Inside

The Intel Core i5-10400F paired with the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX delivers a decisively GPU-bound experience in Inside, with frame rates that remain exceptionally high across all tested settings and resolutions. The data shows that the most demanding preset, Ultra, still produces an average of 177.6 FPS at 1080p, indicating that this combination has substantial headroom for this title. The optimal experience balances visual fidelity with the highest possible frame rate, making the High preset the most compelling choice for users with high-refresh-rate displays.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark results indicate that the High preset offers the best overall experience for this combination. At 1920x1080, High settings produce an average of 180 FPS, which is only 2.4 FPS lower than the 177.6 FPS achieved at Ultra settings, yet it likely carries a lower rendering load on the GPU. Moving to 2560x1440, the High preset delivers 158.9 FPS, comfortably above the 144 Hz refresh rate target for most monitors, while Ultra drops to 157.5 FPS, a negligible difference of 1.4 FPS. At 3840x2160, High maintains an average of 121.5 FPS, which is 8 FPS higher than Ultra’s 113.5 FPS, making High the superior choice for 4K gaming without sacrificing noticeable visual quality.

The Low preset is unnecessary for this hardware. It provides a marginal performance increase over Medium—for instance, 233.9 FPS versus 218.1 FPS at 1080p—but the visual downgrade in a puzzle platformer like Inside, where atmosphere is critical, is not worth the frame rate gain. The Medium preset serves as a middle ground, but the data shows it consistently trails High by a significant margin: 38.1 FPS at 1080p, 33.1 FPS at 1440p, and 42.8 FPS at 4K. Since High is the highest tested preset that still yields over 120 FPS at 4K, it is the recommended starting point, with Ultra reserved for users who prioritize maximum visual settings over the modest FPS difference.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX is the dominant component in this pairing, and its specifications directly explain the observed frame rates. The GPU features 24 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 384-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 960.0 GB/s. This vast memory capacity is far beyond what Inside requires, but it ensures that memory bandwidth is never a bottleneck, even at 4K resolution. The GPU’s boost clock of 2498 MHz and game clock of 2365 MHz, based on the RDNA 3.0 architecture, deliver the raw compute power needed to push these high averages. With 6144 shading units and 192 ROPs, the pixel rate of 479.6 GPixel/s is more than sufficient for a game with relatively simple geometry.

Benchmark scores confirm the GPU’s strength. The Passmark G3D score of 31238 and an average benchmark score of 44019 place it in the 85th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti, has an average score of 44900, which is 2% higher, while the AMD Radeon Pro 580 is 0.4% lower at 44195. In Inside, however, the GPU is never stressed to its limit, as evidenced by the fact that even the most demanding Ultra preset at 4K produces 113.5 FPS. The GPU’s 61.39 TFLOPS FP32 performance is largely held in reserve, meaning the frame rate is more likely limited by the CPU’s ability to feed the rendering pipeline at lower resolutions.

FAQ

*Q: What is the maximum average FPS this combo achieves in Inside?*

A: The highest measured average is 233.9 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings. At Ultra settings, the maximum average drops to 177.6 FPS at the same resolution.

Q: How does the combo perform at 4K resolution?

A: At 3840x2160, the average FPS ranges from 179.3 on Low settings to 113.5 on Ultra settings. The High preset, at 121.5 FPS, is the most balanced option for 4K.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU more likely to be the limiting factor?

A: The data suggests the GPU is the primary limiter at 4K, where the frame rate drops by over 50 FPS from Low to Ultra. However, at 1080p, the CPU’s single-thread performance becomes more relevant, as the FPS difference between settings narrows.

Q: What is the performance difference between High and Ultra settings?

A: Across all resolutions, Ultra is slower than High. The smallest gap is at 1440p, where Ultra is 1.4 FPS slower (157.5 vs 158.9), while the largest gap is at 1080p, with a 2.4 FPS difference (177.6 vs 180).

Q: Does the GPU’s large memory capacity matter for this game?

A: No. The 24 GB VRAM is overkill for Inside, but it guarantees no memory-related stutters. The GPU’s bandwidth of 960.0 GB/s ensures fast data transfer regardless of the resolution.

Q: How does this GPU compare to its nearest rival in raw benchmarks?

