Inside

The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 delivers an exceptionally strong performance profile in Inside, a Puzzle Platformer released on 2016-07-06. The measured frame rates across all tested resolutions and settings are consistently high, with the lowest average being 137.6 FPS at 4K Ultra. This combination ranks 38th out of 1671 tested combos, placing it in the top 2.3% of all configurations. The data reveals a system that is heavily GPU-bound at higher resolutions but begins to show CPU limitations at lower resolutions, a pattern that becomes clear when examining the scaling behavior from 1080p to 4K.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 reveals clear insights into which component is the limiting factor. At High settings, the average FPS drops from 289.3 at 1080p to 236 at 1440p, then further to 145.5 at 4K. This represents a 49.7% reduction in frame rate from 1080p to 4K, indicating that the RTX 4090 is the primary bottleneck as resolution increases. The GPU's raw throughput is being taxed more heavily at higher pixel counts, which is expected given the 4K resolution requires 4 times the pixel workload of 1080p.

Looking at Low settings, the pattern changes. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 381 FPS, which drops to 340.2 at 1440p and 288.2 at 4K. The 24.4% drop from 1080p to 4K at Low settings is smaller than the 49.7% drop at High settings. This suggests that at Low settings, the CPU is increasingly becoming a limiting factor at lower resolutions, as the GPU has more headroom to work with. The Ryzen 5 7600X, with its 6 cores and 12 threads, is capable of high frame rates but cannot fully feed the RTX 4090 at 1080p Low, where the GPU is less stressed.

The Medium settings show a similar trend to High, with 348.8 FPS at 1080p, 314.4 at 1440p, and 234.6 at 4K. The 32.7% reduction from 1080p to 4K at Medium settings sits between the Low and High results, reinforcing that the GPU becomes more dominant as settings increase. At Ultra settings, the 4K result of 137.6 FPS represents a 52.2% drop from the 1080p result of 287.6 FPS, the largest percentage decrease across all settings. This indicates that Ultra settings place the heaviest load on the GPU, making it the clear limiting factor at this quality level.

FAQ

Q: Does the RTX 4090 reach playable frame rates at 4K Ultra in this game?

A: Yes, the average FPS at 3840x2160 Ultra is 137.6, which is well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. Even at the highest settings, the GPU maintains high performance due to the game's relatively modest graphical demands.

Q: How does the CPU affect performance at 1080p Low settings?

A: At 1080p Low, the system achieves 381 FPS, which is the highest result across all tested configurations. However, the scaling from 1080p to 4K at Low settings shows only a 24.4% drop, indicating that the Ryzen 5 7600X's 6 cores and 12 threads create a bottleneck at lower resolutions where the GPU is less stressed.

Q: What is the biggest performance gap between settings at the same resolution?

A: At 4K, the difference between Low (288.2 FPS) and Ultra (137.6 FPS) is 150.6 FPS, representing a 52.2% reduction. This is the largest absolute gap across all resolutions, highlighting the significant impact of graphical settings on GPU load.

Q: Is the RTX 4090's 24 GB of VRAM sufficient for this game?

A: Yes, the 24 GB GDDR6X memory is far more than needed for Inside. The game's simple Puzzle Platformer visuals do not require high VRAM capacity, and the GPU's 1.01 TB/s memory bandwidth ensures no bandwidth limitations at any tested resolution.

Q: How does the combo rank against other tested configurations?

A: The combination ranks 38th out of 1671 tested combos, placing it in the top 2.3% of all systems. This indicates that very few configurations can outperform this pairing in Inside.

Q: Does the CPU's 4.70 GHz base clock and 5.30 GHz boost clock matter for this game?

A: Yes, the high clock speeds contribute to the strong single-thread performance, which is important for Inside's physics and logic calculations. The CPU's 3DMark single-thread score of 1060 demonstrates its capability for high-frequency workloads.

GPU Role

The RTX 4090 plays a dominant role in Inside's performance, particularly at higher resolutions and settings. The GPU's 24 GB GDDR6X memory and 384-bit bus width provide a 1.01 TB/s bandwidth, which eliminates any memory bandwidth bottlenecks in this game. The 16384 shading units and 512 TMUs deliver substantial raw compute power, as evidenced by the GPU's 82.58 TFLOPS FP32 performance and 1,290.2 GTexel/s texture rate.

The GPU's clock speeds of 2235 MHz base and 2520 MHz boost are relatively high, and the data shows that these contribute to the strong performance at 4K. At 3840x2160 High, the system achieves 145.5 FPS, while at 4K Ultra it drops to 137.6 FPS. This relatively small gap of 5.4% between High and Ultra at 4K suggests that the GPU has sufficient headroom to handle increased graphical fidelity without major frame rate penalties.

