Inside

The Intel Core i3-12100F paired with the AMD Radeon RX 570 delivers a playable experience in Inside, but only if the settings are chosen with care. The measured data shows this combo is heavily taxed at higher presets, making the Medium preset the sweet spot for most users, as it provides a substantial framerate boost over High and Ultra while maintaining visual fidelity. The data indicates that the GPU is the primary limiting factor, especially at higher resolutions, where the 4 GB VRAM and modest compute performance of the RX 570 struggle to keep pace.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark results clearly indicate that the Medium preset is the optimal choice for this hardware combination. At 1080p, Medium delivers an average of 110.4 FPS, which is a 57.7% improvement over the High preset's 70 FPS and a 78.6% improvement over Ultra's 61.8 FPS. This places the experience well above the smooth 60 FPS threshold with significant headroom for demanding scenes.

While the Low preset offers the highest framerates—138 FPS at 1080p and 97.7 FPS at 1440p—the visual compromise is often unnecessary. The jump from Low to Medium only costs 27.6 FPS at 1080p, but yields a noticeably better image quality. The data suggests that the rendering overhead of Medium is well within the GPU's capabilities, unlike High and Ultra which cause framerates to plummet.

At 1440p, the Medium preset remains viable with an average of 77.2 FPS. This is 66% faster than the High preset's 46.5 FPS and 71.2% faster than Ultra's 45.1 FPS. The 4K resolution is the breaking point for this GPU; Medium drops to 49.8 FPS, which is below the ideal smoothness threshold. For 4K, the Low preset is the only playable option, delivering 60.5 FPS. The Ultra preset is effectively unplayable at all resolutions, as it never exceeds 61.8 FPS at 1080p and drops to 28.5 FPS at 4K.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 570, built on the GCN 4.0 architecture, is the clear bottleneck in this configuration for Inside. The GPU's 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is sufficient for the game's art style at lower presets. However, the data shows that the GPU's compute resources are quickly overwhelmed at higher settings. The GPU has 2048 shading units and 32 ROPs, with a boost clock of 1244 MHz, delivering a texture rate of 159.2 GTexel/s and a pixel rate of 39.81 GPixel/s.

The performance collapse from Medium to High settings suggests that the increased shading complexity and texture filtering demands exceed the RX 570's capacity. At 1080p, the framerate drops from 110.4 FPS on Medium to 70 FPS on High, a 36.6% reduction. This pattern is consistent across all resolutions, with the gap widening at higher pixel counts. The GPU's 5.095 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is simply not enough to sustain High preset workloads while maintaining smooth framerates.

The GPU's benchmark percentile of 74 places it in the upper quartile of all GPUs, and its average benchmark score of 30158 is nearly identical to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060, which has a deltaPct of 0.2%. This indicates that while the RX 570 is a capable card for its class, Inside's higher presets present a workload that exceeds its mid-range positioning.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a clear pattern of performance degradation as resolution increases, confirming that the GPU is the limiting component. Moving from 1080p to 1440p on the Medium preset reduces the average framerate from 110.4 FPS to 77.2 FPS, a 30.1% drop. Scaling further to 4K reduces the framerate to 49.8 FPS, which is a 54.9% reduction from the 1080p result.

This scaling behavior is consistent across all settings. On High, the framerate drops from 70 FPS at 1080p to 46.5 FPS at 1440p (33.6% reduction) and then to 28.5 FPS at 4K (59.3% reduction from 1080p). The Low preset shows the same trend with 138 FPS at 1080p, 97.7 FPS at 1440p, and 60.5 FPS at 4K.

The fact that even the Low preset cannot maintain a 60+ FPS experience at 4K demonstrates that the resolution scaling is pixel-bound rather than CPU-bound. The Core i3-12100F with its 4 cores and 8 threads is more than capable of feeding the GPU at these framerates. The consistent percentage drops across settings indicate a classic GPU-limited scenario, where the rendering workload increases proportionally with pixel count.

How This Combo Ranks

This combination of the Intel Core i3-12100F and AMD Radeon RX 570 ranks at 1593 out of 1671 tested combos in Inside. This places the pairing in the bottom 5% of all configurations, which is surprisingly low given the game's relatively simple visual style. The poor ranking is likely due to the GPU's inability to handle the High and Ultra presets, which are the settings most commonly used for benchmarking.

