Inside

Inside is a 2016 puzzle platformer that remains remarkably light on modern hardware, and the measured results for the Intel Core Ultra 5 245 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 confirm this. The data shows a configuration capable of extreme frame rates across all tested resolutions, with the primary challenge being selecting a preset that balances visual fidelity against the monitor's refresh rate rather than struggling to maintain playability. This analysis breaks down the benchmark rows to determine the optimal settings, the role of each component, and how this specific combo stacks up against the broader database.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows provide a clear hierarchy across the four presets, and the best choice depends entirely on the target display. At 1920x1080, the Ultra preset delivers an average of 234 FPS, which is already exceptionally high. However, the Medium preset achieves 388 FPS, and Low reaches 420 FPS. For users with a 144Hz or 240Hz monitor, the Ultra setting is the most sensible option, as it provides a substantial visual upgrade over Medium while still exceeding the refresh rate cap of most displays. The High preset at 245 FPS sits nearly identically to Ultra in performance, making it a redundant middle ground unless specific visual tweaks are preferred.

Stepping up to 2560x1440, the situation becomes more nuanced. The Ultra preset averages 168 FPS, which remains above the threshold for high-refresh-rate gaming. High follows closely at 176 FPS, while Medium jumps to 282 FPS and Low to 353 FPS. Here, the recommendation shifts toward High or Ultra for owners of 1440p 144Hz panels, as both presets comfortably clear that bar. The difference between High and Ultra is a mere 8 FPS, suggesting that the Ultra preset is the better value for the negligible performance cost, assuming the GPU can handle its additional effects. For those with 240Hz 1440p displays, Medium at 282 FPS is the only preset that fully utilizes the panel's potential, though the visual compromise from Ultra is significant.

At 3840x2160, the data reveals the first real constraints. Ultra averages 106 FPS, which is still playable but below the 120Hz threshold many 4K displays target. High improves to 111 FPS, a marginal gain. Medium jumps to 177 FPS, and Low reaches 222 FPS. For a 60Hz 4K television, the Ultra preset is the clear winner, as it provides the best image quality while still maintaining a comfortable margin above 60 FPS. For 120Hz 4K panels, the choice is more difficult: Ultra and High both fall short of 120 FPS, while Medium at 177 FPS provides the headroom necessary to avoid screen tearing. Given that the visual leap from Medium to Ultra in a game like Inside is substantial due to its atmospheric lighting and shadows, users with 120Hz displays should prioritize the Ultra preset and accept the slight frame rate miss, as the experience remains smooth. The measured minimum FPS of 151 at 1080p Medium and 240 at 1440p Medium also indicates that even the lowest recorded frames stay well within playable territory, so there is no risk of stutter-induced frustration at any preset.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture using a 5 nm process at TSMC, featuring 12 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 192-bit bus. Its memory bandwidth of 672.0 GB/s is a defining characteristic, and the data suggests this is more than sufficient for Inside's demands. The GPU's boost clock of 2512 MHz, combined with 6144 shading units, provides the raw compute power that drives the high frame rates seen in the measurements. The 80 ROPs and 192 TMUs are responsible for pixel and texture throughput, respectively, and the benchmark results indicate that the card is never the bottleneck at 1080p, where even the Low preset produces 420 FPS.

The GPU's performance percentile of 82 places it in the upper tier of all tested graphics cards, though its nearest rivals in the database are notably older professional workstation parts. The AMD Radeon Pro 580 scores 0.1% higher, the AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100 scores 0.8% higher, and the AMD Radeon Pro 5300 scores 1.2% lower. This is an unusual grouping, as these are not gaming-focused cards, but it highlights that the RTX 5070's raw compute score of 29137 in Passmark G3D is competitive with a wide range of hardware. In the context of Inside, the GPU's 12 GB VRAM is never a concern, as the game's texture and geometry complexity from 2016 is unlikely to exceed a few gigabytes even at 4K Ultra. The card's FP32 performance of 30.87 TFLOPS is more than adequate for the simple shaders and lighting models used by the game engine.

