Inside

FAQ

Q: What is the Intel Core i5-12400's position among all CPUs based on its average benchmark score?

A: The i5-12400 sits in the 72nd percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 18,683. Its closest rival is the AMD EPYC 7643, which scores 18,697, a delta of -0.1%, meaning the i5-12400 trails by a negligible margin. The Intel Core i3-14100F is 0.9% behind, while the AMD Ryzen AI 5 330 leads by 0.7%.

Q: How does the RX 6650 XT compare to its nearest GPU rivals in aggregate benchmarks?

A: The Radeon RX 6650 XT has an average benchmark score of 19,765 and ranks in the 65th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rival is the NVIDIA Tesla K40m at 19,885, which is 0.6% faster. The AMD FirePro D300 trails by 0.7%, and the AMD FirePro W7000 leads by 0.7%. The NVIDIA Quadro K5200 is the closest below at 19,602, a 0.8% deficit.

Q: What is the best measured FPS result for the i5-12400 + RX 6650 XT combo in Inside?

A: The highest average FPS recorded is 292 at 1920x1080 with Low settings. The same resolution at Medium yields 234 FPS, High 146 FPS, and Ultra 139 FPS. At 2560x1440, Low produces 210 FPS, while at 3840x2160, Low drops to 132 FPS.

Q: Which resolution and settings combination yields the lowest average FPS?

A: The lowest average FPS is 63 at 3840x2160 with Ultra settings. High at 4K is slightly better at 66 FPS, and Medium at 4K reaches 106 FPS. This shows the game is quite playable even at the highest resolution, as the minimum recorded average never falls below 60 FPS.

Q: Does the combo rank highly among all tested combinations for Inside?

A: The combo ranks 2,378 out of 3,716 tested combinations, placing it in the lower-middle portion of the pack. This rank reflects the game's relatively low hardware demands, where even mid-range components achieve high frame rates, pushing the i5-12400 + RX 6650 XT below many higher-tier combos.

Q: What are the core and clock specifications for the i5-12400?

A: The i5-12400 has 6 cores and 12 threads, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. It belongs to the Alder Lake-S architecture, manufactured on Intel's 10 nm process, and features 18 MB of shared L3 cache. Its TDP is 65 W, and it supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT is built on the RDNA 2.0 architecture with the Navi 23 chip, produced on TSMC's 7 nm process. It packs 2,048 shading units, 128 texture mapping units, and 64 raster operation units, along with 32 ray tracing cores. The GPU's base clock is 2055 MHz, with a game clock of 2410 MHz and a boost clock of 2635 MHz. Memory runs at 2190 MHz, effective 17.5 Gbps, across an 8 GB GDDR6 interface with a 128-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 280.3 GB/s.

In Inside, the GPU's role is clearly visible when comparing settings at a fixed resolution. At 1920x1080, moving from Low to Medium reduces average FPS from 292 to 234, a 20% drop. From Medium to High, it falls to 146, a 38% decline, and from High to Ultra, it reaches 139, a modest 5% reduction. This pattern suggests that the GPU handles the lower settings with ample headroom, but the jump to High introduces a significant workload increase, likely due to more complex shading and post-processing effects.

At 3840x2160, the same settings progression shows 132 FPS at Low, 106 at Medium, 66 at High, and 63 at Ultra. The 4K resolution stresses the GPU's 8 GB memory and 128-bit bus, as the bandwidth of 280.3 GB/s becomes a limiting factor at higher settings. The data indicates that the GPU is the primary bottleneck at 4K High and Ultra, where the frame rate nearly halves compared to 1080p. The RX 6650 XT's FP32 performance of 10.79 TFLOPS and pixel rate of 168.6 GPixel/s are sufficient for 1080p and 1440p gaming, but the 4K results reveal the limits of its 128-bit memory interface.

Settings Recommendations

For the best experience, the data suggests that Medium settings provide an optimal balance across all resolutions. At 1920x1080, Medium delivers 234 FPS, which is far above the threshold for smooth gameplay, and the minimum FPS of 199 ensures no significant stutters. At 2560x1440, Medium still achieves 168 FPS with a minimum of 143, maintaining fluid motion. Even at 3840x2160, Medium produces 106 FPS, which is well within playable range.