The CPU itself performs admirably relative to its class. The Core i3-12100F has a percentile rank of 72 against all CPUs and an average benchmark score of 13516. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i7-7700K, which is only 1.8% faster, and the Intel Core i3-10105, which is 0.6% faster. This indicates that the CPU is not the limiting factor in this pairing.

The GPU, however, shows a similar benchmark profile with a percentile of 74 and an average score of 30158. The RX 570's nearest rival is the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 with a deltaPct of 0.2%, meaning the two GPUs have nearly identical average benchmark scores. Despite this, the combo's rank in Inside suggests that the specific workload of this game, particularly its higher presets, is particularly punishing for the RX 570's architecture.

FAQ

Q: What is the best settings preset for 1080p gaming with this combo?

A: The Medium preset provides the best balance, delivering 110.4 FPS on average. This is significantly smoother than High (70 FPS) and Ultra (61.8 FPS) while offering better visuals than Low (138 FPS).

*Q: Can this combo handle 4K resolution in Inside?*

A: Only at the Low preset, which achieves 60.5 FPS. The Medium preset drops to 49.8 FPS, while High and Ultra fall to 28.5 FPS, which is not a smooth experience.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU more responsible for the performance in this game?

A: The GPU is the primary bottleneck. The resolution scaling data shows framerates dropping proportionally with pixel count, and the CPU's benchmark scores (e.g., 11912 in Cinebench R23 multicore) are well above what this game requires.

Q: How does the RX 570 compare to its nearest GPU rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RX 570 has an average benchmark score of 30158, which is nearly identical to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 (30109, deltaPct 0.2%) and the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT (30097, deltaPct 0.2%).

Q: What framerate can I expect at 1440p with High settings?

A: The measured average is 46.5 FPS. While playable, it is below the 60 FPS threshold, and the Medium preset at 1440p offers a much smoother 77.2 FPS.

Q: Does the Ultra preset ever achieve a playable framerate?

A: It only reaches 61.8 FPS at 1080p. At 1440p it drops to 45.1 FPS, and at 4K it falls to 28.5 FPS, making it unsuitable for a consistent experience.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average framerates are:

• Low: 138 FPS
• Medium: 110.4 FPS
• High: 70 FPS
• Ultra: 61.8 FPS

At 2560x1440, the measured average framerates are:

• Low: 97.7 FPS
• Medium: 77.2 FPS
• High: 46.5 FPS
• Ultra: 45.1 FPS

At 3840x2160, the measured average framerates are:

• Low: 60.5 FPS
• Medium: 49.8 FPS
• High: 28.5 FPS
• Ultra: 28.5 FPS

The data shows a consistent pattern where the Low preset is always the fastest, followed by Medium, High, and Ultra last. The gap between Medium and High is substantial at all resolutions, indicating that the High preset introduces a significant rendering cost that this GPU cannot sustain.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i3-12100F is a 4-core, 8-thread processor based on the Alder Lake architecture, manufactured on a 10 nm process. It has a base clock of 3.30 GHz and a boost clock of 4.30 GHz, with a 12 MB shared L3 cache. In synthetic benchmarks, it scores 11912 in Cinebench R23 multicore and 1681 in single-core, with a Passmark multithread score of 14015.

The CPU's performance is more than sufficient for Inside. The game's puzzle-platformer nature places minimal demands on processor throughput, and the framerate data confirms this. The fact that the Low preset at 1080p achieves 138 FPS without any apparent CPU limitation suggests that the processor is never the bottleneck. Even at 4K, where the GPU is severely taxed, the CPU is able to maintain consistent framerates.

The CPU's benchmark profile shows it performs similarly to the Intel Core i7-7700K (deltaPct 1.8%) and the Intel Core i7-1250U (deltaPct 0.4%). This level of performance is adequate for modern gaming, and in the context of Inside, the Core i3-12100F provides ample headroom. The bottleneck in this system is unequivocally the GPU, as evidenced by the resolution scaling patterns and the fact that even the CPU's modest 4-core configuration can keep up with the RX 570's output.