Inside

The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D paired with the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX delivers exceptionally high frame rates in Inside, a puzzle platformer where the graphical demands are modest relative to the hardware’s capabilities. The data shows that this combination is capable of maxing out the game’s visual options at standard display resolutions while maintaining high refresh rates, though the scaling pattern across presets reveals distinct performance characteristics regarding the CPU and GPU workload split.

Settings Recommendations

For the best experience per the measured rows, the High preset at 2560x1440 stands out as the optimal balance. It delivers an average of 193 FPS, which is more than sufficient for high refresh rate displays. While the Ultra preset at the same resolution offers a marginally higher visual fidelity, it drops to an average of 184 FPS, a reduction of 9 FPS (approximately 4.7%) that yields minimal perceptible visual improvement for the performance cost. At 1920x1080, the High preset achieves 268 FPS, while Ultra reaches 255 FPS; the difference is again small, making High the pragmatic choice.

The data indicates that at 4K, the High preset is the highest setting that maintains an average above 120 FPS, hitting 121 FPS. The Ultra preset at 3840x2160 drops to 115 FPS, which is still playable but begins to approach the threshold where frame pacing on 120Hz displays could be a concern. For users with 4K displays, High is the recommended preset to stay comfortably above the 120 FPS mark. The Low preset at any resolution provides no tangible benefit, as the frame rates are already so high that the lower graphical fidelity is unnecessary; for instance, Low at 1080p yields 434 FPS, while High yields 268 FPS—both are far beyond what most displays can show.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX is a flagship GPU with substantial resources: 24 GB of GDDR6 memory, 6144 shading units, and a memory bandwidth of 960.0 GB/s. In Inside, a title with relatively simple geometry and lighting, this GPU is rarely the limiting factor at lower resolutions. The boost clock of 2498 MHz and game clock of 2365 MHz are high, but the game’s workload does not appear to stress the GPU heavily enough to expose differences between these clock states. The GPU’s 64th percentile ranking among all tested GPUs, based on an average benchmark score of 19410, suggests that it is above average but not at the absolute top of the distribution; however, its nearest rivals in that benchmark pool include the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3 GB and TITAN Xp, which are far less powerful in modern titles, indicating the percentile is skewed by the benchmark suite’s composition.

The frame rate deltas between presets are instructive. At 1080p, moving from Low to High reduces the average from 434 FPS to 268 FPS, a 38% drop, while moving from High to Ultra only reduces it from 268 FPS to 255 FPS, a 4.8% drop. This pattern suggests that the GPU has ample headroom; the rendering workload for Inside is low enough that even at Ultra, the GPU is not saturated. The 24 GB VRAM is far beyond what this game requires, and the memory clock of 2500 MHz (20 Gbps effective) is irrelevant in practice here. The GPU’s role is essentially to render the frame as fast as the CPU can feed it, particularly at 1080p and 1440p, where the measured FPS figures indicate a CPU-bound scenario.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is substantial but not linear, and it reveals the bottleneck shifting from the CPU to the GPU. At Low settings, the average FPS falls from 434 at 1080p to 242 at 4K, a 44% reduction. At High settings, the drop is from 268 to 121, a 55% reduction. This larger relative drop at High versus Low indicates that the GPU becomes more involved as settings increase, but even at 4K High, the 121 FPS average shows that the GPU is still capable of maintaining high frame rates. The scaling from 1440p to 4K is particularly steep: at High, it drops from 193 to 121 (37% reduction), while at Ultra, it drops from 184 to 115 (37.5% reduction).

The data suggests that at 1080p and 1440p, the CPU is the primary limiting component, as the FPS does not drop proportionally with the resolution increase. For example, moving from 1080p Medium (401 FPS) to 1440p Medium (308 FPS) is a 23% drop, while moving from 1440p Medium to 4K Medium (194 FPS) is a 37% drop. This pattern continues across all presets, with the 1080p to 1440p transition showing smaller relative drops than the 1440p to 4K transition. This is classic behavior for a CPU-bound scenario at lower resolutions, where the GPU is not fully utilized until the resolution increases enough to shift the balance. At 4K, the GPU’s role becomes more significant, but the high absolute FPS numbers indicate that even at 4K, this combo is not struggling.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves an average of 434 FPS, the highest measured value in the entire dataset. The Medium preset yields 401 FPS with a minimum of 341 and maximum of 461, indicating very stable frame times. The High preset drops to 268 FPS, and Ultra further reduces it to 255 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 179 FPS, or about 41%, which shows that even at the highest settings, the hardware is far from its limits.

At 2560x1440, the Low preset averages 385 FPS, a 11% drop from 1080p Low. The Medium preset averages 308 FPS with a minimum of 262 and maximum of 355, which is still well above the 240Hz refresh rate of many high-end monitors. The High preset reaches 193 FPS, and Ultra drops to 184 FPS. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p is more pronounced at High (28% drop) than at Low (11% drop), confirming the GPU’s increasing influence at higher settings.

