Inside

# Inside — AMD Ryzen 7 7700 + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER delivers a thoroughly playable experience across all tested resolutions in Inside, with the data revealing a system that scales predictably from a 1080p powerhouse to a 4K-capable setup at reduced settings. The 8-core, 16-thread Zen 4 processor provides ample headroom, while the 6 GB GTX 1660 SUPER becomes the primary constraint as resolution climbs — a classic pairing where the CPU's 91st percentile ranking versus all CPUs contrasts sharply with the GPU's 55th percentile standing.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a steep, consistent drop as resolution increases, which strongly indicates the GPU is the limiting component in this pairing. At Low settings, the average frame rate falls from 217.4 FPS at 1920x1080 to 154.7 FPS at 2560x1440 — a 28.8% reduction — and then to 99.2 FPS at 3840x2160, representing a 54.4% drop from the 1080p baseline. This pattern of diminishing returns at higher resolutions is textbook GPU-bound behavior.

The scaling story becomes even more pronounced at High settings. The 109.8 FPS at 1080p drops to 75.6 FPS at 1440p, a 31.1% decline, and further to 51.6 FPS at 4K, a 53.0% reduction from 1080p. The fact that the percentage drops are nearly identical across Low and High presets (54.4% vs 53.0% from 1080p to 4K) suggests that the game's rendering workload scales uniformly with pixel count, and that neither CPU thread utilization nor memory bandwidth is creating a bottleneck at any specific resolution.

Interestingly, the Ultra preset shows a slightly different scaling curve. From 105.6 FPS at 1080p to 76.8 FPS at 1440p (a 27.3% drop) and then to 49.7 FPS at 4K (a 52.9% drop from 1080p), the Ultra settings appear to introduce effects that are more resolution-sensitive at intermediate steps. The 1440p-to-4K transition for Ultra shows a 35.3% reduction, compared to 35.9% for High and 35.9% for Low — these figures are remarkably consistent, reinforcing that pixel count, not specific settings, drives the performance curve.

Settings Recommendations

The data suggests that Medium settings offer the most balanced experience across all three resolutions. At 1080p, Medium produces 173 FPS — a 20.4% reduction from Low's 217.4 FPS but still far beyond what any display can show. At 1440p, Medium delivers 125.1 FPS, comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold and only 19.1% below Low's 154.7 FPS. Even at 4K, Medium maintains 79 FPS, which is 20.3% below Low's 99.2 FPS but 53.1% above High's 51.6 FPS.

The High preset, while visually superior, shows a significant penalty that becomes critical at higher resolutions. The gap between Medium and High at 1080p is 36.5% (173 vs 109.8 FPS), and this gap widens to 40.3% at 1440p (125.1 vs 75.6 FPS) and 34.7% at 4K (79 vs 51.6 FPS). For players targeting 4K, Ultra is the least viable option at 49.7 FPS, while High at 51.6 FPS is barely playable — Medium at 79 FPS is clearly the sweet spot.

For 1080p and 1440p gamers, Ultra settings are surprisingly viable. The 105.6 FPS at 1080p Ultra and 76.8 FPS at 1440p Ultra both exceed typical display refresh rates. However, the marginal cost of Ultra over High is minimal at these resolutions — only 3.8% at 1080p (105.6 vs 109.8 FPS) and 1.6% at 1440p (76.8 vs 75.6 FPS) — suggesting that players could easily toggle between these presets based on visual preference without meaningful performance consequences.

GPU Role

The GTX 1660 SUPER, built on the Turing architecture with 1,408 shading units and 48 ROPs, proves to be the decisive factor in this game's performance envelope. Its 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus provides 336.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which appears sufficient for Inside's art style at all tested settings, given that no min FPS data was recorded as problematic. The GPU's boost clock of 1785 MHz and base clock of 1530 MHz deliver 5.027 TFLOPS of FP32 performance.

The benchmark results show the GPU's percentile ranking at 55 versus all GPUs, with its 12,699 Passmark G3D score sitting just below the AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT (14,389, deltaPct -0.7) and slightly above the Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics (14,315, deltaPct -0.2). This mid-range positioning explains why the GPU becomes the limiting factor at 4K — the 51.6 FPS at High and 49.7 FPS at Ultra represent the hardware's practical ceiling for this game's heavier presets.

The GPU's memory configuration deserves attention. With 6 GB capacity and 14 Gbps effective memory speed, the card can handle Inside's texture workloads without apparent stuttering, but the 192-bit bus width means memory bandwidth scales linearly with resolution increases. The data showing a near-identical 53% performance drop from 1080p to 4K across all presets suggests that the GPU's compute and memory subsystems are uniformly stressed, rather than one bottleneck emerging at higher resolutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full range of settings produces excellent results. Low averages 217.4 FPS, Medium 173 FPS, High 109.8 FPS, and Ultra 105.6 FPS. The step from Low to Medium costs 44.4 FPS (20.4%), while Medium to High costs 63.2 FPS (36.5%), and High to Ultra only 4.2 FPS (3.8%). This reveals that the High-to-Ultra transition is nearly free in performance terms at 1080p.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates remain strong but show the GPU's strain. Low produces 154.7 FPS, Medium 125.1 FPS, High 75.6 FPS, and Ultra 76.8 FPS. Notably, Ultra edges out High by 1.2 FPS at this resolution, a statistical anomaly that suggests the settings presets may not have a consistent performance hierarchy at higher pixel counts. The 1440p results show a 19.1% drop from Low to Medium, a 39.6% drop from Medium to High, and essentially no drop from High to Ultra.