The RTX 5070's role becomes more apparent at higher resolutions. The transition from 1080p to 4K shows a performance drop that is consistent with a GPU-bound scenario, but the absolute numbers remain so high that the card's capabilities are not truly stressed. The GPU's 48 RT cores and 192 tensor cores are irrelevant for Inside, which does not use ray tracing or DLSS, but they contribute to the card's overall architecture. The measured data shows that the GPU can push 222 FPS at 4K Low and 111 FPS at 4K High, indicating that the card's memory subsystem and compute units are well-balanced for this workload. There is no evidence of thermal throttling or memory bandwidth limitations in the frametime data, as the minimum FPS values, where available, stay close to the averages.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling across resolutions reveals a classic GPU-bound pattern, but with an unusual twist: the performance drop from 1080p to 1440p is larger than the drop from 1440p to 4K, in percentage terms. At the Ultra preset, the average FPS goes from 234 at 1080p to 168 at 1440p, a reduction of approximately 28%. Moving from 1440p to 4K, the average drops from 168 to 106, a reduction of roughly 37%. This indicates that the CPU becomes more relevant at lower resolutions, where the GPU is not fully saturated, but the overall frame rates are so high that the CPU's influence is minimal.

A more telling comparison is the Low preset scaling. At 1080p Low, the system produces 420 FPS. At 1440p Low, it produces 353 FPS, a drop of 16%. At 4K Low, it produces 222 FPS, a drop of 37% from 1440p. The 1080p to 1440p drop is relatively small, suggesting that the CPU is starting to limit performance at 1080p Low, where the GPU has less work to do. The 1440p to 4K drop is more pronounced, indicating that the GPU is now the primary limiting factor. This is a common pattern for high-end GPUs paired with mid-range CPUs: the CPU can feed frames fast enough at lower resolutions, but the GPU's rendering load scales with pixel count.

The Medium preset offers the most complete data, with minimum and maximum FPS values recorded. At 1080p Medium, the average is 388 FPS with a minimum of 329 and a maximum of 446. At 1440p Medium, the average is 282 FPS with a minimum of 240 and a maximum of 325. At 4K Medium, the average is 177 FPS with a minimum of 151 and a maximum of 204. The consistency of the minimum FPS values, which never drop below 151 FPS even at 4K, demonstrates that the system maintains a stable frame pacing without significant hitches. The spread between minimum and maximum FPS is roughly 30% at each resolution, which is expected for a game with varying scene complexity. The data suggests that at 1080p, the CPU is the limiting factor, as the GPU is capable of rendering frames faster than the CPU can issue draw calls. At 4K, the GPU becomes the bottleneck, as the pixel fill rate and memory bandwidth are taxed more heavily.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core Ultra 5 245 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 combination ranks 271st out of 2887 tested combos in Inside, placing it in the top 9.4% of all configurations in the database. This is a strong result, though not a top-tier one, given that the GPU and CPU are both recent releases with high individual percentiles. The combo's rank suggests that while the hardware is capable of excellent performance, there are many other combinations that achieve even higher frame rates, likely featuring more powerful CPUs or GPUs.

The CPU's individual percentile of 90 places it above 90% of all tested processors, with an average benchmark score of 48995. Its nearest rivals are closely matched: the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5755G scores 0.4% lower, the AMD Ryzen 9 7900 scores 0.5% lower, the Intel Xeon Gold 5318H scores 0.6% higher, and the Intel Core i5-14600K scores 0.8% higher. This clustering indicates that the Core Ultra 5 245 is a solid mid-to-high-range performer, but not a standout. The GPU's percentile of 82 is slightly lower, with an average benchmark score of 40377, and its nearest rivals are the AMD Radeon Pro 580 (0.1% higher), the AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100 (0.8% higher), the AMD Radeon Pro 5300 (1.2% lower), and the NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile (2% higher). The GPU's ranking is less impressive relative to the CPU, which suggests that the combo's overall rank is slightly held back by the GPU's position in the database.

