Inside

The Intel Core i7-12700KF paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti delivers a decisive performance advantage in Inside, a 2016 Puzzle Platformer. The data shows this combination is not merely playable but overwhelmingly fast, with frame rates that suggest the game’s rendering engine is rarely stressed by modern hardware. Across all tested settings and resolutions, the average FPS never drops below 119.4, indicating a smooth experience even under the most demanding graphical presets.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic GPU-bound curve, but the headroom is so large that even the heaviest load remains trivial. At 1080p with Ultra settings, the combo produces 265 FPS, while dropping to 4K Ultra reduces that figure to 119.4 FPS—a 54.9% decrease in raw throughput. This steep drop is expected as pixel count quadruples, but the absolute numbers remain far above any display's refresh rate requirements.

The scaling pattern becomes clearer when examining the Low settings preset. At 1080p Low, the system outputs 366.3 FPS, which falls to 255.2 FPS at 4K Low. That 30.3% reduction is less severe than the Ultra preset's drop, suggesting that at lower settings, the CPU begins to play a more significant role in limiting performance. The gap between 1440p and 4K is consistently larger than the gap between 1080p and 1440p, which indicates the GPU is still the primary bottleneck at higher resolutions, but its workload is so manageable that the CPU can keep pace without issue.

What stands out is that even at 4K Ultra, the frame rate does not approach the 60 FPS threshold—it more than doubles it. This implies that the limiting component is not the GPU's raw compute power but rather the game's own engine limitations or the frame pacing overhead. The data suggests that players using high-refresh-rate 4K monitors (typically 120Hz or 144Hz) will be fully satisfied, as the 119.4 FPS average at maximum settings is within striking distance of those targets.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700KF brings substantial processing power to this pairing, with 12 cores and 20 threads running at a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz. In a game like Inside, which is a side-scrolling puzzle platformer rather than a massive open-world simulation, the CPU's workload is modest. The benchmark results confirm this: single-thread performance is strong, with a 3DMark single-thread score of 1043 and a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4091, but the game rarely demands that much.

The CPU's multi-threaded capabilities are effectively idle in this title. The maximum 3DMark score of 9983 and Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 28979 are far beyond what Inside requires. Instead, the data suggests that the game's frame rate is governed by the GPU even at lower resolutions. At 1080p Low, the system hits 366.3 FPS, which is likely near the engine's internal cap or the point where CPU frame submission becomes a factor. Comparing the 1080p Low result to the 1440p Low result (329.6 FPS) shows only a 10% drop, indicating that the CPU is still feeding frames fast enough to keep the GPU busy.

The 12th Gen Alder Lake architecture, built on Intel's 10 nm process, provides ample single-core speed for this title. The cache hierarchy—80 KB L1 per core, 1.25 MB L2 per core, and 25 MB shared L3—ensures that the game's assets and logic remain close to the execution units. In practical terms, the CPU is never the bottleneck here; even the most demanding scenario (4K Ultra, 119.4 FPS) leaves the processor with significant headroom. The CPU's percentile ranking of 89 against all tested CPUs reinforces that this is a top-tier part, but in Inside, its advantage over cheaper processors would be negligible.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the benchmark database, this specific pairing holds a combo rank of 107 out of 1671 tested combinations. That places it in the top 6.4% of all configurations, which is impressive but not surprising given the high-end nature of both components. The rank reflects the absolute performance ceiling, but the data shows that for Inside, the gap between this combo and lower-ranked ones may be smaller than the raw scores suggest.

The GPU's average benchmark score of 52086 is virtually identical to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080, which scores 52085—a delta of 0%. This means the RTX 5070 Ti matches its predecessor's performance in general compute tasks. The CPU's average score of 35355 is within 0.1% of the Intel Core i5-14400 (35336) and 0.2% of the Intel Core i9-12900HX (35289). These near-identical scores imply that in a game like Inside, the choice between these CPUs would produce almost no measurable FPS difference.

