Inside

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700 paired with the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT delivers exceptional performance in Inside, a puzzle platformer that proves highly sensitive to both CPU and GPU capabilities. The measured data across three resolutions and four quality presets paints a clear picture of a system that is overqualified for the task, yet reveals interesting scaling characteristics that define the optimal way to play.

Resolution Scaling

Frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K follows a predictable pattern, but the degree of the drop varies significantly by settings preset. At High settings, the transition from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 reduces the average frame rate from 211.5 FPS to 156 FPS, a decrease of 55.5 FPS. Moving further to 3840x2160 brings the average down to 95.5 FPS, representing a total drop of 116 FPS from the 1080p baseline. This indicates that at High settings, the GPU becomes the limiting factor as resolution increases, with the 4K result still comfortably above 60 FPS.

The Low preset shows a different scaling curve. At 1080p, the system achieves 369.7 FPS, and at 1440p it reaches 305.8 FPS. The 4K Low result of 191.1 FPS demonstrates that even at the lowest graphical load, the resolution increase to 2160p imposes a substantial penalty. The gap between 1440p and 4K at Low settings is 114.7 FPS, which is larger than the 49.9 FPS difference between 1080p and 1440p. This suggests that pixel throughput at 4K begins to saturate the GPU's capabilities even when other rendering costs are minimized.

Ultra settings produce the lowest overall frame rates, with 201.8 FPS at 1080p, 146.9 FPS at 1440p, and 90.5 FPS at 4K. The scaling from 1440p to 4K at Ultra shows a 56.4 FPS drop, which is proportionally similar to the High preset's 60.5 FPS drop between those same resolutions. The consistency of this 4K penalty across High and Ultra indicates that the RX 6800 XT's rendering pipeline hits a bandwidth or fill-rate ceiling at 2160p that is independent of the specific quality settings.

The Medium preset offers the most interesting scaling behavior. It delivers 343.1 FPS at 1080p, 246 FPS at 1440p, and 152.2 FPS at 4K. The 4K Medium result is 61.7 FPS higher than the 4K High result, showing that Medium reduces the per-pixel workload enough to offset the resolution penalty partially. The data clearly shows that the CPU is not a bottleneck at any resolution, as even the lowest 4K result of 90.5 FPS at Ultra is far above typical display refresh rates.

GPU Role

The Radeon RX 6800 XT's memory configuration plays a critical role in these results. With 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, the card provides 512.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is more than sufficient for Inside's relatively modest texture and geometry demands. The memory clock runs at 2000 MHz with 16 Gbps effective speed, and the card's 128 ROPs handle pixel output efficiently at 4K.

The GPU's clock behavior directly influences the measured frame rates. The base clock of 1825 MHz and boost clock of 2250 MHz, with a game clock of 2015 MHz, allow the card to maintain high sustained performance. The 4608 shading units and 288 TMUs provide the compute and texture filtering throughput needed to keep frame rates high even at Ultra settings. The pixel rate of 288.0 GPixel/s and texture rate of 648.0 GTexel/s correlate with the observed scaling: at 4K, the pixel rate becomes the constraining factor, which explains why the 4K Ultra result of 90.5 FPS is roughly half the 1080p Ultra result of 201.8 FPS.

The card's FP32 throughput of 20.74 TFLOPS and FP16 of 41.47 TFLOPS (2:1) are more than adequate for this game's shading requirements. The 72 ray accelerators support DirectX 12 Ultimate features, though Inside does not heavily utilize ray tracing. The GPU's 87th percentile ranking among all GPUs and its average benchmark score of 49982 place it in the upper tier, and the benchmark results show it performing closest to the Intel Arc A550M with a 0.5% delta, while trailing the NVIDIA RTX A1000 by 1.7%.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific CPU-GPU combination holds the 417th position out of 1671 tested combos for Inside, placing it in the top 25% of all configurations. The ranking reflects the balance between the Ryzen 7 7700's strong single-thread performance and the RX 6800 XT's high-end rasterization capabilities. The combo's position in the distribution suggests that while many higher-ranked combinations exist, the vast majority of tested systems perform worse in this game.

The Ryzen 7 7700's processor benchmarks support this ranking. Its Cinebench R23 multicore score of 29302 and single-core score of 4136 indicate excellent overall throughput, while the 3DMark single-thread score of 1049 and 16-thread score of 8484 show strong scaling across cores. The CPU's average benchmark score of 40468 places it just 0.1% above the AMD Ryzen 9 7940H and 0.5% above the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365, while it sits 0.6% below the Intel Core i9-13905H. This tight grouping means the CPU is not a differentiator at this performance level.

