Inside

The Intel Core i7-14700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti combination delivers exceptional performance in Inside, a puzzle platformer from 2016. Across all measured settings and resolutions, the system maintains frame rates well above display refresh rate thresholds, with the lowest average being 99.2 FPS at 4K Ultra. The data indicates a hardware pairing that is heavily overqualified for the game’s rendering demands, making the experience consistently smooth regardless of configuration.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700K is a 20-core, 28-thread processor from the Core 14th Gen series, built on the Raptor Lake architecture with a 10 nm process. It operates with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz, supported by a 33 MB shared L3 cache and 2 MB L2 cache per core. While Inside is not a CPU-intensive title in the same way as modern simulators or strategy games, the processor’s high single-thread performance is directly relevant. The Cinebench R23 single-core score of 6287 and Passmark single-thread score of 4472 indicate that the CPU can handle the game’s physics and logic threads without becoming a bottleneck, even at high frame rates.

Benchmark results show the i7-14700K sits at the 96th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 70074. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core i7-14700KF, has an average score of 70104, a negligible 0% difference, confirming that the integrated graphics presence in the 14700K does not impact raw compute performance. The data shows that in multi-threaded workloads, the processor scores 44534 in Cinebench R23, which is 30% ahead of the AMD EPYC 9115’s average score of 69887 in the overall benchmark suite, though this delta is more about synthetic workloads than gaming.

For Inside, the CPU’s role is primarily to feed the GPU with draw calls and manage the game’s simple physics. The measured frame rates at 1080p Low, reaching 408.8 FPS, suggest that the CPU is capable of sustaining extremely high throughput. Even at 4K Ultra, where the GPU is more stressed, the CPU maintains a 99.2 FPS average, indicating no processor-induced frame pacing issues. The Passmark physics score of 2964 and floating point math score of 134222 further suggest that the CPU has ample headroom for the game’s occasional complex interactions.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data provides a clear picture of how the game scales with settings. At 1920x1080, the difference between Low (408.8 FPS) and Ultra (218.6 FPS) is substantial, but both are far beyond any practical display refresh rate. At 2560x1440, the Ultra setting delivers 157 FPS, which is still sufficient for high-refresh monitors, while Medium reaches 262.2 FPS. The most demanding configuration, 3840x2160 Ultra, produces 99.2 FPS, which is ideal for 4K displays with 100 Hz or 120 Hz refresh rates.

The optimal balance appears to be the High preset at 2560x1440, which yields 164.7 FPS. This setting provides a 33% performance increase over Ultra at the same resolution while likely maintaining visual fidelity that is indistinguishable in a game with Inside’s minimalist art style. For 4K users, the High preset at 101 FPS is recommended over Ultra’s 99.2 FPS, as the 1.8 FPS difference is negligible but the lower preset typically reduces GPU load, potentially lowering power draw and heat.

At 1080p, the Medium preset at 368.9 FPS is the sensible choice, as it offers a 69% improvement over Ultra’s 218.6 FPS without any perceivable visual penalty on most monitors. The data shows that Low settings provide diminishing returns, as the jump from Low to Medium at 1080p is only 40 FPS (from 408.8 to 368.9), indicating that the GPU is already saturating the CPU’s frame delivery capability.

FAQ

*Q: What is the highest average frame rate this combo achieves in Inside?*

A: The maximum measured average FPS is 408.8, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This represents the absolute ceiling for this hardware pairing in the game.

*Q: Can this system run Inside at 4K with high refresh rates?*

A: Yes. At 3840x2160 with High settings, the average FPS is 101, and at Ultra it is 99.2. Both are suitable for 100 Hz 4K displays, though they fall short of 144 Hz panels.

Q: How does the CPU’s single-thread performance affect the game?

A: The CPU’s Passmark single-thread score of 4472 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 6287 indicate strong per-core performance, which is critical for maintaining high average FPS in Inside. The 1080p Low result of 408.8 FPS demonstrates that the CPU does not bottleneck frame delivery.

Q: Is there a significant performance drop between 1440p and 4K?

A: At High settings, the drop from 2560x1440 (164.7 FPS) to 3840x2160 (101 FPS) is 38.7%. This is expected, as the GPU workload increases by roughly 2.25 times due to pixel count, but the absolute values remain playable.

Q: What is the combo’s ranking relative to other tested configurations?

A: The combo ranks 256th out of 1671 tested combinations, placing it in the top 15.3% of all hardware pairings in the database for Inside performance.

Q: Does the GPU’s VRAM capacity matter for this game?

A: The RTX 3080 Ti has 12 GB of GDDR6X memory. Inside is a 2016 puzzle platformer with simple textures, so the measured data shows no VRAM-related performance cliffs, as even 4K Ultra maintains 99.2 FPS.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i7-14700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti achieves a rank of 256 out of 1671 tested combos in Inside. This places the pairing in the 84.7th percentile of all configurations in the database, meaning only 15.3% of tested combos perform better. Given the game’s age and low system requirements, this ranking is expected; many higher-ranked combos likely feature more recent flagship GPUs that push frame rates even higher at 1080p.

The CPU’s percentile of 96 and GPU’s percentile of 83 suggest a slight imbalance, with the processor being relatively stronger than the graphics card. However, in Inside, the GPU is still the primary determinant of performance at higher resolutions. The data shows that the combo’s performance is sufficient to saturate typical display capabilities, so the ranking reflects raw FPS potential rather than playability differences.

Compared to the GPU’s nearest rivals, the RTX 3080 Ti is nearly identical to the RTX 3090, with a delta of -0.5% in average benchmark score. This means the combo’s rank would not change meaningfully if paired with an RTX 3090. The CPU’s rivals, such as the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X with a delta of -0.5%, also show negligible performance differences, confirming that this combo is well-balanced for the game’s demands.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is built on the Ampere architecture with an 8 nm process and features the GA102 chip with 28,300 million transistors. It operates at a base clock of 1365 MHz and a boost clock of 1665 MHz, with memory clocked at 19 Gbps effective. The 12 GB GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus provides 912.4 GB/s of bandwidth, which is more than sufficient for Inside’s texture streaming requirements.

The GPU’s FP32 performance of 34.10 TFLOPS and texture rate of 532.8 GTexel/s indicate that the card is vastly overprovisioned for a game that released in 2016. The measured frame rates confirm this: at 1080p Low, the GPU produces 408.8 FPS, and at 4K Ultra, it still manages 99.2 FPS. The scaling from 1080p to 4K at High settings shows a 55.5% reduction in FPS (from 226.8 to 101), which is consistent with the 4x pixel count increase, though the absolute numbers remain high.

The GPU’s percentile rank of 83 among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 41224, places it just below the RTX 3090 (41441, -0.5% delta). This indicates that the RTX 3080 Ti is a high-end card that excels in rasterization-heavy workloads. For Inside, the GPU’s 112 ROPs and 10240 shading units ensure that even at 4K Ultra, the pixel fill rate of 186.5 GPixel/s is not a limiting factor. The measured data shows that the GPU is the primary driver of performance differences between settings, with the CPU never becoming a bottleneck.