Inside

Inside is a puzzle platformer with a deliberately muted visual style, yet the measured frame rates for this Intel Core i5-14600K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER pairing show that it still demands a balanced system to hit high refresh rates. The data provided indicates that this combination is far from a bottleneck at most settings, but the way performance scales with both resolution and quality presets reveals where the limits actually lie. For a game of this genre, the goal is typically a locked, fluid frame rate, and the numbers here show that achieving that is largely a matter of choosing the right compromises.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows make the choice of preset straightforward depending on your display. At 1920x1080, the Ultra preset delivers an average of 148.8 FPS, which is more than sufficient for a smooth experience on a standard 60Hz or even 144Hz monitor. However, the jump from High to Ultra is costly, dropping from 154.2 FPS to 148.8 FPS, a relatively small penalty for the extra visual fidelity. The Medium preset at 245.2 FPS and Low at 307 FPS are far beyond what any standard display can show, making them pointless for this hardware unless you are chasing extremely high refresh rates. For 2560x1440, the High preset at 111.5 FPS is the sweet spot for a 100Hz+ panel, while Ultra at 107.4 FPS is still playable but begins to show the GPU working harder. The real decision point is at 3840x2160. Here, High yields 72.3 FPS and Ultra drops to 69 FPS, both hovering near the 60-75Hz range. Given that the jump from Medium to High at 4K is a significant 40.9 FPS loss (from 113.2 to 72.3), the Medium preset is the highest you should consider for a locked 60+ FPS experience at that resolution. The data strongly suggests that High is the optimal preset for 1080p and 1440p, while Medium is the pragmatic choice for 4K.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14600K is a 14-core, 20-thread processor with a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz. Its benchmark scores are substantial, including a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 32881 and a single-core score of 4642, placing it in the 93rd percentile of all CPUs. In the context of Inside, a game that is not typically CPU-intensive, this processor is effectively a non-factor. The measured FPS at 1920x1080 Low being 307 FPS, versus 148.8 FPS at Ultra, shows that the frame rate is being dictated by the GPU and the settings, not the CPU's ability to feed the graphics card. The data indicates that even the most demanding scenes in this puzzle platformer would not stress the i5-14600K's architecture. Its nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, scores nearly identically with a deltaPct of 0.2%, meaning that swapping CPUs would yield no measurable difference in this game's frame rates. The processor's high single-thread performance, as evidenced by its Geekbench single-core score of 2803, ensures that the game's logic and physics calculations are handled with plenty of headroom, leaving the GPU as the sole arbiter of performance.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, with its 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus and a bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s, is the component that actually determines the experience in Inside. Its base clock of 1605 MHz and boost clock of 1770 MHz, combined with 2560 shading units, provide a solid foundation for a game with simple geometry but potentially complex lighting. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1651 and a Passmark G3D score of 18169 place it in the 65th percentile of all GPUs, showing it is a mid-range performer by today's standards. The data clearly shows the GPU is the limiting factor at higher resolutions. At 3840x2160, the average FPS drops from 142 at Low to 113.2 at Medium and then to 72.3 at High, illustrating a steep curve as the render load increases. The 8 GB VRAM is not a concern here, as the game's art style does not require vast texture pools, but the raw compute power of the TU104 chip is what holds back 4K performance. Compared to its nearest rival, the RTX 4060 Mobile, which is 2.3% faster in average benchmark score, the desktop RTX 2070 SUPER holds its own, but the data shows that this GPU is best utilized at 1080p and 1440p for high refresh rates, rather than being pushed to its limits at 4K.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the Intel Core i5-14600K and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER ranks 971 out of 1671 tested combos for Inside. This places it in the lower-middle portion of the database, which is surprising given the individual components' performance. The CPU is in the top 7% of all processors, and the GPU is in the top 35%, but the pairing's rank suggests that many other combinations with stronger GPUs or more balanced pairings achieve higher frame rates. The rank of 971 out of 1671 indicates that while this system is capable, it is not optimized for this specific title. The bottleneck is clearly the GPU, as the CPU's high percentile score does not translate into a higher combo rank when paired with a mid-range graphics card. In the context of the benchmark database, this combo is a workhorse for general gaming, but for a game like Inside, where the visual demands are moderate, the GPU's limitations at 4K and the diminishing returns of the CPU's power mean it does not stand out among the tested configurations. The data suggests that for a better rank, a more powerful GPU would be necessary, as the i5-14600K has ample headroom to support a faster graphics card.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is stark and tells a clear story about the limiting component. At 1920x1080 Ultra, the combo averages 148.8 FPS. Moving to 2560x1440 Ultra, the average falls to 107.4 FPS, a 27.8% reduction. At 3840x2160 Ultra, the average plummets to 69 FPS, a 53.6% reduction from the 1080p figure. This scaling is almost perfectly linear with the pixel count increase, which is the hallmark of a GPU-bound scenario. If the CPU were the limiting factor, the FPS would remain relatively flat across resolutions, as the CPU's workload does not change with resolution. Instead, the data shows that the RTX 2070 SUPER is working progressively harder to fill the extra pixels. The same trend is visible at High settings: 154.2 FPS at 1080p, 111.5 FPS at 1440p, and 72.3 FPS at 4K. The only exception is Low settings, where the FPS at 4K (142 FPS) is still high enough to suggest that the CPU is capable of pushing far beyond what the GPU can render at higher quality settings. This confirms that the i5-14600K is not a bottleneck at any resolution, and the RTX 2070 SUPER is the sole component governing the frame rate as resolution scales.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured data provides a clear picture of performance across all tested configurations.

At 1920x1080, the average FPS is as follows: Low settings yield 307 FPS, Medium yields 245.2 FPS, High yields 154.2 FPS, and Ultra yields 148.8 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium is 61.8 FPS, while the gap between Medium and High is a massive 91 FPS, indicating a significant jump in rendering complexity. The difference between High and Ultra is a modest 5.4 FPS, making High the most efficient preset for most users.

At 2560x1440, the averages are: Low at 220.9 FPS, Medium at 179.7 FPS, High at 111.5 FPS, and Ultra at 107.4 FPS. The drop from Medium to High is 68.2 FPS, again showing the steep cost of higher quality. The difference between High and Ultra shrinks to just 4.1 FPS, reinforcing that Ultra offers little benefit over High at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the averages are: Low at 142 FPS, Medium at 113.2 FPS, High at 72.3 FPS, and Ultra at 69 FPS. The drop from Medium to High is 40.9 FPS, which is the largest relative penalty across all resolutions. This indicates that the GPU is struggling to maintain high frame rates at 4K with more demanding settings. The difference between High and Ultra is only 3.3 FPS, making Ultra a poor trade-off at this resolution. The data overall shows that the RTX 2070 SUPER is best paired with a 1080p or 1440p display, where it can deliver high or ultra settings at very playable frame rates, while 4K is only viable with Low or Medium settings for a smooth experience.