Inside

Inside is a 2016 puzzle platformer that, on paper, should not stress modern hardware. However, the measured data for the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X paired with the Intel Arc B370 reveals a surprisingly steep performance curve, particularly at higher resolutions and settings. The combination ranks 2654 out of 2887 tested combos for this game, placing it in the lower percentile of systems. This analysis breaks down the measured FPS across resolutions and settings, interprets the CPU and GPU roles based on their specifications, and provides a clear recommendation for the best playable experience.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data provides a clear hierarchy of performance across the four tested settings presets. For this specific hardware combination, the optimal balance between visual fidelity and playability is found at Medium settings. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset delivers an average of 113 FPS, with a minimum of 96 FPS and a maximum of 130 FPS. This is a substantial jump from the High preset's 70 FPS average, and it maintains a frame rate well above the standard 60 FPS threshold, ensuring smooth gameplay. The Ultra preset at 1080p yields 67 FPS, which is playable but barely above the Medium preset's minimum, indicating that the extra visual features come at a high performance cost.

At 2560x1440, the Medium preset again emerges as the best option, producing an average of 81 FPS with a minimum of 69 FPS. This is the only 1440p setting that consistently stays above 60 FPS. The High preset at this resolution drops to 51 FPS, which is noticeable for a game requiring precise platforming. The data indicates that while the hardware can handle 1440p, it does so only at Medium settings without risking frame drops below the desired threshold.

The story changes at 3840x2160 (4K). Here, even the Medium preset only achieves an average of 51 FPS, with a minimum of 43 FPS. The High and Ultra presets fall to 32 FPS and 30 FPS, respectively, making them effectively unplayable for a smooth experience. The Low preset at 4K manages 64 FPS, but this comes with a significant reduction in visual quality. For a 4K experience, users would have to compromise heavily on settings, suggesting that this resolution is beyond the comfortable reach of this combo for a consistent 60 FPS experience. Therefore, the best overall recommendation is to play at 1080p or 1440p with the Medium preset, which provides the highest average FPS while maintaining a solid minimum frame rate.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and settings combination for this hardware in Inside?

A: The best experience is at 1920x1080 with Medium settings, which yields an average of 113 FPS and a minimum of 96 FPS. At 2560x1440, Medium is also the best choice, delivering an average of 81 FPS and a minimum of 69 FPS, keeping the experience above 60 FPS.

Q: Can this system run Inside at 4K resolution smoothly?

A: No, not with high visual fidelity. At 3840x2160, the highest average FPS is 64 on Low settings. The Medium preset drops to 51 FPS average, and High/Ultra fall to 32 FPS and 30 FPS, respectively, which is not a smooth playing experience.

Q: How much performance is lost when moving from 1080p to 1440p at High settings?

A: At High settings, the average FPS drops from 70 at 1920x1080 to 51 at 2560x1440. This represents a 27% decrease in average frame rate.

Q: Is the Ultra preset ever a good choice for this game?

A: The Ultra preset provides the lowest average FPS at every resolution, ranging from 67 FPS at 1080p to 30 FPS at 4K. At 1080p, it is only 3 FPS lower than High but 46 FPS lower than Medium, making it a poor trade-off in performance for the visual gains.

Q: What is the most stable setting in terms of frame consistency?

A: The Medium preset is the most stable. At 1080p, it has a narrow range of 96 to 130 FPS, and at 1440p, it ranges from 69 to 93 FPS. Other settings, like High and Ultra, do not have min/max data, but their lower averages suggest less headroom.

Q: How does the combo's rank in Inside compare to other tested systems?

A: The combo ranks 2654 out of 2887 tested combinations, placing it in the bottom 9% of systems tested for this game. This indicates that the hardware is not well-suited for high-end performance in Inside.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a classic pattern of resolution scaling, but with a steep drop-off that highlights the GPU's limitations. Moving from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 on Low settings, the average FPS falls from 141 to 101, a 28% decrease. Scaling further to 3840x2160 on Low brings the average down to 64 FPS, which is a 55% decrease from the 1080p figure. This non-linear drop suggests that the system is becoming increasingly pixel-bound at higher resolutions.

The pattern is consistent across all settings. On Medium, the averages are 113 FPS at 1080p, 81 FPS at 1440p, and 51 FPS at 4K. The gap between 1440p and 4K is 30 FPS, which is larger than the 32 FPS gap between 1080p and 1440p, indicating that the cost of 4K resolution is disproportionately high. This behavior is characteristic of a system where the graphics processor is the primary limiting factor at higher resolutions. The CPU, the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X, has a high boost clock of 5.30 GHz and 6 cores, which is more than sufficient for a puzzle platformer. The data suggests that the Intel Arc B370, with its modest specifications, is unable to maintain frame rates when the pixel count increases, even though the CPU has plenty of headroom.

The fact that the Low preset at 4K (64 FPS) performs similarly to the High preset at 1440p (51 FPS) further emphasizes the GPU bottleneck. The system can handle the computational load of the game, but the rendering pipeline at 4K overwhelms the GPU's capabilities. For users seeking higher resolutions, the data clearly shows that the GPU is the component that needs upgrading, not the CPU.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X and Intel Arc B370 ranks 2654 out of 2887 tested combos in Inside. This places it in the 8th percentile of performance, indicating that it is significantly outperformed by most other systems tested. This low ranking is primarily attributable to the GPU. The Intel Arc B370 has a percentileVsAllGpus score of 5, which means it performs better than only 5% of all GPUs in the database.

