Inside

The Intel Core i5-14600KF paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 delivers a masterclass in high-refresh-rate gaming in Inside, a puzzle platformer that is far more demanding on the GPU than its minimalist art style suggests. The measured frame rates are extraordinarily high across all settings, but the scaling behavior reveals a clear narrative about where the bottleneck lies. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo produces 390.3 FPS, which drops to 301.3 FPS at High and 295.6 FPS at Ultra—a relatively narrow band that suggests the CPU is nearing its practical limit for this title. Moving to 1440p, the Low preset yields 352.8 FPS, while Ultra still manages 224.9 FPS. The story changes dramatically at 4K: Low settings deliver 295 FPS, Medium drops to 232.8 FPS, High settles at 145.6 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 138.3 FPS. The scaling from 1080p to 4K at Ultra represents a 53% reduction in frame rate (295.6 to 138.3 FPS), which is a massive drop that points squarely at the GPU as the primary limiting component at higher resolutions. However, at 1080p and even 1440p, the differences between Low and Ultra are relatively modest (e.g., 390.3 vs. 295.6 FPS at 1080p), indicating that the CPU's 14 cores and 20 threads are doing heavy lifting to keep the frame pipeline fed. This is not a typical scenario where a top-tier GPU is wasted; instead, the data shows a balanced pairing that only becomes GPU-bound when pixel count is maximized.

Resolution Scaling

The resolution scaling curve for this combo in Inside is textbook for a high-end pairing, but the shape of that curve tells a nuanced story. From 1080p Low (390.3 FPS) to 1440p Low (352.8 FPS), the drop is a relatively gentle 9.6%, suggesting that at these settings the CPU is still the primary driver. The jump from 1440p Low to 4K Low (295 FPS) is a steeper 16.4% decline, which begins to show the GPU taking over. At High settings, the scaling is more pronounced: 1080p High produces 301.3 FPS, 1440p High falls to 231.6 FPS (a 23.1% drop), and 4K High collapses to 145.6 FPS (a 37.1% drop from 1440p). This accelerating decline from 1440p to 4K is the signature of a GPU-limited scenario. The Ultra preset amplifies this effect further: 1080p Ultra (295.6 FPS) to 1440p Ultra (224.9 FPS) is a 23.9% reduction, while 1440p Ultra to 4K Ultra (138.3 FPS) is a steeper 38.5% reduction. The data makes it clear that the RTX 4090's 24 GB of GDDR6X memory and 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth are being pushed hard at 4K, while the i5-14600KF's strong single-thread performance (Geekbench single-core score of 2778) keeps frame times consistent at lower resolutions. For a game like Inside, which is not a state-of-the-art 3D renderer, the fact that 4K Ultra still yields 138.3 FPS is remarkable, but the scaling pattern shows that anyone targeting 4K with this combo will see the GPU become the ceiling, whereas 1080p and 1440p are firmly CPU-bound territories.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is the undisputed star of this pairing, and its specifications align perfectly with the measured results. Built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with a 5 nm process from TSMC, this GPU packs 16,384 shading units, 512 texture mapping units, and 176 raster output pipelines. Its boost clock of 2520 MHz, combined with 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus, delivers 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth. These numbers directly explain the high frame rates: the 16384 shading units provide massive parallel compute for pixel shading, while the 512 TMUs handle texture filtering efficiently even at 4K. The GPU's pixel rate of 443.5 GPixel/s and texture rate of 1,290.2 GTexel/s are more than sufficient for Inside's side-scrolling visuals, yet the measured FPS at 4K Ultra (138.3 FPS) shows that even this monster GPU is not idle. The FP32 performance of 82.58 TFLOPS means the GPU is capable of far more than this game demands, but the resolution scaling data indicates that memory bandwidth and ROP throughput become limiting factors at 4K. The GPU's end-of-life production status and its predecessor-successor lineage (GeForce 30 to GeForce 50) suggest this is a mature product, but its benchmark results—like a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 9223 and a Passmark G3D score of 38194—place it in the 91st percentile of all GPUs. In Inside, the RTX 4090's role is to ensure that frame rates never dip below 138 FPS even at maximum settings, which confirms its raw horsepower, but the VRAM capacity of 24 GB is overkill for a game of this visual complexity—the bottleneck at 4K is more about shading rate and memory throughput than capacity.

