Inside

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i7-14700F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti achieves a rank of 935 out of 1671 tested combos in Inside. This places the combination in the middle of the pack, roughly in the 44th percentile of all tested configurations. The ranking reflects a pairing where the CPU is decidedly more capable than the GPU, creating a system that is held back by its graphics component in this title.

The CPU itself sits in the 94th percentile among all processors tested, while the GPU languishes in the 61st percentile among all graphics cards. This significant gap between component tiers explains the mid-pack overall ranking. The data suggests that this combo is not balanced for this particular game, with the processor having substantial headroom that the graphics card cannot utilize.

Looking at the CPU's nearest rivals, the i7-14700F scores 3572 in Cinebench R15 multi-core, which is 0.6% behind the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and 1.1% behind the Ryzen 9 9900X3D. It edges out the Intel Xeon Phi 7290 by 1.2% and the AMD EPYC 7313P by 1.7%. The GPU side shows a different story, with the GTX 1080 Ti's average benchmark score of 19402 being essentially tied with the GTX 780 (0% delta) and nearly identical to the Radeon Pro 560X (-0.1%) and Tesla K40m (-0.6%). This near-parity with much older hardware underscores the GPU's age.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti brings 11 GB of GDDR5X memory on a 352-bit bus, delivering 484.4 GB/s of bandwidth. The memory runs at 1376 MHz with an effective data rate of 11 Gbps. The GPU's base clock is 1481 MHz with a boost clock of 1582 MHz, figures that are now quite modest compared to modern graphics cards.

The GPU's 3584 shading units, 224 texture mapping units, and 88 ROPs provide the raw processing power for this title. The pixel rate of 139.2 GPixel/s and texture rate of 354.4 GTexel/s help explain why the card performs better at lower resolutions where fill-rate demands are reduced. The FP32 performance of 11.34 TFLOPS is notable for a card from the Pascal era, though it lacks dedicated ray tracing or tensor cores.

For a game like Inside, which is a puzzle platformer rather than a graphically intensive AAA title, the GTX 1080 Ti proves adequate at 1080p and 1440p, but the data shows clear limitations at 4K Ultra settings. The card's DirectX 12 score of 66 in Passmark is relatively low, suggesting that the Pascal architecture does not excel in modern API workloads, though Inside's art style may not heavily tax these features.

FAQ

Q: How does this combo perform at 1080p Ultra settings?

A: The combination delivers an average of 150.4 FPS at 1920x1080 with Ultra settings. This is sufficient for smooth gameplay, though it represents a significant drop from the 319.5 FPS achieved at Low settings.

Q: Is the GTX 1080 Ti the bottleneck in this system?

A: Yes, the data strongly indicates GPU limitation. At 4K Ultra, the combo achieves 68.1 FPS, while dropping to 1080p Ultra only raises this to 150.4 FPS. The i7-14700F's 94th percentile CPU ranking compared to the GPU's 61st percentile confirms the graphics card is the constraining component.

Q: What is the best settings/resolution combination for this setup?

A: At 2560x1440 with High settings, the combo achieves 113.8 FPS, which balances visual quality with performance. At 4K, High settings yield 74.5 FPS, which is playable but leaves little headroom. Medium settings at 1440p provide 180.9 FPS for those prioritizing frame rate.

Q: How does the GPU compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The GTX 1080 Ti's average benchmark score of 19402 is essentially identical to the GTX 780 (19405, 0% delta) and Radeon Pro 560X (19426, -0.1% delta). It is 1.1% ahead of the TITAN Xp and 0.6% behind the Tesla K40m, showing that the card performs at a similar level to much older hardware.

Q: Does the CPU's performance vary significantly from its competitors?

A: The i7-14700F is remarkably close to the Ryzen 9 9900X, trailing by only 0.6% in average benchmark score. It leads the Xeon Phi 7290 by 1.2% and the EPYC 7313P by 1.7%, demonstrating that the Intel chip sits in a tightly contested performance tier.

