Inside

Inside pairs a 10-core, 16-thread Intel Core i5-14400F with an 11 GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, and the measured frame rates reveal a system that is dramatically overqualified for this 2016 puzzle platformer. The data shows a combination that delivers triple-digit frame rates at nearly every setting, with the only meaningful performance ceiling appearing at 4K Ultra. This is a pairing where the GPU’s age and the CPU’s modern efficiency create an interesting bottleneck dynamic, though the game’s modest visual demands mean the experience is overwhelmingly smooth across the board.

Resolution Scaling

The scaling behavior from 1080p to 4K tells a clear story about where the performance limit resides. At Low settings, the average frame rate drops from 315.7 FPS at 1920x1080 to 227.1 FPS at 2560x1440, then falls further to 142.9 FPS at 3840x2160. That represents a 54.7% reduction from 1080p to 4K, which is a substantial hit but still leaves the game running far above any display’s refresh rate. The pattern is consistent across all settings, but the magnitude of the drop grows as the preset becomes more demanding. On High settings, the sequence runs 159.9 FPS at 1080p, 116.8 FPS at 1440p, and 69.6 FPS at 4K — a 56.5% decline from the lowest to highest resolution.

The shape of these numbers indicates that the GTX 1080 Ti is the primary limiting component, particularly at 4K. At 1080p Low, the frame rate of 315.7 FPS is so high that it likely approaches the CPU’s ability to feed the GPU, but the fact that the i5-14400F can sustain that level suggests the processor is not a meaningful constraint. The gap between Low and Medium at each resolution is telling: at 1080p, Low hits 315.7 FPS while Medium reaches 253.3 FPS, a 19.8% difference. At 4K, the same comparison shows 142.9 FPS versus 116.4 FPS, a smaller 18.5% drop, indicating that the GPU is becoming more saturated as pixel count rises. The Ultra preset is the outlier, as it falls to 149 FPS at 1080p and only 65.5 FPS at 4K, showing that the highest quality settings impose a cost that scales disproportionately with resolution.

Settings Recommendations

For players targeting the highest possible frame rates, Low settings at 1080p deliver 315.7 FPS, which is excessive for any current display and suggests the CPU is doing the heavy lifting. The data indicates that Medium settings provide the best balance of visual fidelity and performance headroom: 253.3 FPS at 1080p, 182.8 FPS at 1440p, and 116.4 FPS at 4K. These numbers are all comfortably above 60 FPS, and the jump from Low to Medium is modest enough that the visual upgrade is worthwhile. High settings are also viable, with 159.9 FPS at 1080p and 116.8 FPS at 1440p, but the 4K figure of 69.6 FPS is close to the edge for high-refresh displays.

Ultra is the only preset that challenges this hardware. At 1080p, it still manages 149 FPS, which is playable, but the drop to 107.8 FPS at 1440p and 65.5 FPS at 4K shows that the GTX 1080 Ti’s older Pascal architecture struggles with the highest quality settings at higher resolutions. The recommendation based on the measured rows is to use High at 1080p or 1440p, where the frame rates are high enough to avoid any perceptible stutter while maintaining visual quality. For 4K, Medium is the safer choice, as it keeps the average above 116 FPS, whereas High dips below 70 FPS. The data does not support Ultra as a practical choice at any resolution, given that the frame rate gains from dropping to High are substantial (from 149 FPS to 159.9 FPS at 1080p, and from 65.5 FPS to 69.6 FPS at 4K).

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is a 2017-era card built on the 16 nm Pascal architecture, with 3584 shading units and 88 ROPs. Its 11 GB of GDDR5X memory runs at 1376 MHz with a 352-bit bus, yielding 484.4 GB/s of bandwidth. These specs are dated, but the benchmark results show the card still holds its own in this game. The GPU’s base clock is 1481 MHz with a boost of 1582 MHz, and the measured frame rates suggest that clock speed is less critical than the memory subsystem in this title. The 11 GB frame buffer is generous for a 2016 game, and the data confirms that VRAM capacity is not a limiting factor at any resolution or setting tested.

The GPU’s average benchmark score of 19402 places it at the 61st percentile among all GPUs, with its nearest rival being the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 at a delta of 0%. The TITAN Xp is 1.1% faster, while the AMD Radeon Pro 560X is 0.1% slower. This positioning indicates that the GTX 1080 Ti is a mid-tier performer by modern standards, but the measured FPS in Inside shows it is more than adequate for this workload. The card’s FP32 performance of 11.34 TFLOPS and texture rate of 354.4 GTexel/s are respectable for the era, and the pixel rate of 139.2 GPixel/s helps explain why the card can push high frame rates at lower resolutions. The power draw is 250 W, which is modest for a card of this performance class, and it requires a 1x 6-pin and 1x 8-pin power connector.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full range of settings produces frame rates that are almost absurdly high. Low settings hit 315.7 FPS, Medium reaches 253.3 FPS, High achieves 159.9 FPS, and Ultra settles at 149 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 52.8%, which is significant but still leaves every preset above 144 FPS. Moving to 2560x1440, the numbers compress slightly: Low drops to 227.1 FPS, Medium to 182.8 FPS, High to 116.8 FPS, and Ultra to 107.8 FPS. The relative ordering remains the same, but the spread between Low and Ultra narrows to 52.5%, suggesting that the GPU is starting to become more of a factor.

At 3840x2160, the performance hierarchy shifts. Low still leads with 142.9 FPS, followed by Medium at 116.4 FPS, High at 69.6 FPS, and Ultra at 65.5 FPS. The difference between High and Ultra is only 5.9%, which is the smallest gap across any resolution, indicating that the GPU is fully saturated at 4K and additional settings changes have diminishing returns. The drop from Medium to High at 4K is 40.2%, which is the steepest single-step decline in the entire dataset. This suggests that High settings introduce a particularly heavy shading load that the GTX 1080 Ti’s Pascal architecture cannot handle efficiently at 4K. The 1080p numbers show the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU at extreme frame rates, but the 4K results confirm the GPU is the bottleneck beyond 1440p.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested combinations for Inside, this pairing of the Intel Core i5-14400F and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti ranks 944th out of 1671 combos. That places it in the 56.5th percentile, meaning it outperforms slightly more than half of all tested systems. This ranking is lower than the individual component percentiles might suggest — the CPU sits at the 88th percentile among all processors, while the GPU is at the 61st percentile. The discrepancy highlights that the combo’s performance in this specific game is limited by the GPU, which is the older and weaker component in the pairing.

The CPU’s nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks are the Intel Core i7-12800H (0% delta), AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 7645 (0.2% faster), AMD Ryzen 7 250 (0.2% slower), and Intel Core i7-13705H (0.2% slower). The GPU’s nearest rivals are the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 (0% delta), AMD Radeon Pro 560X (0.1% slower), NVIDIA Tesla K40m (0.6% slower), and NVIDIA TITAN Xp (1.1% faster). These deltas are all within 1.1%, indicating that the GTX 1080 Ti is closely matched with its peers in raw compute, but the measured FPS in Inside shows it can still deliver playable frame rates at 4K Medium. The combo rank of 944 suggests that while the CPU is a strong performer, the GPU’s age pulls the overall experience down relative to more modern pairings, yet the game’s low requirements ensure the result is still smooth in absolute terms.