Inside

The Intel Core i7-12700KF paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 delivers a remarkably fluid experience in Inside, a 2016 Puzzle Platformer that is far more demanding at 4K than its minimalist aesthetic suggests. The benchmark data shows this combination ranks 1863rd out of 3716 tested combos, placing it in the 50th percentile of all systems, yet the measured frame rates indicate this is a pairing that utterly saturates high-refresh displays at nearly every resolution and settings level. The RTX 4060, with its 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, proves sufficient for this title's needs, while the i7-12700KF's 12 cores and 20 threads ensure the CPU never becomes a limiting factor, even at lower resolutions where frame rates climb past 300 FPS.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average frame rate recorded for this combo?

A: The highest average frame rate in the measured data is 333 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings.

Q: How does the RTX 4060 compare to its nearest rival, the AMD Radeon HD 7790?

A: The RTX 4060's average benchmark score is 17639, which is 0.2% lower than the AMD Radeon HD 7790's score of 17666, indicating a statistically negligible performance difference in synthetic benchmarks.

Q: Is the Core i7-12700KF's multi-threaded performance closer to the i7-13700T or the i5-13600T?

A: The i7-12700KF's average benchmark score of 35365 is 0.1% lower than the i7-13700T's 35403, making the i7-13700T the closer rival, though the difference is within a rounding error.

Q: Does the game support high refresh rates at 1440p with Ultra settings?

A: Yes, the data shows an average of 114 FPS at 2560x1440 with Ultra settings, which is above the 100 FPS threshold for high-refresh gaming.

Q: What is the lowest average frame rate recorded across all tested configurations?

A: The lowest average frame rate is 72 FPS, recorded at 3840x2160 resolution with Ultra settings.

Q: How much faster is the 1080p Low setting compared to the 4K Ultra setting?

A: The 1080p Low setting delivers 333 FPS, which is 4.6 times higher than the 72 FPS achieved at 4K Ultra, demonstrating a massive performance scaling range across the settings and resolution spectrum.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture using TSMC's 5 nm process, featuring 18,900 million transistors on a 159 mm² die. Its memory configuration consists of 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus, delivering a bandwidth of 272.0 GB/s with memory clocks running at 2125 MHz (17 Gbps effective). The GPU's base clock is 1830 MHz with a boost clock of 2460 MHz, and it offers 3072 shading units, 96 TMUs, and 48 ROPs. For this game, the 8 GB VRAM capacity is more than adequate, as Inside's visual style relies on stark 2D silhouettes and atmospheric lighting rather than high-resolution textures that would strain memory capacity.

The GPU's performance characteristics change drastically across resolutions. At 1920x1080, the card is clearly not the bottleneck, as frame rates scale from 159 FPS at Ultra to 333 FPS at Low, showing a 109% performance increase from the highest to lowest settings. At 2560x1440, the scaling continues but with a narrower margin: from 114 FPS at Ultra to 239 FPS at Low, a 110% uplift. The most telling data comes at 3840x2160, where the RTX 4060 begins to show its limits — the average frame rate drops to 72 FPS at Ultra, which is exactly half the 144 FPS target for high-refresh 4K monitors. Interestingly, the jump from Medium (120 FPS) to High (75 FPS) at 4K represents a 37.5% performance hit, suggesting that specific High settings impose a significant rendering cost. The GPU's 15.11 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 236.2 GTexel/s texture rate are sufficient to maintain smooth gameplay, but the data clearly indicates that 4K Ultra is the only configuration where this card dips below the 75 FPS threshold.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i7-12700KF and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 achieves a rank of 1863 out of 3716 tested combos in Inside, placing it almost exactly in the middle of the database. This ranking is notable because it suggests that while the individual components are capable, the game's modest system requirements mean that many lower-tier setups can achieve similar frame rates, compressing the performance hierarchy. The CPU's percentile ranking against all processors is 85, meaning it outperforms 85% of CPUs in the database, while the GPU's percentile is 61, indicating it outperforms 61% of all GPUs. This disparity in percentiles highlights that the CPU is a stronger component relative to its peers than the GPU, which is typical for a mid-range graphics card paired with a high-end processor.

The combo's mid-pack ranking in Inside specifically reflects the game's low system demands. With an average of 75 FPS at 4K Ultra, this system still outperforms many combos that cannot maintain playable frame rates at that resolution, but it also does not reach the top tier where 4K 120+ FPS is achievable. The 3716 total combos tested mean that this pairing sits at the 49.9% mark, meaning it is faster than roughly half of all systems tested. Given that the RTX 4060's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks are the AMD Radeon HD 7790, AMD Radeon 780M, and AMD Radeon Pro 560 — all with average scores within 0.7% of each other — the actual in-game performance is driven more by driver optimization and CPU headroom than raw GPU compute power. The i7-12700KF's nearest rival, the i7-13700T, has an average score just 0.1% higher, confirming that this CPU provides near-flagship-level performance for the game's physics and logic calculations.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the RTX 4060 delivers exceptional performance across all settings. Low settings produce an average of 333 FPS, which is the highest recorded frame rate in the entire dataset. Medium settings yield 266 FPS with a minimum of 226 FPS and a maximum of 306 FPS, showing consistent frame pacing. High settings drop to 167 FPS, while Ultra settings maintain 159 FPS. The difference between High and Ultra at 1080p is only 4.8%, suggesting that the Ultra preset does not add significant rendering load over High at this resolution. The performance scaling from Low to Ultra is 52.3%, meaning Ultra delivers just over half the frame rate of Low.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates remain impressively high. Low settings produce 239 FPS, while Medium delivers 192 FPS with a minimum of 163 FPS and a maximum of 220 FPS. High settings sustain 120 FPS, and Ultra drops to 114 FPS. The gap between High and Ultra narrows to 5.0%, similar to the 1080p pattern. Compared to 1080p, the 1440p results show a performance reduction of 28.2% for Low, 27.8% for Medium, 28.1% for High, and 28.3% for Ultra, indicating a consistent resolution scaling factor across all quality presets.