How This Combo Ranks

In the grand scheme of tested hardware combinations, this pairing of the Intel Core i5-14600KF and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 achieves a combo rank of 26 out of 1,671 tested combos in Inside. This places it in the top 1.6% of all configurations, which is expected given the caliber of both components. The CPU itself holds the 93rd percentile among all processors, with an average benchmark score of 49,367. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i5-14600K (avg score 49,166, deltaPct 0.4), meaning the non-K variant is essentially a 0.4% slower sibling, and the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (avg score 49,062, deltaPct 0.6), which trails by 0.6%. The GPU, meanwhile, sits in the 91st percentile of all graphics cards with an average score of 66,473, and its nearest rival is the NVIDIA Tesla T4 (avg score 66,733, deltaPct -0.4), which is a 0.4% margin in the RTX 4090's favor. The ranking of 26th out of 1,671 combos is impressive, but it is not the absolute top, suggesting that a few combinations with even more powerful CPUs (or more optimized pairings) edge it out. Given that the RTX 4090 is end-of-life and the i5-14600KF is a high-end but not flagship CPU, this rank reflects a sweet spot of performance where the CPU's 14 cores and 20 threads (boost clock 5.30 GHz) complement the GPU's massive compute array. The deltaPct values from the nearest rivals show that the CPU is already operating at the edge of its performance class, with margins of less than 1% separating it from its closest competitors, meaning that the combo's rank is largely driven by the GPU's dominance rather than any CPU advantage.

FAQ

*Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in Inside?*

A: Based on the measured FPS, 1440p provides the best balance of visual fidelity and performance, with High settings delivering 231.6 FPS and Ultra still hitting 224.9 FPS. At 4K, the frame rates are still high (145.6 FPS at High), but the drop from 1440p is significant, making 1440p the sweet spot for high refresh rates.

Q: Does the RTX 4090 bottleneck the i5-14600KF at 1080p?

A: No, the data suggests the opposite. At 1080p Low, the combo produces 390.3 FPS, which is exceptionally high, but the difference between Low and Ultra (390.3 vs. 295.6 FPS) is only 24%, indicating that the CPU is limiting performance at this resolution, not the GPU.

Q: How does the i5-14600KF compare to its closest rivals?

A: The i5-14600KF has an average benchmark score of 49,367, which is 0.4% higher than the Intel Core i5-14600K (49,166) and 0.6% higher than the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (49,062). It is 1.4% ahead of the Intel Xeon Gold 5318H (48,698).

Q: Is 4K Ultra playable with this hardware?

A: Yes, 4K Ultra yields an average of 138.3 FPS, which is well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. Even 4K High produces 145.6 FPS, so this combo handles 4K without any issues.

Q: What is the GPU's percentile ranking among all graphics cards?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is in the 91st percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 66,473. Its closest rival is the NVIDIA Tesla T4 (66,733), which is 0.4% behind.

Q: How much faster is the combo at 1080p Low compared to 4K Ultra?

A: At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 390.3 FPS, while 4K Ultra drops to 138.3 FPS. This represents a 64.6% reduction in frame rate when moving from the lowest settings at 1080p to the highest settings at 4K.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data for this combo in Inside is comprehensive, covering three resolutions and four settings presets. At 1920x1080, the average frame rates are as follows: Low settings produce 390.3 FPS, Medium yields 361.6 FPS, High delivers 301.3 FPS, and Ultra reaches 295.6 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra at 1080p is 94.7 FPS, which is a 24.3% reduction—a relatively small penalty for cranking up the settings. Moving to 2560x1440, the numbers are: Low at 352.8 FPS, Medium at 322.5 FPS, High at 231.6 FPS, and Ultra at 224.9 FPS. Here, the difference between Low and Ultra is 127.9 FPS, or 36.3%, showing that the GPU is beginning to assert its influence. At 3840x2160 (4K), the frame rates are: Low at 295 FPS, Medium at 232.8 FPS, High at 145.6 FPS, and Ultra at 138.3 FPS. The Low-to-Ultra delta at 4K is 156.7 FPS, a 53.1% drop, which is the most pronounced scaling in the entire dataset. Across all resolutions, the Medium preset consistently performs closer to Low than to Ultra, indicating that the jump from Medium to High carries a disproportionately large performance cost—at 4K, Medium (232.8 FPS) is 60% faster than High (145.6 FPS). This suggests that the High preset enables certain GPU-intensive effects that disproportionately tax the RTX 4090. The data also shows that the CPU's performance headroom is nearly exhausted at 1080p, as the difference between Low and Ultra is only 94.7 FPS, whereas at 4K the same comparison yields a 156.7 FPS gap. This is the definitive evidence that this combo transitions from CPU-bound to GPU-bound as resolution increases, with the crossover occurring somewhere between 1440p and 4K.