The CPU, on the other hand, is a much stronger component. The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X has a percentileVsAllCpus score of 79, meaning it is faster than 79% of all CPUs. Its average benchmark score is 27636, which is nearly identical to its nearest rivals. For instance, it is only 0.2% faster than the AMD Ryzen 7 5700X and the Intel Core i5-12600K, and 0.4% faster than the AMD Ryzen 7 5800. This shows that the CPU is a mid-to-high-tier performer.

The massive discrepancy between the CPU's percentile (79) and the GPU's percentile (5) is the root cause of the combo's low rank in this game. Inside is a visually demanding game, but it is not CPU-intensive. The data suggests that the CPU is severely held back by the GPU. A different, more powerful GPU would likely see a massive improvement in the combo's rank, as the CPU has ample performance headroom. The combo's rank of 2654 is a direct result of the GPU's inability to keep up with the game's rendering demands, even at lower resolutions.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X is a high-performance desktop processor from the 7000 series, built on the Zen 4 architecture with a 5 nm process. It features 6 cores and 12 threads, with a base clock of 4.70 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz. The processor has a substantial 32 MB of shared L3 cache and supports DDR5 memory with a dual-channel bus. These specifications are far beyond what a game like Inside, which was released in 2016, would require.

The CPU's benchmark data confirms its strength. In Cinebench R23, it scores 15236 points in multicore and 1965 points in singlecore. Its Passmark single-thread score is 4135, and its Geekbench singlecore score is 2603. These scores place it in the top tier of processors for single-threaded performance, which is crucial for games that rely on a single primary game thread. The 3dmark single_thread score of 1060 further supports this.

Given these specifications, the CPU is not the bottleneck in this system for Inside. The measured FPS data shows that the frame rate scales heavily with resolution and settings, which is a GPU-bound behavior. For example, at 1080p Low, the system achieves 141 FPS, but at 4K Ultra, it drops to 30 FPS. If the CPU were the limiting factor, the frame rates would be more consistent across resolutions. The CPU's high boost clock of 5.30 GHz ensures that it can feed frames to the GPU quickly, but the GPU cannot process them fast enough at higher resolutions. The CPU's role in this combo is to provide a stable, high-frequency base that does not interfere with the GPU's performance, which it does successfully.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a comprehensive look at performance across three resolutions and four settings. At 1920x1080, the system performs admirably on lower settings. The Low preset achieves an average of 141 FPS. Medium follows with an average of 113 FPS, a minimum of 96 FPS, and a maximum of 130 FPS. High drops to 70 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 67 FPS. This shows a clear performance cliff between Medium and High, where the average FPS drops by 43 frames.

At 2560x1440, the pattern is similar but with lower absolute values. Low averages 101 FPS. Medium averages 81 FPS, with a minimum of 69 FPS and a maximum of 93 FPS. High averages 51 FPS, and Ultra drops to 48 FPS. The gap between Medium and High is 30 FPS, again indicating that High and Ultra settings are not optimized for this hardware.

At 3840x2160, the system struggles. Low averages 64 FPS. Medium averages 51 FPS, with a minimum of 43 FPS and a maximum of 59 FPS. High averages 32 FPS, and Ultra averages 30 FPS. At this resolution, even the Low preset provides a less stable experience than the Medium preset at 1440p. The data across all resolutions and settings shows a consistent trend: the Medium preset offers the best balance of performance and visual quality, while High and Ultra impose a significant performance penalty that is not justified by the frame rate gains.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B370 is an integrated graphics processor (IGP) based on the Xe3-LPG architecture, built on a 3 nm process. It has a very low TDP of 25 W and operates at a base clock of 300 MHz, boosting to 2400 MHz. Its memory is "System Shared," meaning it uses the system's main memory, and its bandwidth is "System Dependent." The GPU has 1280 shading units, 40 texture mapping units, and 20 raster output units. It also includes 10 ray tracing cores. The GPU's performance is measured by a single benchmark: 3dmark_3dmark_steel_nomad_dx12, where it scores 1184 points.

This benchmark score places the GPU at the 5th percentile of all GPUs, indicating very low performance. Its nearest rivals include the ATI Radeon HD 5770, which scores 1190 points, and the AMD Radeon HD 7650M, which scores 1192 points. This puts the Arc B370 in the same performance class as GPUs from over a decade ago. This is the primary reason for the low FPS numbers in Inside. The GPU's pixel rate is 48.00 GPixel/s and its texture rate is 96.00 GTexel/s, which are very low figures by modern standards.

In Inside, the GPU is the dominant bottleneck. The measured FPS scales directly with resolution and settings, which is a clear indication of GPU limitation. For instance, the difference between Low and Ultra settings at 1080p is 74 FPS (141 vs 67), which is a massive drop caused by the increased rendering workload. The GPU's low shading unit count and shared memory architecture cannot handle the demands of higher presets. The data suggests that while the CPU is ready to deliver high frame rates, the GPU is not capable of rendering the frames fast enough, especially at higher resolutions. This makes the Intel Arc B370 the definitive limiting factor in this system for Inside.