Inside

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700X paired with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 delivers a playable experience in Inside, but the data reveals a significant bottleneck that shapes every settings decision. This is a puzzle platformer where the GTX 1070, a Pascal-era GPU, is clearly the limiting component against the modern Zen 5 processor.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows show a clear hierarchy across all three tested resolutions, with the gap between presets widening as resolution increases. At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves 232.6 FPS, while Medium drops to 181.9 FPS, High settles at 116.4 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 109 FPS. The step from High to Ultra costs only 7.4 FPS at 1080p, making Ultra the best choice for owners of high-refresh monitors who want maximum visual fidelity without sacrificing fluidity. However, the data suggests that Medium offers the most balanced experience at this resolution, as it retains 181.9 FPS while providing substantial visual improvements over Low.

At 2560x1440, the pattern shifts. Low still produces 163.6 FPS, but Medium falls to 134 FPS, High drops to 84 FPS, and Ultra reaches 78.5 FPS. The 50 FPS chasm between Medium and High indicates that the GPU begins to struggle with the additional shading work, yet all presets remain comfortably above 60 FPS. For 1440p, Medium is the recommended preset because it preserves a high refresh rate experience while the jump to High nearly halves the frame rate, a trade-off that is not justified for a game of this genre.

The 3840x2160 results are the most revealing. Low produces 104 FPS, Medium drops to 81.1 FPS, but High falls to 49.8 FPS and Ultra to 49.7 FPS. The near-identical scores between High and Ultra at 4K indicate that the GPU has hit a hard performance ceiling that additional settings tweaks cannot overcome. Therefore, 4K users should choose Low or Medium, with Medium being the optimal compromise at 81.1 FPS. Attempting High or Ultra at this resolution will push the experience below the 60 FPS threshold, which is detrimental for a game that relies on precise platforming and atmospheric timing.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 is built on the Pascal architecture and features 8 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering 256.3 GB/s of bandwidth. Its base clock runs at 1506 MHz with a boost of 1683 MHz, and the card houses 1920 shading units alongside 120 texture mapping units and 64 ROPs. The pixel rate is 107.7 GPixel/s and the texture rate is 202.0 GTexel/s, with FP32 performance rated at 6.463 TFLOPS. This hardware profile places the GPU in the 51st percentile among all tested graphics cards, with an average benchmark score of 12331.

The benchmark results show that the GTX 1070 remains competitive with its immediate peers. It sits just 0.7 percent ahead of the NVIDIA Quadro K4200, which scores 12241, and 1.3 percent behind the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 880M at 12490. The GTX 1650 SUPER edges ahead by 1.4 percent with a score of 12504, while the Tesla K20Xm leads by 1.7 percent at 12547. These delta values confirm that the GTX 1070 is positioned in a crowded mid-range segment, and its performance in Inside aligns with this standing.

The 8 GB VRAM capacity is more than sufficient for this title, as the game's visual style prioritizes stark silhouettes and limited color palettes over texture-heavy environments. The memory clock of 2002 MHz, translating to 8 Gbps effective, provides ample bandwidth for the geometry and lighting effects that Inside employs. The data indicates that VRAM is not a constraint in any of the tested configurations, as the frame rate drops at higher presets are driven by compute and fill-rate limitations rather than memory capacity. The transition from 1080p Low at 232.6 FPS to 4K Ultra at 49.7 FPS represents a 78.6 percent reduction, which is consistent with a GPU that is being pushed to its limits by resolution scaling.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700X brings substantial processing power to this pairing. It features 8 cores and 16 threads based on the Zen 5 architecture, codenamed Granite Ridge, manufactured on TSMC's 4 nm process. The base clock is 3.80 GHz with a boost clock of 5.50 GHz, and the chip includes 80 KB of L1 cache per core, 1 MB of L2 per core, and 32 MB of shared L3 cache. Memory support extends to DDR5 over a dual-channel bus with 89.6 GB/s of bandwidth, and the CPU operates within a 65 W TDP envelope. This processor sits in the 89th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 36029.

