Inside

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti combination delivers a remarkably consistent experience in Inside, a 2016 puzzle platformer that places modest demands on modern hardware. The measured frame rates reveal a system that is heavily GPU-limited at higher resolutions, yet capable of extreme performance at 1080p. This analysis breaks down the benchmark data to show exactly where the bottlenecks lie and how each component contributes to the final output.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate curve across resolutions tells a clear story about the limiting component in this pairing. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the system produces 217.9 FPS, which drops to 159.4 FPS at 2560x1440 and further to 97.2 FPS at 3840x2160. This represents a 55.4% performance loss from 1080p to 4K at Low settings, indicating that the GPU is being pushed progressively harder as pixel count increases.

The scaling pattern becomes more pronounced at higher quality presets. At Ultra settings, the system delivers 104.2 FPS at 1080p, 73.1 FPS at 1440p, and 47 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 29.8%, while the jump from 1440p to 4K costs another 35.7%. This non-linear degradation is characteristic of a GPU that is approaching its fill-rate limits, particularly with the GTX 1660 Ti's 192-bit memory bus and 288.0 GB/s bandwidth.

At High settings, the pattern holds: 110.8 FPS at 1080p, 80.4 FPS at 1440p, and 50.7 FPS at 4K. The consistency of these deltas across quality presets suggests that resolution is the dominant factor, not shader complexity. The 4K results at High and Ultra (50.7 and 47 FPS respectively) are close, hinting that the GPU is becoming the hard ceiling. Meanwhile, the 1080p Low result of 217.9 FPS shows that the Ryzen 5 5600's six Zen 3 cores are more than sufficient to feed the GPU at lower resolutions, where the CPU becomes the more relevant partner.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is built on the TU116 chip using a 12 nm process from TSMC, containing 6,600 million transistors on a 284 mm² die. Its Turing architecture, while lacking ray tracing cores, provides 1536 shading units, 96 texture mapping units, and 48 ROPs. The card operates at a base clock of 1500 MHz and boosts to 1770 MHz, with memory running at 1500 MHz (12 Gbps effective) across a 192-bit bus.

The GPU's 6 GB of GDDR6 memory proves adequate for Inside, which is not a VRAM-intensive title. The 288.0 GB/s of bandwidth allows the card to maintain high throughput even at 4K, though the pixel rate of 84.96 GPixel/s and texture rate of 169.9 GTexel/s become limiting factors at higher resolutions. The FP32 performance of 5.437 TFLOPS is modest by modern standards, which explains why the card struggles to maintain 60 FPS at 4K Ultra.

The GTX 1660 Ti's benchmark results place it in the 55th percentile among all GPUs, with an average score of 13925. Its nearest rival is the AMD Radeon RX 570X, which scores 13871, a 0.4% delta. This close margin indicates that the GTX 1660 Ti sits in a competitive mid-range tier, though it is 0.7% behind the NVIDIA Tesla K10 and 0.8% ahead of the NVIDIA RTX A2000 Mobile. In Inside, the card's DirectX 12 score of 51 on PassMark suggests that its feature set is sufficient, but the 4K Ultra result of 47 FPS shows a clear performance ceiling.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600 is a 5000-series processor built on the Zen 3 architecture, codenamed Vermeer. It features 6 cores and 12 threads, with a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. The CPU is manufactured on a 7 nm process at TSMC, containing 4,150 million transistors on a 74 mm² die. Its 32 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel DDR4 memory support with 51.2 GB/s bandwidth provide ample headroom for gaming workloads.

The CPU's benchmark scores demonstrate strong single-thread and multi-thread capabilities. In Cinebench R23, it scores 2584 points in single-core and 18309 points in multi-core, while PassMark data shows 3256 in single-thread and 21541 in multithread. The 3DMark results, particularly the 882 single-thread score and 5641 max-thread score, indicate that the processor can handle the physics and logic demands of Inside without becoming a bottleneck.

The Ryzen 5 5600 sits in the 79th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 21765. Its nearest rival is the Intel Xeon D-1746TER at 21635, a 0.6% delta, while it trails the AMD EPYC 9554P by 0.6% and the Intel Core i7-11700F by 0.9%. This performance tier means that at 1080p Low, where the GPU is less stressed, the CPU can push frame rates to 217.9 FPS, demonstrating that the processor is not the limiting factor in this configuration.

FAQ

*Q: What is the maximum frame rate achievable with this CPU-GPU combo in Inside?*

A: The highest measured average FPS is 217.9, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This drops to 159.4 FPS at 2560x1440 Low and 97.2 FPS at 4K Low.

*Q: Can this system maintain 60 FPS at 4K in Inside?*

A: Yes, but only at Low settings, where it averages 97.2 FPS. At Medium settings it drops to 77 FPS, while at High it falls to 50.7 FPS and Ultra produces 47 FPS.

Q: How does the GTX 1660 Ti compare to its nearest rival in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The GTX 1660 Ti scores 13925 on average, which is 0.4% higher than the AMD Radeon RX 570X (13871) and 0.8% higher than both the NVIDIA RTX A2000 Mobile (13821) and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 (13812).

Q: Is the Ryzen 5 5600 a bottleneck for the GTX 1660 Ti in this game?

A: No. The CPU's single-thread score of 882 in 3DMark and 2584 in Cinebench R23 indicates it can feed the GPU effectively, as shown by the 217.9 FPS result at 1080p Low.

Q: What is the performance difference between High and Ultra settings at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, High settings yield 80.4 FPS while Ultra yields 73.1 FPS, a difference of 9.1%. The gap narrows at 4K, where High produces 50.7 FPS and Ultra produces 47 FPS.

*Q: How does the CPU's multi-thread performance affect Inside's gameplay?*

A: The Ryzen 5 5600's 12 threads and 32 MB of L3 cache handle the game's logic efficiently, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 18309, ensuring no CPU-related frame drops even at high FPS.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data covers four resolutions and four quality presets, providing a complete picture of performance:

1920x1080:

• Low: 217.9 FPS
• Medium: 175.3 FPS
• High: 110.8 FPS
• Ultra: 104.2 FPS

2560x1440:

• Low: 159.4 FPS
• Medium: 128.3 FPS
• High: 80.4 FPS
• Ultra: 73.1 FPS

3840x2160:

• Low: 97.2 FPS
• Medium: 77 FPS
• High: 50.7 FPS
• Ultra: 47 FPS

The data reveals that the gap between Low and Medium is relatively small at every resolution (about 20-25% difference), while the jump from Medium to High is more significant (around 37-38% at 1080p and 1440p, but only 34% at 4K). The Ultra preset consistently costs about 6-7% performance over High, suggesting diminishing returns at the highest settings.

This combination ranks 1438 out of 1671 tested combos for Inside, placing it in the lower-middle tier of all possible pairings. The measured data confirms that while the system is not a top-tier performer, it delivers a thoroughly playable experience at 1080p and 1440p across all settings, with 4K requiring Low or Medium settings for smooth frame rates.