Inside

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti combination delivers exceptional performance in Inside, a puzzle platformer from 2016. The data shows this pairing is far more powerful than the game requires, with the GPU becoming the primary limiting factor only at the highest settings and resolutions. This combo ranks in the top 15% of all tested configurations, making it an elite choice for this title.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic GPU-bound scaling pattern, though the absolute frame rates remain extraordinarily high. At 1080p High settings, the combo produces 230.6 FPS, which drops to 163.5 FPS at 1440p and further to 105.8 FPS at 4K. This represents a 54% reduction in frame rate from 1080p to 4K, indicating that the rendering load is scaling substantially with pixel count, as expected for a GPU-limited scenario.

The scaling behavior changes dramatically when moving to lower settings. At Low settings, the 1080p result of 425.3 FPS falls to 327.4 FPS at 1440p and 209.6 FPS at 4K. The percentage drop from 1080p to 4K at Low settings is 50.7%, slightly less than at High settings, suggesting that even at the lowest quality preset, the RTX 3080 Ti still bears the majority of the workload. However, the sheer magnitude of these numbers — all above 200 FPS even at 4K Low — indicates the CPU is never the bottleneck in this title.

At Ultra settings, the pattern continues with 220.8 FPS at 1080p, 155.2 FPS at 1440p, and 97.9 FPS at 4K. The 4K result is the only measured configuration that drops below 100 FPS, yet it remains highly playable for a puzzle platformer. The consistency of the scaling factor across all settings — roughly a 50-55% reduction from 1080p to 4K — strongly suggests that the limiting component is the GPU's shading and memory throughput rather than any CPU-side constraint. The Ryzen 9 9900X's 12 cores and 24 threads at boost clocks up to 5.60 GHz are clearly more than adequate for this game's physics and logic demands.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is the dominant component in this pairing for Inside. With 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus delivering 912.4 GB/s of bandwidth, the GPU has ample resources for a game of this era. The memory clock runs at 1188 MHz with 19 Gbps effective speed, while the base clock of 1365 MHz boosts to 1665 MHz under load. These specifications translate to a pixel rate of 186.5 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 532.8 GTexel/s, both of which are massively overprovisioned for a 2D side-scrolling puzzle platformer.

The GPU's benchmark scores reinforce its capability. It achieves a PassMark G3D score of 26896 and a Geekbench OpenCL score of 191309, placing it in the 83rd percentile of all GPUs. Its average benchmark score of 41224 is nearly identical to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090, which scores 41441 with a delta of -0.5%, and the AMD Radeon Pro 5300 at 41610 with a delta of -0.9%. This near-parity with the RTX 3090 in synthetic tests, despite the 3080 Ti's lower memory capacity, indicates that the card's 10240 shading units and 320 tensor cores are fully utilized in compute-heavy workloads.

In Inside specifically, the GPU's role becomes evident in the scaling from Medium to Ultra settings. At 4K, Medium produces 162.3 FPS while Ultra drops to 97.9 FPS — a 39.7% reduction. This performance penalty for the Ultra preset reflects the increased shading complexity and possibly higher resolution shadow maps or post-processing effects, all of which tax the GPU's 34.10 TFLOPS of FP32 compute. The 3080 Ti's 80 RT cores and 112 ROPs are less relevant for this game, which does not employ ray tracing, but the raw rasterization throughput is what drives these high frame rates.

How This Combo Ranks

This combination of AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti ranks 239th out of 1671 tested combos in Inside, placing it in the 85.7th percentile of all configurations. This top-15% ranking is impressive given that the game is from 2016 and many newer, more powerful GPUs have been released since. The ranking reflects not just the raw power of each component but their balanced interaction in this specific title.

The CPU's percentile ranking of 94th against all processors supports the combo's high placement. The Ryzen 9 9900X achieves an average benchmark score of 54450, which is 0.4% below the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D's 54681 but 0.7% above the Intel Core i7-14700F's 54097. These tiny deltas — less than 1% — indicate that the 9900X is essentially at the top tier of CPU performance, and any differences in Inside frame rates would be negligible at these extreme frame rates.

The GPU's 83rd percentile ranking is lower than the CPU's 94th, but this discrepancy does not hurt the overall combo ranking because Inside is not a demanding title. The 3080 Ti's average benchmark score of 41224 is within 1.6% of the NVIDIA Tesla M40's 41897, and 1.1% below the RTX 5070's 41687. This clustering of scores around 41000-42000 shows that the 3080 Ti remains competitive with newer mid-range cards in synthetic workloads, even though it is end-of-life and has been succeeded by the GeForce 40 series.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data supports Ultra settings as the optimal choice for most users, despite the frame rate cost. At 4K Ultra, the combo still delivers 97.9 FPS, which is comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay in a puzzle platformer. The 1440p Ultra result of 155.2 FPS and 1080p Ultra result of 220.8 FPS are both far beyond what the game's visuals require, so there is no practical reason to drop below Ultra on this hardware.

