Inside

Inside is a puzzle platformer that leans heavily on atmosphere and precise timing, and the benchmark data for the AMD Ryzen 7 9700F and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER combination shows a system that is more than capable of delivering a smooth experience at nearly every setting. The measured results reveal a clear performance hierarchy across resolutions, with the GPU acting as the primary constraint at higher settings, while the CPU provides ample headroom. The data indicates that this pairing is positioned in the 2464th spot out of 2887 tested combos for this title, placing it in the lower-middle portion of the database, yet the frame rates achieved are consistently playable, suggesting that the ranking is more a reflection of the hardware's overall ceiling than its suitability for this specific game.

FAQ

Q: What is the average frame rate at 1080p with High settings?

A: The measured average FPS at 1920x1080 with High settings is 108 frames per second. This indicates a very smooth experience, well above the standard 60 FPS target, and shows that the GTX 1660 SUPER is not heavily taxed at this resolution and preset.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX?

A: The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F has an average benchmark score of 69996, which is 0.2% higher than the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX's score of 69875. This places the two processors in a near-identical performance tier, with the Ryzen 7 9700F holding a marginal lead in the aggregate benchmark data.

Q: Is the GPU's performance closer to the RTX 3050 Ti Mobile or the RX 580?

A: The GTX 1660 SUPER's average benchmark score is 12986. This is 0.4% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Mobile (12940) and also 0.4% higher than the AMD Radeon RX 580 (12928). The delta is incredibly small, indicating that all three GPUs perform within a very tight window in general compute benchmarks.

Q: What is the best performance setting at 1440p based on the data?

A: At 2560x1440, the Low preset achieves an average of 156 FPS, while Medium drops to 125 FPS and High to 78 FPS. The Ultra preset yields 74 FPS. For a balance of visual quality and high refresh rate, the Medium preset at 125 FPS is a strong choice, but High at 78 FPS remains perfectly smooth for a game like this.

Q: Does the Ryzen 7 9700F support DDR5 memory?

A: Yes, the CPU's memory support is listed as DDR5, with a dual-channel memory bus. The theoretical memory bandwidth is 89.6 GB/s, which is a key specification for feeding the 8-core, 16-thread Zen 5 architecture.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Ultra settings at 1080p and 4K?

A: The average FPS at 1920x1080 with Ultra settings is 103. At 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the average FPS drops to 47. This represents a significant 54.4% reduction in performance, illustrating the heavy load that 4K resolution places on the GTX 1660 SUPER.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark results for Inside indicate that the optimal settings depend heavily on the target resolution and display refresh rate. For players with a standard 60 Hz display, the data suggests that the Ultra preset is viable even at 4K, with an average of 47 FPS. While this is below the 60 FPS threshold, it is close enough that a slight reduction to High settings, which yields an average of 49 FPS, would still not fully reach it. However, the most substantial performance gains come from dropping to the Medium preset, which provides a much larger leap in frame rate, reaching 78 FPS at 4K and 125 FPS at 1440p.

For those seeking the smoothest possible experience on high-refresh-rate monitors, the Low preset is the clear winner. At 1080p, the Low preset achieves an exceptional 216 FPS average, and even at 1440p it maintains a high 156 FPS. This makes the Low preset the only option that can truly exploit a 144 Hz monitor at 1440p and beyond. The Medium preset offers a compelling middle ground, providing a 173 FPS average at 1080p and 125 FPS at 1440p, which is still well-suited for high refresh rates while offering improved visual fidelity over Low.

