Inside

The AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D delivers exceptional performance in Inside, a 2016 puzzle platformer that is anything but demanding by modern standards. The measured data reveals a system that utterly overwhelms the game’s requirements, with average frame rates ranging from a low of 153 FPS at 4K Ultra to a staggering 433 FPS at 1080p Low. This combination sits at rank 5 out of 2,887 tested combos, placing it in the top 0.2% of all configurations. The analysis below explores how this hardware behaves across settings, resolutions, and what the numbers reveal about the limiting factors in this particular title.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data provides a clear hierarchy of performance across four quality presets at each resolution. At 4K, the jump from Ultra to High is minimal in terms of visual impact but yields a measurable performance gain: 153 FPS at Ultra rises to 160 FPS at High, a modest 4.6% improvement. However, the dramatic leap occurs when dropping to Medium, which delivers 256 FPS—a full 67% higher than Ultra. Low settings push this further to 321 FPS, but the visual degradation in a game like Inside, known for its atmospheric lighting and silhouetted art style, would be counterproductive.

The optimal experience is clearly the Medium preset. At 4K, Medium produces 256 FPS with a minimum of 218 FPS and a maximum of 295 FPS, ensuring no frame ever drops below the refresh rate of even the fastest high-end displays. At 1440p, Medium delivers 358 FPS (min 304, max 412), and at 1080p it reaches 399 FPS (min 339, max 459). The consistency across resolutions is notable—Medium is the only preset where minimum frame rates are recorded, and they remain exceptionally high at every resolution. This suggests Medium is the sweet spot where the engine’s rendering load balances perfectly with the GPU’s capabilities, avoiding the occasional stalls that might affect other presets.

High and Ultra presets, while visually richer, offer diminishing returns. At 4K, Ultra averages 153 FPS and High 160 FPS—both still excellent but representing a 38-40% drop from Medium. The gap narrows at lower resolutions: at 1080p, High (333 FPS) and Ultra (327 FPS) are within 2% of each other, but both sit roughly 18% below Medium. For players with 144Hz or 165Hz monitors, any preset above Medium at 1080p or 1440p will exceed display capabilities, but the data suggests Medium provides the most headroom. At 4K, where high-refresh monitors are rarer, Ultra at 153 FPS still clears 120Hz thresholds, making it viable for cinematic playthroughs, but Medium offers the best balance of fidelity and frame rate stability.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D is an absolute monster on paper, and the benchmark data reflects that dominance. Its 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus provides 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth, which is almost comically excessive for a game like Inside that was designed for hardware from a decade earlier. The GPU’s 21,760 shading units, 680 texture mapping units, and 176 raster output processors represent a compute capability that this title cannot possibly stress. The boost clock of 2407 MHz and base clock of 2017 MHz are high, but the game’s simplicity means these clocks likely never throttle under load.

The GPU’s percentile ranking of 92 among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 77,712, places it near the top of the field. Its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks are interesting: the AMD Radeon RX 6650M XT (a mobile part) scores 76,904 (1.1% lower), while the RX 6850M XT scores 78,940 (1.6% higher). The RTX 5090 D also sits close to the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe variants (79,396 and 79,605, respectively, 2.1% and 2.4% higher). This clustering suggests that at the very top of GPU performance, synthetic scores become less differentiated, but in Inside, the RTX 5090 D’s raw rasterization power translates to frame rates that are effectively uncapped.

The measured FPS data shows that the GPU is never the bottleneck in this game. At 4K Ultra, the most demanding configuration tested, the average of 153 FPS represents a 50% drop from Low settings at the same resolution (321 FPS). This scaling pattern indicates that the game’s visual presets do impose some load on the GPU, but even the heaviest settings fail to bring the card anywhere near its limits. The GPU’s DirectX 12 Ultimate support (12_2) and Vulkan 1.4 compatibility ensure it can handle any modern rendering techniques, but Inside is a 2.5D side-scroller that likely uses forward rendering, making the RTX 5090 D’s 170 ray tracing cores and 680 tensor cores irrelevant to its performance.

