Inside

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 combination delivers an exceptional experience in Inside, a 2016 Puzzle Platformer, placing this pairing at rank 41 out of 3716 tested combos. The data shows that this system is not merely capable of running the game but is overwhelmingly overpowered for its demands, resulting in frame rates that far exceed the refresh rates of standard displays. The analysis of the measured FPS indicates that the primary bottleneck is the CPU at lower resolutions, while the GPU becomes more relevant at 4K, yet even then, performance remains exceptionally high.

GPU Role — VRAM, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is a formidable component with a 24 GB GDDR6X memory pool on a 384-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 1.01 TB/s. Its architecture, Ada Lovelace, operates on a 5 nm process and contains 16,384 shading units. The GPU's base clock is set at 2235 MHz with a boost clock of 2520 MHz, which are the clock speeds used to achieve the benchmark results. These specifications are far beyond what a puzzle platformer like Inside requires, as the game's visual complexity is not designed to stress such high-end hardware.

The measured performance confirms this assessment. At 4K with Low settings, the combo achieves an average of 293 FPS, and even at the highest Ultra preset, it maintains 140 FPS. This indicates that the GPU’s massive compute resources—82.58 TFLOPS FP32—are largely idle, as the game engine cannot utilize the full potential of the RTX 4090. The GPU’s role here is to remove any possible frame rate ceiling, ensuring that the CPU and game engine are the sole limiters. The 24 GB of VRAM is also a non-factor; Inside does not present a memory capacity challenge, so the card's ample frame buffer goes unused. In this context, the RTX 4090 is akin to a capable air cooler on a low-power chip; it is complete overkill, but it guarantees that thermal or performance throttling is not a concern.

Measured FPS Breakdown — resolution by resolution, settings by settings, exact numbers

The measured FPS data provides a clear picture of performance scaling across resolutions and settings. At 1080p, the system is heavily CPU-bound. The Low preset yields an average of 428 FPS, which is the highest frame rate recorded in the dataset. Moving to Medium drops to 395 FPS (min 336, max 455), while High and Ultra produce 325 FPS and 309 FPS, respectively. The difference between Low and Ultra at this resolution is 119 FPS, indicating that the CPU has enough headroom to handle the increased draw calls, but the frame rate is still capped by the processor's ability to feed the GPU.

At 1440p, the frame rates remain exceptionally high, though they show a slight dip compared to 1080p due to increased pixel shading demands. The Low preset averages 384 FPS, Medium 354 FPS (min 301, max 407), High 234 FPS, and Ultra 222 FPS. The scaling from Low to Ultra at this resolution is 162 FPS, which is a larger drop than at 1080p, suggesting the GPU is starting to take on a more significant role. The transition to 4K reveals the most substantial impact. At 3840x2160, the Low preset still manages an average of 293 FPS, but Medium drops to 235 FPS (min 200, max 270), High to 147 FPS, and Ultra to 140 FPS. The performance gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is 153 FPS, demonstrating that the GPU is now the primary limiting factor, though the absolute numbers remain well above playable thresholds.

Settings Recommendations — which preset gives the best experience per the measured rows

Based on the measured rows, the optimal settings for this combo depend on the target refresh rate and resolution. For a standard 60 Hz display, every preset at every resolution is overkill; even 4K Ultra at 140 FPS exceeds the display's capability. However, for high-refresh-rate monitors, the data suggests a strategic choice. At 1080p, the Low preset at 428 FPS is the only option that surpasses the Medium preset's 395 FPS, but the difference is marginal for most users. The High preset at 325 FPS is a better balance, offering improved visual fidelity while still exceeding 300 FPS, which is beyond the refresh rate of most gaming monitors.

At 1440p, the Medium preset at 354 FPS is the sweet spot, as it maintains a frame rate above 300 FPS while providing a moderate visual upgrade over Low. The High preset at 234 FPS is still excellent for 144 Hz displays, but the jump to Ultra at 222 FPS is a minor gain for a potential visual improvement. For 4K, the data indicates that High is the recommended preset. It delivers 147 FPS, which is sufficient for 144 Hz displays, while Ultra at 140 FPS offers only a 7 FPS advantage and may not be visually distinguishable in a game with Inside's art style. The Medium preset at 235 FPS is also viable for 240 Hz panels, but the High preset provides the best balance of visual quality and frame rate headroom for modern high-refresh displays.

