Inside

The Intel Core i7-12700K and AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT combination delivers a thoroughly capable experience in Inside, a Puzzle Platformer from 2016. The data shows this pairing produces high frame rates across all tested resolutions and settings, with the CPU’s robust multi-threading and high clock speeds ensuring that the more demanding GPU settings are never starved for data. This combo ranks in the 728th position out of 1671 tested combinations, placing it in the upper-middle tier of the database’s tested configurations.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700K is a 12-core, 20-thread processor based on the Alder Lake architecture, built on Intel’s 10 nm process. It operates with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz, which are substantial figures for a desktop part. The CPU’s cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 1.25 MB of L2 per core, and a shared 25 MB L3 cache. This configuration provides high single-thread performance, as evidenced by a 3dmark single-thread score of 1043 and a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4128.

In the context of Inside, a game that primarily relies on physics and logic for its puzzle-platforming mechanics, the processor’s strong single-core performance is crucial. The benchmark results indicate that the CPU does not bottleneck the GPU at any point. For example, the Passmark single-thread score of 4013 and the Geekbench single-core score of 2561 highlight its capability to handle the game’s main thread efficiently. The multi-threaded performance is also robust, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 29241 and a 3dmark max-threads score of 9979, ensuring that any background tasks or engine overhead are managed without impacting frame pacing.

The closest rivals in the CPU benchmark database include the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845, which scores an average of 35802 (a -0.3% delta), and the Intel Core i7-13700T with an average score of 35468 (a 0.6% delta). The Core i7-12700K’s average benchmark score is 35684, placing it squarely within this performance band. This indicates that for a game like Inside, which is not heavily multi-threaded, the i7-12700K’s architecture provides ample headroom, allowing the GPU to be the primary determinant of frame rates.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT is the graphics powerhouse in this pairing, featuring 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, delivering a bandwidth of 432.0 GB/s. Its memory clock runs at 2250 MHz (18 Gbps effective), with a base GPU clock of 2150 MHz and a boost clock of 2600 MHz. The card is built on the RDNA 2.0 architecture (Navi 22 chip) and includes 2560 shading units, 160 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. It also houses 40 ray accelerators for hardware-accelerated ray tracing, though Inside does not use this feature.

The GPU’s raw compute power is substantial, with an FP32 throughput of 13.31 TFLOPS and a pixel rate of 166.4 GPixel/s. In the benchmark database, the RX 6750 XT scores an average of 35327, with a Passmark G3D score of 20700 and a 3dmark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 2548. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 5600M (avg score 35264, delta 0.2%) and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 (avg score 35787, delta -1.3%). This proximity in scores suggests that the RX 6750 XT is well-positioned to handle the graphical demands of Inside, which is not graphically intense by modern standards but still benefits from a capable GPU to achieve high refresh rates.

The 12 GB VRAM capacity is more than sufficient for this title, even at 4K Ultra settings. The data shows that the GPU’s memory bandwidth is not a limiting factor, as the frame rates scale consistently with resolution and settings changes. The card’s DirectX 12 Ultimate support ensures compatibility with the game’s rendering pipeline, and its Vulkan 1.4 API support allows for efficient draw call handling.

How This Combo Ranks

In the global database of tested combinations, this specific pairing of the Intel Core i7-12700K and AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT achieves a combo rank of 728 out of 1671 total combinations. This places it in the 56th percentile of all tested systems, indicating that it outperforms a majority of configurations while still having room above it in the hierarchy. The rank is a holistic measure, reflecting the balance between CPU and GPU capabilities.

Given that Inside is a 2016 release with relatively modest system requirements, this combination is overkill for achieving maximum frame rates. The benchmark results show that even at 4K Ultra settings, the combo maintains an average of 75.1 FPS, which is well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. The high CPU performance ensures that there are no frame drops due to physics calculations, while the GPU’s strength allows for high resolution and detail settings to be used freely. This ranking suggests that for this specific game, the pairing is more powerful than necessary, but it does not suffer from any notable imbalance that would cause inefficiencies.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a clear picture of the combo’s performance across different resolutions and settings. At 1920x1080, the lowest resolution tested, the system achieves exceptionally high frame rates. With Low settings, it hits an average of 351.2 FPS, which drops to 285.2 FPS on Medium, 176.7 FPS on High, and 168.5 FPS on Ultra. These numbers indicate that at 1080p, the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU enough data to saturate even high-refresh-rate monitors, though the difference between High and Ultra is minimal (a drop of 8.2 FPS), suggesting a slight shift toward GPU limitation at the highest settings.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates remain very high but show a more pronounced scaling with settings. Low settings produce 250.7 FPS, Medium yields 202.9 FPS, High delivers 125.9 FPS, and Ultra drops to 119.9 FPS. The gap between High and Ultra is smaller here (a 6.0 FPS difference) than the gap between Medium and High (a 77.0 FPS difference), indicating that the GPU’s workload increases significantly when moving from Medium to High, but the Ultra preset adds relatively little overhead.

At 3840x2160, the resolution scaling becomes evident. Low settings average 161.1 FPS, Medium drops to 129.5 FPS, High falls to 77.3 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 75.1 FPS. The difference between High and Ultra at 4K is only 2.2 FPS, showing that the Ultra preset is not heavily demanding beyond High. However, the jump from Medium to High (a 52.2 FPS drop) is substantial, highlighting that the High preset introduces rendering features that significantly impact GPU performance at this resolution.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K shows a clear pattern of GPU-bound behavior. At 1080p Low, the system produces 351.2 FPS, which drops to 250.7 FPS at 1440p (a 28.6% reduction) and further to 161.1 FPS at 4K (a 35.7% reduction from 1440p). This scaling is typical for a GPU that is becoming the limiting factor as pixel count increases. The CPU’s high single-thread performance ensures that it can maintain high frame rates at 1080p, but the GPU’s rendering load grows faster than the CPU’s ability to generate frames.

For the Ultra settings, the scaling is more gradual. At 1080p, the average FPS is 168.5, which drops to 119.9 FPS at 1440p (a 28.8% decrease) and then to 75.1 FPS at 4K (a 37.4% decrease from 1440p). This pattern indicates that the GPU is the primary constraint at higher resolutions, as the CPU has enough headroom to provide consistent frame data. The difference between the Low and Ultra scaling curves is minimal, suggesting that the game’s settings do not drastically alter the balance of load between CPU and GPU.

The data shows that at 4K Ultra, the system still averages 75.1 FPS, which is playable but not at the high refresh rates achievable at lower resolutions. The limiting component at 4K is clearly the GPU, as the CPU’s benchmark scores (e.g., 3dmark single-thread score of 1043) indicate it can easily handle the game’s logic. Conversely, at 1080p Low, the system is likely CPU-limited, as the GPU is not being fully utilized to produce over 350 FPS. This analysis confirms that for Inside, the i7-12700K and RX 6750 XT form a well-balanced pair, with the CPU providing a solid foundation and the GPU delivering scalable visual quality.