Inside

# Inside Performance Analysis: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D + AMD Radeon RX 7600

The measured frame rates for this pairing in Inside reveal a system that is heavily GPU-limited at higher resolutions but exhibits remarkable headroom at 1080p. The data shows a 2D puzzle platformer that scales unexpectedly well with hardware, with the RX 7600's 8 GB VRAM and 128-bit memory bus proving sufficient for the game's art style, while the Ryzen 9 9950X3D's 16-core, 32-thread configuration appears almost entirely untapped. This combination ranks 2500th out of 3716 tested combos, placing it in the lower-middle tier of the database, which is surprising given the CPU's 95th percentile standing among all processors.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average frame rate recorded for this combo?

A: The maximum measured average is 282 FPS at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This drops to 134 FPS at the same resolution with Ultra settings, showing a 148 FPS spread across the settings spectrum at 1080p.

Q: How does the combo rank among all tested configurations for this game?

A: The combo ranks 2500th out of 3716 total combinations, placing it in the 67th percentile of tested systems. This suggests that while the hardware is capable, many other pairings deliver better performance in Inside.

Q: What is the lowest average frame rate recorded?

A: The lowest average is 61 FPS at 3840x2160 with Ultra settings. This remains playable, but it is the only measured configuration that dips below the 64 FPS threshold typically associated with smooth gameplay.

Q: Does the RX 7600's VRAM capacity affect performance in this game?

A: The GPU has 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus with 288.0 GB/s bandwidth. At 4K Ultra, the average drops to 61 FPS, but this appears more related to compute load than memory capacity, as the game's art style does not suggest extreme VRAM demands.

Q: How does the CPU's benchmark standing compare to its in-game performance?

A: The Ryzen 9 9950X3D sits in the 95th percentile of all CPUs with an average benchmark score of 75,779. Despite this, the combo's in-game rank is only 2500th of 3716, indicating the GPU is the limiting factor in most scenarios.

Q: What is the frame time consistency at 1440p Medium settings?

A: At 2560x1440 with Medium settings, the combo produces an average of 162 FPS with a minimum of 138 FPS and a maximum of 186 FPS. This 48 FPS range suggests moderate variance but generally stable performance.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data presents a clear hierarchy of performance across settings presets. At 1920x1080, even the Ultra preset delivers 134 FPS average, which is well above the threshold for smooth gameplay. However, the jump from Low to Medium at 1080p shows a 56 FPS drop (282 to 226), while the Medium to High transition costs another 85 FPS (226 to 141). The High to Ultra step is comparatively smaller at just 7 FPS (141 to 134), suggesting diminishing returns at the top end.

At 2560x1440, the pattern shifts. Low settings produce 203 FPS average, Medium drops to 162 FPS (a 41 FPS reduction), High falls to 101 FPS (a 61 FPS drop), and Ultra bottoms out at 97 FPS. The Medium preset here offers the best balance, with a 162 FPS average and a documented minimum of 138 FPS, ensuring no perceptible stutter. The High preset at 1440p remains playable at 101 FPS, but the 64 FPS gap between Medium and High suggests a steep cost for marginal visual gains.

For 4K, the recommendation becomes more nuanced. Low settings produce 127 FPS, Medium drops to 102 FPS, and both High and Ultra fall into the 61-64 FPS range. The Medium preset at 3840x2160 appears optimal, delivering 102 FPS average with an 87 FPS minimum and 117 FPS maximum. This provides a comfortable margin above the 60 FPS baseline while maintaining visual quality. The data suggests that Medium settings across all resolutions offer the most consistent experience, with the 1440p Medium configuration providing the best combination of frame rate and visual fidelity.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo's 2500th place ranking out of 3716 tested configurations positions it in the lower third of all systems evaluated for Inside. This is particularly notable given the hardware's apparent capability on paper. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D's nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 9755 (0.1% delta), AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 9755X3D (0.1% delta), AMD EPYC 8224P (0.3% delta), and Intel Core Ultra 9 285 (0.4% delta), all of which cluster within a 0.4% performance band. This indicates the CPU is delivering near-identical synthetic performance to its closest competitors, yet the in-game ranking suggests other factors dominate.

The RX 7600's nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 OEM (-0.2% delta), AMD Radeon Pro 560X (0.6% delta), AMD Radeon 680M (-0.7% delta), and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti (0.7% delta). With a 57th percentile standing among all GPUs and an average benchmark score of 15,171, the GPU is squarely mid-range. The 2500th rank implies that many combos with weaker CPUs but stronger GPUs outperform this pairing in Inside, which is consistent with a game that appears more dependent on GPU throughput than CPU processing power.

The rank also suggests that the 16-core, 32-thread CPU is massively overprovisioned for this workload. The data shows the CPU's single-thread score of 4,737 in Passmark and multi-thread score of 70,255, but Inside likely uses only a fraction of those threads. The gap between the CPU's 95th percentile ranking and the combo's 67th percentile in-game ranking quantifies this imbalance.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full settings spectrum was measured. Low settings yield 282 FPS average, which is the highest recorded for any configuration. Medium settings produce 226 FPS with a minimum of 192 FPS and maximum of 259 FPS, showing a 67 FPS range. High settings drop to 141 FPS, and Ultra settings further reduce to 134 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra represents a 52.5% reduction in frame rate, indicating that visual effects have a substantial impact on GPU load even at this resolution.

