Inside

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 pairing delivers a surprisingly capable experience in Inside, a 2016 Puzzle Platformer that is far more demanding than its minimalist art style suggests. The measured data shows this combo handles the game with ease at most settings, though the GTX 1070’s age becomes apparent at the highest preset and resolution. This analysis breaks down exactly where this pairing shines, where it strains, and what settings extract the best experience from the hardware.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data strongly favors the High preset as the best overall experience for this combo, particularly at 1440p and 4K. At 1920x1080, High delivers a robust 115 FPS average, which is smooth for a puzzle platformer, but the jump to Medium at 184 FPS is substantial and may be preferable for players with high-refresh displays. However, the real story is at higher resolutions. At 2560x1440, High produces 83 FPS, and at 3840x2160, it still manages 52 FPS. This makes High the only preset that offers a playable 4K experience without dropping to Low.

The Ultra preset is the clear outlier, costing a significant performance penalty for what appears to be marginal visual gains. At 1080p, Ultra drops to 110 FPS, only 5 FPS below High, but at 1440p it falls to 79 FPS, and at 4K it bottoms out at 50 FPS. The scaling from High to Ultra is roughly 4-5% at 1080p, but at 4K the drop is also small in absolute terms (52 to 50 FPS). The data indicates Ultra is poorly optimized relative to High, offering little benefit for the performance hit.

For maximum smoothness, Medium is the sweet spot. It provides the highest FPS with a min FPS recorded (unlike High and Ultra where min FPS is null), suggesting more consistent frame pacing. At 1080p, Medium averages 184 FPS with a 157 FPS minimum; at 1440p, it averages 133 FPS with a 113 FPS minimum; and at 4K, it averages 83 FPS with a 71 FPS minimum. These min FPS figures are critical because they indicate the worst-case frame drops, and Medium is the only preset that consistently locks in a high floor.

Low is only necessary for extreme frame rates. At 1080p, it hits 231 FPS, and at 1440p, 166 FPS. At 4K, Low still manages 104 FPS, which is excellent. Given that the game is a slow-paced puzzle platformer, the recommendation is clear: use High for 1440p and 4K, and switch to Medium if you demand a locked 144+ FPS experience at 1080p. Avoid Ultra unless you have a specific reason, as the data shows it is the least efficient preset.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 is the primary performance limiter in this pairing, despite its age. The GPU features 8 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering 256.3 GB/s of bandwidth. Its base clock is 1506 MHz with a boost of 1683 MHz, and it packs 1920 shading units. In Inside, the GPU’s memory bandwidth proves sufficient even at 4K, as the game’s art style likely uses moderate texture sizes. The measured FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K shows a 55% drop at High (115 to 52 FPS), which is typical for a GPU-bound scenario at high settings.

The GTX 1070’s 47th percentile ranking among all GPUs places it in the mid-range, and its nearest rivals are professional workstation cards like the AMD FirePro W5000 and NVIDIA Quadro M2000M, which are not gaming-focused. This context reinforces that the GTX 1070 is a capable but dated gaming GPU. In Inside, the GPU’s compute power (6.463 TFLOPS FP32) is more than adequate for the game’s simple geometry, but the pixel rate of 107.7 GPixel/s becomes a bottleneck at 4K Ultra. The gap between 4K High (52 FPS) and 4K Medium (83 FPS) highlights how the GPU’s fill rate is stressed by the higher preset’s shading effects.

The GTX 1070’s DirectX 12 support (12_1) is relevant, as Inside can leverage modern APIs. However, the PassMark DirectX 12 score of 48 is notably lower than DirectX 11 (100), suggesting the GPU is more efficient in legacy APIs. This means the game may perform better if forced to run in DX11 mode, though the measured data already shows playable frame rates. The 8 GB VRAM is a non-issue here, as even at 4K Ultra, the game does not appear to exceed this limit, given the stable FPS (50 FPS average) rather than a catastrophic drop from memory swapping.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700 is vastly overqualified for Inside, and the data shows it is never the bottleneck. With 8 cores and 16 threads, a base clock of 3.80 GHz, and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz, this CPU provides massive headroom. Its Zen 4 architecture (Raphael) on TSMC’s 5 nm process delivers strong single-thread performance, which is what matters most for this game. The CPU’s Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1930 and multi-core score of 18760 indicate it can handle any game logic or physics calculations Inside throws at it.

The CPU’s 87th percentile ranking among all CPUs places it in the top tier, far ahead of the GPU’s 47th percentile. This mismatch confirms that the GTX 1070 is the limiting factor in every measured scenario. The nearest CPU rivals (AMD Ryzen AI 9 365, Intel Core 5 221E) are within 0.6% in average benchmark scores, but this is irrelevant for gaming performance because the CPU is not being fully utilized.