The combo rank of 107 is driven by the GPU's strong standing rather than the CPU's, as the graphics card's percentile of 87 against all GPUs is slightly lower than the CPU's 89. However, the measured FPS data shows that this combo still delivers frame rates that are 2–3 times higher than what a typical mid-range system would produce in this game. The rank indicates that there are 106 combinations that score higher, but most of those would involve workstation-class GPUs or multi-GPU setups that offer no tangible benefit for Inside.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a complete picture across three resolutions and four settings presets. At 1080p, the system delivers 281.7 FPS on High, 366.3 FPS on Low, 338.6 FPS on Medium, and 265 FPS on Ultra. The spread between Low and Ultra is 101.3 FPS, showing that settings have a meaningful impact even at this resolution. The Low preset's 366.3 FPS is likely approaching the engine's maximum frame delivery rate, as the CPU's single-thread performance becomes the limiting factor.

Moving to 1440p, the numbers are still exceptionally high: 202.5 FPS on High, 329.6 FPS on Low, 299.3 FPS on Medium, and 189.9 FPS on Ultra. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is roughly 28% across all settings, which is consistent with the increased pixel count. The Ultra preset's 189.9 FPS is still far above any common refresh rate, and even the High preset's 202.5 FPS leaves room for V-Sync at 144Hz without compromise.

At 4K, the performance scales down as expected: 126.1 FPS on High, 255.2 FPS on Low, 206 FPS on Medium, and 119.4 FPS on Ultra. The Low preset's 255.2 FPS demonstrates that when the GPU load is reduced, the system can still push massive frame rates even at 4K resolution. The Ultra preset's 119.4 FPS is the only result below 120 FPS, making it the sole scenario where a 120Hz display might not be fully saturated. The gap between Medium (206 FPS) and High (126.1 FPS) is substantial—79.9 FPS—suggesting that the High preset introduces specific effects that are disproportionately demanding on the GPU.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is the dominant force in this pairing. With 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus, the card offers 896.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is more than sufficient for a game of Inside's visual complexity. The GPU's 8960 shading units and 96 ROPs provide the raw compute power to handle the game's lighting and post-processing effects at high resolutions.

The GPU's clock speeds—a base of 2295 MHz and boost of 2452 MHz—are modest by modern standards, but the architecture's efficiency compensates. The Blackwell 2.0 design, built on TSMC's 5 nm process, delivers 43.94 TFLOPS of FP32 performance. This compute capacity is overkill for Inside, which was released in 2016 and does not utilize ray tracing or advanced AI features. The GPU's RT cores (70) and tensor cores (280) remain largely unused in this title.

The VRAM capacity of 16 GB is never a concern here. Even at 4K Ultra, the game's texture and geometry data would fit comfortably within a fraction of that allocation. The measured FPS at 4K Ultra (119.4) compared to 4K Low (255.2) shows a 53.2% performance penalty for enabling all visual features, indicating that the GPU is still the primary driver of frame rate differences. The GPU's average benchmark score of 52086 places it in the 87th percentile, and its nearest rival, the RTX 4080, matches it exactly. This parity suggests that the RTX 5070 Ti offers no meaningful advantage over the previous generation in this particular game, but its performance is nonetheless exceptional.

FAQ

Q: What is the average FPS at 4K Ultra settings with this combo?

A: The system delivers 119.4 FPS at 4K Ultra, which is the lowest result across all tested configurations. This remains far above the 60 FPS standard and is suitable for 120Hz displays.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its nearest rival in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The Intel Core i7-12700KF scores 35355 on average, which is 0.1% higher than the Intel Core i5-14400 (35336) and 0.2% higher than the Intel Core i9-12900HX (35289). These differences are negligible for gaming.

Q: Is the GPU more powerful than the RTX 4080?

A: The RTX 5070 Ti has an average benchmark score of 52086, while the RTX 4080 scores 52085, resulting in a 0% delta. They are effectively equal in aggregate performance.

Q: What is the highest FPS recorded for this combo?

A: The maximum average FPS is 366.3, achieved at 1080p with Low settings. This is likely near the engine's frame delivery ceiling.

Q: Does resolution scaling significantly impact performance?

A: Yes, but the impact is manageable. Moving from 1080p to 4K reduces FPS by roughly 55% on Ultra settings (from 265 to 119.4), but the absolute numbers remain high.

Q: How does this combo rank against all tested combinations?

A: It holds the 107th position out of 1671 total combos, placing it in the top 6.4% of all configurations tested in the database.