Inside

Inside is a 2016 puzzle platformer that, on paper, should not stress modern hardware. Yet, the measured FPS data for the AMD Ryzen 5 7400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D combination reveals a fascinating scaling curve that defies typical expectations. The benchmark results show a system capable of extreme frame rates, but the pattern of performance drops across resolutions and settings tells a specific story about where the bottleneck lies in this particular title.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1080p to 4K produces a dramatic and consistent reduction in frame rates across all settings, indicating that the rendering load scales heavily with pixel count. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 337 at 1920x1080 to 258 at 3840x2160, a decrease of 79 FPS or roughly 23%. This pattern is remarkably consistent across the other presets: High settings fall from 259 FPS at 1080p to 160 FPS at 4K (a 99 FPS drop), Medium from 311 to 239 (a 72 FPS drop), and Ultra from 255 to 153 (a 102 FPS drop).

The fact that even the Low preset at 4K only manages 258 FPS, while the same preset at 1080p achieves 337 FPS, strongly suggests that the GPU is the limiting component at higher resolutions. The RTX 5090 D, with its 32 GB of GDDR7 memory and 512-bit bus, has ample bandwidth, but the sheer number of pixels being processed at 3840x2160 creates a workload that scales almost linearly with resolution. The data shows a clear trend: as resolution increases, the performance gap between settings narrows, which is a classic sign of GPU-bound operation at 4K.

Interestingly, the drop from 1440p to 4K is more punishing than the drop from 1080p to 1440p. For example, at High settings, moving from 1920x1080 (259 FPS) to 2560x1440 (232 FPS) costs 27 FPS, but moving from 1440p to 4K costs 72 FPS. This non-linear scaling indicates that the RTX 5090 D begins to hit its pixel throughput limits as the resolution approaches 4K, despite its 423.6 GPixel/s pixel rate. The benchmark results suggest that at 1080p and 1440p, the CPU may still be providing headroom, but at 4K, the GPU's raw fill rate becomes the definitive constraint.

FAQ

Q: What is the maximum average FPS recorded for this combo?

A: The highest average FPS is 337, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings. This represents the ceiling for this configuration in Inside.

Q: How does the RTX 5090 D perform at 4K Ultra settings?

A: At 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the combo produces an average of 153 FPS. This is the lowest measured average in the dataset, yet it remains comfortably above 144 Hz for high-refresh-rate displays.

Q: Is the Ryzen 5 7400F a bottleneck at 1080p?

A: The data suggests it may be, as the FPS difference between Low (337) and High (259) at 1080p is 78 FPS. If the GPU were the sole limiting factor, this gap would likely be smaller, indicating the CPU's 6 cores and 12 threads are reaching their limits in this scenario.

Q: What is the best resolution for maximizing frame rates?

A: 1920x1080 offers the highest frame rates across all settings, with the Low preset delivering 337 FPS. However, even at 2560x1440, the combo never drops below 228 FPS on any preset, making 1440p a viable option for very high refresh rates.

Q: How does the Medium preset compare to High at the same resolution?

A: At every resolution, Medium outperforms High. At 4K, Medium averages 239 FPS compared to High's 160 FPS, a difference of 79 FPS. This suggests the Medium preset reduces specific GPU workloads without a proportional visual cost in this game.

Q: Does the combo maintain playable frame rates at 4K?

A: Yes. The lowest average FPS recorded at 3840x2160 is 153 on Ultra settings, which is still well above the 60 FPS standard for smooth gameplay. All other 4K presets exceed 160 FPS.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D is the dominant component in this pairing, and its specifications directly explain the measured performance. With a boost clock of 2407 MHz and 21,760 shading units, the GPU provides immense compute power that translates into high frame rates even at 4K. The 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus delivers 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth, which is critical for handling the texture and geometry data at 3840x2160 without causing memory-related stutters.

The benchmark data shows that the GPU's role becomes more pronounced as resolution increases. At 1080p, the FPS differences between settings are relatively modest (337 to 255), suggesting that the GPU is not fully saturated. However, at 4K, the spread narrows significantly in absolute terms but reveals the GPU's workload ceiling. The RTX 5090 D's 104.8 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 1,636.8 GTexel/s texture rate are put to the test at 4K, where the average FPS across all presets remains above 153.

The VRAM capacity is notably excessive for Inside, a game from 2016, but it ensures that memory is never a bottleneck. The data indicates that the GPU's computational throughput, not its memory subsystem, is the limiting factor at higher resolutions. The 176 ROPs and 680 TMUs provide sufficient rasterization power, but the pixel fill rate of 423.6 GPixel/s appears to be the key metric that caps performance at 4K Ultra.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers exceptional results across the board. Low settings produce an average of 337 FPS, which drops to 311 FPS on Medium, 259 FPS on High, and 255 FPS on Ultra. The Medium preset shows a minimum of 264 FPS and a maximum of 357 FPS, indicating a stable frame time distribution. The 78 FPS gap between Low and High at 1080p suggests that even at this resolution, the CPU's performance (with a boost clock of 4.70 GHz) may be influencing results, as the GPU should theoretically handle this workload with ease.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates remain high but show a clear downward shift. Low settings average 302 FPS, Medium 278 FPS, High 232 FPS, and Ultra 228 FPS. The Medium preset's minimum of 237 FPS and maximum of 320 FPS show a wider variance than at 1080p, hinting at increased GPU workload. The gap between Low and High at 1440p is 70 FPS, similar to 1080p, but the absolute numbers are lower, confirming the GPU's growing influence.

