Inside

The Intel Core i5-9400 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti delivers a benchmark profile that is almost entirely GPU-bound at higher resolutions, yet reveals a modest CPU ceiling at 1080p. The data shows a performance curve where the gap between Low and Ultra settings narrows significantly as resolution climbs, indicating that the rendering load shifts from the processor to the graphics card. This analysis breaks down the measured frame rates, contextualizes the combo’s standing among 1,671 tested configurations, and interprets the GPU’s role in this specific puzzle platformer.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data for Inside shows a clear and predictable drop in performance as resolution increases from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160, but the magnitude of that drop varies heavily with the graphics preset. At Low settings, the average frame rate falls from 223.4 FPS at 1080p to 197.8 FPS at 1440p, and then to 170.1 FPS at 4K. This represents a 23.8% reduction from 1080p to 4K, which is relatively modest and suggests that even at the highest resolution, the RTX 4070 Ti is not being fully taxed by the low-detail workload.

The scaling pattern becomes more pronounced at higher settings, where the GPU is pushed harder. With High settings, the average FPS drops from 169.7 at 1080p to 151.2 at 1440p, and then to 123.0 at 4K—a 27.5% decline from 1080p to 4K. For Ultra settings, the drop is steeper: from 170.7 at 1080p to 150.9 at 1440p, and finally to 117.6 at 4K, which is a 31.1% reduction. This trend is the signature of a system that is increasingly GPU-limited; as the resolution grows, the pixel fill rate and shading demands overwhelm the GPU’s compute resources, while the CPU’s fixed workload becomes less relevant.

At 1080p, the difference between Low and Ultra settings is only 52.7 FPS (223.4 vs. 170.7), which is a 23.6% performance penalty for maxing out the visuals. However, at 4K, the same settings gap shrinks to 52.5 FPS (170.1 vs. 117.6), but the percentage penalty grows to 30.9%. This indicates that the RTX 4070 Ti’s raw throughput is the limiting factor at 4K, while the i5-9400’s six cores can still feed frames at lower resolutions without bottlenecking. The data confirms that for a game like Inside, which is not computationally heavy on the CPU side, the GPU is the dominant component in all scenarios, but its headroom is much larger at 1080p than at 4K.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i5-9400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti combination holds position 847 out of 1,671 tested combos in Inside, placing it in the 49.3rd percentile of all configurations. This is a mid-pack ranking, which is surprising given the GPU’s high percentile standing. The RTX 4070 Ti itself ranks in the 85th percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 44,900, yet the combo’s overall rank is dragged down by the CPU’s more modest 50th percentile placement.

The CPU’s average benchmark score of 2,305 is nearly identical to its nearest rivals, which explains why the combo does not climb higher. The Intel Core i3-10305 scores 2,300 (a 0.2% delta), the Intel Core i3-1125G4 scores 2,299 (also 0.2% delta), and the Intel Xeon E-2134 scores 2,295 (0.4% delta). The only rival that beats the i5-9400 is the Intel Core i7-8809G, which scores 2,319, a 0.6% advantage. These deltas are minuscule, indicating that the i5-9400 is statistically tied with its direct competitors in synthetic CPU tests.

In the context of Inside, this mid-pack ranking suggests that the game does not heavily reward CPU single-thread performance or core counts beyond a certain threshold. The i5-9400’s six cores and six threads, with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and boost of 4.10 GHz, are sufficient to drive the RTX 4070 Ti at most settings, but the combo’s rank would likely improve if the CPU were faster. The data does not show any frame rate data for other combos, so the exact impact of the CPU on the rank cannot be isolated, but the percentile gap between the CPU (50th) and GPU (85th) strongly suggests that the processor is the weaker link in this pairing for this title.

FAQ

Q: What is the average frame rate at 4K with Ultra settings for this combo?

A: The measured average FPS at 3840x2160 with Ultra settings is 117.6 frames per second.

Q: How does the i5-9400 compare to the Intel Core i7-8809G in average benchmark score?

A: The i5-9400 scores 2,305, while the i7-8809G scores 2,319, giving the i7-8809G a 0.6% higher average score.

