The Medium preset at 1080p offers 225 FPS with a range of 191 to 258 FPS, which is also excellent, and the min FPS of 191 is still above 144 Hz. The Ultra preset is never recommended, as it offers only a 4-5% performance penalty over High while delivering marginal visual improvements; the data shows that the High to Ultra step is the least impactful settings change in the entire test matrix.

The Medium preset is a viable middle ground, particularly at 1440p where it achieves 161 FPS with a 137 FPS minimum. This is the only preset where min FPS data is available, and the spread suggests it is stable enough for competitive play. At 4K, the Medium preset at 101 FPS is surprisingly strong, outperforming High by 38 FPS, which makes it the best 4K option for users who want high frame rates without sacrificing too much visual quality. Overall, the data indicates that High at 1440p is the recommended default, with Medium at 4K as the alternative for resolution-hungry users, and Low at 1080p reserved for competitive or high-refresh scenarios.