Inside

The Intel Core Ultra 5 235 paired with the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT is a desktop combination aimed at high-refresh 1440p and playable 4K gaming. In Inside, a puzzle platformer with modest visual demands, this pairing produces some of the most extreme frame rate headroom seen in the database, with average FPS ranging from 89 at 4K Ultra to 413 at 1080p Low. The measured data across twelve resolution/settings permutations reveals a system that is rarely stressed by the game’s rendering load, but the scaling pattern between resolutions and presets still offers clear insight into which component governs performance at each configuration. The following analysis breaks down those measured results, contextualizes them against the combo’s overall rank, and provides practical settings guidance based strictly on the observed frame rates.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is substantial but not uniform across settings, indicating where the GPU begins to take over from the CPU. At Low settings, the average FPS falls from 413 at 1920x1080 to 299 at 2560x1440, then to 188 at 3840x2160. That is a 54.5% reduction from 1080p to 1440p, followed by a 37.1% reduction from 1440p to 4K. The absolute deltas are large—114 FPS lost going to 1440p and another 111 FPS lost going to 4K—but the percentage decline slows as resolution climbs, a pattern consistent with a GPU that still has substantial headroom even at 4K.

At Medium settings, the same resolution progression yields 332 FPS at 1080p, 239 FPS at 1440p, and 150 FPS at 4K. The percentage drops are 28.0% from 1080p to 1440p and 37.2% from 1440p to 4K. Notably, the 1440p-to-4K drop is nearly identical to the Low settings’ drop, suggesting that at these two presets, the GPU’s pixel throughput becomes the limiting factor sooner. However, the 1080p-to-1440p drop is much smaller at Medium (28.0%) than at Low (54.5%), which implies that at Low settings, the CPU is doing more of the work at 1080p, and the GPU starts to catch up as resolution rises.

High settings show a different pattern: 208 FPS at 1080p, 149 FPS at 1440p, and 94 FPS at 4K. The drops are 28.4% and 36.9%, respectively. Ultra settings produce the lowest overall numbers but the most consistent scaling: 198 FPS at 1080p, 142 FPS at 1440p, and 89 FPS at 4K, with drops of 28.3% and 37.3%. Across all four presets, the 1440p-to-4K drop hovers around 37%, which is a strong indicator that the RX 7800 XT’s rendering throughput is the primary constraint at 4K regardless of quality level.

The 1080p-to-1440p scaling tells a more nuanced story. At Low, the 54.5% drop is the steepest, meaning the CPU (Intel Core Ultra 5 235) is feeding frames so quickly at 1080p that the GPU cannot keep pace, and adding pixels exposes that GPU limitation. At Medium, High, and Ultra, the 1080p-to-1440p drop is a consistent 28-28.4%, which suggests a balanced load where both CPU and GPU are contributing. The fact that Ultra at 1080p (198 FPS) is only slightly below High at 1080p (208 FPS) further indicates that the game’s Ultra preset does not add a disproportionate pixel workload compared to High.

The most telling number for limiting-component analysis is the gap between Low and Ultra at each resolution. At 1080p, Low scores 413 FPS while Ultra scores 198 FPS—a 215 FPS spread. At 1440p, the spread is 299 vs 142 FPS (157 FPS gap). At 4K, it narrows to 188 vs 89 FPS (99 FPS gap). As resolution increases, the settings-based frame rate delta shrinks, meaning the GPU’s raw pixel fill rate becomes the dominant factor, while at lower resolutions, the CPU’s ability to issue draw calls and physics updates matters more. This is classic behavior for a well-optimized 2D-perspective game like Inside, where geometric complexity is low but the engine still respects resolution scaling.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT carries 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, with a bandwidth of 624.1 GB/s. Its memory clocks run at 2438 MHz (19.5 Gbps effective), and the GPU has a base clock of 1295 MHz, a game clock of 2124 MHz, and a boost clock of 2430 MHz. These specifications are relevant to the measured FPS because Inside is not a VRAM-heavy title; the 16 GB allocation is far more than the game requires, so the bottleneck is never memory capacity. Instead, the limiting factor is the GPU’s shading and rasterization throughput, which is defined by 3840 shading units, 240 TMUs, and 96 ROPs.

The pixel rate of 233.3 GPixel/s and texture rate of 583.2 GTexel/s directly explain the 4K scaling behavior. At 3840x2160 (8.3 million pixels), the theoretical fill rate allows for high frame rates, but the measured 188 FPS at Low and 89 FPS at Ultra show that the game’s pixel shader workload scales significantly with quality settings. The FP32 performance of 37.32 TFLOPS is ample for this game’s simple shaders, yet the 4K Ultra result of 89 FPS suggests that the Ultra preset includes effects that stress the ROPs or memory subsystem more than raw compute.

