Inside

Inside is a 2016 puzzle platformer that places minimal demands on modern hardware, and the combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 8400F with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D produces results that are almost comically overkill for the title. The benchmark data shows a system that is entirely GPU-bound at lower resolutions but transitions to a more balanced profile as resolution increases, with frame rates that remain exceptionally high across every measured configuration.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic pattern of diminishing returns as pixel count increases, though the absolute numbers remain stratospheric. At 1080p with High settings, the combo delivers 260 FPS average, which rises to 338 FPS at Low settings—a 30% jump that indicates the CPU is not the limiting factor at this resolution. Moving to 1440p, the High preset drops to 233 FPS, a 10.4% reduction from 1080p, while Low settings reach 303 FPS, an 10.4% decrease from the 1080p Low figure. The scaling from 1440p to 4K is more aggressive: High settings fall from 233 FPS to 160 FPS, a 31.3% reduction, and Low settings drop from 303 FPS to 259 FPS, a 14.5% decline.

The data suggests that at 1080p and 1440p, the RTX 5090 D is being held back by the Ryzen 5 8400F's single-thread performance, as the frame rate deltas between Low and High presets are relatively modest. At 1080p, the gap between Low and High is 78 FPS, while at 1440p it narrows to 70 FPS. However, at 4K, the gap between Low and High expands to 99 FPS, indicating that the GPU becomes the primary bottleneck as pixel throughput demands increase. The Medium preset at 4K shows 239 FPS average with a minimum of 203 FPS and maximum of 275 FPS, which represents a 50 FPS drop from the Low preset's 259 FPS average.

The most telling data point is the Ultra preset scaling: from 1080p to 1440p, Ultra drops from 256 FPS to 229 FPS (10.5% reduction), but from 1440p to 4K, it falls to 153 FPS (33.2% reduction). This non-linear scaling confirms that the RTX 5090 D's 32 GB of GDDR7 memory and 1.79 TB/s bandwidth are being pushed harder at 4K, while the CPU overhead becomes relatively less significant. The 4K Ultra figure of 153 FPS is still remarkably high for any game, but it represents the largest performance penalty in the entire dataset, suggesting that even this flagship GPU has limits when paired with a mid-range CPU at extreme resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

For players seeking the optimal balance between visual fidelity and frame rate, the data points to the High preset as the sweet spot across all three resolutions. At 1080p, High delivers 260 FPS, which is only 4 FPS less than Ultra but represents a significant reduction in GPU load. At 1440p, High achieves 233 FPS compared to Ultra's 229 FPS—a negligible 1.7% difference that makes High the sensible choice. At 4K, High produces 160 FPS versus Ultra's 153 FPS, a 4.6% improvement that is more meaningful given the higher resolution's demands.

The Medium preset offers diminishing returns over High: at 1080p, it provides 312 FPS (20% faster than High), but this advantage shrinks to 19.7% at 1440p (279 FPS vs 233 FPS) and 49.4% at 4K (239 FPS vs 160 FPS). The Low preset, while delivering the highest frame rates, sacrifices too much visual quality for a game like Inside, where atmospheric lighting and shadow detail contribute significantly to the experience. The benchmark results show that Low at 4K (259 FPS) is still faster than High at 1080p (260 FPS) by a negligible margin, but the visual trade-off is substantial.

For players with high-refresh-rate displays, the Medium preset at 1440p (279 FPS average, 238 FPS minimum) provides the best combination of smoothness and quality, as it comfortably exceeds any current monitor's refresh rate capability. At 4K, the Medium preset's 239 FPS average with a 203 FPS minimum ensures that even the most demanding frame time spikes remain well above 200 FPS, making it the recommended choice for 4K gaming on this hardware. The Ultra preset's 153 FPS at 4K is still excellent, but the 4.6% performance gain from dropping to High is not worth the visual degradation.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D is the dominant component in this pairing, and its specifications explain why frame rates remain so high even at 4K. The GPU features 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, delivering 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth—more than enough for Inside's modest texture and geometry requirements. The Blackwell 2.0 architecture, built on a 5 nm process at TSMC, packs 92,200 million transistors into a 750 mm² die, with 21,760 shading units, 680 texture mapping units, and 176 render output units.

The clock speeds are equally impressive: a base clock of 2017 MHz and a boost clock of 2407 MHz, with memory running at 1750 MHz (28 Gbps effective). These clocks contribute to a peak FP32 performance of 104.8 TFLOPS and a pixel rate of 423.6 GPixel/s, which explains why the GPU can maintain 160 FPS at 4K High settings. The 170 ray tracing cores and 680 tensor cores are largely irrelevant for Inside, which does not utilize ray tracing or DLSS in its rendering pipeline, but the raw rasterization throughput is what drives the benchmark results.

The GPU's benchmark scores reflect its position in the market: it ranks in the 92nd percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 77,712. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 6650M XT (1.1% slower), the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (1.6% faster), and the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB (2.1% faster) and 16 GB (2.4% faster) variants. These comparisons are based on aggregate benchmark scores, not gaming performance, but they indicate that the RTX 5090 D sits in a performance tier where even its closest competitors are within a few percentage points.

