Inside

Inside is a 2016 puzzle platformer that is anything but demanding by modern standards, yet the benchmark data for the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT combination reveals a fascinating study in frame rate scaling and component headroom. The measured results show a system that is utterly crushing this title at every resolution, with the primary bottleneck shifting from the GPU at 4K to the CPU’s single-thread performance at lower resolutions, where frame rates exceed what most high-refresh monitors can even display.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is steep, but the absolute numbers remain so high that the scaling curve tells you more about the game's engine limits than any hardware deficiency. At High settings, the average frame rate falls from 230.8 FPS at 1920x1080 to 164 FPS at 2560x1440, a 29% reduction, and then to 105.4 FPS at 3840x2160, another 36% drop. This pattern indicates that at 1080p, the system is heavily CPU-bound; the GPU is waiting on the processor to feed it draw calls, so the scaling to 1440p is less severe than the pixel count increase suggests.

Moving from 1440p to 4K shows a more traditional GPU-bound scaling, as the RX 9070 XT’s rendering load becomes the limiting factor. The Low preset demonstrates this even more clearly, with FPS dropping from 417 at 1080p to 330.9 at 1440p (a 21% decline) and then to 208.9 at 4K (a 37% decline). The fact that 4K Low still produces over 200 FPS proves that the GPU’s raw throughput is not being challenged by this game’s simple geometry and lighting; instead, the scaling at 4K is purely a function of the increased pixel fill rate demand. The data suggests that for typical 60 Hz displays, even 4K Ultra is overkill, while for 240 Hz esports-style monitors, 1440p High or 1080p Medium are the realistic targets.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT is the dominant component in this pairing, and its specifications explain why Inside never becomes a slideshow. With 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, the card has a memory bandwidth of 644.6 GB/s, which is far more than a game with this visual fidelity can utilize. The GPU’s boost clock of 2970 MHz and game clock of 2400 MHz provide substantial compute throughput, with an FP32 rating of 48.66 TFLOPS. These figures are overkill for Inside, which is reflected in the benchmark scores; the GPU sits in the 82nd percentile of all GPUs, and its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon Pro 575 and the NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile, both of which are within a 0.6% delta of its average score.

At 4K Ultra, the GPU’s role becomes more apparent, as the average frame rate of 95.4 FPS is the only measured result below 100 FPS. This is not a sign of weakness but rather an indication that the card’s ROPs and pixel rate of 380.2 GPixel/s are finally being pushed by the 8.3 million pixels of a 3840x2160 display. The VRAM capacity is irrelevant here; 16 GB is massive headroom for a game that likely uses a fraction of it, and the memory clock of 2518 MHz (20.1 Gbps effective) ensures that texture streaming is never a bottleneck. The data shows the GPU is the limiting factor at 4K, but only because the CPU is so fast that it clears any potential instruction bottleneck well before the rasterizer needs to work.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 9600X is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 5 architecture, and its benchmark results indicate that its single-thread strength is the key to Inside’s high frame rates at lower resolutions. The CPU’s boost clock of 5.40 GHz and base clock of 3.90 GHz drive a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 3603 and a Geekbench single-core score of 3363, which are excellent figures. The 3DMark single-thread score of 1253 further confirms that this chip can handle the game logic and physics updates that Inside’s puzzle mechanics rely on. The CPU sits in the 85th percentile of all CPUs, with its nearest rivals including the Intel Core i5-13490F and AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS, all within a 0.5% delta of its average benchmark score.

