Inside

The AMD Ryzen 9 7900X paired with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti delivers a playable, though inconsistent, experience in Inside, a Puzzle Platformer from 2016. The benchmark data shows a system that is heavily GPU-limited at higher resolutions, but which reveals substantial CPU headroom at 1080p. The combination ranks 1426th out of 1671 tested combos for this game, placing it in the lower portion of the database, yet the measured frame rates tell a story of a setup capable of smooth performance if settings are managed carefully.

Resolution Scaling

The most striking pattern in the measured data is the dramatic FPS drop as resolution increases from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo produces 219.6 FPS, but this falls to 160.1 FPS at 1440p and further to 101.6 FPS at 4K. This represents a 53.7% reduction in frame rate from 1080p to 4K at the lowest settings, indicating that the GTX 1660 Ti becomes the limiting component once pixel count rises.

The scaling pattern is consistent across all settings presets. At High settings, the drop from 112 FPS at 1080p to 80.5 FPS at 1440p (a 28.1% decline) and then to 49.1 FPS at 4K (a 56.2% decline from 1080p) shows a particularly steep cliff at the highest resolution. The Ultra preset shows similar behavior: 101.9 FPS at 1080p falls to 77.5 FPS at 1440p and 44.7 FPS at 4K. This non-linear scaling—where the 1440p to 4K jump costs more than the 1080p to 1440p step—suggests the GPU's memory bandwidth and fillrate are being saturated at 4K.

The Ryzen 9 7900X, with its 12 cores and 24 threads, is clearly not the bottleneck in this scenario. The CPU's benchmark scores, including a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 43695 and a Passmark multithread score of 51406, place it in the 93rd percentile versus all CPUs. At 1080p Low, the 219.6 FPS result indicates the CPU can feed the GPU far more frames than the GTX 1660 Ti can render at higher resolutions. The data suggests that at 1080p, the CPU is still capable of pushing beyond 220 FPS, but the GPU's limits are reached quickly as resolution climbs.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the database of 1671 tested combinations for Inside, this pairing sits at rank 1426. That places it in the bottom 14.6% of all combos tested, which might seem surprising given the frame rates measured. However, this rank reflects the absolute performance ceiling of the GPU, which is an older end-of-life product from the GeForce 16 series.

The GPU's average benchmark score of 13925 puts it in the 55th percentile versus all GPUs, with nearest rivals including the AMD Radeon RX 570X (0.4% faster) and the NVIDIA RTX A2000 Mobile (0.8% faster). The GTX 1660 Ti's Passmark G3D score of 12871 and 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1061 are modest by modern standards. The CPU, by contrast, is a top-tier part: its nearest rivals include the Intel Core Ultra 5 235 (0.1% slower) and the AMD Ryzen 9 5900XT (0.4% faster), and its average benchmark score of 50556 places it at 93rd percentile.

The rank of 1426 is therefore driven primarily by GPU performance. The CPU contributes little to the ranking because it is not the limiting factor in most configurations. The combo's performance in Inside is constrained by the GTX 1660 Ti's 6 GB of GDDR6 memory and 288.0 GB/s bandwidth, which are adequate for 1080p but become strained at 4K. The data shows that this is a CPU-heavy pairing where the GPU holds back the overall result, a conclusion supported by the fact that at 1080p Low the system achieves 219.6 FPS—more than double the 4K High result.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is built on the Turing architecture with a TU116 chip manufactured on a 12 nm process at TSMC. It features 1536 shading units, 96 texture mapping units, and 48 ROPs, with base and boost clocks of 1500 MHz and 1770 MHz respectively. The 6 GB of GDDR6 memory runs at 1500 MHz with a 192-bit bus, yielding 288.0 GB/s of bandwidth. These specifications are modest, and the GPU's pixel rate of 84.96 GPixel/s and texture rate of 169.9 GTexel/s directly impact performance in a 2D side-scrolling game like Inside.

The game's rendering demands scale primarily with resolution and pixel count, and the GTX 1660 Ti's 48 ROPs become a bottleneck at 4K. The measured results confirm this: at 4K Ultra, the combo manages only 44.7 FPS, while at 4K Low it reaches 101.6 FPS. The 56.9 FPS difference between these two presets at 4K indicates that the GPU's shading units and texture units are heavily taxed by higher-quality effects. In contrast, at 1080p the gap between Low (219.6 FPS) and Ultra (101.9 FPS) is 117.7 FPS, showing that the GPU has more headroom at lower pixel counts.

The GPU's FP32 performance of 5.437 TFLOPS and its DirectX 12 (12_1) support are sufficient for Inside's visual style, which is not particularly demanding. The measured FPS at 1080p High of 112 FPS is well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. However, the GPU's 55th percentile ranking versus all GPUs, combined with its end-of-life production status, means it cannot sustain high frame rates at 4K. The data indicates that the GTX 1660 Ti is the primary constraint in this combo, and its 6 GB VRAM is sufficient for this game but not future-proof.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its best results. The Low preset achieves 219.6 FPS, Medium hits 175.6 FPS, High reaches 112 FPS, and Ultra drops to 101.9 FPS. These numbers show a clear stepwise degradation as settings increase, with the largest single drop occurring from Medium to High (63.6 FPS). The 1080p results are consistently above 100 FPS even at Ultra, making this resolution the sweet spot for this pairing.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates decline noticeably. Low produces 160.1 FPS, Medium 128.5 FPS, High 80.5 FPS, and Ultra 77.5 FPS. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is most pronounced at High settings (31.5 FPS loss, a 28.1% decrease) and least at Low settings (59.5 FPS loss, a 27.1% decrease). At 1440p, the Ultra and High presets converge to within 3 FPS of each other, suggesting that the GPU is reaching its limits and additional settings changes have diminishing returns.

At 3840x2160, the performance falls below ideal levels. Low still manages 101.6 FPS, but Medium drops to 81.4 FPS, High to 49.1 FPS, and Ultra to 44.7 FPS. The 4K High and Ultra results are below the 60 FPS threshold, which would result in noticeable stuttering in a game like Inside that relies on smooth animation for its atmospheric puzzle-solving. The gap between Low and Medium at 4K is 20.2 FPS, while the gap between High and Ultra is only 4.4 FPS, indicating that the GPU is severely constrained at this resolution.

Settings Recommendations

For a consistently smooth experience, the data points to 1080p as the primary resolution for this combo. At 1080p Ultra, the 101.9 FPS result provides a comfortable margin above 60 FPS, and the visual quality of Inside's monochromatic art style benefits from higher settings. The 1080p High preset at 112 FPS is also viable, offering slightly better performance with minimal visual compromise.

At 1440p, the Medium preset at 128.5 FPS is the best balance, as it stays well above 60 FPS. The High preset at 80.5 FPS is playable but leaves less headroom for demanding scenes. The Ultra preset at 77.5 FPS is also acceptable, but the small difference from High (3 FPS) suggests that High is the more efficient choice for 1440p gaming.

At 4K, the data recommends the Low preset at 101.6 FPS as the only setting that reliably exceeds 60 FPS. The Medium preset at 81.4 FPS is playable, but the High (49.1 FPS) and Ultra (44.7 FPS) presets fall short of the 60 FPS target. Given that Inside is a 2D side-scroller where resolution sharpness matters less than frame smoothness, the 4K Low preset is the recommended configuration for users with 4K displays. The 55th percentile GPU ranking and the 1426th combo rank suggest that this pairing is best suited for 1080p or 1440p gaming, with 4K reserved for lower settings.