The VRAM allocation is noteworthy: 32 GB is excessive for a game like Inside, which was released in 2016 and has minimal texture requirements. However, the memory bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s proves beneficial at 4K, where the GPU must push significantly more pixels through the rendering pipeline. The data shows that the GPU's performance scales predictably with resolution, with the 4K Ultra preset (153 FPS) representing the most demanding scenario in the benchmark set.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its highest frame rates across all presets. The Low preset achieves 338 FPS average, while Medium reaches 312 FPS with a minimum of 265 FPS and maximum of 359 FPS. High settings produce 260 FPS, and Ultra comes in at 256 FPS—a surprisingly small gap between the two highest presets. The 1080p results suggest that the CPU is the primary limiter at this resolution, as the GPU has ample headroom to render frames faster than the Ryzen 5 8400F can feed it.

At 2560x1440, the frame rates remain exceptionally high but show the expected decline. Low settings deliver 303 FPS, Medium achieves 279 FPS (minimum 238, maximum 321), High reaches 233 FPS, and Ultra produces 229 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 74 FPS, which is slightly larger than the 82 FPS gap at 1080p, indicating that the GPU is beginning to play a more significant role in performance. The Medium preset's minimum of 238 FPS ensures that even the most demanding scenes never drop below 200 FPS.

At 3840x2160, the GPU finally becomes the bottleneck. Low settings yield 259 FPS, Medium achieves 239 FPS (minimum 203, maximum 275), High delivers 160 FPS, and Ultra drops to 153 FPS. The spread between Low and Ultra is now 106 FPS, the largest in the dataset, confirming that the RTX 5090 D's rendering capabilities are being fully exercised at 4K. The Medium preset's minimum of 203 FPS is particularly notable, as it means the system maintains triple-digit frame rates even in the most demanding moments at 4K.

The frame time consistency, as indicated by the min/max values for Medium presets, is excellent across all resolutions. At 1080p, the 265-359 FPS range represents a 94 FPS spread, while at 1440p it's 83 FPS (238-321), and at 4K it's 72 FPS (203-275). This tightening of the frame time distribution at higher resolutions suggests that the GPU's workload becomes more uniform as the CPU overhead becomes less significant.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of AMD Ryzen 5 8400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D ranks 188th out of 2,887 tested combos in Inside, placing it in the top 6.5% of all configurations. This ranking is remarkable given that the CPU is a mid-range part while the GPU is a flagship, and it reflects the game's low system requirements rather than the hardware's absolute performance. The rank demonstrates that Inside is not a demanding title, and even this pairing—which would struggle in more modern games—achieves near-top-tier performance here.

The CPU's contribution to this ranking is modest but not negligible. The Ryzen 5 8400F has a 77th percentile ranking among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 25,005. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen 5 7500F (0.2% faster), Intel Core i7-11850H (0.3% faster), and Intel Core i7-13620H (0.4% faster), while the AMD EPYC 9474F is 0.4% slower. These sub-percentage differences indicate that the CPU is not a meaningful differentiator in this game, as even a 0.4% performance delta would translate to less than 2 FPS at the frame rates measured.

The GPU's 92nd percentile ranking among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 77,712, is more relevant to the combo's position. The RTX 5090 D's nearest rivals are all within 2.4% of its aggregate score, yet the measured FPS in Inside show the GPU delivering frame rates that are competitive with far more expensive workstation cards. The 188th rank out of 2,887 combos suggests that only a handful of configurations—likely those pairing flagship CPUs with the RTX 5090 D—can outperform this setup, and the differences would be minimal given the game's simplicity.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 8400F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 4 architecture (codename Phoenix), manufactured on TSMC's 4 nm process. It operates with a base clock of 4.20 GHz and a boost clock of 4.70 GHz, with a 65W TDP. The CPU features 64 KB of L1 cache per core, 1 MB of L2 cache per core, and 16 MB of shared L3 cache, with support for DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration providing 83.2 GB/s of bandwidth.

In Inside, the CPU's role is primarily single-thread performance, as the game's physics and logic are not heavily multithreaded. The Ryzen 5 8400F's single-thread benchmark results are strong: 951 in 3DMark single-thread, 296 in Cinebench R15 single-core, 1,236 in Cinebench R20 single-core, and 2,943 in Cinebench R23 single-core. These scores translate to frame rates that are only marginally lower than what a flagship CPU would achieve, as evidenced by the 1080p Low preset's 338 FPS, which is likely near the engine's maximum frame rate ceiling.

The multi-threaded performance is also adequate, with Cinebench R23 multi-core scoring 20,851 and PassMark multi-thread scoring 24,389. However, these scores matter less for Inside, as the game's frame rate is primarily constrained by the GPU at 4K and by the CPU's single-thread performance at lower resolutions. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 6,091 and max-thread score of 6,165 indicate that the CPU scales reasonably well with additional threads, but this scaling has minimal impact on Inside's performance.

The CPU's 65W TDP and 4 nm process node mean it runs cool and efficient, which is beneficial for sustained gaming sessions, but the benchmark data does not show any thermal throttling issues. The 16 MB L3 cache is sufficient for Inside's data footprint, and the DDR5 memory bandwidth of 83.2 GB/s is more than adequate for the game's memory access patterns. The CPU's 77th percentile ranking places it above the median, and its nearest rivals—the Ryzen 5 7500F, Core i7-11850H, and Core i7-13620H—all perform within 0.4% of each other, confirming that CPU choice has minimal impact on Inside's frame rates.