High settings are also viable, though the performance cost is notable. At 1080p, High yields 146 FPS, and at 1440p, it drops to 105 FPS. At 4K, High falls to 66 FPS, which is still technically playable but approaches the lower bound for a smooth experience. Ultra settings offer marginal visual gains over High, with 139 FPS at 1080p and 63 FPS at 4K, but the 4% difference between High and Ultra at 1080p suggests diminishing returns.

Low settings are unnecessary for this combo, as even at 4K, Low produces 132 FPS. The game's art style, a puzzle platformer, likely benefits from higher graphical fidelity, so Medium or High is recommended. Given that the measured data shows Medium at 4K outperforms High at 4K by 60%, the most sensible choice is Medium for users prioritizing frame rate stability, or High for those with 1080p or 1440p displays seeking extra visual polish.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo achieves its highest performance. Low settings produce an average of 292 FPS, Medium 234 FPS with a minimum of 199 and maximum of 269, High 146 FPS, and Ultra 139 FPS. The gap between Medium and High is substantial, suggesting that High enables features that significantly tax the GPU, such as improved shadows or ambient occlusion.

At 2560x1440, the frame rates remain high. Low yields 210 FPS, Medium 168 FPS with a range of 143 to 193, High 105 FPS, and Ultra 100 FPS. The drop from 1080p to 1440p at Low is 28%, while at Ultra it is 28% as well, indicating a consistent resolution scaling factor across settings.

At 3840x2160, the performance scales down further. Low produces 132 FPS, Medium 106 FPS with a minimum of 90 and maximum of 121, High 66 FPS, and Ultra 63 FPS. The 4K results show a steep decline at High and Ultra, where the average FPS is less than half of the 1080p equivalents. This points to the GPU becoming the limiting factor at higher resolutions, as the 8 GB VRAM and 128-bit bus struggle to keep up with the increased pixel throughput.

The measured data includes minimum and maximum FPS only for Medium settings at each resolution. These values show that at 1080p Medium, the frame rate stays between 199 and 269, a range of 70 FPS, indicating some variance but generally stable performance. At 1440p Medium, the range narrows to 50 FPS, from 143 to 193. At 4K Medium, the range is 31 FPS, from 90 to 121, suggesting that higher resolutions reduce frame time variance, likely due to the GPU being more consistently loaded.

Resolution Scaling

Moving from 1080p to 1440p, the FPS drops by 28% at Low (292 to 210), 28% at Medium (234 to 168), 28% at High (146 to 105), and 28% at Ultra (139 to 100). This consistent 28% reduction across all settings indicates that the scaling is resolution-bound rather than settings-bound, suggesting the GPU's pixel throughput is the primary constraint.

From 1440p to 4K, the drop is more pronounced. Low falls from 210 to 132, a 37% decrease. Medium drops from 168 to 106, a 37% decrease. High falls from 105 to 66, a 37% decrease, and Ultra drops from 100 to 63, a 37% decrease. Again, the scaling is uniform across settings, reinforcing the notion that the GPU's rasterization capability, not the CPU, limits performance at higher resolutions.

Overall, from 1080p to 4K, the FPS reduction is 55% at Low (292 to 132), 55% at Medium (234 to 106), 55% at High (146 to 66), and 55% at Ultra (139 to 63). This perfectly uniform scaling suggests that the game's rendering pipeline is pixel-bound, and the i5-12400's CPU performance is not a bottleneck. If the CPU were limiting, we would expect to see a smaller FPS drop at lower resolutions where the GPU is under less load, but the data shows no such effect.

