Inside

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D and AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT combination delivers a remarkably smooth experience in Inside, with performance that scales predictably across resolutions and settings. The data shows this pairing is well-balanced for the game, though the exact optimal configuration depends on whether the priority is maximum visual fidelity or maximum frame rate headroom.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows indicate that the Medium preset offers the best balance of visual quality and performance for this combination. At 1920x1080, Medium produces an average of 269 FPS, which is only 68 FPS less than Low but provides a substantial visual upgrade over the lower tier. The minimum FPS recorded at this setting is 229, ensuring that even the most demanding scenes stay well above any display refresh rate threshold. At 2560x1440, Medium averages 194 FPS with a minimum of 165, which is still exceptionally high for a 1440p panel. The 4K Medium result of 122 FPS with a minimum of 103 demonstrates that this preset remains viable even at the highest resolution.

For users with high-refresh-rate displays at 1080p or 1440p, the Low preset is the only setting that pushes frame rates into the 300+ range at 1080p (337 FPS) and 242 FPS at 1440p. However, the jump from Low to Medium costs only 68 FPS at 1080p and 48 FPS at 1440p, while delivering considerably better image quality. The High preset sits between Medium and Ultra, with 168 FPS at 1080p and 121 FPS at 1440p, but it does not offer the minimum FPS data that Medium provides, making Medium the more predictable choice. Ultra is the most demanding tier, dropping to 160 FPS at 1080p and 115 FPS at 1440p, which is a relatively small penalty over High but a meaningful one over Medium. The data suggests that Medium is the sweet spot for this hardware combination, as it maintains high average frame rates while providing the only fully documented minimum and maximum FPS values across all measured settings at multiple resolutions.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT features 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, delivering 384.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This memory configuration is more than sufficient for a puzzle platformer like Inside, which does not appear to stress VRAM capacity based on the measured frame rates. The GPU's clock speeds are substantial, with a base clock of 2321 MHz, a game clock of 2424 MHz, and a boost clock of 2581 MHz. These clocks allow the card to maintain consistent performance across the tested settings, as evidenced by the relatively small FPS drops when moving from Medium to High or Ultra.

The RX 6700 XT's RDNA 2.0 architecture with 2560 shading units and 64 ROPs provides ample raw throughput for this title. The GPU's 13.21 TFLOPS FP32 performance is clearly not the bottleneck at 1080p, where the CPU appears to be the limiting factor, but it becomes more relevant at 4K. The 4K results show a significant performance drop compared to 1440p — from 194 FPS at Medium 1440p to 122 FPS at Medium 4K — indicating that the GPU is being pushed harder at higher resolutions. The card's 40 ray accelerators and DirectX 12 Ultimate support are present but likely unused in this game, as Inside is a 2D side-scrolling title from 2016 that does not require modern rendering features. The GPU's benchmark percentile of 72 versus all GPUs places it in the upper tier, and its nearest rival comparison shows it performing nearly identically to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Mobile (0% delta) and slightly better than an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (-0.5% delta relative to the RX 6700 XT).

FAQ

*Q: Can this combination run Inside at 4K with playable frame rates?*

A: Yes. The data shows 4K Medium averaging 122 FPS with a minimum of 103 FPS, and 4K High averaging 76 FPS. Even 4K Ultra maintains 72 FPS, meaning all settings are playable at 4K.

Q: What is the biggest FPS jump between settings?

A: The largest gap is between Low and Medium at all resolutions. At 1080p, Low averages 337 FPS versus 269 FPS for Medium, a difference of 68 FPS. At 1440p, the gap is 48 FPS (242 vs 194), and at 4K it is 30 FPS (152 vs 122).

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

A: At 1080p, the CPU appears to be the limiting factor, as frame rates are extremely high (337 FPS on Low) and likely constrained by the CPU's single-thread performance. At 4K, the GPU becomes the bottleneck, evidenced by the steep FPS decline from 1440p to 4K.

Q: Is the Medium preset significantly worse than Low in terms of FPS?

A: No. Medium costs 68 FPS at 1080p, 48 FPS at 1440p, and 30 FPS at 4K compared to Low. These are modest penalties for the visual upgrade, and Medium still delivers 269 FPS at 1080p, which far exceeds any display's refresh rate.

Q: How does the RX 6700 XT compare to the RTX 3090 in this system?

A: The GPU benchmark data shows the RX 6700 XT scores 27425 average, which is 0.5% lower than the RTX 3090's 27565. In practical terms, these GPUs perform nearly identically in synthetic benchmarks, though game-specific results may differ.

Q: What is the best resolution for a 240Hz display?

A: At 1080p, the Low preset (337 FPS) and Medium preset (269 FPS) both exceed 240 FPS. At 1440p, only the Low preset (242 FPS) barely exceeds 240 FPS, while Medium (194 FPS) falls short. For a 240Hz 1080p display, Medium is recommended; for 1440p, Low would be necessary.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific CPU and GPU combination ranks 1367 out of 2887 tested combos within Inside, placing it in the 52.6th percentile of all tested configurations. This mid-pack ranking might seem surprising given the high frame rates observed, but it reflects the fact that Inside is a lightweight title where even modest hardware can achieve high performance, making the relative differences between combos small. The ranking suggests that this pairing is neither at the top nor bottom of the performance spectrum for this game, which aligns with the RX 6700 XT's 72nd percentile among all GPUs and the Ryzen 9 9900X3D's 91st percentile among all CPUs.

