Inside

The AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D paired with the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT delivers a remarkably fluid experience in Inside, a 2016 puzzle platformer that is far more demanding than its minimalist aesthetic suggests. The measured frame rates show that this combination is capable of pushing high refresh rates even at 4K, though the scaling patterns reveal where the hardware’s true strengths and limits lie.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is steep but consistent with a GPU-bound workload. At Low settings, the average frame rate falls from 292.5 FPS at 1920x1080 to 209.6 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of 82.9 FPS, and then to 133.6 FPS at 3840x2160, a further drop of 76 FPS. This indicates that even at the lowest preset, the RX 7600 XT is the primary limiter as resolution increases; the CPU has ample headroom to feed the GPU at lower resolutions.

When moving to Ultra settings, the pattern shifts. The 1080p average of 138.6 FPS drops to 99.7 FPS at 1440p and then to 62.3 FPS at 4K. The gap between 1080p and 1440p is 38.9 FPS, while the gap between 1440p and 4K is 37.4 FPS. This near-linear scaling suggests that the game’s visual effects at Ultra place a consistent load on the GPU’s shading and memory subsystems, with no single resolution causing a disproportionate collapse.

The most telling comparison is the performance delta between Low and Ultra at each resolution. At 1080p, Ultra is 153.9 FPS slower than Low. At 1440p, the difference is 109.9 FPS. At 4K, it narrows to 71.3 FPS. As resolution climbs, the cost of Ultra settings diminishes in absolute terms because the GPU is already saturated by pixel throughput. The data shows that 4K Ultra is the only configuration where the average dips below 65 FPS, making it the boundary for this combo’s comfort zone.

GPU Role

The RX 7600 XT features 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, delivering 288.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU’s boost clock is 2755 MHz, with a game clock of 2470 MHz and a base of 1980 MHz. These specifications align with the measured results: the 16 GB capacity is never a constraint in Inside, as even the heaviest 4K Ultra preset only requires a fraction of that pool. The memory bandwidth, however, plays a more critical role.

The card’s 64 ROPs and 128 TMUs are the workhorses for this game’s 2D-heavy rendering. The pixel rate of 176.3 GPixel/s and texture rate of 352.6 GTexel/s explain why the card scales so predictably with resolution. At 4K, the GPU is rendering over 8 million pixels per frame, and the fill rate becomes the deciding factor. The 22.57 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is sufficient for the game’s simple shaders, but the rasterization throughput is what keeps the 4K High average at 65.8 FPS.

The GPU’s 63rd percentile ranking among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 20146, places it as a mid-range performer. Its nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 7600, scores 20258, a deltaPct of -0.6, meaning the XT variant is marginally slower in synthetic tests. This is surprising given the XT’s larger memory pool, but in Inside the extra VRAM does not translate to higher frame rates. The card’s performance is instead bound by its 288.0 GB/s bandwidth, which is identical to the non-XT model.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data strongly favors the High preset as the optimal balance. At 1920x1080, High delivers 145.3 FPS, which is more than enough for a 144 Hz display. At 2560x1440, High maintains 102.5 FPS, comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. Even at 3840x2160, High achieves 65.8 FPS, which is playable on a 60 Hz monitor.

Medium settings offer a significant uplift but with diminishing returns. The 1080p Medium average of 233.1 FPS is 87.8 FPS higher than High, but the visual difference in a puzzle platformer is minimal. At 4K, Medium reaches 105.1 FPS, a 39.3 FPS improvement over High, which could justify the switch for competitive play or high-refresh 4K displays. However, the jump from Medium to Low yields another 28.5 FPS at 4K (to 133.6 FPS), suggesting that Low is only necessary for extreme refresh rate targets.

