Inside

Inside is a 2016 puzzle platformer that, on paper, should be trivial for a modern flagship like the Intel Core Ultra 5 245 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090. The measured data confirms this, but the specific frame pacing and scaling patterns reveal a title that is heavily CPU-bound, even at 4K. The dataset provides a clear picture of how this specific combination behaves, with average frame rates ranging from 143 FPS to 420 FPS depending on resolution and preset. The analysis below breaks down the optimal settings, answers common questions, and explains the role each component plays in this particular pairing.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data offers a clear hierarchy of performance across the four available presets. For this specific configuration, the Medium preset at 2560x1440 provides the most balanced experience, but the choice ultimately depends on the user's display refresh rate and preference for visual fidelity.

At 1920x1080, the Ultra preset delivers an average of 317 FPS. This is only slightly below the 323 FPS average of the High preset, making the jump to Ultra essentially free in performance terms. The data shows a minimal 6 FPS difference between High and Ultra at 1080p, which suggests that the visual enhancements are not taxing the hardware noticeably. However, the difference between Ultra and Medium is more substantial, with Medium hitting 388 FPS. This 71 FPS gap indicates that Medium is less demanding, but the 317 FPS floor on Ultra is already far beyond the refresh rate of most monitors. Therefore, at 1080p, Ultra is the recommended preset if the goal is maximum visual quality without sacrificing the high frame rate advantage.

Moving to 2560x1440, the High preset produces an average of 239 FPS, while Ultra trails slightly at 228 FPS. The 11 FPS delta between these two is negligible, and both are well above the 144Hz threshold common for high-refresh-rate 1440p monitors. The Medium preset at 347 FPS offers a significant frame rate boost, but it comes at the cost of reduced graphical detail. Since the Ultra preset still clears 200 FPS by a comfortable margin, it is the recommended choice for 1440p users who want the best image quality. The data indicates that the system is not stressed at this resolution, as the frame rate drop from 1080p to 1440p is only about 28% for the High preset, suggesting the GPU is still not the primary bottleneck.

At 3840x2160 (4K), the situation becomes more nuanced. The Medium preset is the standout performer, delivering an average of 240 FPS with a minimum of 204 FPS and a maximum of 276 FPS. This is the only preset at 4K that provides minimum frame rates consistently above 200 FPS, which is crucial for maintaining smoothness on high-refresh-rate 4K displays. The High preset at 4K drops to 150 FPS, and Ultra falls further to 143 FPS. While these are still playable, they are below the 240 FPS target that the Hardware has been shown to hit on Medium. The Low preset at 4K hits 300 FPS, but it is visually inferior. Given that the Medium preset at 4K offers a 90 FPS advantage over High and a 97 FPS advantage over Ultra, it represents the best compromise between visual fidelity and the sheer frame rate headroom this hardware can provide. For 4K, Medium is the definitive recommendation.

The overall recommendation leans toward Medium at 4K or Ultra at 1440p, depending on the user's resolution preference. The data suggests that the Intel Core Ultra 5 245 and RTX 5090 combination is so powerful that the user can prioritize visual quality at lower resolutions or prioritize frame rate smoothness at 4K.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this hardware to maintain a 240 FPS average?

A: The data shows that the Medium preset is the only one achieving a 240 FPS average at 3840x2160. At 2560x1440, the Medium preset achieves 347 FPS, and at 1920x1080, it achieves 388 FPS. If the target is strictly 240 FPS, the Medium preset at 4K is the highest resolution that hits this mark.

Q: How much performance is lost when switching from 1080p to 4K on the High preset?

A: The measured data shows a drop from 323 FPS at 1920x1080 to 150 FPS at 3840x2160 on the High preset. This represents a 173 FPS reduction, or roughly a 54% decrease in average frame rate. This significant drop indicates a shift in the bottleneck from the CPU to the GPU as resolution increases.

Q: Does the Ultra preset offer a meaningful performance penalty compared to High?

A: The penalty is minimal. At 1920x1080, the difference is only 6 FPS (323 vs 317). At 2560x1440, the difference is 11 FPS (239 vs 228). At 3840x2160, the difference is 7 FPS (150 vs 143). The data indicates that the Ultra preset is only slightly more demanding than High across all resolutions, making it a viable choice for maximum quality.

Q: Is the minimum frame rate data available for all presets?

A: No. The dataset only includes minimum and maximum frame rates for the Medium preset at each resolution. For example, at 1920x1080 Medium, the minimum is 329 FPS and the maximum is 446 FPS. For other presets, only the average FPS is provided, so the consistency of those presets cannot be analyzed from this data.

