Inside

The Intel Core i7-12700KF paired with the AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT delivers a strong performance profile for Inside, a Puzzle Platformer from 2016. Benchmark data shows this combination is capable of high frame rates across all tested settings and resolutions, with the primary trade-offs occurring at the highest visual presets and 4K resolution.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data indicates that the Medium preset offers the most balanced experience for this hardware combination, particularly at higher resolutions. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset delivers 235.7 FPS, which is more than sufficient for any display, while the jump to High reduces performance to 144.9 FPS. The Ultra preset, at 142.1 FPS, offers only a marginal difference from High at 1080p. The real distinction appears at 2560x1440, where Medium produces 168.9 FPS versus 103.9 FPS on High and 100.8 FPS on Ultra. This indicates that the visual leap from Medium to High is not justified by the significant 65 FPS drop at this resolution. At 3840x2160, Medium maintains a playable 105.6 FPS, while High falls to 64.6 FPS and Ultra to 61.5 FPS.

For users prioritizing a smooth experience, Medium is the optimal choice. It provides a substantial frame rate buffer over the lower-tier presets while avoiding the steep performance cost of High and Ultra. The Low preset, while delivering 294 FPS at 1080p and 209.8 FPS at 1440p, likely compromises the atmospheric visuals that define this title. Given the game's 2016 release date, the visual differences between Medium and High are unlikely to be transformative, making the performance savings of Medium the better trade-off. The data suggests that Ultra is only advisable for users with 1080p displays who demand maximum image quality and can accept the 142.1 FPS result.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT is the primary driver of performance at higher resolutions. This GPU features 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, delivering 280.3 GB/s of bandwidth. The architecture is RDNA 2.0 on a 7 nm process, with a base clock of 2055 MHz and a boost clock of 2635 MHz. The memory operates at 2190 MHz, translating to 17.5 Gbps effective. The card's compute capabilities include 10.79 TFLOPS of FP32 performance, supported by 2048 shading units and 64 ROPs.

The GPU's percentile ranking against all tested GPUs is 72, with an average benchmark score of 29024. Its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks are the AMD Radeon RX 6800M, which scores 29011 (a 0% delta), and the AMD Radeon RX 470, which scores 28996 (a 0.1% delta). This places the RX 6650 XT in a competitive mid-range tier. In Inside, the GPU's limitations become apparent at 4K Ultra, where the frame rate drops to 61.5 FPS. This is a 57.1% reduction from the 1080p Ultra result of 142.1 FPS, indicating that the 8 GB VRAM and memory bandwidth are being taxed at the highest settings and resolution. The relatively small performance gap between High (64.6 FPS) and Ultra (61.5 FPS) at 4K further suggests that the GPU is nearing its architectural limits rather than being constrained by a single bottleneck.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700KF provides ample processing headroom for this title. This CPU features 12 cores and 20 threads, with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz. It is built on the Alder Lake architecture using a 10 nm process. The cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 1.25 MB of L2 per core, and a shared 25 MB L3 cache. The processor supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration.

The CPU's percentile ranking against all CPUs is 89, with an average benchmark score of 35355. Its nearest rivals are the Intel Core i5-14400, which scores 35336 (a 0.1% delta), and the Intel Core i7-13800H, which scores 35416 (a -0.2% delta). The i7-12700KF's strong single-thread performance, evidenced by a Geekbench single-core score of 2526 and a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4091, is well-suited for a game like Inside, which relies heavily on a single main thread for game logic. The multi-threaded capabilities, including a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 28979, ensure that background tasks and any secondary threads do not cause stutters. In the measured data, the CPU does not appear to be a limiting factor at any resolution. The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K follows a pattern consistent with GPU-bound behavior, where the CPU maintains a high minimum performance floor while the GPU's workload increases with pixel count.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i7-12700KF and AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT ranks 1062 out of 1671 tested combos in Inside. This places the system in the 36th percentile of all tested configurations, meaning it outperforms roughly 36% of the database's combinations. This ranking might seem modest given the hardware's individual percentile scores, but it is important to consider the context. The CPU and GPU each score in the 89th and 72nd percentiles respectively, suggesting they are individually strong components. The combo's lower rank in this specific game is likely due to the inclusion of many higher-end graphics cards in the test pool that excel in this particular title.

The measured frame rates indicate that this combo is well above the playability threshold for most users. At 1080p, all presets deliver over 140 FPS, with Low reaching 294 FPS. At 1440p, the system maintains over 100 FPS on all presets. Even at 4K, the Medium preset achieves 105.6 FPS, which is a solid result for a game of this genre. The rank of 1062 reflects the presence of more powerful GPUs in the database, such as those with higher VRAM counts and memory bandwidths, which can push 4K Ultra to higher frame rates. However, this specific pairing demonstrates a well-balanced profile, where the CPU's high single-thread performance complements the GPU's mid-range rasterization power effectively.

Resolution Scaling

The performance scaling across resolutions reveals a clear GPU-bound trend. At 1080p High, the system produces 144.9 FPS. Moving to 1440p High reduces this to 103.9 FPS, a 28.3% drop. The transition to 4K High further reduces the frame rate to 64.6 FPS, a 37.8% drop from 1440p. This pattern indicates that the GPU is the primary limiting component, as the CPU's capabilities are not being challenged by the increasing resolution. The scaling for the Medium preset is similar: 235.7 FPS at 1080p, 168.9 FPS at 1440p, and 105.6 FPS at 4K. The frame rate drops are roughly proportional to the pixel count increase, which is characteristic of a GPU-limited scenario.

The Low preset shows the most extreme scaling, with 294 FPS at 1080p, 209.8 FPS at 1440p, and 130.3 FPS at 4K. This suggests that at Low settings, the GPU is still the bottleneck, but the reduced visual complexity allows for higher absolute frame rates. The data also shows that the gap between presets narrows as resolution increases. At 1080p, the difference between Low and Ultra is 151.9 FPS. At 4K, this gap shrinks to 68.8 FPS. This convergence indicates that at 4K, the GPU's pixel processing throughput becomes the dominant constraint, overwhelming the differences in settings. The 8 GB VRAM and 280.3 GB/s bandwidth of the RX 6650 XT are sufficient for 4K in this game, as evidenced by the playable frame rates, but the architecture's raw compute power limits the highest preset performance.