Moving to 2560x1440, the measurements show 203 FPS at Low, 162 FPS at Medium (with 138 FPS minimum and 186 FPS maximum), 101 FPS at High, and 97 FPS at Ultra. The Medium preset's 162 FPS average represents a 20.2% drop from Low, while the High preset's 101 FPS is a 37.7% drop from Medium. The Ultra preset at 97 FPS is only 4 FPS below High, suggesting the final settings tier adds minimal additional load.

At 3840x2160, the measurements reveal: Low at 127 FPS, Medium at 102 FPS (with 87 FPS minimum and 117 FPS maximum), High at 64 FPS, and Ultra at 61 FPS. The gap between Medium and High is a substantial 38 FPS (a 37.3% reduction), while the High to Ultra step costs only 3 FPS. This pattern mirrors the 1440p results but with compressed absolute values, indicating the GPU is approaching its limits at 4K with higher presets.

The resolution scaling from 1080p to 1440p at Medium settings shows a 28.3% FPS reduction (226 to 162), while the 1440p to 4K step at Medium shows a 37.0% reduction (162 to 102). These percentages are consistent with the pixel count increases, confirming the GPU is the primary bottleneck at higher resolutions.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7600 features 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, delivering 288.0 GB/s of bandwidth. Its base clock is 1720 MHz, with a boost clock of 2655 MHz and a game clock of 2250 MHz. The GPU has 2048 shading units, 128 texture mapping units, and 64 render output units, with 32 ray tracing cores. The measured frame rates show this configuration handles Inside comfortably at 1080p and 1440p, but struggles to maintain high frame rates at 4K with elevated settings.

The VRAM capacity does not appear to be a limiting factor in this game. Even at 4K Ultra, where the average drops to 61 FPS, the 8 GB allocation seems sufficient given the game's art style—a monochromatic, physics-based puzzle platformer with limited texture complexity. The 128-bit memory bus, which could bottleneck memory-intensive workloads, shows no obvious signs of constraint in the measured data, as the frame rate scaling follows expected patterns based on resolution and settings.

The GPU's 57th percentile ranking among all GPUs and its average benchmark score of 15,171 place it in the mid-range category. Its nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 OEM, is nearly identical in score (15,199 vs. 15,171, a -0.2% delta), yet the measured FPS in Inside shows the RX 7600 delivering playable frame rates across all configurations. The GPU's FP32 performance of 21.75 TFLOPS and pixel rate of 169.9 GPixel/s suggest ample compute capacity for this workload, which is reflected in the 282 FPS peak at 1080p Low.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D is a 16-core, 32-thread processor based on Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge) on a 4 nm process from TSMC. It has a base clock of 4.30 GHz and a boost clock of 5.70 GHz, with a TDP of 170 W. The cache configuration includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 1 MB of L2 per core, and 128 MB of L3 cache. Its memory support is DDR5 with dual-channel configuration and 89.6 GB/s bandwidth.

The CPU's benchmark results are impressive: a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 42,018 and single-core score of 2,259, a Geekbench multi-core score of 26,736 and single-core score of 3,064, and a 3DMark max threads score of 17,184. These place it in the 95th percentile of all CPUs with an average benchmark score of 75,779. However, the in-game performance data suggests this processing power is largely irrelevant for Inside.

The game's measured FPS at 1080p Low (282 FPS) and Medium (226 FPS) indicate that even at low settings, the GPU is the limiting factor. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see frame rate plateaus across different settings at the same resolution, but the data shows consistent scaling with settings changes. The 16-core configuration is vastly overprovisioned for a game that likely uses only 1-4 threads, and the 128 MB L3 cache, while beneficial for some workloads, provides no measurable advantage in this title. The CPU's nearest rivals, all within 0.4% in synthetic benchmarks, would likely perform identically in Inside.

Resolution Scaling

The resolution scaling data reveals how the system's bottleneck shifts as pixel count increases. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 282 FPS, but this drops to 203 FPS at 1440p (a 28.0% reduction) and 127 FPS at 4K (a 37.4% reduction from 1440p). These reductions align closely with the pixel count increases: 1440p has 1.78x the pixels of 1080p, and 4K has 2.25x the pixels of 1440p. The fact that FPS scales nearly inversely with pixel count indicates the GPU is the sole bottleneck at Low settings across all resolutions.

At Medium settings, the scaling pattern changes slightly. The 1080p to 1440p drop is 28.3% (226 to 162 FPS), and the 1440p to 4K drop is 37.0% (162 to 102 FPS). These percentages are nearly identical to the Low settings scaling, suggesting the GPU remains the bottleneck. However, at High settings, the 1080p to 1440p drop is 28.4% (141 to 101 FPS), while the 1440p to 4K drop is 36.6% (101 to 64 FPS). The consistency of these percentages across settings tiers reinforces that the GPU is the limiting component throughout.

The Ultra settings data shows a similar pattern: 134 FPS at 1080p, 97 FPS at 1440p (a 27.6% drop), and 61 FPS at 4K (a 37.1% drop from 1440p). The fact that the 1080p Ultra (134 FPS) is lower than the 1080p High (141 FPS) but higher than the 1440p High (101 FPS) confirms that resolution has a larger impact than settings tier. The data implies that the CPU is never the bottleneck, even at 1080p Low where the GPU is producing 282 FPS—the CPU's single-thread performance of 4,737 in Passmark is more than sufficient to feed the GPU at these frame rates.