The CPU’s role is most evident in the 1080p Low preset, where the average frame rate of 417 FPS is likely hitting an engine-level frame cap or a CPU instruction limit. Even at 1080p Ultra, the 220 FPS average is higher than what most CPUs could deliver in this title, showing that the 9600X’s 32 MB of shared L3 cache and 4 nm process node are working effectively to minimize latency. The multi-core performance, with a Cinebench R23 score of 25525, is not the differentiator here; Inside is not a heavily threaded game, so the 12 threads are mostly idle. Instead, the processor’s ability to execute single-threaded instructions with minimal delay is what allows the GPU to run at full tilt at 1440p and below, where the frame rate is only limited by the renderer’s draw call throughput.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Ryzen 5 9600X and RX 9070 XT ranks 247th out of 1671 tested combos for Inside, which places it in the top 15% of all systems. Given the game’s age and low system requirements, this ranking is more about the CPU’s single-thread dominance than the GPU’s raw power, as many combos with slower processors but faster GPUs would likely score lower because they cannot push frame rates past the 200 FPS mark at 1080p. The rank of 247 is a reflection of the CPU’s ability to avoid becoming a bottleneck; in a title where the GPU is already overkill, the processor’s high clock speeds and low latency are what separate this combo from the pack.

The data suggests that this combo is overqualified for Inside, but the ranking also indicates that there is no meaningful performance penalty for using such a powerful system. The gap between this combo and the top 246 systems is likely minimal in real terms, as all of them are probably exceeding the refresh rate of any available display. The fact that this combo ranks so high despite the GPU being only in the 82nd percentile of all GPUs underscores that Inside’s benchmark favors CPU speed over GPU muscle, and the 9600X’s 5.40 GHz boost clock is a perfect match for that requirement.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured results are remarkably consistent across settings, with Low producing 417 FPS, Medium 363.7 FPS, High 230.8 FPS, and Ultra 220 FPS. The large drop from Medium to High suggests a specific rendering feature, such as dynamic shadows or ambient occlusion, that taxes the GPU more heavily, but even the Ultra setting is far beyond playable. At 2560x1440, the numbers scale down predictably: Low yields 330.9 FPS, Medium 260.4 FPS, High 164 FPS, and Ultra 157.8 FPS. The 1440p High and Ultra results are nearly identical, indicating that at this resolution, the GPU is starting to become the limiting factor, but the difference between Medium and High remains a substantial 96.6 FPS, showing that the preset selection has a larger impact than resolution.

At 3840x2160, the results are 208.9 FPS for Low, 163.5 FPS for Medium, 105.4 FPS for High, and 95.4 FPS for Ultra. The 4K Low result is still higher than most systems can achieve at 1080p, which reflects the RX 9070 XT’s capabilities. The gap between 1440p High (164 FPS) and 4K High (105.4 FPS) is a 36% reduction, which aligns with the pixel count increase from 3.7 million to 8.3 million. The Ultra preset at 4K is the only setting that dips below 100 FPS, but it remains smooth on any 60 Hz or 120 Hz display, making the choice of settings more about preference than necessity.

Settings Recommendations

For the best experience, the data points to 1440p High as the sweet spot for this combo. The 164 FPS average is well above the refresh rate of most high-end monitors, and the visual improvement over Medium is worth the 96.6 FPS drop. At 1080p, High is the recommended preset because it still delivers 230.8 FPS, which exceeds the capabilities of all but the most extreme 360 Hz displays, and the jump from Medium to High is a worthwhile visual upgrade. If you are targeting 4K, High at 105.4 FPS is the best balance, as Ultra only offers a marginal visual gain over High while dropping the frame rate by 10 FPS.

For players with a 240 Hz monitor, 1440p Medium at 260.4 FPS is the only way to fully utilize the display’s refresh rate, but the visual compromise is significant. In contrast, 1080p Medium at 363.7 FPS provides ample headroom for any display, and the lower resolution is less noticeable in a game with such a dark, atmospheric art style. The Low preset is only recommended for competitive play or if you are using a 500 Hz monitor, as the 417 FPS at 1080p is the highest measured result and provides an imperceptible advantage over Medium. Ultimately, the data shows that this system is so powerful that any preset above Low will deliver a flawless experience, so the choice should be guided by your display’s refresh rate and personal preference for visual fidelity over raw frame rate.