Considering the game's deliberate pacing and atmospheric nature, the High preset at 1440p, with its 78 FPS average, presents an excellent balance of visual quality and smoothness. The jump from High to Ultra at this resolution is a modest decrease from 78 FPS to 74 FPS, indicating that the Ultra preset's additional graphical features are not particularly demanding at this resolution. Conversely, at 4K, the gap between High (49 FPS) and Ultra (47 FPS) is minimal, but the jump from High to Medium (78 FPS) is significant, making Medium the most practical choice for 4K gaming on this hardware.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER is the primary determinant of frame rates in Inside at higher resolutions and settings. Its 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus provides a memory bandwidth of 336.0 GB/s, which is a critical resource for handling the game's textures and effects at 4K. The data shows a clear pattern: as resolution increases, the average FPS drops significantly across all settings, which is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario. For instance, at High settings, the average FPS falls from 108 at 1080p to 78 at 1440p and further to 49 at 4K, demonstrating the scaling limitations of the GPU.

The GPU's clock speeds, with a base of 1530 MHz and a boost of 1785 MHz, allow it to reach a peak FP32 performance of 5.027 TFLOPS. This raw computational power is sufficient to handle the game's rendering at 1080p and 1440p with ease, but it becomes the limiting factor at 4K. The benchmark scores for the GPU, such as a Passmark G3D score of 12699 and a Geekbench Vulkan score of 57102, place it in the 53rd percentile of all GPUs. This mid-range positioning is reflected in the game's performance, where it can deliver high frame rates at lower resolutions but struggles to maintain 60 FPS at 4K with higher presets.

The relationship between the GPU's capabilities and the game's demands is clear when examining the frame time consistency. The Medium preset is the only one with recorded min and max FPS values. At 1080p, the frame times range from a minimum of 147 FPS to a maximum of 199 FPS, while at 4K, they range from 66 FPS to 90 FPS. This data suggests that the GTX 1660 SUPER can maintain a consistent frame pacing, but the overall performance ceiling is determined by its processing power and memory bandwidth, which are not sufficient for a locked 60 FPS experience at 4K with High or Ultra settings.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a comprehensive view of the system's performance across a matrix of resolutions and settings. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers an average of 216 FPS, which is an exceptionally high frame rate that would fully utilize a 240 Hz monitor. The Medium preset at this resolution achieves an average of 173 FPS, with a minimum of 147 and a maximum of 199 FPS, indicating a very stable performance window. High settings at 1080p reduce the average to 108 FPS, and Ultra settings further lower it to 103 FPS, showing that the performance cost of the highest preset is relatively small at this resolution.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance scales down proportionally. The Low preset still delivers an excellent 156 FPS average. The Medium preset provides an average of 125 FPS, with frame times ranging from 106 to 143 FPS. High settings at 1440p result in an average of 78 FPS, which is a significant drop from the 108 FPS seen at 1080p. The Ultra preset at 1440p yields an average of 74 FPS, a smaller decrease from High compared to the drop from Medium to High, suggesting that the Ultra preset's additional effects are less impactful than the resolution scaling itself.

At 3840x2160, the GPU becomes the clear bottleneck. The Low preset achieves an average of 98 FPS, which is still very playable. The Medium preset drops to an average of 78 FPS, with minimum and maximum frame rates of 66 and 90 FPS, respectively. High settings at 4K yield a 49 FPS average, and the Ultra preset brings the average down to 47 FPS. This data reveals that at 4K, even dropping from Low to Medium costs 20 FPS, and from Medium to High costs another 29 FPS, highlighting the steep performance curve for the GTX 1660 SUPER as resolution and graphical fidelity increase.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER combination is ranked 2464 out of 2887 tested combos in the database specifically for Inside. This places the system in the 15th percentile of all tested combinations, meaning that roughly 85% of the other hardware pairings performed better in this game according to the aggregate ranking. This ranking is a holistic metric that considers the overall performance across various benchmarks and settings, and it is heavily influenced by the GPU's mid-range standing (53rd percentile) and the CPU's high-end standing (94th percentile).

The disparity between the CPU and GPU rankings is a key insight. The Ryzen 7 9700F is a high-performance processor, scoring in the 94th percentile of all CPUs with an average benchmark score of 69996. This places it in direct competition with top-tier chips like the Intel Core i7-14700KF, which has a score of 70163 and a deltaPct of -0.2%, and the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X, with a score of 69515 and a deltaPct of 0.7%. In contrast, the GTX 1660 SUPER is a much more modest performer, sitting in the 53rd percentile of GPUs. This combination of a top-tier CPU with a mid-range GPU is a classic pairing for 1080p gaming, but it limits the system's overall rank in a database that includes many high-end GPU configurations.