Q: What FPS can be expected at 4K with different settings?

A: The measured data shows 68.1 FPS at Ultra, 74.5 FPS at High, 112.8 FPS at Medium, and 140.9 FPS at Low for 3840x2160 resolution. The jump from Ultra to Medium represents a 65.7% increase in frame rate, indicating that settings adjustments have a substantial impact at this resolution.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its highest performance across all settings. Low settings produce an average of 319.5 FPS, which drops to 253.9 FPS at Medium, 158.7 FPS at High, and 150.4 FPS at Ultra. The difference between High and Ultra is relatively modest at 8.3 FPS, suggesting that the Ultra preset adds significant visual effects without a proportional performance cost.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates remain strong. Low settings yield 229.2 FPS, Medium produces 180.9 FPS, High achieves 113.8 FPS, and Ultra drops to 110.3 FPS. The gap between High and Ultra narrows to just 3.5 FPS at this resolution, indicating that the GPU is becoming the limiting factor as pixel count increases.

At 3840x2160, performance degrades noticeably. Low settings still manage 140.9 FPS, but Medium falls to 112.8 FPS, High drops to 74.5 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 68.1 FPS. The spread between Low and Ultra at 4K is 72.8 FPS, demonstrating that settings choices have a dramatic impact at this resolution. The 4K High result of 74.5 FPS is still above the 60 FPS threshold, but the Ultra result of 68.1 FPS shows the GPU straining to maintain playability.

Resolution Scaling

The data reveals a clear pattern of frame rate decline as resolution increases. At High settings, the transition from 1080p to 1440p results in a drop from 158.7 FPS to 113.8 FPS, a 28.3% reduction. The jump from 1440p to 4K further reduces performance to 74.5 FPS, a 34.5% decline. Overall, High settings at 4K deliver only 46.9% of the 1080p frame rate.

Low settings show even more dramatic scaling. The 319.5 FPS at 1080p falls to 229.2 FPS at 1440p and then to 140.9 FPS at 4K. The total drop from 1080p to 4K is 55.9%, which is steeper than the High settings drop of 53.1%. This counterintuitive result suggests that at Low settings, the GPU is more fully utilized and resolution scaling has a greater impact.

The scaling pattern indicates that the GTX 1080 Ti is the limiting component across all resolutions. If the CPU were the bottleneck, frame rates would remain more consistent across resolutions, particularly at lower settings where CPU overhead is more likely to dominate. The consistent performance decline with increasing pixel counts points to the GPU's rendering throughput as the primary constraint, despite the CPU's substantial capabilities.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700F is a 20-core, 28-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake architecture, built on Intel's 10 nm process. It features a base clock of 2.10 GHz and a boost clock of 5.40 GHz, with 33 MB of shared L3 cache and 2 MB of L2 cache per core. The CPU supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory in dual-channel configuration and connects via PCIe Gen 5 with 16 lanes.

In synthetic benchmarks, the i7-14700F demonstrates strong multi-threaded performance with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 35443 and a single-core score of 5003. The Geekbench results show 16571 multi-core and 2711 single-core. Passmark testing reveals particular strengths in integer math (157242) and floating-point math (108275), while the find prime numbers score of 178 is notably lower.

For Inside, a puzzle platformer that is not typically CPU-intensive, the i7-14700F provides more than adequate processing power. The 94th percentile ranking among all CPUs means this processor outclasses the vast majority of installed hardware. However, the measured FPS data shows that this CPU power does not translate into proportionally higher frame rates because the GTX 1080 Ti cannot keep pace with the processor's capabilities. The combination of a top-tier CPU with a mid-tier GPU creates a system where the CPU is effectively waiting on the GPU to complete rendering tasks, particularly at higher resolutions and settings. The CPU's 65 W TDP and active production status suggest it is an efficient, modern component that will remain relevant for years, but in this specific configuration, its potential is not fully realized.