Inside

Inside is a 2016 puzzle platformer that remains remarkably light on system demands, yet the measured data for the Intel Core i5-11400F and AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT reveals a configuration that is heavily overqualified for the task, delivering triple-digit frame rates at nearly every setting and resolution. The benchmark results show a pairing that prioritizes raw refresh rate headroom over graphical fidelity, making it an ideal match for high-refresh-rate monitors even when the game’s art style does not require such extreme performance. The data indicates that this combo is almost never the limiting factor, with performance scaling that points to the CPU and GPU working in concert to eliminate any potential bottlenecks.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows provide a clear hierarchy for optimizing the experience in Inside. At 1920x1080, the Ultra preset achieves an average of 139 FPS, which is already far beyond the 60 FPS standard for smooth gameplay, but the Medium preset jumps to 234 FPS and the Low preset reaches 273 FPS. For players with a 144Hz display, the High preset at 146 FPS is the sweet spot, offering the highest visual quality while still maintaining enough headroom to avoid dips below the refresh rate in demanding scenes. The Medium preset at 234 FPS is excessive for most monitors, but it does provide a substantial buffer for any potential frame-time spikes.

At 2560x1440, the High preset delivers 105 FPS, which is still comfortably above 60 FPS and offers a noticeable visual upgrade over Medium’s 168 FPS. The Ultra preset at 100 FPS is also viable, but the gap between High and Ultra is minimal in a game with Inside’s limited geometry and lighting, making High the recommended setting for a balance of quality and performance at this resolution. The Medium preset’s 168 FPS is again only relevant for 165Hz or 240Hz panels, where the extra frames provide a competitive edge that is largely irrelevant for a puzzle platformer.

At 3840x2160, the High preset drops to 66 FPS, which is just above the 60 FPS threshold but leaves little room for error in complex scenes. The Medium preset at 106 FPS is the clear recommendation for 4K, as it provides a substantial performance cushion while still delivering most of the visual features that define the game’s atmosphere. The Ultra preset at 63 FPS is technically playable, but the data suggests that the visual difference between Medium and Ultra is not worth the 40% performance penalty. The Low preset at 132 FPS at 4K confirms the game’s scalability, but it sacrifices the shadow and lighting quality that make Inside’s monochromatic world so compelling. Across all resolutions, the Medium preset appears to be the most balanced choice, offering the best experience per the measured rows when considering both frame rate stability and visual fidelity.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT is a 7nm RDNA 2.0 part with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, providing a memory bandwidth of 280.3 GB/s. The GPU’s base clock is 2055 MHz, with a game clock of 2410 MHz and a boost clock of 2635 MHz, which are high frequencies that help the card maintain its performance in a game that is not particularly demanding on fill rate or texture throughput. The 2048 shading units and 64 ROPs are more than sufficient for a title like Inside, which relies on simple 2D sprites and limited 3D geometry.

The VRAM capacity of 8 GB is never a concern in this game, as the measured data shows no signs of texture thrashing or memory-related stutters even at the Ultra preset across all resolutions. The GPU’s pixel rate of 168.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 337.3 GTexel/s are far more than what Inside requires, which explains why the frame rates are so high even at 4K. The FP32 compute of 10.79 TFLOPS is also overkill for a game that was designed to run on hardware from nearly a decade prior. The data indicates that the RX 6650 XT is operating well below its maximum capacity in this title, meaning that the GPU is rarely the limiting component. Instead, the benchmark results suggest that the GPU’s high clock speeds allow it to complete frames quickly, shifting the bottleneck to the CPU in certain scenarios, particularly at lower resolutions where the frame rate is exceptionally high.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K shows a clear pattern of GPU-bound behavior at higher resolutions, but with a twist that reveals the CPU’s influence at the lower end. At the Low preset, the average FPS drops from 273 at 1920x1080 to 210 at 2560x1440, a 23% decrease, and then to 132 at 3840x2160, a further 37% decrease. This scaling is consistent with a GPU that is becoming more saturated as the pixel count increases, but the absolute numbers are so high that even the 4K result is far above what most games can achieve.

At the High preset, the drop is more pronounced: 146 FPS at 1080p, 105 FPS at 1440p, and 66 FPS at 4K. This represents a 55% reduction from 1080p to 4K, which is a typical curve for a GPU that is nearing its limits at the highest resolution. However, the fact that the 1080p result is only 146 FPS, compared to 273 FPS at Low, indicates that the High preset’s additional visual effects are taxing the GPU more heavily, but not to the point where the CPU becomes the bottleneck. The Medium preset shows a similar pattern, with 234 FPS at 1080p, 168 FPS at 1440p, and 106 FPS at 4K.

