Inside

The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D paired with the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT delivers exceptional performance in Inside, a 2016 puzzle platformer that is far more demanding on frame rates than its minimalist aesthetic suggests. The measured data shows this combination is capable of pushing well beyond typical high-refresh display limits, though the scaling patterns reveal a nuanced balance between CPU and GPU workloads.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate progression across resolutions tells a clear story about where the bottleneck lies. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combo produces 407.2 FPS, which drops to 326.5 FPS at 2560x1440 — a 19.8% reduction. Moving to 3840x2160 at Low settings yields 208.2 FPS, representing a further 36.2% decline from the 1440p figure. This scaling pattern indicates that while the GPU is becoming more stressed at higher resolutions, the CPU remains capable of feeding it adequately even at 4K.

The High settings tier shows a more pronounced resolution penalty. From 227.7 FPS at 1080p, the frame rate falls to 165.3 FPS at 1440p (a 27.4% drop) and then to 100.4 FPS at 4K (a 39.3% drop from 1440p). This steeper decline at High settings compared to Low suggests that the additional graphical work at higher resolutions is amplifying the GPU's role as the limiting component, particularly when texture quality and shading complexity increase.

Ultra settings exhibit the most dramatic scaling behavior. The 217.6 FPS at 1080p drops to 154.1 FPS at 1440p (29.2% reduction) and ultimately to 99.6 FPS at 4K (35.4% reduction from 1440p). The fact that Ultra at 4K produces a frame rate nearly identical to High at 4K (99.6 vs 100.4) suggests that the GPU is hitting a performance ceiling at this resolution, with the extra settings overhead having minimal additional impact.

GPU Role

The Radeon RX 9070 XT, built on the RDNA 4.0 architecture with a Navi 48 chip, provides the graphical horsepower for these results. Its 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus delivers 644.6 GB/s of bandwidth, which proves sufficient for Inside's visual style even at 4K Ultra settings. The GPU's boost clock of 2970 MHz and game clock of 2400 MHz, combined with 4096 shading units and 128 ROPs, enable the high fill rates observed in the benchmark data.

The pixel rate of 380.2 GPixel/s and texture rate of 760.3 GTexel/s are key specifications for understanding the 4K performance. At 3840x2160 Ultra, the 99.6 FPS average suggests the GPU is operating near its practical limits for this workload, despite the game's relatively modest graphical complexity. The 64 RT cores and 48.66 TFLOPS of FP32 compute are more than adequate for a title from 2016, but the resolution scaling data indicates that raw pixel throughput becomes the binding constraint at 4K.

The GPU's benchmark performance, with an average score of 39647 and a percentile ranking of 82 against all GPUs, positions it well above the median. Its nearest rivals in the aggregate benchmarks — the AMD Radeon Pro 575 at 39703 (0.1% higher) and NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile at 39568 (0.2% lower) — show that the RX 9070 XT sits in a competitive performance tier, though these aggregate scores do not directly translate to Inside's specific workload.

CPU Role

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D brings substantial processing capability to this pairing. With 8 cores and 16 threads based on the Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge), it operates at a base clock of 4.70 GHz and boosts up to 5.20 GHz. The 96 MB of shared L3 cache is particularly relevant for gaming workloads, as it reduces memory latency and improves frame pacing in CPU-bound scenarios.

The CPU's 3DMark results show strong multi-threaded performance: 10081 in the 16-thread test and 10067 at max threads, with single-thread performance at 1212. The Cinebench R23 scores of 34004 multi-core and 4800 single-core further establish this processor's capability. The PassMark multi-thread score of 40009 and single-thread score of 4430 indicate a well-rounded performer that can handle both heavily threaded and lightly threaded workloads efficiently.

In Inside, the CPU's role is most evident at lower resolutions and settings. The 407.2 FPS at 1080p Low is likely approaching the engine's game logic and draw call limits, as the GPU has spare capacity at this resolution. The Ryzen 7 9800X3D's 90th percentile ranking against all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 37780, places it ahead of its nearest rivals — the Intel Xeon 6353P at 37811 (-0.1% delta) and Intel Core Ultra 5 225 at 37831 (-0.1% delta) — though the margins are extremely tight.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D and Radeon RX 9070 XT ranks 259th out of 1671 tested combos in Inside, placing it in the top 15.5% of all configurations. This ranking reflects the high absolute performance of both components, though it also indicates that a substantial number of other combinations achieve higher frame rates in this specific title.

The percentile positions of the individual components provide context for this ranking. The CPU's 90th percentile status is significantly higher than the GPU's 82nd percentile, suggesting that the processor is the stronger relative performer in this pairing. This asymmetry is consistent with the measured FPS data, which shows the system maintaining high frame rates even at 4K where the GPU is more heavily taxed.

Given the game's 2016 release date and its 2D side-scrolling nature, the ranking is influenced by how well the engine scales with modern hardware. The combination's ability to exceed 200 FPS at 1080p and maintain above 99 FPS at 4K Ultra demonstrates that it is not leaving significant performance on the table, even if some other high-end configurations achieve even higher raw frame rates.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers its highest frame rates, with the Low preset reaching 407.2 FPS. Medium settings reduce this to 367.8 FPS (a 9.7% decrease from Low), while High settings produce 227.7 FPS (a 38.1% decrease from Medium). Ultra settings yield 217.6 FPS, which is only 4.4% below High, suggesting diminishing returns from the additional settings overhead at this resolution.

The 2560x1440 results show a similar pattern with slightly lower absolute values. Low settings produce 326.5 FPS, Medium 265.5 FPS (18.7% below Low), High 165.3 FPS (37.7% below Medium), and Ultra 154.1 FPS (6.8% below High). The relative performance gaps between settings tiers remain consistent with 1080p, indicating that the settings scaling is resolution-independent.

At 3840x2160, the frame rates compress considerably. Low settings achieve 208.2 FPS, which drops to 166.9 FPS at Medium (19.8% reduction). High settings produce 100.4 FPS, a 39.8% reduction from Medium, while Ultra achieves 99.6 FPS — nearly identical to High. This convergence at Ultra settings for 4K suggests the GPU is fully saturated, with the final settings tier adding negligible performance cost but also delivering minimal frame rate benefit.

The overall spread from best to worst case — 407.2 FPS at 1080p Low versus 99.6 FPS at 4K Ultra — represents a 75.5% reduction in frame rate. This wide range indicates that Inside is flexible enough to run on modest hardware but scales well into the high-refresh territory that this combination targets.