Inside

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT combination in Inside delivers a performance profile that is defined by extreme headroom at every resolution, with the CPU's 12 cores and 24 threads proving largely irrelevant to a game that is primarily GPU-bound. The Ryzen 9 9900X, built on the Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge) with a base clock of 4.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz, offers a level of single-threaded throughput that far exceeds what this 2016 puzzle platformer requires. Its benchmark scores confirm this: a single-thread score of 1286 in 3DMark and 6555 in Cinebench R23. Given that Inside is a side-scrolling title with modest physics and AI demands, the CPU's 64 MB of shared L3 cache and high clock speeds are effectively idle resources. The data shows that the processor’s role here is to simply stay out of the way, which it does without any measurable bottleneck; even at 1080p with low settings, where CPU load is typically highest, the frame rates remain astronomically high.

The GPU, however, is the component that dictates the experience. The Radeon RX 7900 XT, with its 20 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 320-bit bus (800.0 GB/s bandwidth) and a boost clock of 2394 MHz, is a high-end graphics card that is overkill for this title. At 4K Ultra, the average frame rate drops to 104.3 FPS, which suggests the pixel throughput and shading work (5376 shading units, 192 ROPs) are the limiting factors. The card's 51.48 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 459.6 GPixel/s pixel rate are more than sufficient for the game's simple 2D rendering, but the scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals that the GPU is still doing the heavy lifting. The VRAM capacity of 20 GB is never a concern; the game's textures are far below the 8 GB threshold, and the 800.0 GB/s bandwidth ensures no memory-related stutters. The GPU's benchmark percentile (82nd vs all GPUs) and its average score of 38358 place it in the upper echelon, but its nearest rivals (a 0% deltaPct against the RTX 5080 Mobile) indicate that this is a card that is simply not stressed by this workload.

Resolution scaling is where the performance characteristics become most clear. From 1080p to 1440p, the average FPS drops by roughly 20-30% depending on the preset, but from 1440p to 4K, the drop is more severe, particularly at lower settings. For example, at Low settings, the frame rate falls from 425.6 FPS at 1080p to 355.9 FPS at 1440p (a 16% drop), but then plummets to 223.1 FPS at 4K (a 37% drop from 1440p). This pattern indicates that at 1080p and 1440p, the GPU is not fully saturated; the CPU is capable of feeding it frames at an incredible rate. At 4K, however, the GPU's fill rate and shading units become the bottleneck, causing a more substantial decline. The High preset shows a similar trend: 245.6 FPS at 1080p, 176 FPS at 1440p (a 28% drop), and 110 FPS at 4K (a 37% drop from 1440p). This suggests that while the game is GPU-bound at 4K, the transition from 1080p to 1440p still has some CPU headroom to spare, as the absolute frame rates are so high that even a 28% reduction leaves the system well above any refresh rate.

The measured FPS breakdown provides exact numbers for each configuration. At 1080p, the Low preset yields 425.6 FPS, which is the highest recorded average for this combo. Medium produces 392.8 FPS, High comes in at 245.6 FPS, and Ultra achieves 232.6 FPS. The difference between High and Ultra at 1080p is a mere 5.3% (13 FPS), which is surprisingly small. Moving to 1440p, the scores are 355.9 FPS (Low), 285.8 FPS (Medium), 176 FPS (High), and 170 FPS (Ultra). The gap between High and Ultra narrows further to 3.4% (6 FPS). At 4K, the results are 223.1 FPS (Low), 176.4 FPS (Medium), 110 FPS (High), and 104.3 FPS (Ultra). The consistency of the High-to-Ultra delta across resolutions—5.3%, 3.4%, and 5.2%—suggests that the Ultra preset adds a negligible amount of visual fidelity for the performance cost, likely just a few extra shadows or post-processing effects that are not worth the frame rate sacrifice. The Low-to-Medium jump at 4K is 20.9% (from 176.4 to 223.1 FPS), which is substantial, indicating that the Medium preset is a more balanced choice for 4K displays.

This combo ranks 138th out of 1671 tested combinations in Inside, placing it in the top 8.3% of all systems. This ranking is high, but it is not at the absolute top, which suggests that there are other pairings (likely with faster GPUs like a 4090 or a 7900 XTX) that can push the 4K Ultra frame rate higher. However, the percentileVsAllCpus of 94 for the CPU and 82 for the GPU show that this is a well-matched pair, with the CPU not holding the GPU back in any meaningful way. The nearest CPU rivals—the Ryzen 9 9900X3D (-0.4% deltaPct), Intel Core i7-14700F (0.7%), and Intel Core Ultra 5 245K (-1.5%)—all have nearly identical average benchmark scores, meaning that swapping the CPU would have no measurable impact on Inside's frame rates. The GPU's nearest rivals, including the RTX 5080 Mobile (0% deltaPct) and RTX 4080 Mobile (0.6%), are also within a rounding error of the 7900 XT's average score, but the desktop 7900 XT's higher power limit (300 W TDP) and larger memory bus give it an edge in sustained loads, which is why the 4K results are as strong as they are.

For settings recommendations, the data points to a clear hierarchy. If the goal is maximum visual quality, the Ultra preset at 4K with 104.3 FPS is playable on a high-refresh-rate monitor but not ideal for a 144Hz panel. The High preset at 4K (110 FPS) is only 5.5% faster and offers almost identical visuals, so it is not a meaningful improvement. The real sweet spot is the Medium preset. At 4K, Medium delivers 176.4 FPS, which is a 60% improvement over Ultra, and the visual difference between Medium and Ultra in a game like Inside—which uses a muted, monochromatic palette and simple geometric shapes—is likely imperceptible to most players. At 1440p, Medium (285.8 FPS) provides enough headroom to drive a 240Hz monitor, while High (176 FPS) is still excellent for a 165Hz display. At 1080p, even the Ultra preset (232.6 FPS) exceeds the refresh rate of most gaming monitors, so the choice is purely aesthetic. The benchmark results suggest that the Medium preset offers the best balance of frame rate and fidelity across all resolutions, as the jump from Low to Medium at 4K (a 26.5% increase in FPS) is larger than the jump from Medium to High (a 37.7% decrease), indicating diminishing returns beyond Medium. The Ultra preset, while the most demanding, never drops below 104 FPS, so it is viable for players who prioritize consistency over raw speed, but it is not recommended for competitive play.