At 3840x2160, the performance profile changes significantly. Low settings average 258 FPS, Medium 239 FPS, High 160 FPS, and Ultra 153 FPS. The Medium preset records a minimum of 203 FPS and a maximum of 274 FPS. The critical observation is the massive 98 FPS drop between Low and High at 4K, compared to 78 FPS at 1080p. This widening gap indicates that the GPU's shading and texture units are being saturated by the higher resolution, making the RTX 5090 D the definitive bottleneck at 4K.

Settings Recommendations

The data clearly shows that the Medium preset offers the best balance of performance and visual fidelity for this combo. At every resolution, Medium delivers significantly higher frame rates than High or Ultra while presumably maintaining a reasonable visual upgrade over Low. At 1080p, Medium achieves 311 FPS, which is 52 FPS higher than High and only 26 FPS lower than Low. At 1440p, Medium's 278 FPS is 46 FPS ahead of High, and at 4K, Medium's 239 FPS is 79 FPS ahead of High.

For users with high-refresh-rate displays (144 Hz or higher), Medium at 2560x1440 provides an average of 278 FPS, which is more than sufficient to saturate most monitors. The minimum of 237 FPS on Medium at 1440p ensures that even the most demanding scenes remain above 200 FPS. At 4K, Medium's 239 FPS average is remarkable, but the 203 FPS minimum suggests that occasional dips could occur.

Ultra settings are not recommended for this title, as they provide only marginal gains over High in visual quality but produce the lowest frame rates. The difference between High and Ultra is minimal across all resolutions (e.g., 4 FPS at 1080p, 4 FPS at 1440p, 7 FPS at 4K), making Ultra an inefficient choice. Low settings offer the highest frame rates but likely sacrifice visual detail that is central to Inside's atmospheric puzzle platforming.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 7400F, with its 6 cores and 12 threads, plays a supporting role in this pairing. Its base clock of 3.70 GHz and boost clock of 4.70 GHz provide solid single-thread performance, as evidenced by its Cinebench R23 single-core score of 3072. The 32 MB of shared L3 cache and 83.2 GB/s memory bandwidth are adequate for feeding the GPU, but the data suggests the CPU may be limiting performance at lower resolutions.

At 1080p, the FPS difference between Low (337) and High (259) is 78 FPS. If the GPU were completely unconstrained, this gap would likely be larger, as the RTX 5090 D is capable of far higher frame rates. The CPU's 12 threads may struggle to keep up with the GPU's frame generation at 1080p, particularly at Low settings where the GPU workload is minimal. The Passmark multithread score of 25,645 and single-thread score of 3,689 indicate a capable processor, but Inside's engine may not fully utilize all cores.

At 4K, the CPU's influence diminishes, as the GPU becomes the primary bottleneck. The fact that Low settings at 4K (258 FPS) are significantly lower than Low at 1080p (337 FPS) confirms that the GPU is doing the heavy lifting at higher resolutions. The CPU's 4.70 GHz boost clock and Zen 4 architecture provide enough headroom to avoid severe bottlenecks, but the data suggests that a more powerful CPU could extract higher frame rates at 1080p.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 5 7400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D combination ranks 196th out of 2,887 tested combos in Inside, placing it in the top 6.8% of all configurations. This is a strong result, but not a top-tier ranking, which is surprising given the GPU's specifications. The ranking suggests that the CPU is holding back the combo's overall performance in this game, as the RTX 5090 D alone is capable of higher frame rates.

Compared to the GPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks, the RTX 5090 D shows a 1.1% delta against the AMD Radeon RX 6650M XT and a -1.6% delta against the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT. This indicates that in raw benchmark scores, the RTX 5090 D is competitive but not overwhelmingly dominant. The CPU's nearest rival, the Intel Core i5-14600T, has a 0.1% delta, showing that the Ryzen 5 7400F is positioned similarly to its direct competition.

The combo's rank of 196 reflects a system that delivers excellent frame rates in Inside, but it does not reach the top of the charts. This is likely due to the CPU's limitations at 1080p, where the data shows the largest performance gaps between settings. At 4K, the combo's performance is more consistent with its hardware expectations, but the overall ranking is pulled down by the lower-resolution results. For a game like Inside, which is not demanding by modern standards, this combo provides more than enough power, but the data indicates that the Ryzen 5 7400F is the weak link in this specific pairing.