Inside

Inside is a puzzle platformer with modest visual demands, but the measured data for this specific combination of the Intel Core i7-14700K and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 reveals a wide performance envelope depending on how the game is configured. The benchmark results provide clear guidance on which settings deliver the best balance of visual quality and frame rate, and they also highlight the distinct roles the CPU and GPU play in shaping the final experience.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows show that the optimal preset is Medium at any resolution, but the reasoning differs by target display. At 1920x1080, Medium produces an average of 184 FPS, which is a substantial 60% higher than the High preset’s 115 FPS average, while the visual jump from Medium to High is typically less pronounced in a game of this art style. The Ultra preset at 1080p yields 110 FPS, which is only 4% below High, making it a viable choice if maximum fidelity is desired and the display can handle the extra load, but Medium offers the best headroom for consistent frame pacing, as evidenced by its minimum FPS of 157 versus no recorded minimums for the other presets.

At 2560x1440, Medium remains the safest recommendation with a 133 FPS average and a minimum of 113 FPS. The High preset drops to 83 FPS, and Ultra falls to 79 FPS, which are still playable but leave less margin for demanding scenes. For 3840x2160, the situation becomes more critical: Medium is the only preset that maintains a comfortably playable average at 83 FPS, with a minimum of 71 FPS. High and Ultra both dip to 52 and 50 FPS respectively, which may be acceptable for a slower-paced puzzle title but are not ideal for maintaining smooth motion. Low settings, while offering the highest frame rates at every resolution, sacrifice too much visual detail for a game where atmosphere is a core component, so Medium is the recommended baseline across the board.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070, with its 8 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus delivering 256.3 GB/s of bandwidth, plays a decisive role in how Inside scales across settings. The GPU’s 1920 shading units and 64 ROPs, running at a boost clock of 1683 MHz, are more than sufficient for this title’s rendering workload, but the data shows that the GTX 1070 becomes the primary limiter as resolution and preset quality increase. At 4K with Ultra settings, the average FPS of 50 is barely half of the 104 FPS achieved at 4K Low, indicating that the GPU’s pixel throughput is being saturated by the higher rendering demands.

The card’s 8 GB VRAM is not a bottleneck at any of the tested configurations, as evidenced by the fact that even at 4K Ultra, the game still runs, albeit at lower frame rates, and the minimum FPS of 71 at 4K Medium suggests memory allocation is not causing hitches. The GTX 1070’s performance percentile of 47 places it in the middle of the pack, and its nearest rivals, such as the AMD FirePro W5000 with a deltaPct of -0.2%, show that this GPU is operating at a level where small differences in architecture can tip the balance. The data from the measured FPS rows indicates that the GPU’s compute capabilities, rated at 6.463 TFLOPS FP32, are well-matched to the game’s engine, but the card’s age is evident in the steep performance drop from 1080p to 4K, where the pixel fill rate becomes the limiting factor.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS progression from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic GPU-bound scaling pattern, but with some nuances that point to the CPU’s involvement at lower resolutions. At 1080p Medium, the average is 184 FPS, which drops to 133 FPS at 1440p (a 28% decrease) and then to 83 FPS at 4K (an additional 38% decrease). This scaling is roughly consistent with the increase in pixel count, suggesting the GPU is the dominant constraint once the resolution climbs past 1080p.

However, at 1080p Low, the average of 231 FPS is so high that it suggests the CPU is starting to become a factor, as the GTX 1070 would be pushing frames faster than most engines can maintain stable physics and logic updates. The drop from 231 FPS at 1080p Low to 166 FPS at 1440p Low (a 28% reduction) is similar to the Medium preset’s scaling, but the absolute numbers indicate that the Core i7-14700K’s high single-thread performance is what allows these frame rates to be achieved in the first place. At 4K, the scaling flattens out, with Medium dropping from 133 to 83 FPS and High from 83 to 52 FPS, which is a clear sign that the GPU’s fill rate is the sole limiting factor at that resolution, as the CPU has ample headroom to feed the frame queue.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured data shows a full spectrum of performance options. Low settings deliver an average of 231 FPS, which is the highest figure in the entire dataset and indicates that the CPU and GPU combination is capable of extreme frame rates when visual fidelity is minimized. Medium settings produce 184 FPS on average, with a minimum of 157 FPS and a maximum of 212 FPS, providing a smooth experience for high-refresh-rate displays. High settings drop to 115 FPS on average, and Ultra falls to 110 FPS, which are both still well above the 60 FPS threshold but represent a significant reduction from the lower presets. The gap between Medium and High is 69 FPS, which is larger than the gap between High and Ultra at only 5 FPS, suggesting diminishing returns on visual quality for the performance cost.

At 2560x1440, the pattern holds but with lower absolute numbers. Low settings average 166 FPS, Medium averages 133 FPS with a minimum of 113 FPS and a maximum of 153 FPS, and High drops to 83 FPS. Ultra is nearly identical to High at 79 FPS, which is again a marginal difference. The transition from 1080p to 1440p costs approximately 28% of the frame rate across all presets, which is consistent with the pixel count increase of 78%, indicating that the GPU is scaling as expected without any surprising bottlenecks.

