Inside

The Intel Core i7-13700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti combination delivers a remarkably smooth experience in Inside, a Puzzle Platformer from 2016. The benchmark data shows this pairing is heavily GPU-bound at higher resolutions, while the CPU’s substantial headroom allows for extreme frame rates at 1080p. This analysis breaks down the measured performance across resolutions and settings, placing the results in context against other tested hardware combinations.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and reveals a clear shift in bottleneck. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo produces 345 FPS, but at 4K Low, that figure falls to 153.5 FPS — a reduction of over 55%. This dramatic scaling indicates that at lower resolutions, the Intel Core i7-13700K is doing most of the heavy lifting, pushing frame rates far beyond what the GPU can sustain as pixel count rises.

Moving from 1440p to 4K shows a more moderate decline. At High settings, 1440p yields 124.2 FPS, while 4K High drops to 77.5 FPS, a 37.6% decrease. The pattern holds across all settings: the gap between 1440p and 4K is consistently around 37-39%, while the gap between 1080p and 1440p is larger, often exceeding 50%. This suggests the RTX 3060 Ti begins to saturate its memory bandwidth and shading capabilities as resolution climbs, making it the primary limiting factor at 4K.

The data also shows that settings scaling within a resolution is not linear. At 1080p, dropping from Ultra (167 FPS) to Low (345 FPS) more than doubles performance, indicating the game’s visual effects are computationally expensive relative to its base geometry. At 4K, the same settings change yields 76.3 FPS at Ultra versus 153.5 FPS at Low, a 2.01x improvement. This consistent ratio across resolutions implies that the CPU is never the bottleneck — the GPU’s workload scales predictably with both resolution and settings.

FAQ

Q: What is the maximum average FPS achievable with this combo?

A: The highest recorded average is 345 FPS at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This far exceeds any display refresh rate, indicating the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU more frames than it can render at higher quality presets.

*Q: Can this system handle 4K gaming in Inside?*

A: Yes, but with compromises. At 4K Ultra, the average FPS is 76.3, which is playable but not ideal for high-refresh displays. Dropping to High yields 77.5 FPS, while Medium settings push it to 127.8 FPS, and Low reaches 153.5 FPS.

Q: How does the RTX 3060 Ti compare to its closest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The GPU’s average benchmark score of 25120 places it nearly even with the AMD Radeon RX 6700M (25180, delta -0.2%) and AMD Radeon RX 6600 (25235, delta -0.5%). It is also within 0.7% of the AMD Radeon RX 580 2048SP, which scores 25287.

Q: Is the i7-13700K a bottleneck at 1080p?

A: At 1080p Low, the combo hits 345 FPS, suggesting the CPU can push far beyond typical display limits. However, the 4.1x difference between 1080p Low (345 FPS) and 4K Low (153.5 FPS) confirms the GPU becomes the limiting factor as resolution increases.

Q: What is the combo’s ranking among all tested systems?

A: This specific combination ranks 764th out of 1671 total tested combos for Inside, placing it in the upper-middle tier of the database.

Q: Does the i7-13700K’s multi-threading advantage show in this game?

A: Inside is not a heavily threaded title; the CPU’s 16 cores and 24 threads are largely underutilized. The single-thread performance (Cinebench R23 single-core score of 5505) is more relevant, and it shows no signs of limiting the frame rates observed.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is the decisive component at higher resolutions. With 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, it delivers 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is sufficient for Inside’s art style but becomes a constraint at 4K. The GPU’s boost clock of 1665 MHz and 4864 shading units produce 16.20 TFLOPS of FP32 performance, translating to 253.1 GTexel/s texture rate and 133.2 GPixel/s pixel rate.

These specifications explain the measured FPS pattern. At 4K Ultra (76.3 FPS), the GPU is rendering roughly 8.3 million pixels per frame, and the pixel rate becomes the limiting factor. Dropping to Medium settings (127.8 FPS) relieves the shading load, while Low settings (153.5 FPS) reduce both shading and texture work. The GPU’s average benchmark score of 25120 places it in the 69th percentile of all GPUs, confirming its mid-range positioning.