Resolution Scaling — how FPS drops from 1080p to 4K and what it says about the limiting component

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is revealing about the system's bottleneck. At Low settings, the average frame rate drops from 428 FPS at 1080p to 293 FPS at 4K, a reduction of 135 FPS or approximately 31.5%. This is a significant drop, but the absolute frame rate remains high, indicating that the GPU is still handling the workload efficiently. However, the drop is more pronounced at higher settings. At Ultra, the frame rate falls from 309 FPS at 1080p to 140 FPS at 4K, a 169 FPS reduction. This larger absolute drop at higher settings suggests that the GPU is becoming more of a limiting factor as pixel count increases.

The data also shows that the frame rate drop from 1080p to 1440p is relatively modest compared to the drop from 1440p to 4K. For instance, at High settings, the frame rate drops from 325 FPS at 1080p to 234 FPS at 1440p (a 91 FPS drop), but then falls further to 147 FPS at 4K (an additional 87 FPS drop). This pattern indicates a transition from a CPU-bound scenario at 1080p to a more balanced load at 1440p, and finally to a GPU-bound scenario at 4K. The CPU, with its 12 cores and 24 threads, is powerful enough to maintain high frame rates at lower resolutions, but the GPU's rendering workload at 4K becomes the primary constraint. The fact that the system still exceeds 140 FPS at 4K Ultra proves that both components are exceptionally strong, but the scaling behavior clearly identifies the GPU as the limiting component at the highest resolution.

How This Combo Ranks — use comboRankInGame vs other tested combos

This specific combination of the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 ranks 41st out of 3716 tested combos in Inside. This places it in the top 1.1% of all systems tested, a remarkable achievement that underscores its elite status. The ranking is based on the measured FPS across all resolutions and settings, and the high position reflects the consistent ability to deliver triple-digit frame rates even at 4K Ultra. The CPU alone has a percentile rank of 92 against all CPUs, and its nearest rivals include the AMD EPYC 9015 (with a delta of -0.1%), the AMD EPYC 7313 (delta of 0.2%), and the Intel Core i9-14900 (delta of -1.1%). These minimal deltas show that the 9900X is at the top of the CPU performance hierarchy.

The GPU also performs well, with a percentile rank of 88 against all GPUs. Its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks include the Intel Arc Pro A60 (delta of 0%), the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 48 (delta of 0.3%), and the AMD Radeon Pro W6600M (delta of -2.5%). While these synthetic scores show the RTX 4090 is not the absolute top scorer in every test, its real-world performance in Inside is what drives the combo's rank. The combination of a top-tier CPU and a high-end GPU ensures that neither component holds the other back. The rank of 41 out of 3716 reflects the fact that this pairing is one of the best possible for achieving maximum frame rates in this game, and it would only be surpassed by configurations with even more specialized hardware, which are rare.

CPU Role — cores, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X is a 12-core, 24-thread processor based on the Zen 5 architecture, codenamed Granite Ridge. It has a base clock of 4.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz, with a 64 MB L3 cache. These specifications are critical for understanding its role in Inside. While the game is not a multi-threaded benchmark, the CPU's strong single-thread performance is essential for handling the game's logic and physics. The Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2253 and the 3DMark single-thread score of 1286 indicate that the 9900X has excellent per-core performance, which translates to high frame rates in games that are not heavily threaded.

In Inside, the CPU's role is to ensure that the game logic and rendering commands are processed quickly enough to feed the GPU. The data shows that at 1080p, the frame rate is capped by the CPU, as evidenced by the fact that the Low preset (428 FPS) and Medium preset (395 FPS) are not significantly different from each other. This suggests that the CPU can process the game's single-threaded workload quickly, but it struggles to keep up with the GPU's ability to render frames at extremely high rates. The 12 cores are largely underutilized, as the game is likely not optimized for multi-threading, but the high boost clock of 5.60 GHz ensures that the main thread runs as fast as possible. The 3DMark 2-thread score of 2519 and 4-thread score of 4886 show that the CPU excels in lightly threaded scenarios, which is exactly what Inside requires. Therefore, the CPU is the limiting factor at 1080p, but it is so powerful that it still allows for 309 FPS at Ultra, making it a non-issue for any real-world display setup.