Q: Is the RTX 4070 Ti more likely to bottleneck the system at 1080p or 4K in this game?

A: The data shows a larger percentage FPS drop from Low to Ultra at 4K (30.9%) compared to 1080p (23.6%), indicating that the GPU becomes the limiting factor more severely at higher resolutions.

Q: What is the difference in average FPS between Low and High settings at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, Low settings produce 197.8 FPS, while High settings produce 151.2 FPS, a difference of 46.6 frames per second.

Q: What is the RTX 4070 Ti’s memory configuration?

A: The GPU features 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus, providing 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth.

Q: What is the combo’s exact rank out of all tested combinations?

A: The combo ranks 847th out of 1,671 tested combos in Inside.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its highest raw frame rates. Low settings average 223.4 FPS, which drops to 207.5 FPS at Medium settings, 169.7 FPS at High, and 170.7 FPS at Ultra. The near-identical scores for High and Ultra (169.7 vs. 170.7) suggest that the game’s Ultra preset adds little additional GPU load over High at this resolution, likely due to the CPU’s frame submission rate capping performance. The 52.7 FPS gap between Low and Ultra is substantial, but all presets remain far above display refresh rate thresholds.

Moving to 2560x1440, the average FPS scales down across all settings. Low averages 197.8 FPS, Medium averages 182.6 FPS, High averages 151.2 FPS, and Ultra averages 150.9 FPS. The difference between High and Ultra is negligible (0.3 FPS), reinforcing the pattern seen at 1080p where those two presets behave identically. The drop from Low to Ultra is 46.9 FPS, which is a 23.7% reduction, indicating that the GPU is still managing the resolution increase well but starting to feel the pressure from higher pixel counts.

At 3840x2160, the performance hit is most evident. Low settings still average 170.1 FPS, which is respectable, but Medium falls to 156.4 FPS, High to 123.0 FPS, and Ultra to 117.6 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra widens to 52.5 FPS, and the percentage penalty grows to 30.9%. The 4K results show that the RTX 4070 Ti’s 40.09 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 208.8 GPixel/s pixel rate are being fully utilized, while the i5-9400’s 2.90 GHz base clock is no longer the bottleneck. The data consistently shows that High and Ultra settings produce almost identical results at every resolution, suggesting that Inside’s Ultra preset does not introduce meaningful additional geometry or shading work beyond High.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is the primary driver of frame rates in this configuration, and its specifications align with the measured performance trends. The GPU is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture using a 5 nm process at TSMC, with 35,800 million transistors on a 294 mm² die. It operates at a base clock of 2310 MHz and a boost clock of 2610 MHz, which are high frequencies that contribute to its strong 4K performance. The memory subsystem features 12 GB of GDDR6X on a 192-bit bus, delivering 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth—sufficient for a game like Inside that does not demand large texture pools.

The GPU’s compute resources are extensive: 7,680 shading units, 240 texture mapping units, and 80 raster output units. These translate to a pixel rate of 208.8 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 626.4 GTexel/s, which explain why the card can maintain 123 FPS at 4K High settings. The FP32 performance of 40.09 TFLOPS ensures that even the most complex shader workloads in this puzzle platformer are handled with ease. The RTX 4070 Ti also includes 60 RT cores and 240 tensor cores, though Inside does not utilize ray tracing or DLSS, so these features are irrelevant to the measured results.

The GPU’s average benchmark score of 44,900 places it in the 85th percentile of all GPUs, and its nearest rivals—the RTX 5090 Mobile (45,152, -0.6% delta), Intel Arc A730M (45,592, -1.5%), AMD Radeon Pro 580 (44,195, +1.6%), and AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT (45,642, -1.6%)—are all within a 3.2% band. This indicates that the RTX 4070 Ti is a consistently strong performer, and the measured FPS in Inside reflects that. However, the GPU’s role is constrained by the CPU in lower-resolution scenarios; the 1080p results show only a 23.6% penalty from Low to Ultra, which is less than the 30.9% penalty at 4K, proving that the i5-9400 is holding back the GPU’s full potential at 1080p. The boost clock of 2610 MHz is the key enabler for the high frame rates, and the 285 W TDP is justified by the sustained performance across all resolutions.