At 3840x2160, the data shows a sharper separation between presets. Medium is the standout with an average of 83 FPS and a minimum of 71 FPS, making it the only 4K preset that consistently stays above the 60 FPS mark. Low settings achieve 104 FPS on average, which is higher than Medium, but the visual sacrifice is notable. High and Ultra fall to 52 FPS and 50 FPS respectively, which are very close to each other and suggest that the GPU is hitting a hard performance ceiling at this resolution, regardless of the incremental settings changes between those two presets. The minimum FPS figures are only recorded for Medium at each resolution, and at 4K that value of 71 FPS indicates that even the most demanding scenes remain fluid.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the Intel Core i7-14700K and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 ranks 3056 out of 3716 tested combos for Inside, placing it in the lower 18% of all configurations. This ranking is heavily influenced by the GPU, as the GTX 1070’s overall benchmark percentile of 47 is far below the CPU’s percentile of 94. The data shows that while the CPU is a high-end part capable of competing with the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (which has a deltaPct of -0.2% compared to the i7-14700K’s average benchmark score), the GPU is the limiting factor in this pairing.

The combo’s rank suggests that most other tested systems have either a more modern GPU or a better-balanced pairing, as the GTX 1070 is now an end-of-life product. In the context of this game, the ranking is not a reflection of playability — as the measured FPS shows that even at 4K Medium, the game runs well — but rather a measure of raw performance headroom compared to other combinations. The CPU’s high benchmark scores, such as a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 33440.5 and a Geekbench single-core score of 2569, do not translate into a higher combo rank because Inside is not a CPU-intensive title, and the GPU’s mid-range performance drags the overall score down.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700K, with its 20 cores and 28 threads, is massively overprovisioned for Inside, which is a puzzle platformer that does not utilize multi-threaded workloads heavily. The CPU’s boost clock of 5.60 GHz and its single-core performance, as evidenced by a Cinebench R20 single-core score of 2617, are what matter most for this game’s frame rate ceiling. The data shows that at 1080p Low, the combo achieves 231 FPS, and this high number is only possible because the CPU can process game logic and draw calls quickly enough to feed the GPU’s 6.463 TFLOPS of compute power.

The CPU’s role becomes more apparent when looking at the scaling from Low to Ultra settings. At 1080p, the FPS drops from 231 on Low to 110 on Ultra, which is a 52% reduction that is primarily due to increased GPU load, but the fact that the CPU can maintain frame rates above 200 FPS at Low indicates that it is not a bottleneck in this title. The i7-14700K’s L3 cache of 33 MB shared and its support for DDR4 and DDR5 memory provide ample bandwidth for the game’s assets, which are relatively small for a 2016 release. The CPU’s 94th percentile ranking versus all CPUs confirms that it is a top-tier part, but in Inside, its performance is largely irrelevant beyond ensuring that frame rates do not dip due to physics calculations or AI pathfinding, which are minimal in this genre.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and settings combination for a smooth 60 FPS experience?

A: The data shows that at 3840x2160 with Medium settings, the average FPS is 83 with a minimum of 71 FPS, which is the highest resolution that consistently stays above 60 FPS. For 2560x1440, Medium provides 133 FPS average with a minimum of 113 FPS, and at 1920x1080, even Ultra settings achieve 110 FPS average.

Q: Can this combo handle 4K gaming in Inside?

A: Yes, but only with the Medium preset, which yields an average of 83 FPS and a minimum of 71 FPS. High settings drop to 52 FPS and Ultra to 50 FPS, which are below the 60 FPS threshold and may be less comfortable for some players.

Q: How does the GTX 1070’s 8 GB of VRAM affect performance in this game?

A: The 8 GB of GDDR5 memory is not a limiting factor in Inside, as the game does not require large texture budgets. The absence of any memory-related stuttering, even at 4K Ultra, confirms that the VRAM capacity is sufficient for all tested settings.

Q: Is the Intel Core i7-14700K overkill for this game?

A: The CPU’s high single-core performance, with a boost clock of 5.60 GHz and a Geekbench single-core score of 2569, allows for extremely high frame rates at 1080p Low (231 FPS), but the GPU becomes the bottleneck at higher resolutions. For this title, a less powerful CPU would likely yield similar results at 1440p and 4K.

Q: What is the difference in frame rate between Medium and High settings at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, Medium settings produce an average of 133 FPS, while High settings produce 83 FPS. This represents a 50 FPS difference, or a 38% reduction in performance, for a modest increase in visual quality.

Q: How does this combo rank compared to all other tested systems for Inside?

A: This combination ranks 3056 out of 3716 tested combos, placing it in the lower 18% of configurations. This is primarily due to the GTX 1070’s mid-range performance, as the CPU is in the top 6% of all processors.