Q: How does this combo rank among other tested configurations for Inside?

A: The data places this combination at rank 40 out of 3716 tested combos. This puts it in the top 1.1% of all configurations tested for this game, indicating that it delivers near-top-tier performance, though it is not the absolute fastest combination in the database.

Q: Is the game more CPU-limited or GPU-limited at 1080p?

A: The frame rates at 1920x1080 are exceptionally high, with the Low preset hitting 420 FPS. The relatively small variance between presets (420 FPS Low vs 317 FPS Ultra) and the fact that the CPU is a mid-range 14-core part suggests the game is heavily CPU-bound at this resolution. The GPU is likely capable of rendering far more frames than the CPU can issue.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is a monolithic powerhouse, but its role in this specific title is constrained by the game's age and the CPU's capabilities. The GPU features 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, providing a massive 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth. Its boost clock is rated at 2407 MHz, with a base clock of 2017 MHz. For a game like Inside, which is not graphically intensive by modern standards, these specifications are immense overkill in terms of raw rendering power.

The VRAM capacity is a non-factor in this title. The game's art style and asset sizes are unlikely to stress even a fraction of the 32 GB frame buffer. The measured data shows that the GPU is not the limiting factor at lower resolutions. At 1920x1080, the frame rates are so high (420 FPS on Low) that the rendering pipeline is likely stalled by CPU draw-call submission. The GPU is sitting idle waiting for the processor to feed it work. This is evidenced by the fact that reducing the graphics settings from Ultra to Low at 1080p only increases the frame rate by about 32% (from 317 FPS to 420 FPS). If the GPU were the bottleneck, the frame rate increase would be much more dramatic.

The GPU's role becomes more pronounced at 3840x2160. The 4K resolution presents a significantly larger pixel fill-rate demand. The data shows a sharp drop in performance when moving from 1440p to 4K on the High preset, going from 239 FPS down to 150 FPS. This 37% reduction indicates that the GPU is now beginning to engage, as the pixel throughput required at 4K is substantially higher. However, even at 4K, the RTX 5090 is powerful enough to push the Medium preset to 240 FPS. The fact that the Ultra preset at 4K only hits 143 FPS, compared to the High preset's 150 FPS, suggests that the specific shader complexity of the Ultra preset is the limiting factor, rather than raw memory bandwidth or pixel rate.

The RTX 5090's clock behavior is not directly measured in the game, but its synthetic benchmark scores (e.g., 3DMark Steel Nomad at 18355) indicate a high level of compute capability. In Inside, this compute power is largely underutilized. The GPU is effectively being used as a high-end pixel pusher, but the game's simple geometry and lighting mean that the tensor cores and ray tracing units are likely dormant. The data suggests that the RTX 5090 is not being stressed to its limit; rather, it is being limited by the game's CPU-bound nature at lower resolutions and the relatively low graphical complexity at 4K.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested configurations for Inside, this specific pairing of the Intel Core Ultra 5 245 and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 achieves a rank of 40 out of 3716 combos. This is an exceptional result, placing the setup in the 98.9th percentile of all tested systems. It indicates that while there are 39 other configurations that deliver higher frame rates, this combo is definitively in the top tier.

To contextualize this rank, consider the CPU's own standing. The Intel Core Ultra 5 245 sits in the 90th percentile when compared to all CPUs in the broader benchmark database. Its average benchmark score is 48995, which is nearly identical to its nearest rivals. For example, the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5755G scores 49196, a delta of -0.4%, and the AMD Ryzen 9 7900 scores 49228, a delta of -0.5%. This indicates the CPU is a solid mid-to-high-range performer, but not the absolute fastest available.

The GPU, however, is a top-tier part. The RTX 5090 is in the 92nd percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 79842. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB (79605) and the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (78940). Despite this, the combo rank of 40 is not higher, which suggests that the game's performance is not solely dependent on GPU power. If it were, the RTX 5090's high percentile might push this combo into the top 10.

The discrepancy between the component-level percentiles and the game-specific rank highlights the CPU-bound nature of Inside. The rank of 40 indicates that other combos featuring faster CPUs (likely with higher single-thread performance) can achieve better frame rates, even if they have slower GPUs. The data implies that for this title, the CPU selection is more critical for achieving the absolute highest FPS numbers. The RTX 5090 is so fast that it can keep up with most CPUs, but the CPU's ability to feed the render thread dictates the final score. Thus, while this combo is elite, it is not the absolute peak because the Ultra 5 245, while fast, is not the fastest single-threaded processor in the database.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data across the three resolutions reveals a clear pattern of scaling that identifies the system's bottleneck. The frame rates drop significantly as resolution increases, but the magnitude of the drop varies by preset, which provides insight into how the workload shifts.