At 3840x2160, the Low preset averages 242 FPS, which is still very high for 4K. The Medium preset averages 194 FPS with a minimum of 165 and maximum of 223, showing that even at 4K, the frame times remain consistent. The High preset drops to 121 FPS, and Ultra reaches 115 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is 127 FPS, or 52%, which is the largest relative gap across all resolutions, indicating that the GPU is more stressed at 4K but still delivers excellent performance. The Medium preset at 4K, with its 194 FPS average, is arguably the sweet spot for users with 4K 144Hz displays, as it provides a comfortable margin above the refresh rate.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX ranks 203rd out of 3716 tested combos in Inside, placing it in the top 5.5% of all configurations. This rank is impressive but not at the very top, suggesting that there are a few combinations that achieve even higher frame rates, likely those with more recent or specialized hardware. Given the game’s age (released in 2016) and its low graphical demands, the rank confirms the raw processing power of this combo. The 9950X3D, with its 16 cores and 32 threads, is a high-end desktop CPU that scores in the 95th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 75779. Its nearest rivals, such as the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 9755 and Intel Core Ultra 9 285, have average scores within 0.4% of the 9950X3D, indicating that these CPUs are nearly equivalent in synthetic benchmarks.

The GPU’s rank is less impressive, sitting at the 64th percentile among all GPUs with an average score of 19410. However, this percentile is somewhat misleading, as the nearest rivals in the GPU benchmark pool are outdated models like the NVIDIA Quadro K5200 and AMD FirePro D300. The RX 7900 XTX’s 24 GB of VRAM and 61.39 TFLOPS of FP32 performance are far beyond what Inside needs, and the combo’s high rank in the game reflects the CPU’s strength in maintaining high frame rates in a title that is likely single-threaded or lightly threaded. The rank of 203 out of 3716 is strong, but it does not place the combo in the top 100, which suggests that some other configurations, possibly with even faster single-core CPUs, can eke out slightly higher FPS in this specific game.

FAQ

*Q: What is the highest average frame rate achieved by this combo in Inside?*

A: The highest average frame rate is 434 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 with the Low preset.

Q: Does the combo maintain 120+ FPS at 4K with the highest settings?

A: No, at 3840x2160 with the Ultra preset, the average FPS is 115, which is below 120. The High preset at 4K achieves 121 FPS, just above the threshold.

Q: How does the CPU’s benchmark score compare to its nearest rival?

A: The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D has an average benchmark score of 75779, which is 0.1% higher than the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 9755 and 0.4% higher than the Intel Core Ultra 9 285.

Q: What is the minimum FPS recorded for this combo at 1440p Medium settings?

A: The minimum FPS at 2560x1440 with the Medium preset is 262 FPS, with a maximum of 355 FPS.

Q: Is the GPU or CPU more likely to be the bottleneck at 1080p?

A: The data indicates a CPU-bound scenario at 1080p, as the FPS drops only 11% when moving from Low to Medium (434 to 401 FPS), but the GPU’s influence grows at higher resolutions.

Q: What is the combo’s rank among all tested configurations in this game?

A: The combo ranks 203rd out of 3716 tested combinations, placing it in the top 5.5% of all configurations.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D is a 16-core, 32-thread processor based on the Zen 5 architecture, codenamed Granite Ridge, with a base clock of 4.30 GHz and a boost clock of 5.70 GHz. It features 128 MB of L3 cache and supports DDR5 memory with a dual-channel bus. In Inside, a game that is not heavily multithreaded, the CPU’s single-thread performance is critical. The CPU’s benchmarks show strong single-thread results: a Geekbench single-core score of 3064 and a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2259. These scores, combined with the high boost clock, allow the CPU to feed the GPU efficiently at lower resolutions.

The CPU’s 95th percentile ranking among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 75779, indicates that it is one of the fastest processors available. Its nearest rivals, the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 9755 and Ryzen 7 PRO 9755X3D, have nearly identical average scores (75738 and 75716, respectively), with deltas of 0.1%. This suggests that in synthetic tests, these CPUs are indistinguishable, but the 9950X3D’s higher boost clock may provide a slight edge in lightly threaded workloads like Inside. The measured FPS data supports this: at 1080p Low, the combo achieves 434 FPS, which is likely near the CPU’s maximum frame generation capability for this game. The fact that moving from 1080p to 1440p at Low only reduces FPS by 11% (to 385) further confirms that the CPU is the primary limiter at these resolutions, as the GPU has ample headroom. The CPU’s 32 threads are largely unused in this game, but the high per-core performance and large cache are what drive the exceptional FPS numbers.