The limiting component at 4K is the RX 6650 XT. The 128-bit memory bus and 8 GB VRAM are adequate for 1080p and 1440p, but at 4K, the bandwidth of 280.3 GB/s becomes insufficient, as evidenced by the 55% FPS drop. The GPU's 64 ROPs and 168.6 GPixel/s pixel rate are also taxed by the 8.3 million pixels at 4K, leading to the observed frame rates.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400 features 6 cores and 12 threads, a base clock of 2.50 GHz, and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. It belongs to the Alder Lake-S architecture, with an 18 MB shared L3 cache and 1.25 MB L2 cache per core. The CPU's single-thread performance is strong, as evidenced by its Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2,257 and Geekbench single-core score of 1,848. Multi-threaded performance is also solid, with Cinebench R23 multi-core at 15,989 and Passmark multithread at 18,747.

In Inside, the CPU's role is secondary to the GPU. The game is a puzzle platformer, and the measured FPS data shows that resolution scaling is uniform, indicating that the CPU is not a limiting factor. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 292 FPS, which is likely above the game's engine limits. The i5-12400's 12 threads provide ample headroom for the game's physics and logic, which are typically single-threaded or lightly threaded.

The CPU's benchmark data supports this analysis. The 3DMark single-thread score is 910, and the 2-thread score is 1,692, showing that even with fewer threads, the CPU performs well. The Passmark single-thread score of 3,456 and data compression score of 226,908 indicate strong per-core performance, which is crucial for games that rely on a single main thread.

The i5-12400's cache hierarchy, with 80 KB L1 per core and 18 MB shared L3, is sufficient for the game's data footprint. The CPU's memory support for DDR4 and DDR5, with a dual-channel bus, ensures adequate memory bandwidth for feeding the GPU. The process node of 10 nm and TDP of 65 W suggest efficient power delivery, which helps maintain boost clocks during extended gaming sessions.

Given the FPS results, the CPU is not a bottleneck at any resolution or setting. The 55% FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is consistent with GPU-bound behavior, and the CPU's 72nd percentile ranking among all CPUs confirms its capability. The nearest rival, the AMD EPYC 7643, scores nearly identically, showing that the i5-12400 is competitive with much higher-end server chips in synthetic benchmarks, though the EPYC's core count would benefit heavily threaded workloads.

How This Combo Ranks

The i5-12400 + RX 6650 XT combo ranks 2,378 out of 3,716 tested combinations for Inside. This places it in the 64th percentile of all combos, meaning 36% of tested configurations perform worse. The rank is primarily influenced by the GPU's 65th percentile ranking, as the CPU's 72nd percentile is less impactful in this GPU-bound game.

The combo's rank is lower than what the individual component percentiles might suggest, implying that many combos feature higher-tier GPUs paired with similar or weaker CPUs. For example, the RX 6650 XT's nearest GPU rivals, such as the NVIDIA Tesla K40m, have similar aggregate scores, but combos with those GPUs may rank higher if paired with more powerful CPUs. However, Inside's low hardware demands mean that even mid-range GPUs achieve high frame rates, so the rank is more about the GPU's absolute performance than its relative standing.

The data shows that the combo is well-suited for 1080p and 1440p gaming, with average FPS above 100 at High settings for both resolutions. At 4K, the combo still maintains playable frame rates at Medium, but Ultra dips to 63 FPS, which is borderline. The rank of 2,378 out of 3,716 suggests that while this combo is not top-tier, it is far from the bottom, and its performance in Inside is more than adequate for a smooth experience.

Comparing to the CPU's nearest rivals, the i5-12400's performance is nearly identical to the AMD EPYC 7643 and Intel Core i7-1355U, with deltas of -0.1% and -0.3%, respectively. This indicates that the CPU choice has minimal impact on the combo's rank, as the GPU is the determining factor. Similarly, the GPU's nearest rivals, the NVIDIA Tesla K40m and AMD FirePro W7000, have scores within 0.7% of the RX 6650 XT, showing that the GPU's performance class is well-defined.

The combo's rank of 2,378 reflects the fact that Inside is not a demanding title, so the RX 6650 XT, while capable, is outclassed by many higher-end GPUs in the database. The 8 GB VRAM and 128-bit bus are sufficient for this game, but for more graphically intensive titles, the combo would likely rank lower. In Inside, however, the combo provides a high-refresh-rate experience at 1080p and a comfortable 60+ FPS at 4K Medium, which is the primary takeaway from the measured data.