Inside

Inside is a puzzle platformer with modest hardware demands, but the measured data for the AMD Ryzen 5 5600G paired with the AMD Radeon RX 580 reveals a configuration that scales predictably across resolutions and settings. The benchmark results indicate a system that is more than capable of delivering smooth gameplay at mainstream resolutions, with the primary bottleneck shifting from the GPU to the CPU only at the highest settings and lowest resolutions.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and consistent across all settings, clearly identifying the Radeon RX 580 as the limiting component at higher pixel counts. At Low settings, the average frame rate falls from 150 FPS at 1920x1080 to 108 FPS at 2560x1440, a 28% reduction, and then to 68 FPS at 3840x2160, a further 37% drop from 1440p. This near-linear decline with pixel count is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario, where the Polaris 20 chip's 6.175 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 256.0 GB/s of memory bandwidth are simply overwhelmed by the 8.3 million pixels of 4K.

The pattern holds at Medium settings, where average FPS goes from 120 at 1080p to 86 at 1440p (a 28% decrease) and then to 54 at 4K (a 37% decrease from 1440p). High settings show a similar trajectory: 75 FPS at 1080p, 54 FPS at 1440p (a 28% drop), and 34 FPS at 4K (a 37% drop). Ultra settings follow suit, with 71 FPS at 1080p, 51 FPS at 1440p, and 32 FPS at 4K.

The consistency of these percentage drops across all four settings presets is telling. It suggests that the resolution scaling is purely a function of pixel throughput and is independent of the graphical complexity being rendered. The GPU's 32 ROPs and 144 TMUs are being taxed equally whether the game is drawing simple low-resolution textures or complex ultra-quality effects. The data shows that the Ryzen 5 5600G with its 3.90 GHz base clock and 4.40 GHz boost clock has ample headroom to feed the GPU at 1080p; the CPU's single-thread performance of 872 in 3dmark is not the constraining factor until frame rates exceed the 100 FPS range.

At 4K, the RX 580 simply cannot maintain playable frame rates on High or Ultra presets, with averages of 34 and 32 FPS respectively. The Medium preset at 4K, with an average of 54 FPS and a minimum of 46 FPS, is the only viable option for 4K gaming, and even then it falls short of a rock-solid 60 FPS. The scaling data strongly indicates that for this combination, 1080p is the sweet spot, with 1440p being a reasonable compromise, and 4K being reserved for lighter settings.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows provide a clear hierarchy of settings for each resolution, and the data suggests that the Medium preset offers the best balance of visual fidelity and performance for this specific hardware combo. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset delivers an average of 120 FPS with a minimum of 102 FPS and a maximum of 138 FPS. This is a significant jump from the High preset's 75 FPS average, and it provides a frame rate that is well above the refresh rate of most standard monitors, ensuring smooth and responsive gameplay.

Comparing Medium to Low at 1080p, the difference is 30 FPS (120 vs 150), which is substantial in relative terms but less critical in absolute terms since both are well above 100 FPS. The visual uplift from Low to Medium is almost always worth the performance cost in a game like Inside, where the atmospheric lighting and shadow effects are core to the experience. The data shows that the Ultra preset, at 71 FPS average, is only 4 FPS slower than High (75 FPS), indicating that the step from High to Ultra is less demanding than the step from Medium to High. However, the 49 FPS gap between Medium and High suggests that High settings introduce a significant increase in shading complexity that the RX 580 struggles to process at 1080p.

At 2560x1440, the Medium preset again stands out, with an average of 86 FPS and a minimum of 73 FPS. This is comfortably playable and provides a smooth experience on a 1440p display. The High preset at 1440p drops to 54 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold that most gamers consider the minimum for a fluid experience. The Low preset at 1440p, with 108 FPS, is overkill for the visual quality it provides. For 4K, the Medium preset is the only reasonable choice, with an average of 54 FPS and a minimum of 46 FPS. While not a perfect 60 FPS, it is playable and far superior to the 34 and 32 FPS averages of High and Ultra, which would feel stuttery and unresponsive.

