Inside

The Intel Core i7-14700KF and Intel Arc B580 pairing delivers a remarkably fluid experience in Inside, a puzzle platformer that is far more demanding than its minimalist art style suggests. The data shows that this combo is capable of extreme frame rates, but the optimal settings depend heavily on your display's refresh rate and resolution. For the best balance of visual fidelity and performance, the Medium preset at 2560x1440 is the standout choice, delivering 156 FPS average with a minimum of 133 FPS. This provides a silky-smooth experience on high-refresh-rate monitors while maintaining the game's atmospheric lighting and shadow quality. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset hits 217 FPS average, which is excellent for 240Hz displays, but the jump to High at 136 FPS is a significant visual upgrade that is still well above the 120Hz threshold. For 4K displays, the High preset at 61 FPS is the playable ceiling, though the Medium preset at 98 FPS offers a better experience for those prioritizing frame rate over the highest shadows.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data provides a clear hierarchy of performance across the four available presets. At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves 271 FPS, but this is unnecessary for virtually any display on the market. The Medium preset at 217 FPS is the sweet spot for competitive or high-refresh-rate play, offering a 54 FPS advantage over High while still retaining adequate visual quality. However, the High preset at 136 FPS is the recommended choice for most users, as it provides a substantial improvement in texture filtering and draw distances that are noticeable in Inside's moody, side-scrolling environments. The Ultra preset at 129 FPS offers only a marginal 7 FPS gain over High, which is not worth the additional GPU load, especially since the visual differences between High and Ultra are often imperceptible in this art style.

Moving to 2560x1440, the Medium preset at 156 FPS is the definitive recommendation. It maintains a 133 FPS minimum, ensuring no perceptible stutter, and delivers near-maximum visual quality. The High preset at 98 FPS is acceptable for 100Hz displays, but the 58 FPS drop from Medium is a steep price for the extra visual polish. At 3840x2160, the situation becomes more constrained. The Low preset hits 123 FPS, but the Medium preset at 98 FPS is the best compromise, providing a playable frame rate with acceptable visuals. The High preset at 61 FPS is barely playable, and the Ultra preset at 58 FPS is not recommended due to the risk of drops below 60 FPS in busier scenes. The data strongly suggests that Medium at 1440p is the "best experience" for this combo, as it hits the high-refresh-rate target without sacrificing too much visual quality.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700KF 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. This is an extremely powerful CPU, ranking in the 94th percentile against all processors, with an average benchmark score of 70163. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (0.9% faster) and the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K (1% slower), indicating that the i7-14700KF is firmly in the top tier of desktop CPUs. In Inside, which is a 2D platformer with limited physics and AI, this CPU is massively over-provisioned. The game's logic is simple, so the CPU is rarely the bottleneck.

However, the benchmark results show that the i7-14700KF's high single-thread performance, as evidenced by its Cinebench R23 single-core score of 6235, ensures that even at 1080p with Low settings (271 FPS), the CPU can feed the GPU without becoming a limiting factor. The 33 MB of shared L3 cache and 2 MB per-core L2 cache provide ample headroom for the game's small working set. The 125W TDP is modest for this core count, and the processor's ability to boost to 5.60 GHz on a single core is more than sufficient for Inside's frame pacing. In this specific game, the CPU's role is to stay out of the way, and the data confirms it does so effectively, as the frame rate scales almost entirely with GPU load across resolutions.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B580 is the critical component in this pairing. Based on the Xe2-HPG architecture and manufactured on a 5 nm process by TSMC, this GPU features 2560 shading units, 160 texture mapping units, and 80 raster output units. It operates at a fixed base and boost clock of 2670 MHz. The GPU has 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, providing 456.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This memory configuration is more than adequate for Inside, which has modest texture requirements. The GPU's benchmark scores show it ranks in the 68th percentile against all GPUs, with an average score of 23021. Its nearest rivals are interesting: it performs nearly identically to the AMD Radeon RX 580 2048SP (0.2% slower) and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 (0.6% faster), while being slightly slower than the RTX 3080 (0.7% faster). This places the Arc B580 in a strange performance tier, roughly matching older high-end cards from previous generations.

