Inside

Resolution Scaling

The measured frame rates for Inside across 1080p, 1440p, and 4K reveal a workload that is far more sensitive to resolution than to the CPU's capabilities. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 combination produces 308.4 FPS. Moving to 2560x1440 Low, the average drops to 275.9 FPS, a reduction of 32.5 FPS. At 3840x2160 Low, the average falls further to 239.1 FPS. This progression shows a clear 69.3 FPS difference between 1080p and 4K at the lowest settings, indicating that even a modest GPU load at 4K begins to limit the frame rate.

The scaling pattern becomes more pronounced when settings are increased. At High settings, the frame rate goes from 236 FPS at 1080p to 212.5 FPS at 1440p, and then to 142.8 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1440p to 4K is 69.7 FPS, which is nearly double the 23.5 FPS drop observed from 1080p to 1440p. This suggests that at 4K High, the RTX 5080's rendering workload becomes the primary constraint, as the pixel count increase from 1440p to 4K is substantial.

Ultra settings show the most severe resolution scaling. At 1080p Ultra, the system achieves 235.2 FPS. At 1440p Ultra, this declines to 207.1 FPS, and at 4K Ultra, it drops to 132.1 FPS. The total loss from 1080p to 4K at Ultra is 103.1 FPS. This indicates that the combination of high resolution and maximum settings pushes the GPU to its limits, with the CPU having less influence on the outcome.

The data shows that at 1080p, the frame rates across all settings are tightly clustered: Low (308.4 FPS), Medium (281.7 FPS), High (236 FPS), and Ultra (235.2 FPS). The difference between High and Ultra at 1080p is negligible at 0.8 FPS, suggesting that the CPU or game engine is the limiting factor at this resolution, not the GPU. In contrast, at 4K, the spread between Low (239.1 FPS) and Ultra (132.1 FPS) is 107 FPS, which is a much wider gap, confirming that the GPU becomes the bottleneck as resolution increases.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average frame rate recorded for this combination?

A: The highest average frame rate is 308.4 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings.

Q: How much does the frame rate drop when moving from 1080p to 4K at High settings?

A: At High settings, the average frame rate drops from 236 FPS at 1920x1080 to 142.8 FPS at 3840x2160, a decline of 93.2 FPS.

Q: Is there a significant difference between High and Ultra settings at 1080p?

A: No, the difference is minimal. At 1920x1080, High settings yield 236 FPS and Ultra yields 235.2 FPS, a difference of only 0.8 FPS, indicating the CPU is the limiting factor at this resolution.

Q: What is the lowest average frame rate recorded?

A: The lowest average frame rate is 132.1 FPS, recorded at 3840x2160 resolution with Ultra settings.

Q: How does the RTX 5080's performance compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 5080 has an average benchmark score of 59188, which is 1.6% higher than the Intel Arc A570M's 58239, and 2.5% higher than the Intel Arc A580's 57756. It is 1.9% lower than the Intel Arc Pro A60's 60326.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Low and Medium settings at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, Low settings produce 275.9 FPS, while Medium settings produce 257.6 FPS, a difference of 18.3 FPS.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a 5 nm process node from TSMC. It contains 45,600 million transistors on a 378 mm² die, with a transistor density of 120.6M per mm². The GPU operates with a base clock of 2295 MHz and a boost clock of 2617 MHz, with memory clocked at 1875 MHz or 30 Gbps effective. The memory subsystem consists of 16 GB of GDDR7 on a 256-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 960.0 GB/s.

In Inside, the GPU's role becomes more evident as resolution increases. At 1080p, the frame rates are consistently high, ranging from 235.2 FPS at Ultra to 308.4 FPS at Low. The minimal difference between High (236 FPS) and Ultra (235.2 FPS) at 1080p suggests that the GPU is not fully utilized at this resolution, as the game's puzzle-platformer visuals are not demanding enough to saturate the RTX 5080's 56.28 TFLOPS of FP32 performance.

At 4K, however, the GPU's architecture comes into play. The 960.0 GB/s memory bandwidth and 112 ROPs are tasked with filling the 3840x2160 framebuffer. The measured results show that at 4K Ultra, the system drops to 132.1 FPS, a 43.1% reduction from 1080p Ultra. This aligns with the GPU's pixel rate of 293.1 GPixel/s, which becomes a limiting factor at higher resolutions.