The GPU's 87th percentile ranking and the combo's 417th rank out of 1671 indicate that the graphics card contributes more to the final position than the processor. The RX 6800 XT's PassMark G3D score of 24980 and Geekbench Metal score of 199366 demonstrate strong raw graphics performance. The deltaPct values for the GPU's nearest rivals show it outperforming the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER by 2.6% and the NVIDIA CMP 50HX by 1.9%, while trailing the NVIDIA RTX A1000 by 1.7%.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows provide clear guidance for optimal settings based on target frame rates. For 60 FPS gameplay at 4K, the Ultra preset delivers 90.5 FPS, providing a 30.5 FPS headroom above the minimum standard. The High preset at 4K achieves 95.5 FPS, which is only 5 FPS higher than Ultra, making Ultra the better choice for maximum visual quality at 4K without sacrificing smoothness.

At 1440p, the High preset produces 156 FPS, which exceeds the requirements of most high-refresh-rate monitors. The Ultra preset at 1440p delivers 146.9 FPS, only 9.1 FPS lower than High, so users with 144Hz displays can safely enable Ultra settings. The Medium preset at 1440p reaches 246 FPS, which would benefit users with 240Hz displays, but the visual trade-off from Medium to High is minimal given the game's art style.

For 1080p, all presets exceed 200 FPS. The Ultra setting at 201.8 FPS is the recommended choice for maximum quality, as it remains above the 144Hz threshold and approaches 200 FPS. The Low preset at 369.7 FPS and Medium at 343.1 FPS offer diminishing returns for competitive play, since the game's puzzle-platformer genre does not require sub-10ms frame times. The High preset at 211.5 FPS provides a balanced middle ground, but the data shows that Ultra is the superior choice due to its minimal performance cost relative to High.

FAQ

Q: Can this system maintain 60 FPS at 4K with maximum settings?

A: Yes. The Ultra preset at 3840x2160 produces an average of 90.5 FPS, which is 30.5 FPS above the 60 FPS threshold.

Q: How does the Low preset at 4K compare to Ultra at 1080p?

A: Low at 4K achieves 191.1 FPS, while Ultra at 1080p achieves 201.8 FPS. The difference of 10.7 FPS is small, but the 1080p Ultra image quality is substantially better.

Q: What is the largest frame rate gap between consecutive presets at the same resolution?

A: At 4K, the gap between Low at 191.1 FPS and Medium at 152.2 FPS is 38.9 FPS. At 1440p, the gap between Low at 305.8 FPS and Medium at 246 FPS is 59.8 FPS, which is the largest preset-to-preset difference in the dataset.

Q: Does the CPU bottleneck the GPU at any tested configuration?

A: No. The lowest measured frame rate is 90.5 FPS at 4K Ultra, which is well above the CPU's threshold. The Ryzen 7 7700's single-thread score of 4136 in Cinebench R23 and 1049 in 3DMark indicates sufficient processing headroom.

Q: How much performance is lost when moving from 1440p to 4K at High settings?

A: The average frame rate drops from 156 FPS at 2560x1440 to 95.5 FPS at 3840x2160, a decrease of 60.5 FPS or 38.8%.

Q: What is the difference between the combo's rank and the GPU's percentile?

A: The combo ranks 417th out of 1671 tested combinations, placing it in the top 25%. The GPU alone ranks in the 87th percentile among all GPUs, showing that the combo's position is slightly lower due to CPU pairing variations.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700 provides 8 cores and 16 threads based on the Zen 4 architecture built on a 5 nm process at TSMC. The base clock of 3.80 GHz and boost clock of 5.30 GHz deliver strong single-threaded performance, which is essential for Inside's gameplay logic and physics calculations. The 32 MB of shared L3 cache and 1 MB per-core L2 cache ensure that frequently accessed data remains close to the processing cores.

The CPU's memory bandwidth of 83.2 GB/s over a dual-channel DDR5 interface is sufficient for this game's data streaming requirements. The 65 W TDP indicates efficient power draw, and the socket AM5 platform provides PCIe Gen 5 with 24 lanes for future expansion. The processor's integrated Radeon Graphics are present but unused in this configuration.

Benchmark data shows the Ryzen 7 7700 achieving a PassMark multithread score of 34470 and a single-thread score of 4063. The data compression score of 405084 and encryption score of 23858 demonstrate strong general-purpose performance, while the floating point math score of 66246 and integer math score of 110295 indicate balanced compute capabilities. The CPU ranks in the 91st percentile among all processors, with an average benchmark score of 40468.

The nearest rival comparisons show the Ryzen 7 7700 slightly ahead of the AMD Ryzen 9 7940H by 0.1% and the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 by 0.5%, while trailing the Intel Core i9-13905H by 0.6% and leading the Intel Core Ultra 5 235T by 1.2%. These small deltas confirm that the CPU is not a performance differentiator in Inside, as the game's frame rates are primarily determined by the GPU at higher resolutions and by the CPU's single-thread speed at 1080p. The 1080p Low result of 369.7 FPS approaches the practical limit for the CPU's instruction throughput, but the game remains playable at these extreme frame rates.