Resolution Scaling

The measured data reveals a clear and predictable relationship between resolution and frame rate. Moving from 1080p to 1440p to 4K consistently reduces average FPS across all settings, but the magnitude of the drop varies significantly by preset. At Low settings, the progression is 433 FPS (1080p) → 388 FPS (1440p) → 321 FPS (4K). This represents a 10.4% drop from 1080p to 1440p and a 17.3% drop from 1440p to 4K, totaling a 25.9% reduction from 1080p to 4K. At Medium settings, the numbers are 399 → 358 → 256, showing drops of 10.3% and 28.5%, respectively, for a 35.8% total reduction.

High settings show 333 → 255 → 160, with a 23.4% drop from 1080p to 1440p and a 37.3% drop from 1440p to 4K, totaling 52.0%—the steepest decline of any preset. Ultra follows a similar pattern: 327 → 243 → 153, representing 25.7% and 37.0% drops, for a 53.2% total reduction. This scaling behavior is telling. The fact that Low and Medium settings show shallower resolution scaling curves suggests that at these presets, the CPU or memory subsystem begins to play a more significant role, especially at lower resolutions where the GPU is underutilized.

The 4K to 1080p ratio at Low settings (321/433 = 0.74) indicates that even at 4K, the system retains 74% of its 1080p performance. For a game this old, this is remarkably consistent. The narrowing gap between presets at lower resolutions—where High and Ultra nearly converge at 1080p (333 vs 327 FPS)—implies that the CPU becomes the limiting factor as resolution decreases. At 4K, the GPU has more work to do, but it still finishes each frame in roughly 6.25 milliseconds at Ultra (160 FPS), leaving ample headroom. The limiting component in Inside is likely the game’s single-threaded nature or engine-level frame pacing, not the RTX 5090 D.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the data shows a full range of performance. Low settings produce 433 FPS average, the highest of any configuration tested. Medium delivers 399 FPS with a minimum of 339 and maximum of 459, indicating excellent frame pacing. High settings average 333 FPS, while Ultra comes in at 327 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 106 FPS, or 24.5%, which is relatively narrow compared to higher resolutions. This suggests that at 1080p, the game is heavily CPU-bound, as even the most demanding settings fail to significantly tax the GPU.

At 2560x1440, the performance hierarchy shifts slightly. Low settings average 388 FPS, a 10.4% drop from 1080p. Medium falls to 358 FPS (min 304, max 412), still comfortably above 300 FPS. High settings drop more sharply to 255 FPS, a 23.4% reduction from 1080p, while Ultra averages 243 FPS. The gap between High and Ultra narrows to just 12 FPS (4.7%), suggesting that the visual difference between these presets has diminishing returns at this resolution. The 1440p data shows the GPU beginning to assert some influence, but the Ryzen 7 9850X3D’s 8 cores and 16 threads are still more than sufficient.

At 3840x2160, the full impact of resolution becomes apparent. Low settings deliver 321 FPS, a 17.3% drop from 1440p. Medium averages 256 FPS with a minimum of 218 and maximum of 295, which is the only 4K configuration with recorded min/max values—indicating more variance but still no stutter below 200 FPS. High settings fall to 160 FPS, while Ultra bottoms out at 153 FPS. The 4K Ultra result is still 2.5x higher than a standard 60 FPS target, but it represents a 53.2% reduction from 1080p Ultra. The scaling from 1440p to 4K at High and Ultra (37-38% drops) is consistent with a GPU that is finally being pushed, though even at 4K Ultra, the RTX 5090 D is nowhere near its thermal or power limits (575W TDP).

FAQ

*Q: What is the highest average frame rate achieved by this combo in Inside?*

A: The highest measured average is 433 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings.

Q: Does the system maintain playable frame rates at 4K with maximum settings?

A: Yes, at 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the average frame rate is 153 FPS, which exceeds the refresh rate of most 4K monitors.

Q: How much performance is lost when moving from 1080p to 4K at Medium settings?