The GPU’s average benchmark score is 11627, with a percentileVsAllGpus of 51, meaning it sits near the midpoint of all GPUs tested. Its nearest rivals in the database include the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 (deltaPct -0.5%), the AMD Radeon Pro 5500M (deltaPct 0.9%), and the NVIDIA Tesla K20c (deltaPct 1.3%). These are older or lower-tier cards, which underscores that the RX 7800 XT’s average benchmark score is dragged down by compute workloads that are not representative of gaming. In Inside, the GPU’s actual frame rates are far above what those rival scores would predict, because the game’s rendering load is light and the RX 7800 XT’s high clock speeds (boost 2430 MHz) and high fill rates shine.

The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 4157 and PassMark G3D score of 24176 are more indicative of gaming performance, and those align with the measured FPS being in the hundreds at 1080p. The GPU’s DirectX 12 Ultimate support (12_2) ensures full feature compatibility, but Inside does not leverage ray tracing or mesh shaders heavily, so the 60 RT cores (under the RDNA 3.0 architecture) are largely idle during gameplay. The Vulkan score of 54228 and OpenCL score of 18290 further suggest strong compute, but those are not the primary drivers here.

The TDP of 263 W and suggested PSU of 600 W are power delivery requirements, not performance metrics, but they do indicate the GPU is a mid-range to upper-mid-range part that can sustain high clocks without thermal throttling in a well-ventilated case. The dual-slot cooler and 267 mm length are physical constraints, not performance limits. For Inside, the GPU never comes close to hitting its power ceiling, as evidenced by the fact that even at 4K Ultra, the average FPS is 89, which is far above the refresh rate of most 4K displays.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the database of 2887 tested CPU/GPU combinations for Inside, this pairing ranks 677th. That places it in the top 23.5% of all combos, which is a strong showing for a mid-range GPU and a 14-core CPU. The rank of 677 means that 2210 other combinations produce higher average FPS in this game, but many of those likely use top-tier GPUs like the RTX 4090 or RX 7900 XTX, which are not in this data set’s nearest rivals for the GPU or CPU.

The CPU’s percentileVsAllCpus is 89, meaning the Intel Core Ultra 5 235 performs better than 89% of all CPUs in the database. This high percentile is reflected in the 1080p Low result of 413 FPS, which is likely CPU-limited at that resolution and settings. The CPU’s nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 (avgScore 46030, deltaPct 0.1%), the Intel Core i9-13900HX (avgScore 46098, deltaPct -0.1%), and the AMD EPYC 4364P (avgScore 45970, deltaPct 0.2%). These are all high-end laptop or workstation chips, and the Core Ultra 5 235 matches them within 0.2% in average benchmark scores, which is why it ranks so high.

However, the combo rank of 677 is lower than the CPU’s percentile might suggest, because the GPU is the limiting factor at higher resolutions. The GPU’s percentileVsAllGpus is only 51, meaning it sits at the median of all GPUs tested. That is a stark contrast to the CPU’s 89th percentile. In Inside, where the GPU’s fill rate matters more at 4K, the combo rank reflects this imbalance: the CPU could push far more frames, but the GPU caps the output. The deltaPct values for the GPU’s nearest rivals (GTX 1660 at -0.5%, Radeon Pro 5500M at 0.9%, Tesla K20c at 1.3%) show that the RX 7800 XT’s average benchmark score is similar to older cards, but its real-world gaming performance in this title is much better due to its high clock speeds and modern architecture.

The combo rank of 677 out of 2887 translates to roughly the 77th percentile of all combos, which is respectable but not elite. The data shows that many combos with a stronger GPU (e.g., a 4070 Ti or 7900 XT) would rank higher, even if their CPU is weaker, because Inside’s frame rates at 1080p and 1440p are so high that the GPU becomes the bottleneck. Conversely, combos with a weaker GPU but a similar CPU would rank much lower, confirming that the RX 7800 XT is the entry point for achieving the 4K Ultra result of 89 FPS.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data provides a clear hierarchy of settings for each resolution. At 1920x1080, every preset delivers well above 60 FPS, with the lowest being Ultra at 198 FPS and the highest being Low at 413 FPS. The jump from Low to Medium costs 81 FPS (413 to 332), but the jump from Medium to High costs 124 FPS (332 to 208), and High to Ultra costs only 10 FPS (208 to 198). This means that at 1080p, the most efficient choice is High, because it offers nearly the same frame rate as Ultra (within 10 FPS) while presumably reducing visual effects that are not noticeable on a small screen. Medium is also viable if the user wants a larger safety margin, but High is the sweet spot.

At 2560x1440, the same pattern holds: Ultra is 142 FPS, High is 149 FPS, Medium is 239 FPS, and Low is 299 FPS. The gap between High and Ultra is only 7 FPS, so High is the recommended preset for 1440p, as it delivers 149 FPS, which is well above 144 Hz for most monitors. Medium offers 239 FPS, which is excessive for any display refresh rate, and the visual quality loss from High to Medium is not worth the extra 90 FPS. Low at 299 FPS is unnecessary unless the user has a 300 Hz monitor, but even then, High provides a better balance.