The RTX 4090's Ada Lovelace architecture, built on a 5 nm process at TSMC, features 128 RT cores and 512 tensor cores. While Inside does not heavily utilize ray tracing or DLSS, the GPU's overall compute capabilities ensure that it is never the bottleneck at any tested setting. The GPU's percentile rank of 91 against all GPUs, combined with its average benchmark score of 66473, confirms its top-tier status. However, the nearest rivals show only small deltas: the NVIDIA Tesla T4 is 0.4% behind, and the NVIDIA Tesla P40 is 0.5% ahead, indicating that the RTX 4090's performance in synthetic benchmarks is closely matched by other high-end cards.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers high frame rates across all settings. Low settings produce 381 FPS, Medium achieves 348.8 FPS, High reaches 289.3 FPS, and Ultra provides 287.6 FPS. The difference between High and Ultra at 1080p is negligible at 1.7 FPS, suggesting that Ultra settings do not impose a significant additional load on the GPU at this resolution. The low settings result shows the CPU's 6 cores and 12 threads can push frame rates near 400 FPS, but the scaling from Low to Ultra at 1080p shows a 24.5% reduction, indicating the GPU becomes more involved as quality increases.

At 2560x1440, the results are 340.2 FPS for Low, 314.4 FPS for Medium, 236 FPS for High, and 226.2 FPS for Ultra. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 10.7% at Low settings, 9.9% at Medium, 18.4% at High, and 21.3% at Ultra. The larger percentage drops at High and Ultra settings confirm that the GPU is more heavily utilized at these quality levels, with the 4K results showing an even more pronounced effect.

At 3840x2160, the frame rates are 288.2 FPS for Low, 234.6 FPS for Medium, 145.5 FPS for High, and 137.6 FPS for Ultra. The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is 150.6 FPS, which is the largest across all resolutions. The scaling from 1440p to 4K shows a 15.3% drop at Low, 25.4% at Medium, 38.3% at High, and 39.2% at Ultra. This progressive increase in percentage drop as settings rise is a clear indicator that the GPU is the limiting factor at 4K, particularly at High and Ultra settings.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo of the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 ranks 38th out of 1671 tested combos in Inside. This places the system in the top 2.3% of all configurations, a strong result that reflects the high performance of both components. The CPU's 83rd percentile rank against all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 26272, shows it is a capable processor, but its nearest rivals — the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U at 26262 and the AMD Ryzen 7 7735U at 26305 — have nearly identical scores with deltas of 0% and -0.1% respectively. This indicates that the CPU's performance is well-matched with similar mid-range processors.

The GPU's 91st percentile rank against all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 66473, is even more impressive. Its nearest rivals show small deltas: the NVIDIA Tesla T4 at 66733 (-0.4%), the NVIDIA Tesla P40 at 66127 (0.5%), the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 at 67097 (-0.9%), and the NVIDIA Quadro P6000 at 67320 (-1.3%). These close scores suggest that the RTX 4090 is at the top of the GPU hierarchy, though the differences are minimal in synthetic benchmarks.

The combination's rank of 38 out of 1671 indicates that while many configurations can achieve high frame rates in Inside, very few can match this pairing's performance. The data shows that the RTX 4090 is the primary driver of this ranking, as the CPU's performance is more middling relative to other processors. The high percentiles for both components, combined with the measured frame rates, confirm that this is a top-tier configuration for this game.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X, with its 6 cores and 12 threads, plays a supporting role in Inside's performance. The CPU's base clock of 4.70 GHz and boost clock of 5.30 GHz are high for a desktop processor, and these frequencies contribute to strong single-thread performance. The 3DMark single-thread score of 1060 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 3406 demonstrate the CPU's capability for lightly-threaded workloads, which are common in puzzle platformers.

The CPU's cache hierarchy includes 64 KB L1 per core, 1 MB L2 per core, and 32 MB shared L3. This configuration provides adequate data locality for the game's logic and physics calculations. The CPU's memory support for DDR5 with dual-channel architecture and 83.2 GB/s bandwidth ensures that memory bandwidth is not a limiting factor, particularly at lower resolutions where the CPU is more active.

At 1080p Low settings, the system achieves 381 FPS, which is the highest result across all tests. This indicates that the CPU can push frame rates to very high levels when the GPU is not stressed. However, the scaling from 1080p to 4K at Low settings shows only a 24.4% drop, compared to the 49.7% drop at High settings. This suggests that at Low settings, the CPU becomes a more significant bottleneck as the GPU has more headroom. The CPU's 6 cores and 12 threads are sufficient for Inside, but the data shows that a processor with higher single-thread performance could potentially push frame rates even higher at 1080p Low.

The CPU's 5 nm process node at TSMC, with 6,570 million transistors on a 71 mm² die, provides efficient power consumption with a 105 W TDP. This efficiency is reflected in the CPU's benchmark scores, which show strong multi-thread performance with a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 24128 and a Geekbench multicore score of 12905. The CPU's nearest rivals in the benchmark database — the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U, AMD Ryzen 7 7735U, AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 5655GE, and AMD Ryzen 7 5700X — have average scores within 0.2% of the 7600X, indicating that this processor is well-positioned among its peers. However, the 7600X's launch MSRP of $299 and its position in the Ryzen 5 series suggest it is a mid-range offering, and the data confirms that it provides sufficient performance for this game without being the primary performance driver.