The CPU's benchmark results demonstrate its strength in both single-threaded and multi-threaded workloads. In Cinebench R23, it scores 4459 single-core and 31588 multi-core, while Geekbench reports 3353 single-core and 17002 multi-core. The 3DMark tests show a scaling pattern from 1280 in single-thread to 9771 in max-threads, indicating efficient utilization of all available cores. PassMark single-thread performance is 4654, with multi-thread reaching 37161. These figures place the 9700X in close competition with several Intel parts, as the nearest rival data shows a 0.2 percent advantage for the Intel Core i5-14500HX at 35940, a 0.4 percent deficit to the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H at 36165, a 0.6 percent lead over the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845 at 35802, and a 0.8 percent gap behind the Intel Core Ultra 5 225H at 36328.

For Inside, the CPU's role is largely background processing, as the game's physics and logic are not demanding. The measured FPS data shows that even at 1080p Low, where the GPU is least stressed, the system reaches 232.6 FPS. This suggests that the Ryzen 7 9700X is delivering frames faster than the GTX 1070 can render them, confirming that the CPU is not a bottleneck in any scenario. The high boost clock of 5.50 GHz ensures that any single-threaded game logic executes without delay, while the 16 threads provide ample headroom for background tasks and streaming. The data indicates that this processor is vastly overqualified for the computational demands of Inside, which is expected given its release in 2024 versus the game's 2016 launch.

How This Combo Ranks

The combined AMD Ryzen 7 9700X and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 configuration ranks 1411 out of 1671 tested combos in Inside, placing it in the bottom 15.5 percent of all pairings. This rank is surprising given the individual component strengths. The CPU is in the 89th percentile, and the GPU sits in the 51st percentile, yet their combination falls well below the median. The explanation lies in the stark performance mismatch: the 9700X is capable of far higher frame rates, but the GTX 1070 caps the system's output, particularly at higher resolutions and settings.

The ranking reflects the GPU's age and position in the market. While the GTX 1070's average benchmark score of 12331 is respectable for its class, it is not designed to drive modern titles at high frame rates. The combo rank of 1411 indicates that most other tested configurations either pair a similar GPU with a slower CPU without changing the outcome, or they pair a faster GPU with any CPU to achieve better results. In the context of Inside, this specific pairing is inefficient because the CPU investment yields no tangible benefit over a much cheaper processor. The data shows that the GPU is the sole determinant of performance in this game, making the 9700X's capabilities irrelevant to the final FPS numbers.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS progression from 1080p to 4K clearly illustrates the GPU bottleneck. At 1080p High, the system produces 116.4 FPS. Moving to 1440p High reduces this to 84 FPS, a 27.8 percent drop, and further to 4K High yields 49.8 FPS, another 40.7 percent reduction from the 1440p figure. The total drop from 1080p High to 4K High is 57.2 percent. This scaling pattern is typical for a GPU-bound scenario, where the number of pixels being rendered increases geometrically while the GPU's processing power remains constant.

The Low preset shows a different pattern. From 232.6 FPS at 1080p, the frame rate drops to 163.6 FPS at 1440p (29.7 percent reduction) and then to 104 FPS at 4K (36.4 percent reduction from 1440p). The total reduction from 1080p Low to 4K Low is 55.3 percent. This smaller relative drop compared to High settings confirms that the GPU is less stressed at Low, but it still cannot maintain high frame rates at 4K. The Medium preset follows the same trend, going from 181.9 FPS at 1080p to 134 FPS at 1440p and 81.1 FPS at 4K, representing a 55.4 percent total reduction.

The Ultra preset behaves nearly identically to High, with 109 FPS at 1080p, 78.5 FPS at 1440p, and 49.7 FPS at 4K. The convergence of High and Ultra scores at 4K (49.8 versus 49.7 FPS) strongly suggests that the GPU's pixel throughput and shading capacity are exhausted, meaning that no settings adjustment can recover performance. The data points to a system where the Ryzen 7 9700X is never the limiting factor, as evidenced by the linear FPS drops that correspond directly to pixel count increases. This is a classic case of a powerful CPU being paired with an underpowered GPU, resulting in a configuration that is best utilized at 1080p or 1440p with medium to high settings, while 4K should be reserved for the Low or Medium presets.