A: The RX 7900 XTX has an average benchmark score of 44019, which is 0.4% lower than the AMD Radeon Pro 580’s 44195 and 2% lower than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti’s 44900.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its highest frame rates. The Low preset averages 233.9 FPS, which is the peak performance measured. Medium settings reduce this to 218.1 FPS, while High drops further to 180 FPS. The Ultra preset, despite being the most demanding, still manages an average of 177.6 FPS. This pattern shows a clear step-down from Low to Medium (a 15.8 FPS drop) and a larger step from Medium to High (38.1 FPS), but the gap between High and Ultra is minimal at just 2.4 FPS.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates remain high but show a consistent reduction. Low settings average 207.5 FPS, while Medium achieves 192 FPS. High settings produce 158.9 FPS, and Ultra is nearly identical at 157.5 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra is exactly 50 FPS, indicating that the GPU is handling the increased resolution without severe penalty. At 3840x2160, the scaling becomes more pronounced. Low settings still yield 179.3 FPS, but Medium drops to 164.3 FPS. High settings average 121.5 FPS, and Ultra falls to 113.5 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is 65.8 FPS, the largest of any resolution, confirming that the GPU’s workload increases substantially with higher pixel counts.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K reveals a clear GPU-bound trend. At Low settings, the average FPS falls from 233.9 at 1080p to 207.5 at 1440p, a 26.4 FPS reduction, and then to 179.3 at 4K, another 28.2 FPS drop. This represents a 23.3% decrease from 1080p to 4K. For Medium settings, the decline is from 218.1 to 192 to 164.3, a total reduction of 53.8 FPS. High settings show a steeper drop: 180 at 1080p, 158.9 at 1440p, and 121.5 at 4K, a 32.5% reduction. Ultra settings follow a similar path, with averages of 177.6, 157.5, and 113.5, respectively, a 36.1% decrease.

The data indicates that the GPU is the limiting component at higher resolutions. The consistent reduction in FPS as resolution increases aligns with the GPU’s rendering workload, which scales directly with pixel count. At 1080p, the frame rates are so high (over 177 FPS on all settings) that the CPU’s 6 cores and 12 threads may start to become a factor, as the GPU is not fully saturated. However, at 4K, the GPU’s compute resources are taxed more heavily, making the 24 GB VRAM and high bandwidth essential for maintaining playable averages.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-10400F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor from the Comet Lake architecture, with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.30 GHz. Its benchmark scores show balanced performance: a single-thread score of 688 in 3DMark and a multi-thread score of 4735 in the max threads test, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 10297. In Inside, this CPU is more than adequate, as the game’s puzzle platformer nature does not demand high core counts. The benchmark results show that the FPS differences between settings at 1080p are relatively small (e.g., 177.6 versus 180 for Ultra and High), suggesting that the CPU can keep up with the GPU’s output.

Comparing to its nearest rivals, the i5-10400F has an average benchmark score of 14168, which is 1.1% lower than the Intel Core i5-8500’s 14332 and 0.8% lower than the AMD Ryzen 3 7320C’s 14277. The data implies that the CPU is not the bottleneck in Inside, even at lower resolutions where the GPU has more headroom. The lack of integrated graphics and a 65 W TDP further indicate a focus on efficiency rather than extreme performance, but for this game, the 12 threads provide ample parallelism for any background tasks without impacting frame rates.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested combinations, this pairing of the Intel Core i5-10400F and AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX ranks 752nd out of 1671 total combos for Inside. This places it in the middle of the pack, which is surprising given the high absolute FPS numbers. The rank reflects the fact that many other combinations, likely with more powerful CPUs, achieve even higher frame rates, particularly at 1080p where the CPU’s single-thread performance becomes more critical. The combo’s 73rd percentile CPU score and 85th percentile GPU score suggest a slight imbalance, where the GPU outclasses the CPU.

The empirical data, however, shows that this imbalance does not harm the gaming experience. The lowest measured average is 113.5 FPS at 4K Ultra, which is still far above the 60 FPS standard. The combo’s rank of 752 indicates that while it is not the top performer, it delivers a smooth and responsive experience in Inside. The high GPU percentile (85) versus the CPU percentile (73) confirms that the GPU is the stronger component, and the frame rates reflect this, with the GPU handling the heavy lifting at higher resolutions. For a game like Inside, this rank is more than sufficient, as the visual style and gameplay do not require the absolute highest FPS counts.