Inside

The Intel Core i5-9400 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER delivers a remarkably fluid experience in Inside, a game whose minimalist aesthetic belies its technical demands. Across the measured configurations, the combo exhibits a wide performance envelope, from a peak of 224 FPS at 1080p Low to a still-playable 67.6 FPS at 4K High. The data indicates that this pairing is well-suited for high-refresh-rate displays at standard resolutions, while retaining enough headroom for 4K gaming on less demanding presets.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows reveal a clear hierarchy of visual presets, with the most significant performance cliff occurring between Medium and High settings. At 1080p, the jump from Medium (205.5 FPS) to High (155.1 FPS) represents a 24.5% drop in average frame rate, which is substantial for a game that can otherwise run at triple-digit speeds. The step from High to Ultra (144.9 FPS) is comparatively minor at 6.6%. This pattern persists across resolutions, suggesting that the High preset introduces a specific rendering feature that is disproportionately expensive relative to its visual impact.

For users prioritizing frame rate, the Medium preset offers the best balance of visual fidelity and speed. At 1440p, Medium maintains 178 FPS, which is 63% faster than High (109.2 FPS) and only 11.7% slower than Low (201.6 FPS). This makes Medium the logical choice for 144Hz monitors at 1440p, as it comfortably exceeds the refresh rate threshold while providing a richer visual presentation than Low.

At 4K, the situation changes drastically. The High preset drops to 67.6 FPS, which is just above the 60 FPS target but leaves little margin for demanding scenes. The Ultra preset at 4K (67.8 FPS) performs nearly identically to High, indicating that the rendering bottleneck shifts to the GPU's raw compute capabilities rather than specific settings toggles. For 4K users, the Medium preset (111.1 FPS) is the clear recommendation, as it doubles the frame rate of High while still delivering a detailed image. The Low preset at 4K (141.1 FPS) is available for those who prioritize smoothness above all else.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER is the dominant component in this pairing, and its specifications explain the observed scaling. The GPU features 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s. For a game like Inside, which uses a muted color palette and relatively simple textures, the 8 GB frame buffer is ample at all tested resolutions. The absence of memory-related stutters in the data, even at 4K Ultra, indicates that the 448.0 GB/s bandwidth is sufficient for the game's asset streaming.

The GPU's clock behavior is notable: a base clock of 1605 MHz and a boost clock of 1770 MHz. The relatively small boost delta of 165 MHz suggests that the card operates near its thermal and power limits under sustained load, which is typical for a 215 W TDP design. The measured FPS results align with the GPU's theoretical throughput. The FP32 compute rating of 9.062 TFLOPS and texture rate of 283.2 GTexel/s provide the raw horsepower needed to push the game's simple geometry and lighting effects at high frame rates.

The RTX 2070 SUPER's position in the broader GPU landscape is confirmed by its benchmark percentile of 65 vs. all GPUs. Its average benchmark score of 22206 places it within a tight cluster of rivals: the NVIDIA RTX A400 is 0.5% faster, the GeForce GTX TITAN Z is 0.9% slower, and the RTX 4060 Mobile is 2.3% faster. This parity is reflected in the game's measured FPS, which show the card delivering consistent performance across resolutions without any anomalous dips that would suggest driver or architectural inefficiencies.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic GPU-bound profile. At High settings, the average FPS drops from 155.1 at 1080p to 109.2 at 1440p (a 29.6% reduction), and then to 67.6 at 4K (a further 38.1% reduction). This compounding decline is steeper than linear scaling with pixel count, which indicates that the game's rendering pipeline has non-trivial overhead at higher resolutions, likely related to fill-rate operations and memory latency.

The Low preset shows the same pattern but with higher absolute values: 224 FPS at 1080p, 201.6 at 1440p (10% lower), and 141.1 at 4K (30% lower). The smaller relative drop at 1440p for Low settings suggests that the CPU is beginning to play a larger role at lower graphical loads. The 1080p Low result of 224 FPS is likely approaching the practical frame rate ceiling for the Intel Core i5-9400's six cores, as the GPU has ample headroom at these settings.

The Medium preset exhibits an interesting anomaly: the drop from 1080p (205.5 FPS) to 1440p (178 FPS) is only 13.4%, but the subsequent drop to 4K (111.1 FPS) is 37.6%. This non-linear scaling suggests that at 1440p Medium, the system is partially CPU-limited, whereas at 4K Medium, the GPU becomes the sole bottleneck. The Ultra preset mirrors the High preset's scaling closely, with a 28.5% drop from 1080p to 1440p and a 34.6% drop from 1440p to 4K.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-9400 and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER ranks 1107 out of 1671 tested combos for Inside. This places the pairing in the 66th percentile of all combinations, which is consistent with the GPU's individual rank of 65th percentile vs. all GPUs. The CPU's rank of 50th percentile vs. all CPUs is notably lower, suggesting that the system's overall performance is lifted by the GPU's strength while being partially constrained by the processor.

The rank of 1107 indicates that nearly two-thirds of the tested combos outperform this pairing in Inside. This is not a damning assessment, as the measured FPS are generally high, but it does contextualize the hardware's position. The nearest rival combos in the database would likely feature similar GPUs paired with stronger CPUs, which would close the gap at lower resolutions where the CPU becomes more relevant. At 4K, however, the combo's rank likely improves relative to its overall position, as the GPU-bound workload minimizes the CPU's contribution.

The deltaPct values for the GPU's nearest rivals are telling: the RTX 2070 SUPER is within 2.5% of the AMD Radeon RX 5700 (which is slower) and within 2.3% of the RTX 4060 Mobile (which is faster). This tight clustering suggests that the combo's rank in Inside is highly sensitive to the specific game's optimization, and small differences in GPU architecture can shift the ranking by dozens of positions.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 provides six physical cores and six threads, with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.10 GHz. In Inside, a game that is primarily GPU-bound at higher presets, the CPU's role is secondary but not negligible. The 1080p Low result of 224 FPS is the clearest evidence of CPU involvement, as this frame rate is likely near the maximum achievable with this processor's single-thread performance.

The CPU's benchmark scores contextualize its capabilities. In Cinebench R23, it scores 7969 multi-core and 1125 single-core. The single-core score is particularly relevant for Inside, as puzzle platformers often rely on a dominant game thread for physics and game logic. The boost clock of 4.10 GHz provides sufficient single-thread headroom to keep up with the GPU at lower resolutions, but the 1080p High result of 155.1 FPS suggests that the CPU is not the limiting factor at this preset.

The CPU's average benchmark score of 2305 places it in a narrow band of rivals: the Intel Core i3-10305 is 0.2% faster, the Core i3-1125G4 is 0.2% faster, and the Xeon E-2134 is 0.4% faster. The only slower rival is the Core i7-8809G at 0.6% slower. This tight clustering indicates that the i5-9400's performance is well understood, and its 50th percentile rank vs. all CPUs reflects its position as a mid-range part.

In the context of Inside, the CPU's 6 cores and 6 threads are sufficient to feed the RTX 2070 SUPER at 4K, where the GPU is the clear bottleneck. The 42.7 GB/s memory bandwidth and dual-channel DDR4 support provide adequate data throughput for the game's assets, though the 9 MB shared L3 cache is modest by modern standards. The data shows that the CPU's influence is most pronounced at 1080p Low, where the 224 FPS result likely represents the system's maximum frame rate ceiling. For most users playing at 1440p or 4K, the CPU will not be the primary constraint, and the combo's rank of 1107 of 1671 is a fair representation of its overall balance.