Inside

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D delivers exceptionally high frame rates in Inside, a 2016 puzzle platformer. Across all tested resolutions and settings, the average FPS never drops below 153, indicating that this combination is vastly overqualified for the game’s rendering demands. The data shows a system that is entirely GPU-limited at lower settings, but which scales predictably as resolution and quality presets increase.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data reveals a clear hierarchy across the four quality presets: Low, Medium, High, and Ultra. At 1080p, the spread between the lowest and highest presets is moderate, with Low averaging 425 FPS, Medium at 393 FPS, High at 327 FPS, and Ultra at 322 FPS. The gap between High and Ultra is minimal—just 5 FPS—suggesting that the Ultra preset offers little additional visual fidelity for its performance cost at this resolution.

For 1440p, the same pattern holds. Low delivers 381 FPS, Medium 352 FPS, High 255 FPS, and Ultra 243 FPS. The drop from Medium to High is substantial at 97 FPS, while the High-to-Ultra transition again costs only 12 FPS. At 4K, the numbers compress further: Low runs at 321 FPS, Medium at 256 FPS, High at 160 FPS, and Ultra at 153 FPS. Here, the Medium-to-High drop is the largest relative step, losing 96 FPS, whereas High to Ultra loses just 7 FPS.

Given these measurements, the Medium preset stands out as the best balance for most users. At 1080p, Medium provides 393 FPS, which is only 32 FPS below Low but far above the 327 FPS of High. At 1440p, Medium’s 352 FPS is within 29 FPS of Low, while High falls to 255 FPS. At 4K, Medium’s 256 FPS is still comfortably above 240 Hz refresh rates, making it the only preset that combines high fluidity with a meaningful quality uplift over Low.

The Ultra preset is difficult to recommend. At every resolution, it delivers only a marginal improvement over High—between 5 and 7 FPS—while the data shows no corresponding benefit in the measured metrics. For a puzzle platformer like Inside, the visual difference between High and Ultra is unlikely to justify the performance sacrifice, especially when High already exceeds 150 FPS at 4K and 243 FPS at 1440p. The optimal experience, per the measured rows, is Medium at 1440p or 4K, where frame rates remain high and the quality boost over Low is substantial.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Ryzen 9 9900X3D and RTX 5090 D ranks 13th out of 2,887 tested combos in Inside. This places it in the top 0.5% of all configurations in the database, a position consistent with the hardware’s flagship status. The percentile rankings for the individual components reinforce this: the CPU sits at the 91st percentile against all CPUs, and the GPU at the 92nd percentile against all GPUs.

The combo’s rank of 13 suggests that only a handful of other pairings achieve higher average FPS in this game. Given that Inside is a lightweight title with modest system requirements, the limiting factor for higher ranks is likely CPU single-thread performance rather than GPU capability. The Ryzen 9 9900X3D’s benchmark scores—such as a single-thread Geekbench score of 3,041 and a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 6,739—are strong, but a few processors may edge it out in the specific workloads Inside relies upon.

In practical terms, the rank of 13 means this combo delivers near-top-tier performance. The delta to the nearest CPU rivals is small: the Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF is 0.6% faster in average benchmark score, while the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K is 1.3% slower. Similarly, the GPU’s nearest rivals show deltas under 2.5%, with the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT being 1.6% faster. These tiny margins confirm that the combo is operating at the very edge of what is possible, and any ranking differences above it are negligible in real-world frame rates.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a GB202 chip, fabricated on TSMC’s 5 nm process. It features 21,760 shading units, 680 texture mapping units, and 176 raster operation pipelines. The GPU’s memory subsystem is substantial: 32 GB of GDDR7 on a 512-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s. Clock speeds are listed with a base of 2017 MHz and a boost of 2407 MHz, with memory running at 1750 MHz (28 Gbps effective).

In Inside, the GPU’s role is primarily defined by its ability to sustain high frame rates without bottlenecking. The measured FPS data shows that at 1080p Low, the system achieves 425 FPS, which is likely near the CPU’s limit for this game. As resolution increases, the GPU becomes more dominant. At 4K Ultra, the average drops to 153 FPS, reflecting the increased pixel workload. The GPU’s massive memory bandwidth and 32 GB capacity are irrelevant for Inside’s modest textures, but the raw compute power ensures that even at 4K, the frame rate stays above 150 FPS.

The RTX 5090 D’s benchmark scores—such as a Passmark G3D score of 44,065 and a Geekbench Vulkan score of 376,915—indicate top-tier performance. However, the nearest rivals in the database are mobile GPUs (RX 6650M XT and RX 6850M XT) and older Tesla parts, which suggests that the 5090 D’s direct competition is limited. The GPU’s 92nd percentile ranking confirms it is among the fastest available, and in Inside, it is never the limiting factor at 1080p or 1440p, where CPU constraints cap the frame rate.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured averages are: Low 425 FPS, Medium 393 FPS (with a min of 334 and max of 452), High 327 FPS, and Ultra 322 FPS. The Medium preset has the only recorded min/max range at this resolution, a spread of 118 FPS, which indicates some variance but still a floor far above refresh rates. The step from Low to Medium costs 32 FPS, while Medium to High costs 66 FPS, and High to Ultra costs just 5 FPS.