For users with 4K displays who prioritize maximum smoothness over visual fidelity, the High preset at 105.8 FPS offers a 8.1% improvement over Ultra while likely looking nearly identical in a game with Inside's minimalist art style. The Medium preset at 162.3 FPS provides an additional 53.4% improvement over High, but the visual differences between Medium and Ultra in a 2D platformer are typically subtle — mostly affecting shadow resolution and ambient occlusion quality.

Low settings are not recommended for this combo. The 209.6 FPS at 4K Low, while technically faster than Ultra, represents a 114% increase in frame rate that provides no tangible benefit on standard 60 Hz, 120 Hz, or even 144 Hz displays. The 1080p Low result of 425.3 FPS exceeds the refresh rate of virtually all consumer monitors, making those extra frames invisible to the user. The data shows that the GPU has such massive headroom that even the most demanding preset remains playable at every resolution.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo produces its highest frame rates across all settings. Low averages 425.3 FPS, Medium 363.5 FPS, High 230.6 FPS, and Ultra 220.8 FPS. The gap between High and Ultra is only 4.4%, while the jump from Medium to High costs 36.5% of the frame rate. This suggests that High enables a significant graphical feature that Medium lacks, but Ultra adds little beyond High.

At 2560x1440, the frame rates remain exceptionally high. Low averages 327.4 FPS, Medium 265.3 FPS, High 163.5 FPS, and Ultra 155.2 FPS. The scaling from 1080p shows a reduction of 23% for Low, 27% for Medium, 29% for High, and 30% for Ultra. The slightly larger reduction at higher settings confirms that the GPU's workload increases more with resolution when more shading operations are active.

At 3840x2160, the frame rates finally approach levels where the GPU's limitations become visible. Low averages 209.6 FPS, Medium 162.3 FPS, High 105.8 FPS, and Ultra 97.9 FPS. The reduction from 1440p is 36% for Low, 39% for Medium, 35% for High, and 37% for Ultra. The consistency of this ~37% reduction across all settings indicates a uniform scaling factor tied to pixel count, which is the definitive signature of a GPU-bound workload.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X plays a supporting role in Inside, providing more than enough processing power to avoid becoming a bottleneck. With 12 cores and 24 threads from its Zen 5 architecture on a 4 nm process, the CPU features a base clock of 4.40 GHz and boost clock of 5.60 GHz. Its L3 cache of 64 MB shared across the chip, combined with 1 MB L2 per core and 80 KB L1 per core, ensures that game data is readily available for the cores.

The CPU's synthetic benchmark results show exceptional single-thread and multi-thread capabilities. It achieves a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 6555 and multi-core score of 46438, with a Geekbench single-core score of 3341 and multi-core score of 19827. The 3DMark single-thread score of 1286 and 16-thread score of 12552 demonstrate that the CPU scales well with thread count, which is relevant for games that utilize multiple cores for background tasks.

In Inside, the CPU's role is primarily to manage game logic, physics, and entity updates — all of which are lightweight for a puzzle platformer. The fact that frame rates remain above 200 FPS even at 4K Low settings, where the GPU is least stressed, proves that the CPU never becomes the limiting factor. The 9900X's 120W TDP and 89.6 GB/s memory bandwidth on DDR5 dual-channel are more than sufficient for this workload. The CPU's PassMark single-thread score of 4672 and multi-thread score of 54643 further confirm that it handles both lightly-threaded and heavily-threaded tasks with ease, making this combo exceptionally well-balanced for Inside.

FAQ

*Q: What is the highest average FPS this combo achieves in Inside?*

A: The highest measured average FPS is 425.3, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings. This is far beyond the refresh rate of most displays.

Q: At what settings does the combo drop below 100 FPS?

A: The only measured configuration below 100 FPS is 3840x2160 at Ultra settings, which averages 97.9 FPS. All other settings and resolutions exceed 100 FPS.

Q: How does the Ryzen 9 9900X compare to its closest rival in CPU benchmarks?

A: The Ryzen 9 9900X scores 54450 on average, which is 0.4% below the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D's 54681 and 0.7% above the Intel Core i7-14700F's 54097, placing it within 1.8% of all nearest rivals.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between High and Ultra settings at 1440p?

A: High settings average 163.5 FPS at 2560x1440, while Ultra averages 155.2 FPS, representing a 5.3% reduction for the highest quality preset.

Q: How much faster is 1080p Low compared to 4K Ultra?

A: The 1080p Low result of 425.3 FPS is 334% higher than the 4K Ultra result of 97.9 FPS, demonstrating the massive performance headroom at lower resolutions and settings.

Q: Does the GPU or CPU limit performance in this game?

A: The data indicates the GPU is the limiting component. At 4K, frame rates scale consistently with pixel count across all settings, and even the most CPU-intensive scenarios at 1080p Low produce over 400 FPS, showing the CPU has significant unused capacity.