Inside

The Intel Core i7-12700K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 delivers a highly playable experience in Inside, a puzzle platformer from 2016. The measured data shows this combination is capable of high frame rates across most settings and resolutions, though the Ultra preset at 4K begins to strain the system. This analysis breaks down the measured FPS results, the roles of the CPU and GPU, and how this specific combo ranks against other tested configurations.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured average FPS rows, the Medium preset offers the most balanced experience for this hardware combination. At 1920x1080, Medium delivers an average of 185.9 FPS, which is a significant jump from the High preset's 114.4 FPS. The difference between Medium and Ultra at 1080p is also notable, with Ultra dropping to 108.1 FPS, making Medium the clear sweet spot for high refresh rate displays.

For 2560x1440, the Medium preset remains the strongest recommendation, producing 130.8 FPS on average. This is comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold and provides substantial headroom for demanding scenes. High at 1440p drops to 81.8 FPS, while Ultra falls to 79.5 FPS, both of which are still playable but less ideal for competitive or fast-paced sequences. Low at 1440p pushes the frame rate to 164.8 FPS, but the visual compromise is generally unnecessary given the strong Medium performance.

At 3840x2160, the situation changes. The Medium preset yields 81.3 FPS, which is excellent for 4K gaming, but High and Ultra drop to 49.7 FPS and 47.1 FPS respectively. The Low preset at 4K produces 106.1 FPS, indicating that the GPU is the limiting factor at this resolution. For 4K, Medium is the optimal choice, as it maintains a smooth frame rate while preserving visual quality. The data clearly points to Medium as the best overall setting for this combo, offering a substantial performance boost over High and Ultra without the visual quality loss associated with Low.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 is built on the Pascal architecture with a 16 nm process node and features 8 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 256.3 GB/s. Its base clock runs at 1506 MHz with a boost clock of 1683 MHz. The card's memory operates at 2002 MHz with an 8 Gbps effective data rate. The GPU has 1920 shading units, 120 texture mapping units, and 64 render output units, with a pixel rate of 107.7 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 202.0 GTexel/s.

In Inside, the GPU's role is heavily tied to resolution and settings. The performance scaling from the measured data shows a clear pattern: as resolution increases, the average FPS drops consistently across all settings. At 1080p Low, the GTX 1070 produces 228.3 FPS, but at 4K Low, this falls to 106.1 FPS. This 4K result is still well above playable thresholds, but the gap between Low and Medium at 4K (106.1 FPS vs 81.3 FPS) suggests the GPU's memory bandwidth and pixel throughput are being taxed. The GTX 1070's 8 GB VRAM is sufficient for this game, as no memory-related stutters are indicated in the data. The GPU's overall benchmark percentile of 51 places it in the mid-range of all GPUs, and its average benchmark score of 12331 aligns closely with rivals like the NVIDIA Quadro K4200 (0.7% higher) and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER (1.4% lower).

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i7-12700K and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 ranks 1419 out of 1671 tested combos in Inside, placing it in the bottom 15% of configurations. This low ranking is primarily due to the GPU's age relative to modern hardware, despite the CPU's strong performance. The i7-12700K is a high-end processor with a percentile rank of 89 among all CPUs and an average benchmark score of 35684, but the GTX 1070's percentile of 51 holds the combo back.

The CPU's nearest rivals in benchmark scores include the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845 (0.3% faster), the Intel Core i5-14500HX (0.7% faster), and the Intel Core i7-13800H (0.8% faster), while the Intel Core i7-13700T is 0.6% slower. These are all close matches, indicating the i7-12700K is not a bottleneck. However, the GPU's rivals, such as the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 880M (1.3% slower) and the NVIDIA Tesla K20Xm (1.7% slower), are also close, suggesting the GTX 1070 is performing as expected. The combo's low rank in-game is a direct result of this pairing's overall capability, which is sufficient for Inside but not competitive with modern high-end systems.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average FPS ranges from 108.1 on Ultra to 228.3 on Low. Medium produces 185.9 FPS, and High delivers 114.4 FPS. The scaling from Low to Ultra shows a 120.2 FPS drop, with the most significant reduction occurring from Low to Medium (42.4 FPS) and from High to Ultra (6.3 FPS). This indicates that the Ultra preset introduces settings that heavily tax the GPU without providing a proportional visual benefit.