For the Low preset, the scaling is relatively mild. At 1920x1080, the average is 420 FPS. At 2560x1440, it drops to 376 FPS, and at 3840x2160, it falls to 300 FPS. The drop from 1080p to 4K is 120 FPS, or a 28.6% decrease. This is a modest decline that suggests the CPU is the primary limiter. The Low preset reduces the pixel shader work so much that the GPU can easily handle the load at all resolutions, but the CPU's frame rate ceiling is around 420 FPS. As resolution increases, the GPU takes slightly longer to render each frame, but the CPU is still the bottleneck, limiting the scaling impact.

The High preset exhibits a much steeper scaling curve. The frame rates are 323 FPS at 1080p, 239 FPS at 1440p, and 150 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 84 FPS (26%), and from 1440p to 4K is another 89 FPS (37%). The total drop from 1080p to 4K is 173 FPS, a 53.6% reduction. This significant scaling indicates that the GPU is becoming the limiting factor at higher resolutions. The High preset adds more shading and texture work, which increases the GPU's render time. At 4K, the GPU is now the bottleneck, causing the frame rate to fall dramatically.

The Medium preset shows a unique pattern. It starts at 388 FPS at 1080p, drops to 347 FPS at 1440p, and then falls to 240 FPS at 4K. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p is only 10.6%, but the drop to 4K is 30.8%. This suggests that the Medium preset is well-balanced. At 1080p and 1440p, the CPU is still the main bottleneck, but at 4K, the GPU's load increases enough to make it the limiting factor. The minimum FPS data for Medium supports this: the variance (max-min) is 117 FPS at 1080p (446-329), 104 FPS at 1440p (399-295), and only 72 FPS at 4K (276-204). The tighter frame times at 4K indicate that the system is more consistent when the GPU is fully engaged.

The Ultra preset shows a pattern similar to High, with a 54.3% drop from 1080p to 4K (317 to 143 FPS). This confirms that the more demanding presets shift the bottleneck to the GPU. In summary, the resolution scaling data indicates that at 1080p and 1440p, the Intel Core Ultra 5 245 is the limiting component, capping frame rates. At 4K, the RTX 5090's workload increases enough to become the primary limiter, especially on the High and Ultra presets. The Medium preset offers the best balance, leveraging the CPU's strength at lower resolutions and the GPU's power at 4K.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The dataset provides specific average frame rates for all combinations of resolution and preset. The Medium preset is unique in that it also includes minimum and maximum values, offering a glimpse into frame pacing.

1920x1080:

• Ultra: Average 317 FPS.
• High: Average 323 FPS.
• Medium: Average 388 FPS, with a minimum of 329 FPS and a maximum of 446 FPS.
• Low: Average 420 FPS.

At 1080p, the difference between Low and Ultra is 103 FPS, showing that the graphics settings have a measurable impact on the CPU's workload. However, the frame rates are all exceptionally high, well beyond what any standard display can refresh.

2560x1440:

• Ultra: Average 228 FPS.
• High: Average 239 FPS.
• Medium: Average 347 FPS, with a minimum of 295 FPS and a maximum of 399 FPS.
• Low: Average 376 FPS.

The 1440p data shows a wider spread between Low and Ultra (148 FPS), indicating the GPU is starting to matter. The Medium preset's minimum of 295 FPS suggests that even in the most demanding scenes, the frame rate stays above the 240Hz threshold.

3840x2160 (4K):

• Ultra: Average 143 FPS.
• High: Average 150 FPS.
• Medium: Average 240 FPS, with a minimum of 204 FPS and a maximum of 276 FPS.
• Low: Average 300 FPS.

The 4K data shows the most pronounced differences. The Low preset achieves 300 FPS, but the Ultra preset drops to 143 FPS, a 52% reduction. The Medium preset is the standout, providing a 90 FPS advantage over High and a 97 FPS advantage over Ultra, while maintaining a minimum frame rate above 200 FPS. This makes Medium the only preset at 4K that guarantees a smooth experience on a 240Hz display.

The data also highlights the consistency of the Medium preset. At 4K, the variance between minimum and maximum is 72 FPS, the smallest of all resolutions. This indicates that the hardware is well-balanced at this setting, providing a stable frame rate without the massive spikes seen at lower resolutions. The High and Ultra presets do not have min/max data, but their lower averages suggest they are more variable. Overall, the measured FPS breakdown confirms that this hardware is capable of running Inside at extreme frame rates, with the Medium preset at 4K offering the best combination of speed and stability.