In the context of Inside specifically, the combo's rank of 271 is driven by the game's low system requirements. Many older or less powerful GPUs can achieve high frame rates in this title, so the RTX 5070's advantage is diminished. The data shows that the combo is not a top-100 performer, but it is well above the median, and the measured FPS values confirm that it delivers a premium experience at all settings. The rank is more reflective of the hardware's overall capability than its suitability for this specific game, as Inside does not stress modern components to their limits.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 245 is a 14-core, 14-thread processor based on the Arrow Lake architecture, manufactured on a 3 nm process at TSMC. It has a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.10 GHz, with a 24 MB shared L3 cache. The lack of hyper-threading means the 14 cores map directly to 14 threads, which is a departure from Intel's previous designs. For a game like Inside, which is not heavily multithreaded, the CPU's single-core performance is paramount. The Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4648 is strong, and the Passmark single-thread score of 4394 confirms this. The CPU's boost clock of 5.10 GHz is likely the key factor in achieving these scores, as the game's physics and game logic rely on a few fast cores.

The CPU's role in the measured FPS is most evident at 1080p Low, where it achieves 420 FPS. This is a clear indication that the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU at a very high rate, and the GPU is not the limiting factor at this resolution. The CPU's memory bandwidth of 102.4 GB/s, supported by dual-channel DDR5, is sufficient for the game's data streaming needs. The 14 cores provide ample headroom for background tasks, but the game itself likely uses only a few of them. The CPU's TDP of 65 W is modest, and the data shows no evidence of power throttling affecting frame rates.

Comparing the CPU to its nearest rivals in the database, the Core Ultra 5 245 is nearly identical in performance to the AMD Ryzen 9 7900 and the Intel Core i5-14600K, with deltas of -0.5% and +0.8%, respectively. This is significant because the Ryzen 9 7900 is a 12-core part and the i5-14600K is a 14-core part, indicating that the Core Ultra 5 245's architecture is efficient despite its lower thread count. In Inside, the CPU's performance is more than adequate, as the measured FPS at 1080p are among the highest in the dataset. The CPU's integrated graphics, Arc Xe-LPG Graphics 64EU, are not used in this configuration, but they do not interfere with the discrete GPU's operation. The CPU's 20 PCIe Gen 5 lanes provide ample bandwidth for the RTX 5070's PCIe 5.0 x16 interface.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers its highest frame rates across all presets. The Low preset averages 420 FPS, making it the fastest configuration tested. Medium averages 388 FPS, with a minimum of 329 and a maximum of 446 FPS, showing a tight distribution. High averages 245 FPS, and Ultra averages 234 FPS. The gap between Low and High is 175 FPS, which is substantial, but the gap between High and Ultra is only 11 FPS, suggesting that the Ultra preset's additional effects are not particularly demanding at this resolution.

Moving to 2560x1440, the Low preset averages 353 FPS, a 16% reduction from 1080p. Medium averages 282 FPS, with a minimum of 240 and a maximum of 325 FPS. High averages 176 FPS, and Ultra averages 168 FPS. The reduction from 1080p to 1440p is consistent across presets, with High and Ultra dropping by approximately 28-29%, while Low and Medium drop by 16-27%. This suggests that the higher presets are more sensitive to resolution scaling, likely due to increased pixel shading and post-processing effects.

At 3840x2160, the Low preset averages 222 FPS, which is still remarkably high. Medium averages 177 FPS, with a minimum of 151 and a maximum of 204 FPS. High averages 111 FPS, and Ultra averages 106 FPS. The reduction from 1440p to 4K is more pronounced, with Low dropping by 37%, Medium by 37%, High by 37%, and Ultra by 37%. This uniformity indicates that the GPU is now the primary bottleneck, and the scaling is purely pixel-bound. The Ultra preset at 4K, with an average of 106 FPS, is the only configuration that dips near the 60 FPS threshold, but it still maintains a comfortable margin above it. The minimum FPS at 4K Medium is 151, which is the lowest recorded minimum in the dataset, but it is still well above the threshold for smooth gameplay. Overall, the measured FPS breakdown confirms that this combo can handle Inside at maximum settings with high refresh rates at 1080p and 1440p, and it can provide a solid 4K experience with a preference for the Ultra preset on 60Hz displays.