Inside

Inside is a puzzle platformer that rarely pushes hardware to its limits, and the measured data for the Intel Core i7-14700K paired with the AMD Radeon RX 7600 reflects that. This combination delivers extremely high frame rates across all tested settings and resolutions, making it clear that the experience is smooth, but the scaling patterns reveal where the bottleneck shifts as you increase graphical load.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is steep but not catastrophic, which is typical for a game of this visual complexity. At Low settings, the average FPS falls from 285.8 at 1920x1080 to 127.8 at 3840x2160, a reduction of roughly 55%. This indicates that even at the lowest settings, the GPU is becoming the primary limiting factor as pixel count quadruples. The drop from 1440p to 4K at Low settings is from 206.4 to 127.8, showing that the scaling is consistent and heavily tied to resolution.

Moving to High settings, the pattern holds but with lower absolute numbers. The 1080p average of 140.5 FPS drops to 102.7 at 1440p and then to 64.5 at 4K. The gap between 1440p and 4K here is about 37%, which is less severe than the Low setting drop, suggesting that the additional shading work at High settings is already engaging the GPU more fully. At Ultra, the trend continues: 137.1 FPS at 1080p, 97.4 at 1440p, and 61.6 at 4K. The 4K Ultra result is the only sub-60 FPS reading in the entire set, but it is still very close to the 60 FPS target.

What this scaling tells us is that the CPU has more than enough headroom at 1080p to push well beyond 200 FPS at Low and Medium settings, but the RX 7600 starts to hit its limits as resolution increases. The data suggests that for a 144Hz monitor, 1080p is the sweet spot, while 1440p is viable for high refresh rates only at lower settings. For 4K, the experience is playable but not ideal for high-refresh displays.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7600 is built on the RDNA 3.0 architecture with a Navi 33 chip, featuring 2048 shading units and 64 ROPs. Its boost clock is listed at 2655 MHz, with a game clock of 2250 MHz, and it comes with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, delivering 288.0 GB/s of bandwidth. These specs align with the measured results: the card is capable of high frame rates in lighter titles like Inside, but the 4K Ultra result of 61.6 FPS shows that it is working near its maximum capacity.

The GPU’s performance relative to its peers is defined by its nearest rivals. The data shows the RX 7600 has an average benchmark score of 20258, placing it just 0.6% behind the RX 7600 XT and 0.8% ahead of the RX 460. It also sits 1.3% above the RTX 3070 Mobile and 1.5% above the Intel Arc B570. In practical terms, this means the RX 7600 is a mid-range card that trades blows with these competitors, but in Inside specifically, it delivers the frame rates seen in the measured data without issue.

The 8 GB VRAM is not a limiting factor in this game, as the visual complexity is low and texture sizes are modest. The memory bandwidth of 288.0 GB/s is sufficient for the pixel rates required at 4K, as evidenced by the 64.5 FPS average at High settings. The GPU’s 21.75 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is more than enough for this title, and the results confirm that the card is not struggling with the workload until Ultra settings at 4K are applied.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i7-14700K and the AMD Radeon RX 7600 ranks 1104 out of 1671 tested combos in Inside. This places it in the lower-middle portion of the database, which might seem surprising given the high frame rates, but it reflects the fact that many other configurations with more powerful GPUs achieve even higher numbers. The rank is a relative measure across all tested hardware pairings, and the 66th percentile position indicates that there are many faster setups.

However, the rank does not tell the full story. The measured FPS data shows that this combo is never below 61.6 FPS in any tested configuration, which is a strong result for a puzzle platformer. The rank is likely dragged down by the fact that the CPU is overkill for this game, while the GPU is the limiting factor at higher resolutions. In a title where the CPU is not heavily taxed, the i7-14700K’s 20 cores and 28 threads provide no additional benefit over a cheaper processor, so the combo’s overall standing is lower than its raw frame rates might suggest.

Settings Recommendations

For the best experience, the data points to High settings as the optimal choice across all resolutions. At 1080p, High delivers 140.5 FPS, which is well above the refresh rate of most monitors, and even at 4K, High maintains 64.5 FPS, which is playable. The jump from High to Ultra costs performance without a proportional visual gain in a game like Inside, where the art style is minimalist and the difference between presets is subtle.

At 1440p, High settings provide 102.7 FPS, which is smooth on a 100Hz display. If you have a higher refresh rate monitor, dropping to Medium gives you 162.1 FPS at 1440p, which is a significant improvement, but the visual fidelity loss may not be worth it. At 1080p, Low settings hit 285.8 FPS, but this is unnecessary for any practical display, and Medium at 224.8 FPS is a better balance. For 4K, High is the recommended preset, as Ultra drops to 61.6 FPS and Low still requires 127.8 FPS, which is overkill for most screens.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the results show a clear progression: Low averages 285.8 FPS, Medium drops to 224.8 FPS, High is at 140.5 FPS, and Ultra is the slowest at 137.1 FPS. The gap between High and Ultra is minimal, only about 3 FPS, which reinforces the idea that Ultra is not worth the performance cost. The 1080p numbers are all well above 60 FPS, and even the lowest result at Ultra is more than double that threshold.

At 2560x1440, the averages are 206.4 FPS for Low, 162.1 FPS for Medium, 102.7 FPS for High, and 97.4 FPS for Ultra. The drop from Medium to High is about 37%, which is the largest single-step reduction in this resolution, indicating that High settings introduce a significant increase in shading complexity. The difference between High and Ultra is again small, at just over 5 FPS, so High is the smarter choice for 1440p displays.

At 3840x2160, the numbers fall to 127.8 FPS for Low, 100.0 FPS for Medium, 64.5 FPS for High, and 61.6 FPS for Ultra. This is the only resolution where any preset dips below 60 FPS, and even then, only barely. The scaling from Low to Medium is a 22% drop, from Medium to High is a 36% drop, and from High to Ultra is a 4.5% drop. The data shows that 4K is playable at all settings, but High offers the best balance of quality and performance.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700K is a 20-core, 28-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake architecture, with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz. It has 33 MB of shared L3 cache and supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory. In Inside, this CPU is massively overprovisioned. The game’s simple physics and 2D-style rendering do not require the parallel processing power of 28 threads, and the measured frame rates at 1080p Low (285.8 FPS) are likely limited by the GPU or the game engine’s draw call overhead, not the CPU.

The CPU’s benchmark scores reinforce its high-end positioning. It achieves a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 44534 and a single-core score of 6287, placing it in the 96th percentile of all CPUs. Its nearest rivals include the i7-14700KF, which is 0% different in average score, and the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X, which is 0.5% faster. For a game like Inside, the single-core performance is what matters most, and the 6287 score in R23 single-core is excellent. However, the data does not show any CPU bottleneck in the measured FPS, as the numbers scale consistently with GPU load rather than showing erratic dips that would indicate processor limits.

In practical terms, this CPU will not hold back the RX 7600 in Inside at any resolution. The 5.60 GHz boost clock ensures that the game’s main thread runs at maximum speed, and the 33 MB L3 cache helps with any asset streaming. But the truth is that a much less powerful CPU would deliver nearly identical results in this title. The i7-14700K is a future-proofing choice, not a necessity for Inside, and the benchmark results confirm that the GPU is the component that dictates performance at higher resolutions.