Inside

The AMD Ryzen 7 5700X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 combination delivers exceptional performance in Inside, a puzzle platformer that proves far more demanding on the GPU than its minimalist aesthetic might suggest. With measured frame rates ranging from 95.1 FPS at 4K Ultra to 309.7 FPS at 1080p Low, this pairing demonstrates a remarkable capacity for high-refresh-rate gaming across all tested configurations. The data indicates a system that is overwhelmingly GPU-bound at higher resolutions, while the CPU’s strong single-threaded capabilities ensure it never becomes a bottleneck, even at the lowest settings.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic GPU-bound workload. At High settings, the average FPS drops from 217.4 at 1080p to 159.8 at 1440p, a reduction of 26.5%, before falling further to 99 at 4K, which represents a 54.5% decline from the 1080p baseline. This steep curve is characteristic of a game where pixel throughput is the primary limiting factor, as the RTX 3080’s rendering capabilities are stressed by the increasing resolution.

The scaling pattern becomes even more pronounced when examining the Low settings tier. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 309.7 FPS, but this drops to 280.6 at 1440p and 200.5 at 4K. The relatively smaller gap between 1080p and 1440p at Low settings (9.4%) compared to the High settings gap (26.5%) suggests that at lower graphical fidelity, the CPU begins to play a more significant role in maintaining frame rates, though the GPU still dominates the overall performance envelope.

Interestingly, the Ultra settings tier shows the most severe scaling, with 206.9 FPS at 1080p dropping to 148.4 at 1440p and 95.1 at 4K. The 4K Ultra result represents a 54.0% reduction from 1080p Ultra, confirming that the most demanding preset amplifies the GPU’s workload proportionally. The data suggests that at 4K, regardless of settings, the RTX 3080 is operating near its practical limits for this title, while at 1080p, the system has substantial headroom for high-refresh-rate displays.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 5700X brings eight cores and sixteen threads to the table, with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 4.60 GHz. This Zen 3 architecture processor, built on a 7 nm process, demonstrates strong single-threaded performance that is crucial for a game like Inside, which relies on consistent frame pacing rather than massive multi-threaded workloads. The processor’s 32 MB of shared L3 cache provides ample fast-access storage for game data, while its 51.2 GB/s memory bandwidth ensures the CPU can feed the GPU without introducing latency.

In synthetic benchmarks, the 5700X scores 3193 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 22620 in multi-core, placing it in the 83rd percentile of all CPUs. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core i9-11900KF, scores nearly identically with a deltaPct of 0.1%, indicating that the 5700X offers comparable raw processing power. The CPU’s 3DMark single-thread score of 921 and 2-thread score of 1821 suggest that even lightly threaded workloads are handled efficiently, which aligns with the frame rate behavior observed at 1080p Low where the CPU’s influence becomes more apparent.

The 5700X’s thread scaling is particularly relevant: its 4-thread score of 3512 and 8-thread score of 5768 represent substantial gains over the 2-thread result, but the jump to max threads (6850) is comparatively modest. This indicates that while the processor can leverage additional cores, the game’s engine likely does not require more than a handful of threads to maintain peak performance. The data shows that at 1080p Low, the system reaches 309.7 FPS, which is within 0.5% of the 1440p Low result, suggesting the CPU can sustain very high frame rates without becoming a limiting factor.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080, built on the Ampere architecture with a GA102 chip, is the dominant component in this pairing. With 10 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 320-bit bus, the card delivers 760.3 GB/s of bandwidth, which proves sufficient for Inside even at 4K Ultra where memory pressure is highest. The GPU’s 8704 shading units and 272 texture mapping units provide substantial raw compute power, reflected in its 29.77 TFLOPS FP32 performance and 465.1 GTexel/s texture rate.

The RTX 3080’s boost clock of 1710 MHz, combined with its 68 RT cores and 272 tensor cores, positions it as a high-end solution that excels in both traditional rasterization and ray-traced workloads, though Inside’s art style primarily stresses the former. The GPU’s 80th percentile ranking among all GPUs is supported by its PassMark G3D score of 25086, which places it in close competition with the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE (deltaPct of -0.9%) and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Mobile (deltaPct of 1%). This competitive positioning explains why the RTX 3080 can deliver playable frame rates at 4K Ultra, where it averages 95.1 FPS, while also providing the headroom for 200+ FPS at lower resolutions.

The GPU’s memory subsystem is particularly noteworthy: the 760.3 GB/s bandwidth is more than sufficient for the game’s texture streaming requirements, and the 10 GB capacity prevents any VRAM-related stuttering even at the highest settings. The pixel rate of 164.2 GPixel/s and texture rate of 465.1 GTexel/s indicate that the card can handle the fill-rate demands of 4K rendering, which aligns with the observed 99 FPS average at 4K High.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1080p, the system delivers its highest frame rates across all settings. Low settings produce an average of 309.7 FPS, while Medium achieves 284 FPS, High reaches 217.4 FPS, and Ultra settles at 206.9 FPS. The gap between Medium and High (66.6 FPS) is larger than the gap between High and Ultra (10.5 FPS), suggesting that the High preset introduces a significant visual quality increase without proportionally taxing the GPU.

Moving to 1440p, the frame rates remain impressively high. Low settings yield 280.6 FPS, Medium drops to 252.5 FPS, High falls to 159.8 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 148.4 FPS. The 1440p Medium result is particularly notable, as it remains above 250 FPS, demonstrating that this combination can drive high-refresh-rate 1440p monitors even with moderate graphical enhancements.

At 4K, the system’s performance becomes more moderate but remains entirely playable. Low settings average 200.5 FPS, Medium achieves 157.5 FPS, High produces 99 FPS, and Ultra delivers 95.1 FPS. The 4K results show a clear inflection point: while Low and Medium settings maintain frame rates above 150 FPS, the High and Ultra presets drop below 100 FPS, indicating that the GPU’s pixel throughput becomes the primary constraint at this resolution. The difference between 4K High (99 FPS) and 4K Ultra (95.1 FPS) is a mere 3.9 FPS, suggesting that the Ultra preset’s additional effects have minimal impact on the RTX 3080’s performance at this resolution.

How This Combo Ranks

Among the 1671 tested combinations in the benchmark database, this pairing of the AMD Ryzen 7 5700X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 ranks 506th, placing it in the top 30.3% of all systems tested. This ranking reflects the balance between the CPU’s strong single-threaded performance and the GPU’s high-end capabilities, though it also indicates that there are more powerful combinations available for users seeking absolute maximum frame rates.

The CPU’s 83rd percentile ranking among all processors and the GPU’s 80th percentile ranking among all GPUs suggest that this combination is well-matched, with neither component significantly outclassing the other. The Ryzen 7 5700X’s nearest rivals, including the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X (deltaPct of -0.2%) and the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U (deltaPct of -0.2%), all perform within a narrow performance band, confirming that the CPU is not a limiting factor in this system. Similarly, the RTX 3080’s nearest rivals, such as the AMD Radeon Pro Duo (deltaPct of -0.2%) and AMD Radeon 880M (deltaPct of 0.4%), demonstrate that the GPU sits comfortably in the upper echelon of graphics cards.

The ranking of 506 out of 1671 combos is particularly impressive when considering the game’s release date of 2016, as Inside was designed for hardware of that era. The fact that this modern combination still ranks in the top third of all tested systems underscores the game’s scalability and the raw power of this pairing. The measured frame rates, which remain above 95 FPS even at 4K Ultra, confirm that this system can deliver a flawless experience in Inside, with the data showing no scenario where either component becomes a critical bottleneck.