The RTX 3060 Ti’s 38 RT cores and 152 tensor cores are irrelevant for Inside, as the game does not utilize ray tracing or DLSS. Its DirectX 12 Ultimate support (12_2) ensures full API compatibility, but the game’s 2016 release date means it relies on simpler rendering paths. The GPU’s PassMark G3D score of 20349 and DirectX 11 score of 163 indicate strong legacy performance, which is what matters here.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i7-13700K and RTX 3060 Ti combination ranks 764th out of 1671 tested combos in Inside. This places it in the 54th percentile of all tested systems, meaning a slight majority of configurations outperform it. However, this ranking is heavily influenced by the GPU’s mid-range status — the CPU alone sits in the 93rd percentile of all CPUs.

The disparity between CPU and GPU percentiles (93rd vs 69th) highlights that this combo is CPU-overqualified for the GPU’s capabilities. In a game like Inside, which is not graphically demanding by modern standards, the RTX 3060 Ti still manages to produce playable frame rates at 4K, but the i7-13700K’s potential is largely untapped. Systems with weaker CPUs but stronger GPUs would likely rank higher in this specific title, as the game’s low thread count does not reward the 13700K’s 16 cores.

Benchmark data confirms the CPU’s processing headroom. The 3DMark max-threads score of 12412 and Cinebench R23 multicore score of 39000 are exceptional, but Inside cannot leverage them. The combo’s rank of 764 reflects the GPU’s mid-pack standing rather than any CPU deficiency.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-13700K is a 16-core, 24-thread processor based on Raptor Lake architecture, with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.40 GHz. Its 30 MB of shared L3 cache and 2 MB per-core L2 cache provide ample data storage for game logic, but Inside’s modest computational demands rarely stress this configuration.

Synthetic benchmarks reveal the CPU’s strengths. The single-thread score of 5505 in Cinebench R23 and 4333 in PassMark single-thread are elite, enabling high frame rates in lightly threaded games. The 3DMark 2-thread score of 2262 and 4-thread score of 4469 show that even a fraction of the CPU’s cores can handle the game’s main thread, while the 16-thread score of 10717 demonstrates scaling potential that Inside never reaches.

The measured FPS data underscores this imbalance. At 1080p Low, the combo hits 345 FPS, which is likely near the game’s engine limit or the GPU’s render capacity. At 4K Low, the FPS drops to 153.5, a 55.5% reduction, even though the CPU workload is identical. This proves the GPU is the limiting factor at all resolutions above 1080p. The CPU’s 125W TDP and dual-channel DDR4/DDR5 memory support are more than sufficient for this workload, and its integrated UHD Graphics 770 is irrelevant when a discrete GPU is present.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The full dataset shows a clear hierarchy across resolutions and settings. At 1920x1080, Low settings produce 345 FPS, Medium yields 275.8 FPS, High drops to 176 FPS, and Ultra settles at 167 FPS. This 2.07x spread from Low to Ultra indicates that the GPU’s shading units are the primary constraint, as the CPU maintains consistent frame delivery.

At 2560x1440, the same pattern emerges with lower absolute numbers: Low hits 251.1 FPS, Medium reaches 198.9 FPS, High achieves 124.2 FPS, and Ultra manages 121.7 FPS. The gap between High and Ultra narrows to just 2.1%, suggesting diminishing returns from the highest preset. This is consistent with the GPU’s pixel rate limits.

At 3840x2160, the figures compress further: Low delivers 153.5 FPS, Medium drops to 127.8 FPS, High falls to 77.5 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 76.3 FPS. The delta between High and Ultra is a mere 1.5%, indicating that the extra settings in Ultra have minimal visual impact but still tax the GPU. The 4K Low result of 153.5 FPS is still highly playable, but the 4K Ultra score of 76.3 FPS is more suited to a 60 Hz display.

The data confirms that this combo is best suited for 1080p and 1440p gaming. At 1440p High, the 124.2 FPS average exceeds most high-refresh monitors, while 4K gaming requires dropping to Medium settings (127.8 FPS) for a smooth experience. The RTX 3060 Ti’s 8 GB VRAM is sufficient for Inside at all settings, but its compute throughput is the limiting factor at 4K Ultra.