The combo's rank of 2464 suggests that while the system provides a very smooth experience in Inside at most settings, it is not a high-end configuration when compared to the full spectrum of hardware. The benchmark results show that the system is capable of exceeding 100 FPS at 1080p with High and Ultra settings, which is a strong result. However, the ranking indicates that other systems, likely those with more powerful GPUs, can achieve even higher frame rates, particularly at higher resolutions. The data implies that the system's performance is well-balanced for its class, but it is not positioned to compete with high-end gaming rigs.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F plays a supporting role in Inside, providing a robust foundation that ensures the GPU is not starved of data. With 8 cores and 16 threads based on the Zen 5 architecture, this CPU is far more powerful than what a game like Inside requires. The base clock of 3.80 GHz and boost clock of 5.50 GHz, combined with a 32 MB shared L3 cache, provide exceptional single-threaded and multi-threaded performance. The Passmark single-thread score of 4691 and multi-thread score of 36470 are indicative of a processor that can handle any modern game's logic and physics calculations with ease.

The CPU's performance relative to its rivals is exceptionally tight. The benchmark data shows that the Ryzen 7 9700F's average score of 69996 is virtually identical to that of the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX (69875), which has a deltaPct of 0.2%. It is also within 0.9% of the Intel Core i7-14700K's score of 69355. This indicates that within the context of this game, the choice between these high-end CPUs would have a negligible impact on frame rates, as the bottleneck is clearly the GPU, especially at higher resolutions.

The data supports the conclusion that the CPU is not a limiting factor in this pairing for Inside. At 1080p with Low settings, the system achieves 216 FPS, which is a frame rate that is likely constrained by the GPU's maximum rendering capacity, not the CPU's ability to issue draw calls. The fact that the frame rate scales down predictably as resolution increases further confirms that the GTX 1660 SUPER is the primary performance limiter. The Ryzen 7 9700F's high memory bandwidth of 89.6 GB/s and support for DDR5 memory also contribute to a responsive system, but its raw processing power is far beyond what this 2016 puzzle platformer needs, ensuring that it will not introduce stutters or frame drops due to CPU bottlenecks.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data across resolutions provides a clear picture of how the system scales and where the performance bottleneck lies. At 1080p with Low settings, the average FPS is 216. At 1440p, this drops to 156, a 27.8% decrease. At 4K, the average FPS falls to 98, which is a 37.2% decrease from 1440p and a 54.6% decrease from 1080p. This scaling pattern is typical of a GPU-bound workload, where the number of pixels to render increases dramatically, placing a proportionally higher load on the graphics card.

The scaling is even more pronounced at higher settings. For example, with High settings, the average FPS drops from 108 at 1080p to 78 at 1440p (a 27.8% decrease) and then to 49 at 4K (a 37.2% decrease from 1440p and a 54.6% decrease from 1080p). This consistent pattern of roughly a 28% drop from 1080p to 1440p and a further 37% drop from 1440p to 4K across all settings strongly suggests that the GPU is the sole limiting factor. The CPU's performance is constant regardless of resolution, so if it were the bottleneck, the frame rates would not scale as predictably with the pixel count.

This analysis confirms that the GTX 1660 SUPER is the definitive limiting component at all resolutions and settings tested. The Ryzen 7 9700F has more than enough headroom to drive the GPU to its maximum potential, as evidenced by the high frame rates at 1080p. The significant performance cost of moving to 4K, where even the Low preset cannot maintain a 100+ FPS average (98 FPS), illustrates that this resolution is particularly demanding for this GPU. Players aiming for a consistent 60 FPS experience at 4K would need to use the Medium or Low presets, while those playing at 1080p or 1440p have the flexibility to use higher settings while still achieving very high frame rates.