Inside

The AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER delivers a fascinating case study in system bottlenecking within the puzzle-platformer Inside. This 2016 title, with its stylized 2.5D visuals, proves far less demanding than modern AAA releases, yet the data reveals that the RTX 2060 SUPER remains the definitive limiting factor at higher resolutions. The benchmark set shows a classic performance curve where the CPU's immense headroom is masked by the GPU's age, particularly as pixel count climbs.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate data paints a clear picture of how the RTX 2060 SUPER scales under load. Moving from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 on the High preset, the average frame rate drops from 138.5 FPS to 101.9 FPS, a substantial 26.4% reduction. The jump to 3840x2160 is even more punishing, with the average falling to 65 FPS, another 36.2% decline from the 1440p figure. This steep scaling curve is the signature of a GPU-bound scenario, where the rendering workload increases exponentially with pixel count.

The pattern persists across all settings. At Low, the 1080p average of 281.1 FPS plummets to 200.2 FPS at 1440p and further to 125.2 FPS at 4K. The Ultra preset shows the same trajectory: 131.2 FPS at 1080p, 94.2 FPS at 1440p, and 62.2 FPS at 4K. The consistency of these drops — roughly 29% to 35% per resolution step regardless of quality level — strongly implies that the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth are being saturated. The CPU, with its 8 cores and 16 threads, is clearly not the constraint, as it would likely show a more dramatic difference between low and high settings at the same resolution.

Settings Recommendations

For a game like Inside, the interplay between settings and resolution is critical for achieving a smooth experience. At 1920x1080, the data shows that even the Ultra preset, the highest tested, holds an average of 131.2 FPS. This is well above the threshold for most high-refresh-rate monitors. However, the step down to High at 138.5 FPS is marginal, and the jump to Medium at 227.2 FPS is enormous. Given the visual nature of Inside, which relies on atmospheric lighting and shadow, the High preset appears to be the optimal balance, offering a 5.6% frame rate increase over Ultra with presumably minimal visual compromise.

At 2560x1440, the decision becomes more consequential. Ultra dips to 94.2 FPS, which is playable but not ideal for fast-paced sequences. The High preset at 101.9 FPS provides a more comfortable margin. The Medium preset at 162.4 FPS is the clear winner for maximizing smoothness, as the visual differences between Medium and High in a game with this art style are often subtle. For 3840x2160, the situation is reversed. Ultra at 62.2 FPS is borderline, while High at 65 FPS is only marginally better. The Medium preset at 98.9 FPS is the only tested option that provides a consistently fluid 4K experience, making it the recommended choice for 4K displays.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER is a Turing-architecture card with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s. Its base clock is 1470 MHz with a boost clock of 1650 MHz. The benchmark results indicate that for Inside, this memory configuration is not a limiting factor at any resolution, as the game's assets are relatively simple. The performance drops are more directly tied to the GPU's compute throughput.

The card's 2176 shading units and 64 ROPs are the primary engines for this game's rendering. The data implies that at 1080p, the GPU has enough raw power to push frame rates past 200 FPS on lower presets, but the Ultra preset's additional effects — likely including more complex lighting and post-processing — tax the shader units significantly, bringing the average down to 131.2 FPS. The 4K results, with a maximum of 125.2 FPS on Low, suggest the card is hitting a hard architectural limit. The 34 RT cores and 272 tensor cores are irrelevant here, as Inside does not utilize ray tracing or DLSS, which is confirmed by the fact that the game's release predates these features' mainstream adoption.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the spread is wide. Low delivers an average of 281.1 FPS, while Medium produces 227.2 FPS. High follows at 138.5 FPS, and Ultra trails at 131.2 FPS. The delta between Low and Medium is 53.9 FPS, but the gap between Medium and High is a massive 88.7 FPS, indicating that the High preset introduces a significant rendering cost. Ultra adds only a small additional burden over High, dropping 7.3 FPS.

At 2560x1440, the same hierarchy holds. Low runs at 200.2 FPS, Medium at 162.4 FPS, High at 101.9 FPS, and Ultra at 94.2 FPS. The difference between Medium and High narrows to 60.5 FPS, but the relative cost remains high. At 3840x2160, Low still manages 125.2 FPS, but Medium drops to 98.9 FPS. High and Ultra are nearly identical, at 65 FPS and 62.2 FPS respectively, showing that at 4K, the GPU is so constrained that the extra effects in Ultra have almost no additional impact on the average frame rate.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of CPU and GPU ranks 1194th out of 1671 tested combos for Inside. This places it in the 28.6th percentile, meaning roughly 71% of all tested system configurations deliver higher average frame rates in this game. This ranking is heavily influenced by the GPU's age and performance tier.

The RTX 2060 SUPER's average benchmark score of 19774 places it just 0.3% ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN and 0.5% ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 in the general GPU benchmark pool. This posits it as a mid-range card. The CPU, however, is a top-tier part. The Ryzen 7 7800X3D's average score of 31580 puts it a mere 0.1% ahead of the Intel Core i7-12700F and 0.6% ahead of the AMD Ryzen 7 8700G. This massive CPU capability, combined with a modest GPU, creates a significant bottleneck that is reflected in the 1194th rank. Systems with a more balanced pairing, even with a slower CPU but a faster GPU, would likely outperform this combo in Inside.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D is a Zen 4 architecture processor with 8 cores and 16 threads. Its base clock is 4.20 GHz with a boost clock of 5.00 GHz. Critically, it features 96 MB of shared L3 cache, a design element that provides a substantial advantage in many gaming workloads. Its benchmark scores are exceptional, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 29149 and a single-core score of 4115.

In the context of Inside, the CPU's role is almost entirely secondary. The game is not heavily threaded, and the 7800X3D's single-thread performance is more than sufficient. The data supports this, as the frame rates at 1080p Low (281.1 FPS) are high enough that any CPU limitation would be negligible. The CPU's 96 MB L3 cache likely helps maintain consistent frame pacing in complex scenes, but the measured average FPS is primarily dictated by the GPU. The 7800X3D is capable of pushing far more frames than the RTX 2060 SUPER can render, making it a future-proof component in this pairing, even if its potential is untapped by this specific game and GPU.

FAQ

*Q: Can this system run Inside at 4K with maximum settings?*

A: No. The measured average frame rate at 3840x2160 with the Ultra preset is 62.2 FPS. While playable, it does not reach the higher refresh rates that the lower resolutions achieve.

Q: What is the best settings preset for 1920x1080?

A: The High preset provides a good balance, with an average of 138.5 FPS. This is a 5.6% improvement over Ultra's 131.2 FPS, while the Medium preset's 227.2 FPS may come with notable visual downgrades.

Q: How does the RTX 2060 SUPER compare to its nearest rival in GPU benchmarks?

A: The RTX 2060 SUPER's average benchmark score is 19774, which is 0.3% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN and 0.5% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070.

Q: Is the Ryzen 7 7800X3D a significant factor in the 1080p performance?

A: No, the CPU is not the limiting component. The 1080p Low preset achieves 281.1 FPS, and the bottleneck is the GPU. The CPU's benchmark scores, such as 29149 in Cinebench R23 multi-core, show it has ample headroom.

Q: What is the frame rate drop from 1440p to 4K on the High preset?

A: The average frame rate drops from 101.9 FPS at 2560x1440 to 65 FPS at 3840x2160, a decrease of 36.2%.

Q: Does the GPU's memory bandwidth affect the 4K results?

A: The RTX 2060 SUPER has 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth, but the benchmark data suggests the performance limit is more related to its shading units and overall compute power. The scaling pattern is consistent with a shader-bound workload, not a memory-bound one.