The combo's position at 1367 out of 2887 indicates that roughly 47% of tested combinations perform better. Given the CPU's high percentile rank (91) and the GPU's solid but not top-tier rank (72), the limiting factor in this combo's ranking is likely the GPU. In a game like Inside, which does not heavily utilize multi-core CPUs, the 12-core Ryzen 9 9900X3D's advantages are not fully exploited, while the RX 6700 XT's raw graphics throughput plays a larger role in determining the final FPS. The measured data supports this: at 4K, the FPS drops significantly from 1440p, indicating GPU-bound behavior, whereas at 1080p, the CPU's strong single-thread performance (3dmark single-thread score of 1269) allows for very high frame rates.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS progression from 1080p to 4K reveals a clear pattern of GPU scaling. At Medium settings, the average FPS drops from 269 at 1080p to 194 at 1440p (a 27.9% reduction) and then to 122 at 4K (a 37.1% reduction from 1440p). This scaling is typical of a game that becomes increasingly GPU-bound at higher resolutions. At 1080p, the CPU's performance headroom allows the GPU to output extremely high frame rates, but as resolution increases, the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth become the limiting factors.

The Low preset shows a similar pattern: 337 FPS at 1080p, 242 FPS at 1440p, and 152 FPS at 4K. The relative drops are 28.2% and 37.2%, respectively, which are nearly identical to the Medium preset's scaling. This consistency suggests that the game's rendering load scales predictably with pixel count, and that neither the CPU nor GPU introduces unexpected bottlenecks. The High and Ultra presets show smaller absolute FPS values but similar proportional scaling. At High, the drop from 1080p (168 FPS) to 1440p (121 FPS) is 28.0%, and from 1440p to 4K (76 FPS) is 37.2%. Ultra follows suit with 160 to 115 (28.1%) and then 115 to 72 (37.4%).

These consistent percentages across all settings indicate that the game is well-optimized with no sudden performance cliffs. The 4K results, while lower, remain playable, with even the Ultra preset maintaining 72 FPS. The scaling data strongly suggests that the GPU is the primary limiting factor at 4K, while at 1080p, the system is likely CPU-limited, as evidenced by the extremely high frame rates that approach the CPU's single-threaded processing ceiling.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured results show a clear hierarchy across settings. The Low preset delivers an average of 337 FPS, which is the highest recorded value for this combination. Medium averages 269 FPS with a minimum of 229 and a maximum of 310, providing a wide performance envelope. High averages 168 FPS, and Ultra averages 160 FPS. The gap between High and Ultra is only 8 FPS, suggesting that Ultra's additional settings have minimal impact on performance at this resolution, whereas the jump from Low to Medium costs 68 FPS.

At 2560x1440, the pattern repeats with lower absolute values. Low averages 242 FPS, Medium averages 194 FPS (minimum 165, maximum 223), High averages 121 FPS, and Ultra averages 115 FPS. The difference between High and Ultra narrows to 6 FPS, while the Low-to-Medium gap remains significant at 48 FPS. The minimum FPS at Medium (165) is still well above 144 FPS, making this setting suitable for high-refresh-rate 1440p displays.

At 3840x2160, the performance drops are more pronounced. Low averages 152 FPS, Medium averages 122 FPS (minimum 103, maximum 140), High averages 76 FPS, and Ultra averages 72 FPS. The Low-to-Medium gap shrinks to 30 FPS, indicating that at 4K, the GPU is the primary constraint and the settings differences have a smaller absolute impact. The High-to-Ultra gap remains minimal at just 4 FPS. The Medium preset's minimum of 103 FPS ensures that even the most complex scenes stay above 100 FPS at 4K, making this the recommended resolution for users with 4K displays.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D is a 12-core, 24-thread processor based on the Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge) with a base clock of 4.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.50 GHz. It features a substantial 128 MB L3 cache, which is a hallmark of the X3D series and benefits gaming workloads. The CPU's benchmark scores are impressive, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 47737 and a single-core score of 6739. Its PassMark single-thread score of 4646 and Geekbench single-core score of 3041 place it in the top tier of desktop processors, with a percentile rank of 91 versus all CPUs.

In Inside, the CPU's role is primarily to feed the GPU with draw calls and handle game logic, which is not heavily multi-threaded. The game's 2D nature means that the 12-core configuration is largely underutilized, and the CPU's high single-thread performance is what matters most for achieving the very high frame rates seen at 1080p. The 3dmark single-thread score of 1269 and the 2-thread score of 2512 indicate strong per-core performance, which is essential for maintaining 337 FPS at 1080p Low. The CPU's 128 MB L3 cache likely helps with cache-sensitive workloads, though its impact in this particular game is difficult to quantify from the available data.

The CPU's nearest rivals include the Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF, which scores 55093 (0.6% higher), and the Intel Core i7-14700F at 53620 (2.1% lower). These comparisons show that the Ryzen 9 9900X3D is competitive with mid-range Intel offerings, though the differences are small. In Inside, these benchmark differences are unlikely to translate into meaningful FPS differences, as the game's demands are modest. The CPU's 120W TDP and 4nm process node from TSMC contribute to its efficiency, but the power draw is not a factor in the measured FPS results. Overall, the CPU provides more than enough performance for this game, and the bottleneck at higher resolutions shifts entirely to the GPU.