Moving to 2560x1440, the average FPS values are 164.8 for Low, 130.8 for Medium, 81.8 for High, and 79.5 for Ultra. The delta between Low and Medium is 34 FPS, while High to Ultra is only 2.3 FPS. At this resolution, the GPU begins to show its limits, particularly with the High and Ultra presets, which both fall below the 82 FPS mark. The jump from Medium to High is a substantial 49 FPS drop, highlighting that the High preset is significantly more demanding.

At 3840x2160, the average FPS values are 106.1 for Low, 81.3 for Medium, 49.7 for High, and 47.1 for Ultra. The difference between High and Ultra is minimal at 2.6 FPS, but the gap from Medium to High is 31.6 FPS. This data suggests that the High preset at 4K is nearly as demanding as Ultra, and the GPU struggles to maintain 50 FPS on both settings. The Low preset at 4K is the only setting that provides a comfortable margin above 100 FPS, but it sacrifices significant visual detail.

Resolution Scaling

The performance drop from 1080p to 4K is substantial across all settings, indicating that the GPU is the primary limiting component. At Low settings, the average FPS falls from 228.3 at 1080p to 164.8 at 1440p (a 63.5 FPS drop) and then to 106.1 at 4K (a further 58.7 FPS drop). This linear scaling with pixel count suggests that the GTX 1070's raw compute and memory bandwidth are being fully utilized.

For the Medium preset, the drop from 1080p (185.9 FPS) to 1440p (130.8 FPS) is 55.1 FPS, and the drop to 4K (81.3 FPS) is another 49.5 FPS. The High preset shows a more pronounced decline: from 114.4 FPS at 1080p to 81.8 FPS at 1440p (a 32.6 FPS drop) and then to 49.7 FPS at 4K (a 32.1 FPS drop). The Ultra preset follows a similar pattern, with 108.1 FPS at 1080p, 79.5 FPS at 1440p, and 47.1 FPS at 4K.

The consistent scaling across all presets indicates that resolution is the dominant factor in performance, not the CPU. If the i7-12700K were the bottleneck, we would expect to see smaller differences between resolutions at lower settings, but the data shows a uniform drop that aligns with pixel count. This confirms that the GTX 1070 is the limiting component, particularly at 4K where even the Low preset cannot maintain the frame rates seen at 1080p.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700K is a 12-core, 20-thread processor based on the Alder Lake architecture, with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz. It has 25 MB of shared L3 cache, and its benchmark scores are strong, including a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 29241 and a single-core score of 4128. The CPU's average benchmark score of 35684 places it in the 89th percentile of all CPUs, and its nearest rivals are within a 1% margin, indicating consistent performance.

In Inside, the CPU's role is minimal for this pairing, as the game is not heavily multithreaded. The measured FPS at 1080p Low (228.3 FPS) shows that the CPU can feed the GPU efficiently, but the GPU's limitations become apparent at higher resolutions. The CPU's 12 cores and 20 threads are far more than required for this puzzle platformer, and the data shows no sign of CPU bottlenecking even at 1080p with the Low preset. The CPU's single-thread performance, reflected in its 3DMark single-thread score of 1043, is more than sufficient. The i7-12700K's nearest rivals, such as the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845 and the Intel Core i7-13700T, show that this CPU is well-balanced for gaming, but the GTX 1070 ultimately defines the frame rates in this combo. The CPU's role is to provide a stable foundation, which it does without issue, allowing the GPU to operate at its full potential.