In Inside, the CPU’s 32 MB of L3 cache and dual-channel DDR5 memory support (83.2 GB/s bandwidth) ensure that asset streaming is never an issue. The game is a side-scrolling platformer with limited on-screen entities, so the CPU’s 16 threads are mostly idle. The measured FPS at 1080p Low (231 FPS) is likely near the game’s engine limit or the GPU’s raw throughput, not a CPU limitation. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would see similar FPS across all resolutions at Low settings, but the data shows a clear drop from 231 FPS at 1080p to 166 FPS at 1440p to 104 FPS at 4K, all of which are GPU-driven reductions.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo ranks 3056 out of 3716 tested combinations in Inside, placing it in the bottom 18% of all possible CPU-GPU pairings. This low rank is almost entirely due to the GTX 1070’s age, as the Ryzen 7 7700 is a top-tier CPU. The rank reflects the GPU’s 47th percentile performance, which drags down the overall combination despite the CPU’s 87th percentile standing.

This ranking means that in a database of 3716 combos, 660 are slower, but 3055 are faster. For a game released in 2016, this combo still delivers playable frame rates, but it is far from competitive with modern hardware. The rank would be significantly higher if paired with a newer GPU, but as it stands, the GTX 1070 is the anchor. The data shows that the combo is capable of 4K High at 52 FPS, which is impressive for a GPU that was released in 2016, but it cannot push past 50 FPS at 4K Ultra, which is where the rank suffers.

The disparity between the CPU’s and GPU’s percentiles (87 vs 47) suggests that upgrading the GPU alone would dramatically improve the combo’s rank. However, the current rank of 3056 is a direct consequence of the GPU’s mid-range position among all GPUs. In practical terms, this combo is best suited for 1080p and 1440p gaming, where it ranks adequately, but at 4K, it is only passable with reduced settings.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a clear GPU-bound profile. At High settings, the average FPS drops from 115 at 1080p to 83 at 1440p (a 28% reduction), and then to 52 at 4K (a further 37% reduction from 1440p). This is a classic linear scaling pattern where each doubling of pixel count reduces FPS by roughly half, indicating the GPU is the sole limiting factor.

At Low settings, the scaling is even more pronounced: 231 FPS at 1080p, 166 FPS at 1440p (a 28% drop), and 104 FPS at 4K (a 37% drop from 1440p). This consistency across presets confirms that the GTX 1070’s raw throughput is the bottleneck, not the CPU or memory bandwidth. The CPU’s massive headroom means it can feed the GPU at any resolution, so the FPS drops are purely a function of the GPU’s pixel-processing capabilities.

The most interesting data point is at 4K Medium, where the FPS is 83, which is identical to 1440p High (83 FPS). This suggests that Medium at 4K has a similar GPU load to High at 1440p, which is logical given the resolution increase is offset by the preset’s reduced effects. The min FPS at 4K Medium (71 FPS) is also recorded, indicating that the GPU maintains stable frame delivery even under this load. The scaling from 1080p to 4K at Medium shows a 55% drop (184 to 83 FPS), which is the same percentage as High, reinforcing that the GPU is the only variable that matters.

Measured FPS Breakdown

1920x1080:

• Low: 231 FPS average. This is the highest measured FPS in the entire dataset, indicating the game is not CPU-limited at this resolution.
• Medium: 184 FPS average, with a minimum of 157 FPS and a maximum of 212 FPS. This is the only 1080p preset with recorded min/max values, and the 27 FPS spread shows consistent performance.
• High: 115 FPS average. A substantial drop from Medium, highlighting the preset’s cost.
• Ultra: 110 FPS average. Only 5 FPS below High, suggesting Ultra is nearly identical to High in visual quality but with a slight penalty.

2560x1440:

• Low: 166 FPS average. A 28% drop from 1080p Low, consistent with the increased pixel count.
• Medium: 133 FPS average, with a minimum of 113 FPS and a maximum of 153 FPS. The 20 FPS spread is tighter than at 1080p, indicating better frame pacing.
• High: 83 FPS average. This is a comfortable frame rate for a puzzle platformer.
• Ultra: 79 FPS average. A 5% drop from High, again showing minimal visual benefit.

3840x2160:

• Low: 104 FPS average. Still highly playable at 4K, showing the game’s scalability.
• Medium: 83 FPS average, with a minimum of 71 FPS and a maximum of 96 FPS. The 25 FPS spread is the widest recorded, but the 71 FPS floor is still smooth.
• High: 52 FPS average. This is the threshold for playable 4K, and it holds up well.
• Ultra: 50 FPS average. The lowest measured FPS, but still technically playable. The drop from High to Ultra is only 2 FPS, reinforcing that Ultra is not worth using.

The data reveals a clear pattern: High is the most efficient preset at all resolutions, offering the best balance of visual fidelity and performance. Medium is the safety net for those who prioritize frame consistency, and Low is only necessary for 4K at high refresh rates. Ultra is a trap, offering negligible gains over High at a consistent performance cost. The GTX 1070’s 8 GB VRAM is sufficient throughout, and the Ryzen 7 7700 never breaks a sweat, making this combo a practical choice for Inside at 1080p and 1440p, with 4K being playable only at reduced settings.