Inside

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i3-12100F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti occupies the 1445th position out of 1671 tested combos for Inside. This places the configuration in the lower tier of tested systems, with roughly 86% of tested combos delivering higher average frame rates. The ranking reflects a pairing that is functional for the game but far from optimized for high-refresh-rate or maximum-fidelity play. The CPU's percentile standing against all processors is 72, meaning it outperforms 72% of all tested CPUs in general benchmarks, while the GPU's percentile is 55, indicating it beats just over half of all tested GPUs. This mismatch—a stronger-than-average CPU paired with a mid-pack GPU—shapes the performance profile in Inside.

The combo's rank is not surprising given the GPU's modest standing. The GTX 1660 Ti's average benchmark score is 13925, which is only 0.4% higher than the AMD Radeon RX 570X and 0.8% higher than the NVIDIA RTX A2000 Mobile. It trails the NVIDIA Tesla K10 by 0.7%. These are narrow margins, placing the GPU in a tightly contested mid-range segment. The CPU, by contrast, has an average benchmark score of 13516, which is 0.1% behind the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3975WX and 0.4% ahead of the Intel Core i7-1250U. The i3-12100F's nearest rivals are all close, but the CPU's relative strength does little to boost the combo's rank when the GPU is the primary bottleneck in this puzzle platformer.

GPU Role

The GTX 1660 Ti brings 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 288.0 GB/s. This memory configuration is adequate for Inside's art style, which relies on atmospheric lighting and shadow work rather than massive texture loads. The GPU's base clock is 1500 MHz with a boost clock of 1770 MHz, and memory runs at 1500 MHz with 12 Gbps effective transfer. The TU116 chip, built on a 12 nm process at TSMC, contains 6,600 million transistors on a 284 mm² die, with 1536 shading units, 96 TMUs, and 48 ROPs.

Benchmark results show the GPU's raw compute at 5.437 TFLOPS FP32, with a texture rate of 169.9 GTexel/s and a pixel rate of 84.96 GPixel/s. In DirectX 11, the GPU scores 103 in Passmark, while DirectX 12 yields 51, and DirectX 9 yields 190. The OpenCL score is 60863, and Vulkan is 58014. These scores indicate the GPU handles older APIs well, which matters for Inside, a 2016 title that does not demand modern rendering features. The absence of ray tracing and tensor cores further suggests the GPU is built for rasterization workloads, which is precisely what Inside requires.

The GPU's percentile of 55 versus all GPUs means it sits just above the median. Its nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 570X, is 0.4% behind in average score, while the NVIDIA Tesla K10 is 0.7% ahead. The GTX 1660 Ti's 6 GB VRAM is sufficient for 4K Ultra settings, where the measured average FPS is 47.1, but the GPU is clearly the limiting factor at higher resolutions. The data shows that dropping from Ultra to High at 4K improves FPS from 47.1 to 51.2, a modest gain that underscores the GPU's ceiling in this game.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i3-12100F is a 4-core, 8-thread processor from the Alder Lake-S architecture, built on Intel's 10 nm process. It runs at a base clock of 3.30 GHz and boosts to 4.30 GHz, with a 58 W TDP. The CPU has 80 KB of L1 cache per core, 1.25 MB of L2 per core, and 12 MB of shared L3 cache. It supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory in dual-channel mode and provides PCIe Gen 5 with 16 lanes from the CPU.

Single-thread performance is strong: the 3DMark single-thread score is 893, and Cinebench R23 single-core is 1681. Multi-thread scores are also respectable, with Cinebench R23 multi-core at 11912 and Geekbench multi-core at 7413. Passmark single-thread is 3444, and Passmark multi-thread is 14015. The CPU's boost clock of 4.30 GHz helps maintain high frame rates in Inside, which is not heavily threaded. The game's puzzle-platformer nature means the CPU rarely becomes the bottleneck, as evidenced by the measured FPS scaling.

The CPU's percentile of 72 versus all CPUs places it well above the GPU's 55. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core i7-7700K, is 1.8% ahead in average score, while the Intel Core i3-10105 is 0.6% behind. The i3-12100F's 4 cores and 8 threads are sufficient for Inside, which does not scale beyond a few threads. The data shows that the CPU can drive 1080p Low at 217.9 FPS, indicating headroom even at high frame rates. The CPU's role here is to feed the GPU without becoming a constraint, and benchmark results indicate it does so effectively.

FAQ

Q: What is the combo's rank among all tested systems for Inside?

A: The combo ranks 1445th out of 1671 tested combos, placing it in the lower portion of the performance distribution.

Q: How does the GPU compare to its nearest rival in benchmark scores?

A: The GTX 1660 Ti has an average benchmark score of 13925, which is 0.4% higher than the AMD Radeon RX 570X and 0.8% higher than the NVIDIA RTX A2000 Mobile, but 0.7% lower than the NVIDIA Tesla K10.

Q: What is the CPU's single-thread performance in Cinebench R23?

A: The i3-12100F scores 1681 in Cinebench R23 single-core, which is a strong result for a 4-core processor and supports high frame rates in lightly threaded games.

Q: Does the GPU have enough VRAM for 4K Ultra settings?

A: The 6 GB GDDR6 memory is sufficient for 4K Ultra, where the measured average FPS is 47.1, but the GPU is the limiting factor at this resolution.

Q: How does the CPU's percentile compare to the GPU's?

A: The CPU's percentile is 72 versus all CPUs, while the GPU's is 55 versus all GPUs, indicating the CPU is relatively stronger than the GPU in this pairing.

Q: What is the GPU's FP32 compute performance?

A: The GTX 1660 Ti delivers 5.437 TFLOPS FP32, with a texture rate of 169.9 GTexel/s and a pixel rate of 84.96 GPixel/s.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a clear pattern of the GPU becoming the limiting component as resolution increases. At 1080p High, the average FPS is 111.2, while at 1440p High it drops to 80.5, and at 4K High it falls to 51.2. This represents a 54% reduction from 1080p to 4K at High settings. The scaling is more dramatic at Low settings: 217.9 FPS at 1080p, 155.2 FPS at 1440p, and 98.2 FPS at 4K, a 55% drop from 1080p to 4K.

The FPS reduction from 1080p to 1440p at High is 27.6%, while from 1440p to 4K it is 36.4%. This progressive decline indicates that the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth become increasingly taxed at higher resolutions. At Ultra settings, the pattern is similar: 107.2 FPS at 1080p, 76 FPS at 1440p, and 47.1 FPS at 4K. The 4K Ultra result is the lowest measured, suggesting the GPU is near its practical limit for this game.

The data also shows that CPU headroom is not a concern. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 217.9 FPS, which is well above any display refresh rate, and the CPU's strong single-thread score of 1681 in Cinebench R23 supports this. The limiting component is clearly the GPU, as evidenced by the consistent FPS drops with resolution increases. The GTX 1660 Ti's 288.0 GB/s bandwidth and 6 GB VRAM are adequate for the game's demands, but the pixel rate of 84.96 GPixel/s becomes a bottleneck at 4K, particularly at Ultra settings where the FPS drops below 50. The scaling pattern confirms that Inside is GPU-bound at higher resolutions with this hardware.