The pattern is clear: the Medium preset is the performance-per-frame sweet spot. It consistently provides the largest jump in frame rate over High settings while retaining a level of visual quality that is appropriate for the game's art style. For users with 60 Hz displays, the High preset at 1080p is also viable, but the extra headroom provided by Medium ensures that no frame drops will be noticed.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 580, with its 8 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, provides 256.0 GB/s of bandwidth. In the context of Inside, this memory configuration is more than sufficient. The highest memory load observed in the data does not indicate any capacity limitation, as the game is not texture-heavy in the way that modern open-world titles are. The 8 GB frame buffer is ample for 4K resolution at Medium settings, where the average FPS of 54 suggests the GPU is computing shading and pixel fill rather than swapping textures.

The GPU's clock speeds, with a base of 1257 MHz and a boost of 1340 MHz, are modest by today's standards, but the architecture's 2304 shading units and 32 ROPs are the key to its performance. The pixel rate of 42.88 GPixel/s and texture rate of 193.0 GTexel/s are the physical limits that dictate the resolution scaling we observe. At 4K Ultra, the 32 FPS average is a direct consequence of the ROPs being unable to fill the 8.3 million-pixel frame buffer fast enough. The data shows a clear correlation between the 37% FPS drop from 1440p to 4K and the 2.25x increase in pixel count, confirming that the GPU's pixel throughput is the limiting factor.

The GPU's benchmark scores place it in the 53rd percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 12928. Its nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER, scores 12986, a delta of -0.4%, indicating that the RX 580 is essentially on par with that card in general compute tasks. However, in this specific game, the RX 580's performance is more dependent on its driver optimizations and the game's engine, which appears to favor the GCN architecture's strengths in fill-rate-limited scenarios.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average frame rate achieved by this combo at 1080p?

A: The highest average frame rate is 150 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 with the Low settings preset.

Q: Is the AMD Radeon RX 580 capable of maintaining 60 FPS at 4K resolution?

A: The data shows that only the Medium preset at 3840x2160 comes close, with an average of 54 FPS and a minimum of 46 FPS. High and Ultra presets average 34 and 32 FPS respectively, failing to reach 60 FPS.

Q: How does the Ryzen 5 5600G's multi-threaded performance compare to its rivals?

A: The CPU's average benchmark score of 21088 is 0.1% higher than the Intel Core i3-1220P (21066) and 0.2% higher than the AMD Ryzen 5 7530U (21133), but 0.1% lower than the Intel Core Ultra 7 256V (21112).

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

A: At 2560x1440, the High preset averages 54 FPS, while the Ultra preset averages 51 FPS, a difference of only 3 FPS.

Q: Does the 8 GB VRAM of the RX 580 ever become a limiting factor in this game?

A: Based on the measured FPS data, there is no indication of a VRAM capacity bottleneck. The performance scaling is consistent with a pixel-fill-rate limitation rather than a memory bandwidth or capacity issue, as the frame rate drops are proportional to resolution increases.

Q: What is the minimum FPS recorded for this combo at 1080p Medium settings?

A: At 1920x1080 with Medium settings, the minimum FPS is 102, with a maximum of 138 FPS.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600G is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture, codenamed Cezanne. With a base clock of 3.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz, it provides strong single-thread performance, as evidenced by its Geekbench single-core score of 1801 and its 3dmark single-thread score of 872. In a game like Inside, which is not heavily multi-threaded, this single-thread performance is the most critical CPU attribute. The data shows that at 1080p Low settings, where the GPU is less stressed, the CPU is capable of driving the frame rate to 150 FPS. This suggests that the CPU is not a bottleneck at this level.