At 3840x2160, the limits become apparent. Low still achieves 99.2 FPS, Medium 79 FPS, but High falls to 51.6 FPS and Ultra to 49.7 FPS. The gap between Medium and High is 34.7%, making this the most consequential settings decision at 4K. The data indicates that players targeting 4K should stick with Medium or Low, as the visual upgrade to High or Ultra comes at a steep 34-37% performance penalty.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific CPU-GPU combination ranks 1,453 out of 1,671 tested combos in Inside, placing it in the 13th percentile of all pairings. This low ranking is surprising given the individual component performance — the Ryzen 7 7700 sits in the 91st percentile of all CPUs, while the GTX 1660 SUPER is in the 55th percentile of all GPUs. The combination's ranking suggests that Inside is heavily GPU-bound, allowing systems with weaker CPUs and stronger GPUs to outperform this pairing.

The CPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks — the AMD Ryzen 9 7940H (avg score 40,431, deltaPct 0.1), AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 (40,262, deltaPct 0.5), and Intel Core i9-13905H (40,712, deltaPct -0.6) — all show nearly identical average scores, indicating that the 7700's 40,468 average benchmark score is representative of a performance tier rather than a distinctive outlier. The GPU's nearest rivals, the AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 (14,314, deltaPct -0.2) and Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics (14,315, deltaPct -0.2), similarly show that the 1660 SUPER's 14,286 average score places it in a tightly clustered mid-range group.

CPU Role

The Ryzen 7 7700's specifications — 8 cores, 16 threads, 3.80 GHz base clock, and 5.30 GHz boost clock — provide substantial computational headroom that Inside does not fully exploit. The CPU's Zen 4 architecture on a 5 nm process with 32 MB of shared L3 cache delivers strong synthetic performance: Cinebench R23 scores of 29,302 multi-core and 4,136 single-core, with a Passmark single-thread score of 4,063.

The data indicates the CPU is never the bottleneck in this pairing. At 1080p Low, the system reaches 217.4 FPS, which is far below what the CPU could theoretically support given its benchmark scores. The 3DMark results — 8,484 for 16 threads and 8,479 for max threads — show excellent multi-threaded scaling, but Inside as a puzzle platformer likely uses only a few threads, leaving most of the 16 threads idle.

The CPU's 65 W TDP and dual-channel DDR5 memory support (83.2 GB/s bandwidth) ensure that memory bandwidth is not a limiting factor. The 1 MB L2 cache per core and 64 KB L1 cache per core provide low-latency access for game logic, but the GPU-bound nature of the rendering pipeline means these advantages rarely manifest in real-world FPS gains. The CPU's 91st percentile ranking versus all CPUs is effectively wasted in this combination for Inside, where the GPU's 55th percentile standing caps performance.

FAQ

*Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in Inside?*

A: The data shows that 2560x1440 at Medium settings (125.1 FPS) offers the best balance of visual quality and performance, while 1920x1080 at Ultra (105.6 FPS) is also excellent. At 3840x2160, only Low (99.2 FPS) or Medium (79 FPS) are viable, as High (51.6 FPS) and Ultra (49.7 FPS) drop below 60 FPS.

Q: Is the Ryzen 7 7700 or GTX 1660 SUPER the limiting factor?

A: The GTX 1660 SUPER is clearly the limiting component. The GPU's 55th percentile ranking versus all GPUs, combined with the CPU's 91st percentile ranking, and the consistent 53% FPS drop from 1080p to 4K across all settings, all point to GPU-bound performance.

Q: How does this combo rank compared to other tested systems?

A: This pairing ranks 1,453 out of 1,671 tested combos in Inside, placing it in the bottom 13% of all systems. This is primarily due to the GPU's mid-range performance, as the CPU is in the top 9% of all processors.

Q: What are the frame rates at 1080p with different settings?

A: At 1920x1080, the measured average FPS is 217.4 for Low, 173 for Medium, 109.8 for High, and 105.6 for Ultra. All settings exceed 100 FPS, making 1080p the most comfortable resolution for this combo.

Q: Does the High to Ultra transition cost much performance?

A: At 1080p, the drop is only 3.8% (109.8 to 105.6 FPS), and at 1440p, Ultra actually performs 1.6% better than High (76.8 vs 75.6 FPS). However, at 4K, Ultra is 3.7% slower than High (49.7 vs 51.6 FPS).

Q: Is 4K gaming possible with this combination?

A: Yes, but only with reduced settings. The data shows 99.2 FPS at Low and 79 FPS at Medium in 3840x2160. High and Ultra settings produce 51.6 and 49.7 FPS respectively, which may be acceptable but fall below 60 FPS.