In Inside, the GPU is the primary driver of frame rate scaling. At 1080p Low, the GPU achieves 271 FPS, but this drops to 129 FPS at Ultra, showing a 142 FPS swing purely from settings. This indicates that the GPU's raw compute power is the limiting factor at higher presets. The 13.67 TFLOPS FP32 performance is substantial, but the game's rendering techniques, particularly at Ultra with enhanced shadow and lighting effects, stress the GPU's fixed-function units. The 80 ROPs are sufficient for the pixel fill rates needed at 4K, as evidenced by the 123 FPS at Low 4K. However, the 456 GB/s memory bandwidth becomes a constraint at higher resolutions and settings, which is typical for this title. The GPU's 190W TDP and 450W suggested PSU requirement are reasonable for the performance delivered.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i7-14700KF and Intel Arc B580 ranks 2764 out of 3716 tested combos in Inside, placing it in the 74th percentile of all tested systems. This ranking is surprisingly low given the individual performance of the components, but it reflects the specific optimization of the game. The CPU's 94th percentile ranking is irrelevant here, as the game is GPU-bound. The GPU's 68th percentile ranking is more indicative, but the combo's rank suggests that other pairings with better GPUs and slower CPUs outperform it. The data shows that this combo is not optimized for Inside's specific rendering pipeline, likely due to driver overhead or architectural quirks with the Arc B580.

The rank of 2764 implies that there are 952 tested combos that perform worse, meaning this setup is in the upper half of all systems. However, for a CPU that costs $384 at launch and a GPU that costs $249 at launch, the performance is adequate but not exceptional. The combo's ranking is dragged down by the GPU's relatively modest performance compared to its nearest rivals. For instance, the RTX 3080, which is only 0.7% faster in synthetic benchmarks, could pair with a slower CPU and likely achieve a higher rank in this game. The i7-14700KF is overkill for Inside, and the combo's rank reflects that the CPU's power is not being fully utilized. In practical terms, this means the user is paying for CPU headroom that the game never touches, but the actual frame rates are still excellent for the game's genre.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K clearly indicates that the Intel Arc B580 is the limiting component in this system. At 1080p High, the combo achieves 136 FPS. At 1440p High, it drops to 98 FPS, a 28% reduction. At 4K High, it falls to 61 FPS, a 55% reduction from 1080p. This pattern is consistent with a GPU-bound scenario, where the pixel fill rate and memory bandwidth are the primary constraints. The CPU's performance is constant across resolutions, so the drop is solely due to the GPU's workload.

This is further emphasized by the Low preset scaling. At 1080p Low, the combo hits 271 FPS. At 1440p Low, it drops to 195 FPS (28% reduction), and at 4K Low, it drops to 123 FPS (55% reduction). The consistent percentage drops across presets confirm that the GPU is the bottleneck, not the CPU. The i7-14700KF's high clock speeds and large cache do not contribute to higher frame rates at lower resolutions because the GPU cannot render frames fast enough to saturate the CPU. In this game, the CPU is effectively idle, waiting for the GPU to complete its work. The data suggests that if you were to pair this CPU with a much faster GPU, the frame rates would scale significantly higher, but with the Arc B580, the GPU's limits are the definitive ceiling.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured data shows the full range of performance. At Low, the average FPS is 271, which is exceptionally high and suitable for 240Hz monitors. At Medium, the average drops to 217 FPS, with a minimum of 185 FPS and a maximum of 250 FPS, providing a stable experience for high-refresh-rate displays. The High preset averages 136 FPS, which is a comfortable 144Hz experience. The Ultra preset averages 129 FPS, only 7 FPS lower than High, indicating diminishing returns. There is no min or max data for Low, High, or Ultra, but the averages show a clear step-down as settings increase.

At 2560x1440, the same pattern continues but at lower absolute numbers. The Low preset averages 195 FPS, which is still very high. The Medium preset averages 156 FPS, with a minimum of 133 FPS and a maximum of 180 FPS, making it the best choice for 144Hz gaming. The High preset averages 98 FPS, which is suitable for 100Hz displays. The Ultra preset averages 93 FPS, a 5 FPS drop from High, which is negligible but shows the GPU's limits at this resolution with maxed settings.

At 3840x2160, the data shows a more constrained experience. The Low preset averages 123 FPS, which is surprisingly high for 4K. The Medium preset averages 98 FPS, with a minimum of 83 FPS and a maximum of 113 FPS, providing a playable experience for 4K60 displays. The High preset averages 61 FPS, which is right at the 60 FPS threshold, but the lack of min/max data suggests it may dip below in complex scenes. The Ultra preset averages 58 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS target and not recommended for consistent smoothness. The data clearly shows that 4K Ultra is only possible with frame rate dips, while 4K Medium is the optimal 4K setting for this combo.