The RTX 5080's percentile ranking at 89% of all GPUs indicates strong overall performance, but in Inside, the game's relatively simple geometry means that the GPU's shading units (10752) and texture mapping units (336) are not the primary bottlenecks. Instead, the data suggests that at 4K, the fill rate and memory bandwidth are the key constraints, as evidenced by the significant frame rate drops when moving from 1440p to 4K across all settings.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The benchmark results provide a complete matrix of average frame rates across three resolutions and four settings levels. At 1920x1080, the system delivers 308.4 FPS at Low, 281.7 FPS at Medium, 236 FPS at High, and 235.2 FPS at Ultra. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a total reduction of 73.2 FPS, with the largest single drop being 45.7 FPS from Medium to High.

At 2560x1440, the frame rates are 275.9 FPS at Low, 257.6 FPS at Medium, 212.5 FPS at High, and 207.1 FPS at Ultra. The difference between Low and Ultra is 68.8 FPS. Notably, the gap between High and Ultra narrows to 5.4 FPS at this resolution, compared to 0.8 FPS at 1080p, indicating that the GPU is beginning to take on more of the workload.

At 3840x2160, the frame rates drop to 239.1 FPS at Low, 215.5 FPS at Medium, 142.8 FPS at High, and 132.1 FPS at Ultra. The spread between Low and Ultra is 107 FPS, the largest of any resolution. The drop from Medium to High is 72.7 FPS, which is the steepest single-step decline in the entire dataset, highlighting a significant increase in GPU load at High settings.

Comparing settings across resolutions, Low settings maintain a high frame rate even at 4K, with 239.1 FPS, which is only 69.3 FPS lower than at 1080p. Ultra settings, however, show a much more dramatic scaling, with 132.1 FPS at 4K versus 235.2 FPS at 1080p, a difference of 103.1 FPS. This suggests that Ultra settings introduce effects that disproportionately increase GPU work at higher resolutions.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600X is a 6-core, 12-thread processor from the 5000 series, based on the Zen 3 architecture with the Vermeer codename. It has a base clock of 3.70 GHz and a boost clock of 4.60 GHz, with a TDP of 65 W. The CPU features 64 KB of L1 cache per core, 512 KB of L2 cache per core, and a 32 MB L3 cache. Its memory support includes DDR4 with dual-channel configuration and a bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s.

In Inside, the CPU's role is most apparent at lower resolutions. At 1080p, the frame rates are nearly identical between High (236 FPS) and Ultra (235.2 FPS), with only a 0.8 FPS difference. This indicates that the game engine is not able to utilize the GPU fully, and the CPU's single-thread performance becomes the limiting factor. The Ryzen 5 5600X achieves a single-thread score of 917 in 3DMark and 2622 in Cinebench R23, which are strong results for a 6-core processor.

The CPU's multi-threaded capabilities, while not critical for this game, are reflected in its synthetic benchmarks. It scores 5582 in 3DMark with 16 threads, 18578 in Cinebench R23 multi-core, and 8673 in Geekbench multi-core. These scores place the CPU at the 78th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 20680. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen 5 5600GT (0.3% lower score), Intel Core i7-10700 (0.3% lower), and Intel Core i5-12490F (0.5% lower).

At 1440p, the CPU's influence diminishes slightly, but it still plays a role. The frame rates at High (212.5 FPS) and Ultra (207.1 FPS) differ by 5.4 FPS, which is larger than at 1080p but still relatively small. At 4K, the CPU becomes less relevant, as the GPU's workload dominates. The difference between High and Ultra at 4K is 10.7 FPS, which is smaller than the 72.7 FPS drop from Medium to High, confirming that the GPU is the primary constraint at this resolution.

The Ryzen 5 5600X's boost clock of 4.60 GHz and 32 MB of L3 cache are sufficient for Inside's physics and logic, which are typical of a puzzle platformer. The game's release date of 2016-07-06 means it was designed for hardware of that era, and the 5600X's Zen 3 architecture provides ample headroom. The benchmark results show that at 1080p, the CPU can sustain frame rates above 235 FPS across all settings, which is well above the refresh rates of most displays.