At 3840x2160, the choices are tighter. Ultra is 89 FPS, High is 94 FPS, Medium is 150 FPS, and Low is 188 FPS. The difference between Ultra and High is only 5 FPS (89 vs 94), so High is again the better choice, as it provides a 5.6% frame rate improvement with minimal visual changes. Medium at 150 FPS is the best option for 4K if the user wants to hit higher refresh rates, but it comes at the cost of visual fidelity. Low at 188 FPS is overkill for 4K displays, which typically max out at 120 Hz or 144 Hz, so the extra frames are wasted.

The overall recommendation across all resolutions is to use High settings, as it consistently sits within 5-10 FPS of Ultra while offering a noticeable improvement over Medium in terms of visual quality (based on the fact that High’s FPS is much lower than Medium’s, implying more graphical work). For competitive play at 1080p, Medium at 332 FPS is a safe choice, but High at 208 FPS already exceeds any high-refresh monitor’s capability. At 4K, High at 94 FPS is the best balance, as it stays above 90 FPS and avoids the Ultra preset’s marginal gains.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the average FPS by preset is as follows: Low delivers 413 FPS, Medium delivers 332 FPS with a minimum of 282 FPS and a maximum of 382 FPS, High delivers 208 FPS, and Ultra delivers 198 FPS. The Medium preset is the only one with recorded min/max values, showing a 100 FPS spread between the lowest and highest frames, which is typical for a scene with variable geometric complexity. Low’s 413 FPS is the highest of any resolution/settings combination in the data, indicating that the CPU is the limiter at this point.

At 2560x1440, the averages are: Low at 299 FPS, Medium at 239 FPS (min 203, max 275), High at 149 FPS, and Ultra at 142 FPS. The Medium preset’s min/max spread is 72 FPS, narrower than at 1080p, which suggests more consistent frame pacing as the GPU takes on more load. The drop from Low to Medium is 60 FPS, from Medium to High is 90 FPS, and from High to Ultra is 7 FPS. The High-to-Ultra gap is the smallest at this resolution, making Ultra an attractive option for those with 144 Hz 1440p monitors, since 142 FPS is just below the refresh rate.

At 3840x2160, the averages are: Low at 188 FPS, Medium at 150 FPS (min 128, max 173), High at 94 FPS, and Ultra at 89 FPS. The Medium preset’s min/max spread is 45 FPS, the tightest of any resolution, indicating that the GPU’s workload is more uniform at 4K. The percentage drop from Low to Medium is 20.2%, from Medium to High is 37.3%, and from High to Ultra is 5.3%. The High-to-Ultra gap is again minimal, reinforcing the recommendation to use High over Ultra.

The data shows that the RX 7800 XT scales nearly linearly with resolution when settings are held constant. For example, at High settings, the FPS at 1080p (208) is 1.40 times the FPS at 1440p (149), and the 1440p FPS is 1.59 times the 4K FPS (94). This is close to the expected pixel count ratios (1080p to 1440p is 1.78x pixels, 1440p to 4K is 2.25x pixels), but the game’s lighting and post-processing effects do not scale perfectly with pixel count, so the frame rate drops are slightly less than the pixel count increases. At Low settings, the scaling is less linear: 1080p (413) to 1440p (299) is a 1.38x drop, and 1440p to 4K (188) is a 1.59x drop, which is similar to High’s ratios, indicating that the game’s engine has a consistent resolution scaling factor regardless of preset.

FAQ

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

A: The highest average FPS is 413, measured at 1920x1080 with Low settings.

*Q: Can this combo run Inside at 4K Ultra with average FPS above 60?*

A: Yes, the measured average FPS at 3840x2160 with Ultra settings is 89, which is well above 60.

*Q: How does the combo rank among all tested CPU/GPU combinations for Inside?*

A: It ranks 677th out of 2887 combos, placing it in the top 23.5% of all tested configurations.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between High and Ultra settings at 2560x1440?

A: At 2560x1440, High averages 149 FPS and Ultra averages 142 FPS, a difference of 7 FPS.

Q: Which component is more likely to limit performance at 1080p Low?

A: The CPU (Intel Core Ultra 5 235) is the likely limiter, as the 413 FPS result is far above what the GPU would typically cap at low resolution, and the CPU’s 89th percentile score indicates high single-thread capability.

*Q: Does the GPU’s 16 GB VRAM ever become a bottleneck in Inside?*

A: No, the game’s visual complexity is low, and the measured frame rates do not indicate any VRAM capacity issues; the 16 GB allocation is sufficient for all tested settings and resolutions.