A: The average frame rate drops from 399 FPS at 1080p to 256 FPS at 4K, a reduction of 143 FPS or 35.8%.

Q: Which preset shows the smallest difference between High and Ultra at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, High averages 255 FPS and Ultra averages 243 FPS, a difference of just 12 FPS (4.7%).

Q: Is the GPU or CPU the limiting factor in this game?

A: The data suggests the CPU limits performance at lower resolutions, as evidenced by the narrowing gap between presets at 1080p. At 4K, the GPU begins to matter more, but even at Ultra, it is not fully stressed.

Q: What is the minimum frame rate recorded in any configuration?

A: The lowest minimum is 218 FPS, recorded at 3840x2160 with Medium settings.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D is a Zen 5 architecture processor built on TSMC’s 4 nm process, featuring 8 cores and 16 threads with a base clock of 4.70 GHz and boost clock of 5.60 GHz. Its 96 MB of shared L3 cache is a defining feature for gaming, and in Inside, this proves to be more than adequate. The CPU’s percentile ranking of 92 among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 58,386, places it in the top tier. Its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks include the Intel Xeon Platinum 8260M (58,323, 0.1% lower), Intel Core i9-14900 (58,115, 0.5% lower), and AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 (58,826, 0.7% higher). These deltas are negligible, indicating that in CPU-bound scenarios, the 9850X3D trades blows with the best.

In Inside, the CPU’s role becomes evident when examining the FPS scaling. At 1080p, the difference between Low (433 FPS) and Ultra (327 FPS) is only 106 FPS, suggesting that the game’s engine, which likely runs a single main thread for gameplay logic, cannot fully utilize the CPU’s 16 threads. The 9850X3D’s high single-thread performance, evidenced by its Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2,228, is what matters here. The boost clock of 5.60 GHz ensures that even the most demanding frame-to-frame calculations are completed in under 2.3 milliseconds, allowing for the 433 FPS maximum observed.

The CPU’s memory bandwidth of 89.6 GB/s (dual-channel DDR5) is likely not a constraint, as Inside’s data footprint is small. The 8,315 million transistors on a 70.6 mm² die represent a dense, efficient design, and the 120W TDP is modest for the performance delivered. In this game, the CPU is never the bottleneck—even at 1080p Low, the 433 FPS ceiling is more likely a game engine limit than a hardware one. The 9850X3D’s 96 MB L3 cache probably helps with the game’s asset streaming, but the title’s 2016 release date means it was designed for CPUs with a fraction of this cache.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D combination achieves a rank of 5 out of 2,887 tested combos in Inside, placing it in the 99.8th percentile. This is an extraordinary result, especially considering that the game is over nine years old and has been tested on thousands of systems. The top 5 ranking indicates that this configuration is among the fastest ever measured for this title, though the fact that it is not rank 1 suggests that some other combinations—likely those with even higher single-thread CPUs or more favorable memory configurations—manage to squeeze out slightly higher frame rates.

The rank is consistent with the hardware’s theoretical capabilities. The RTX 5090 D’s average benchmark score of 77,712 places it at the 92nd percentile among GPUs, and the CPU’s 92nd percentile ranking mirrors this. However, the combo’s rank 5 out of 2,887 is disproportionately high, indicating that both components are performing near their peak in this specific game. The nearest GPU rivals in synthetic tests—the RX 6650M XT and RX 6850M XT—are mobile parts that would likely rank much lower in Inside due to lower power limits, but the synthetic scores show that at the extreme high end, performance differences are minimal.

What does rank 5 out of 2,887 mean for real-world usage? It means that in a database of nearly 3,000 configurations, only 4 achieve higher frame rates in Inside. This reflects the combination’s balance: the CPU’s high single-thread performance pairs perfectly with the GPU’s massive rasterization throughput. The 433 FPS at 1080p Low is likely near the practical limit for this game’s engine, and the 4K Ultra result of 153 FPS ensures that even the most demanding display setups are fully saturated. For players seeking the absolute best performance in Inside, this combo represents the pinnacle of what is achievable, with only a handful of exotic configurations edging it out in specific scenarios.