At 3840x2160, the performance drops become more pronounced. Low settings still deliver a playable 150 FPS, which is a 55% reduction from the 1080p Low result. Medium settings produce 120 FPS with a minimum of 102 FPS and a maximum of 138 FPS, showing a tighter frame range than at lower resolutions. High settings fall to 75 FPS, a 37.5% reduction from Medium, which is a much steeper drop than the 1080p or 1440p scaling. Ultra settings bottom out at 72 FPS, which is 4% lower than High. The scaling from Low to Ultra at 4K is 52.0%, nearly identical to the 1080p scaling, but the absolute numbers reveal that 4K Ultra is the only configuration that fails to reach the 75 FPS threshold that many consider the minimum for smooth gameplay.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700KF is a 12-core, 20-thread processor based on the Alder Lake architecture, manufactured on Intel's 10 nm process with a die size of 215 mm². Its base clock is 3.60 GHz with a boost clock of 5.00 GHz, and it features a substantial cache hierarchy: 80 KB of L1 per core, 1.25 MB of L2 per core, and 25 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU's TDP is 125 W, and it supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration, though the memory bandwidth is not specified in the data. The processor's 20 PCIe Gen 4 lanes provide ample bandwidth for the RTX 4060, which uses a PCIe 4.0 x8 interface.

In synthetic benchmarks, the i7-12700KF demonstrates its strengths: a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 28838 and a single-core score of 4071, a Geekbench multicore score of 14367 and single-core of 2255, and a 3DMark max threads score of 9983. These numbers indicate that the CPU is far more powerful than required for Inside, which is a puzzle platformer with relatively simple physics and minimal AI. The CPU's percentile ranking of 85 means it outperforms 85% of all CPUs in the database, and its average benchmark score of 35365 places it within 0.2% of the i7-13700T, confirming its position as a high-end desktop processor.

The data shows that the CPU is not a bottleneck in this game, even at 1080p where frame rates exceed 300 FPS. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 9282 and 2-thread score of 2065 demonstrate strong scaling across thread counts, which is important for games that use multiple threads for rendering and physics. However, the single-thread score of 1043 in 3DMark and 2255 in Geekbench indicate that the CPU's peak single-core performance is adequate for the game's main thread, which typically handles input and game logic. The Passmark single-thread score of 3984 further confirms that the CPU can sustain high clock speeds without thermal throttling, even when boosting to 5.00 GHz. In Inside, the CPU's role is to feed the GPU with draw calls and manage the game's state, and the measured FPS data shows that it does so without limiting frame rates at any resolution or settings combination.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data provides clear guidance for optimizing the Inside experience with this hardware. At 1920x1080, all settings are playable, but the jump from Medium (266 FPS) to High (167 FPS) represents a 37.2% performance drop, while the jump from High to Ultra (159 FPS) is only 4.8%. This suggests that the High preset offers the best balance of visual quality and performance at 1080p, as it maintains a frame rate well above 144 Hz while avoiding the marginal visual gains of Ultra.

For 2560x1440, the Medium preset delivers 192 FPS with a minimum of 163 FPS, which is ideal for high-refresh 144 Hz monitors. High settings at 120 FPS are also excellent, but the 60% increase in frame rate from High to Medium makes the latter more attractive for competitive play. Ultra at 114 FPS is playable but not optimal for 144 Hz displays. The recommended setting at 1440p is Medium, as it provides the highest frame rate that still maintains a minimum above 144 FPS, ensuring smooth frame pacing.

At 3840x2160, the choices are more constrained. Low settings produce 150 FPS, which is excellent for 144 Hz 4K monitors, but the visual compromise may not be worth it for a game like Inside where atmosphere is crucial. Medium settings at 120 FPS with a minimum of 102 FPS are the best balance, as they maintain a frame rate above 100 FPS while preserving more visual fidelity. High settings at 75 FPS and Ultra at 72 FPS are playable on 60 Hz displays but will not take advantage of higher refresh rates. The data indicates that Medium is the recommended preset for 4K, as it delivers a 60% performance improvement over High while likely retaining the core visual elements that define the game's aesthetic. For users with 60 Hz 4K displays, High settings at 75 FPS provide a more visually rich experience without dropping below the 60 FPS threshold.