The most telling data point is the Ultra preset, which yields 139 FPS at 1080p, 100 FPS at 1440p, and 63 FPS at 4K. The 1080p to 4K drop of 55% mirrors the High preset, but the absolute numbers are lower, suggesting that the Ultra preset’s effects are consistently adding a fixed cost to each frame. The data indicates that at 1080p, the CPU is not the limiting factor, as the frame rates at Low and Medium are well above 200 FPS, which would require a very strong single-threaded performance to sustain. The scaling from 1080p to 4K shows that the GPU becomes the primary constraint as resolution increases, but the CPU still has enough headroom to push high frame rates at the lower resolutions.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-11400F and AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT ranks 2424 out of 3716 tested combos in Inside, placing it in the lower half of the database. This ranking is somewhat surprising given the high frame rates, but it reflects the fact that many other configurations with more powerful CPUs and GPUs are also tested, and the game is not demanding enough to separate mid-range hardware from high-end parts. The CPU itself has a percentile rank of 71 against all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 17177, which positions it as a solid mid-range processor. Its nearest rivals include the AMD EPYC 7H12, which scores 17120 and is 0.3% slower, and the Intel Core i5-12450H, which scores 17239 and is 0.4% faster.

The GPU has a percentile rank of 65 against all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 19765. Its nearest rivals are the NVIDIA Tesla K40m, which scores 19885 and is 0.6% faster, and the AMD FirePro D300, which scores 19637 and is 0.7% slower. The combo’s rank of 2424 out of 3716 suggests that while this pairing is capable of excellent performance in Inside, it is not positioned near the top of the leaderboard because many users test with flagship CPUs and GPUs that achieve even higher frame rates. The data indicates that this combo is in the middle of the pack, which is expected given that the CPU and GPU are both mainstream parts, but the measured FPS shows that this ranking does not reflect any weakness in this specific title.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-11400F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Rocket Lake architecture, built on Intel’s 14nm process. It has a base clock of 2.60 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz, which provides strong single-threaded performance that is crucial for a game like Inside, which likely relies on a single primary thread for game logic and rendering calls. The CPU’s cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 512 KB of L2 per core, and 12 MB of shared L3 cache, which helps reduce memory latency and improve performance in workloads that fit within the cache.

The benchmark data shows that the i5-11400F scores 868 in 3DMark single-thread and 1777 in Geekbench single-core, which are respectable numbers for a 2021 processor. In multi-threaded tests, it scores 5652 in 3DMark max threads and 14340 in Cinebench R23 multicore, indicating that it can handle more demanding workloads, but Inside does not appear to scale well with multiple cores. The measured FPS at 1080p Low is 273 FPS, which is a very high number that could potentially be limited by the CPU’s ability to process draw calls and update game state. However, the fact that the frame rate at 4K Low is still 132 FPS suggests that the CPU is not a major bottleneck, as the GPU is doing more work at higher resolutions.

The CPU’s 12 threads are more than enough for a game from 2016, and the data shows that the processor is not struggling to keep up with the GPU’s frame output. The memory bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s, while modest by modern standards, is sufficient for this title. The CPU’s PCIe Gen 4 support with 20 lanes ensures that the GPU can communicate at full speed, although the RX 6650 XT only uses PCIe 4.0 x8, which does not saturate the available bandwidth. Overall, the i5-11400F provides ample single-thread performance to drive high frame rates in Inside, and its multi-threaded capabilities are a bonus for other applications.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves an average of 273 FPS, which is the highest measured value across all settings and resolutions. The Medium preset follows at 234 FPS, with a minimum of 199 FPS and a maximum of 269 FPS, indicating a stable frame time distribution. The High preset delivers 146 FPS, and the Ultra preset drops to 139 FPS. The difference between High and Ultra is only 7 FPS, which suggests that the Ultra preset adds minimal extra cost at this resolution. The data shows that 1080p is where the CPU and GPU both have significant headroom, with the Low preset pushing past 270 FPS, which is likely limited by the game’s engine or the CPU’s single-thread speed.

At 2560x1440, the Low preset averages 210 FPS, a 23% reduction from 1080p, while the Medium preset averages 168 FPS with a minimum of 143 FPS and a maximum of 193 FPS. The High preset delivers 105 FPS, and the Ultra preset drops to 100 FPS. The 1440p results show a similar pattern to 1080p, with the gap between High and Ultra remaining at 5 FPS. The Medium preset’s minimum of 143 FPS is still well above 60 FPS, ensuring smooth gameplay even in the most complex scenes.

At 3840x2160, the Low preset averages 132 FPS, which is a 52% reduction from 1080p, but still a very playable frame rate. The Medium preset averages 106 FPS with a minimum of 90 FPS and a maximum of 121 FPS, providing a comfortable experience for 4K displays. The High preset drops to 66 FPS, and the Ultra preset hits 63 FPS, which are the only measured results below the 100 FPS mark. The 4K data shows that the GPU is becoming the limiting factor, as the frame rates scale more aggressively with resolution. The minimum FPS values for the Medium preset at 4K are 90 FPS, which is still above the 60 FPS threshold, but the High and Ultra presets likely have lower minimums that were not recorded, indicating that they may experience occasional dips below 60 FPS. Overall, the measured FPS breakdown confirms that this combo is capable of running Inside at maximum settings at 1080p and 1440p, with only 4K requiring a reduction to Medium settings for a consistently smooth experience.