However, the CPU's role becomes more apparent when looking at the frame rate ceilings. The 3dmark 16-thread score of 5451 and the Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 10551 indicate strong multi-threaded capabilities, but these are not fully utilized by Inside. The game's engine appears to rely on a few primary threads, meaning the CPU's boost clock of 4.40 GHz is more important than its core count. The 16 MB of L3 cache and 512 KB per-core L2 cache help reduce memory latency, which is beneficial for the game's physics and logic updates.

The CPU's performance relative to its rivals is tightly clustered. Its average benchmark score of 21088 is nearly identical to the Intel Core i3-1220P (21066, +0.1%) and the Intel Core Ultra 7 256V (21112, -0.1%). This indicates that for this game, the specific CPU chosen has minimal impact on the final frame rate, as the GPU is the dominant factor in most scenarios. The only scenario where the CPU might matter is at 1080p Low, where the 150 FPS average suggests the frame rate is approaching the limit of what the CPU's single-thread performance can deliver. In contrast, at 4K Ultra, the 32 FPS average is entirely determined by the GPU's fill rate, and the CPU is idle most of the time.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured data set for this combo is as follows. At 1920x1080, the Low preset averages 150 FPS. The Medium preset averages 120 FPS, with a minimum of 102 FPS and a maximum of 138 FPS. The High preset averages 75 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 71 FPS. This shows a clear gradient where the step from Low to Medium costs 30 FPS, from Medium to High costs 45 FPS, and from High to Ultra costs only 4 FPS.

Moving to 2560x1440, the Low preset averages 108 FPS. The Medium preset averages 86 FPS, with a minimum of 73 FPS and a maximum of 99 FPS. The High preset averages 54 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 51 FPS. The relative differences are consistent with 1080p, but the absolute frame rates are all lower due to the increased pixel count.

At 3840x2160, the Low preset averages 68 FPS. The Medium preset averages 54 FPS, with a minimum of 46 FPS and a maximum of 62 FPS. The High preset averages 34 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 32 FPS. The 4K data shows that only the Low and Medium presets are playable, and even then, the Medium preset's minimum of 46 FPS indicates occasional dips below the 60 FPS threshold.

The data also reveals that the difference between High and Ultra is consistently small across all resolutions: 4 FPS at 1080p, 3 FPS at 1440p, and 2 FPS at 4K. This suggests that the Ultra preset adds very little extra GPU load compared to High, and users should always select Ultra if they can handle High, as the visual quality improvement is nearly free. The larger gap between Medium and High (45 FPS at 1080p, 32 FPS at 1440p, and 20 FPS at 4K) indicates that High settings introduce a significant rendering feature (likely more complex lighting or post-processing) that has a substantial performance cost.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 5600G and the AMD Radeon RX 580 ranks 3386 out of 3716 tested combos for Inside. This places it in the lower 9% of all systems tested, which is a surprising result given the game's modest graphics requirements. The low ranking is likely due to the fact that the database includes many systems with much newer and more powerful GPUs, such as the RTX 40-series and RX 7000-series cards, which can easily maintain 144 FPS at 4K.

Despite the low overall rank, the combo's performance is entirely playable for the game's intended experience. The 1080p Medium preset, with its 120 FPS average, is in the top tier of what most gamers would consider "high refresh rate" gaming. The bottleneck is clearly the RX 580, which is an older GPU with a 53rd percentile ranking among all GPUs. In contrast, the Ryzen 5 5600G is a more modern CPU with a 74th percentile ranking, indicating that the CPU has much more headroom for future GPU upgrades.

The rank is a reflection of the GPU's age and its position in the performance hierarchy, not a statement about the playability of the game. For a puzzle platformer like Inside, which focuses on atmosphere and narrative over fast-paced action, a stable 54 FPS at 4K Medium is a perfectly acceptable experience. The data shows that this combo is capable of delivering a smooth and enjoyable gameplay experience, even if it does not top any performance charts. The combo's rank of 3386 out of 3716 serves as a reminder that the RX 580, while still functional, is firmly in the entry-level segment of modern gaming performance.