Ultra is the least efficient choice. The 1080p Ultra average of 138.6 FPS is 6.7 FPS lower than High, despite the higher preset tier. This anomaly suggests that Ultra enables effects that tax the GPU without proportional visual benefit. At 4K, Ultra’s 62.3 FPS dips below the 65.8 FPS of High, making it strictly worse for this hardware. The recommendation is to run High for all resolutions, with Medium as a fallback for 4K high-refresh scenarios.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination ranks 1072 out of 1671 tested combos in Inside, placing it in the 36th percentile of all configurations. This ranking is lower than the individual component percentiles (the CPU is in the 87th percentile, the GPU in the 63rd), which indicates that the pairing is not optimized for this particular game. The bottleneck is clearly the GPU, as the CPU’s massive 96 MB L3 cache and 8-core/16-thread configuration are vastly overqualified for a game that relies on simple physics and 2D rendering.

The combo rank of 1072 suggests that many other CPU-GPU pairings deliver higher frame rates. However, the measured data shows that this combo is only limited at the extreme end of the settings spectrum. The rank is likely dragged down by the GPU’s mid-range positioning rather than any deficiency in the CPU. For a game as old as Inside, the GPU’s raw fill rate is the determining factor, and the RX 7600 XT’s 64 ROPs are simply not competitive with higher-tier cards that have more rasterization units.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D is built on the Zen 4 architecture with a 5 nm process, featuring 8 cores and 16 threads. Its base clock is 4.20 GHz with a boost of 5.00 GHz, and it has 96 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU’s benchmark scores are exceptional: 29149 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 4115 in single-core. These numbers place it in the 87th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 31580.

In Inside, the CPU’s role is minimal. The game’s 2016 release date means it was designed for quad-core processors, and this 8-core chip is never stressed. The 3DMark 2-thread score of 1887 and single-thread score of 959 indicate that even the CPU’s lightest workloads are handled with ease. The game’s physics and logic are simple, and the 7800X3D’s high single-thread performance ensures that frame pacing is consistent.

The nearest CPU rivals are the Intel Core i7-12700F (deltaPct 0.1), AMD Ryzen 9 5980HX (deltaPct 0.3), AMD Ryzen 7 8700G (deltaPct 0.6), and AMD Ryzen 7 7745HX (deltaPct 0.6). These deltas are all under 1%, meaning the 7800X3D is statistically tied with these alternatives in synthetic benchmarks. For Inside, any of these CPUs would produce identical frame rates, confirming that the GPU is the sole performance gate.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers 292.5 FPS on Low, 233.1 FPS on Medium, 145.3 FPS on High, and 138.6 FPS on Ultra. The gap between Low and Medium is 59.4 FPS, while the gap between Medium and High is 87.8 FPS. The small difference between High and Ultra (6.7 FPS) is notable, as it suggests Ultra is a marginal upgrade that costs nearly the same performance as the jump from Medium to High.

At 2560x1440, the averages are 209.6 FPS (Low), 170.1 FPS (Medium), 102.5 FPS (High), and 99.7 FPS (Ultra). The Low to Medium gap narrows to 39.5 FPS, and the High to Ultra gap narrows to 2.8 FPS. The 1440p results show that the GPU is beginning to feel the pixel load, but it still maintains triple-digit frame rates for all presets except Ultra, which just misses 100 FPS.

At 3840x2160, the averages fall to 133.6 FPS (Low), 105.1 FPS (Medium), 65.8 FPS (High), and 62.3 FPS (Ultra). The Low to Medium gap is 28.5 FPS, and the High to Ultra gap is 3.5 FPS. The 4K results highlight the GPU’s limitations: only Low and Medium exceed 100 FPS, while High and Ultra hover near 60-65 FPS. The Ultra preset’s 62.3 FPS is the only measured result below the 60 FPS threshold, making it the sole configuration where the combo fails to maintain perfect smoothness.

The data across all resolutions shows a consistent pattern: Low and Medium are always playable, High is playable up to 4K, and Ultra is only viable at 1080p and 1440p. The RX 7600 XT’s 16 GB memory and 2755 MHz boost clock are sufficient for the game’s demands, but the 128-bit bus and 64 ROPs cap the card’s 4K performance. For a puzzle platformer, the High preset at 4K offers the best visual fidelity per frame, and the 65.8 FPS average is well within acceptable range for a game that does not require twitch reflexes.