At 2560x1440, the averages are: Low 381 FPS, Medium 352 FPS (min 299, max 405), High 255 FPS, and Ultra 243 FPS. The Medium preset’s min of 299 FPS is still above 240 Hz, making it suitable for high-refresh displays. The drop from Low to Medium is 29 FPS, Medium to High is 97 FPS, and High to Ultra is 12 FPS. The 4K results show: Low 321 FPS, Medium 256 FPS (min 218, max 295), High 160 FPS, and Ultra 153 FPS. At this resolution, the Medium preset’s min of 218 FPS is the only one that dips below 240, but the average remains high.

The data reveals that the High and Ultra presets are nearly identical in performance, differing by only 5-12 FPS across all resolutions. This suggests that Ultra adds minimal additional rendering work over High in Inside. Conversely, the gap between Medium and High is significant—66 FPS at 1080p, 97 FPS at 1440p, and 96 FPS at 4K—indicating that High enables effects that are far more demanding than Medium’s settings.

Resolution Scaling

Scaling from 1080p to 1440p, the FPS drops are consistent across presets: Low falls from 425 to 381 (a 10.3% decrease), Medium from 393 to 352 (10.4%), High from 327 to 255 (22.0%), and Ultra from 322 to 243 (24.5%). The larger percentage drop for High and Ultra suggests that these presets are more sensitive to pixel count, likely due to more demanding shader effects that scale with resolution.

Scaling from 1440p to 4K, the drops become more pronounced: Low goes from 381 to 321 (15.7%), Medium from 352 to 256 (27.3%), High from 255 to 160 (37.3%), and Ultra from 243 to 153 (37.0%). The High and Ultra presets see the steepest declines, losing nearly 40% of their frame rate when moving to 4K. This pattern indicates that at lower settings, the system is partially CPU-limited, as the FPS does not scale linearly with pixel count. At higher settings, the GPU becomes the primary bottleneck, and the FPS drop more closely matches the increase in pixel workload.

The 1080p-to-4K total drop confirms this: Low goes from 425 to 321 (24.5% reduction), while Ultra goes from 322 to 153 (52.5% reduction). The CPU’s role is evident at Low settings, where the 4K frame rate of 321 FPS is still higher than the 1080p Ultra frame rate of 322 FPS. This indicates that the Ryzen 9 9900X3D can push Inside to over 300 FPS even at 4K when the GPU is not heavily taxed, but the GPU’s rendering load at Ultra settings caps the frame rate much lower.

FAQ

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

A: The highest average FPS is 425, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings.

Q: How much performance is lost when switching from High to Ultra at 4K?

A: At 3840x2160, High averages 160 FPS and Ultra averages 153 FPS, a loss of only 7 FPS.

Q: Does the Medium preset provide a stable frame rate at 1440p?

A: Yes, Medium at 2560x1440 averages 352 FPS, with a minimum of 299 FPS and a maximum of 405 FPS.

Q: Which resolution and settings combination delivers the lowest average FPS?

A: The lowest average is 153 FPS, recorded at 3840x2160 with Ultra settings.

Q: How does the combo rank against other tested configurations?

A: The combo ranks 13th out of 2,887 tested combos in Inside.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU more likely to limit performance at 1080p Low?

A: At 1080p Low, the average of 425 FPS is extremely high, indicating the CPU is the limiting component, as the GPU has more than enough headroom.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D is a 12-core, 24-thread processor based on the Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge), manufactured on a 4 nm process by TSMC. It has a base clock of 4.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.50 GHz, with a TDP of 120 W. The cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 1 MB of L2 per core, and a substantial 128 MB of L3 cache. It supports DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration with a bandwidth of 89.6 GB/s.

In Inside, the CPU’s role is most apparent at lower resolutions and settings, where the GPU is not fully utilized. At 1080p Low, the system hits 425 FPS, which is likely near the game’s engine limit or the CPU’s single-thread throughput cap. The CPU’s single-thread performance is strong, as evidenced by a Geekbench single-core score of 3,041 and a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 6,739. The Passmark single-thread score of 4,646 further confirms this capability.

The 3DMark scores provide insight into multi-threaded scaling: the CPU achieves 12,490 in the 16-thread test and 13,795 in the max-thread test, indicating that scaling flattens beyond 16 threads. For a game like Inside, which is not heavily multithreaded, the CPU’s high single-core boost clock of 5.50 GHz is more relevant. The 128 MB L3 cache also helps with any data-heavy workloads, though Inside’s simple scenes likely do not stress it. The CPU’s average benchmark score of 54,762 places it at the 91st percentile, with nearest rivals like the Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF within 0.6%—a negligible difference that has no measurable impact on Inside’s frame rates.

The CPU’s performance ceiling is evident in the 1080p Low result of 425 FPS, which is only 44 FPS higher than the 4K Low result of 321 FPS. This relatively small gap suggests that the CPU is not the primary limiter even at 4K Low, as the GPU can still render the simple scenes quickly. However, when settings are raised to Ultra, the CPU’s role diminishes further, and the GPU’s rendering workload dominates, as shown by the 4K Ultra average of 153 FPS. The Ryzen 9 9900X3D provides more than enough processing power for Inside, ensuring that the RTX 5090 D is the bottleneck in most scenarios, which is the expected behavior for a flagship combination.