Inside

Inside is a 2016 puzzle platformer that places minimal stress on modern hardware, and the measured results for the Intel Core Ultra 7 265 and AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT combination confirm this. The data shows a system with immense headroom, where even the most demanding settings at 4K produce frame rates well above display refresh rate standards. This analysis walks through the measured FPS data to determine the optimal settings, examines the role of the GPU and CPU, and contextualizes this specific combo within the broader benchmark database.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data offers a clear hierarchy of performance across four quality presets at three resolutions. For the best balance of visual fidelity and frame rate, the High preset is the standout recommendation. At 1920x1080, the High preset delivers an average of 208 FPS, which is more than sufficient for any high-refresh-rate monitor. At 2560x1440, it maintains a robust 149 FPS average, and even at 3840x2160, it achieves a highly playable 94 FPS average. The High preset provides a substantial visual upgrade over Medium while sacrificing only a marginal amount of performance compared to the jump from High to Ultra.

The Ultra preset, while offering the highest visual quality, shows a measurable performance cost that makes it less appealing for this title. At 1080p, Ultra averages 198 FPS, a mere 10 FPS drop from High. At 1440p, the gap widens to 7 FPS (142 vs. 149). At 4K, the difference becomes more pronounced, with Ultra dropping to 89 FPS average compared to High's 94 FPS. While these are all playable numbers, the incremental visual gains from Ultra are typically minor in a game with Inside's art style, making High the more efficient choice for maintaining higher frame rates.

The Medium preset offers a significant performance boost over High, but it is not necessary for this hardware. At 1080p, Medium produces 332 FPS average, and at 1440p, it hits 239 FPS average. This preset could be considered for competitive play on 360Hz monitors, but the jump from High to Medium involves a noticeable reduction in shadow quality and ambient occlusion. The Low preset is the extreme performance option, yielding 415 FPS at 1080p, 299 FPS at 1440p, and 188 FPS at 4K. These numbers are impressive but come with the most significant visual compromises. For most users, High is the optimal choice; it delivers frame rates that far exceed the 60 FPS standard and provides the best visual experience without pushing the hardware unnecessarily.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT is the primary driver of the frame rates in this dataset, and its specifications explain the high performance ceiling. The GPU features 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing a memory bandwidth of 624.1 GB/s. This large memory pool and high bandwidth are more than adequate for a game like Inside, which does not have demanding texture requirements. The boost clock of 2430 MHz and the game clock of 2124 MHz are high, allowing the 3840 shading units to operate at peak efficiency. The GPU's raw compute power is rated at 37.32 TFLOPS for FP32 operations, which is a substantial amount for a puzzle platformer.

The data indicates that the GPU scales predictably with resolution and settings. The performance drop from 1080p to 4K at the High preset is significant, going from 208 FPS to 94 FPS, which is a 54.8% reduction. This scaling demonstrates that the GPU is actively rendering each frame and is not being bottlenecked by the CPU. The GPU's 60 ray accelerators and support for DirectX 12 Ultimate are features that are not heavily utilized by this title, as Inside does not rely on advanced ray tracing or mesh shaders. The card's performance in synthetic benchmarks, such as a Passmark G3D score of 24176 and a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 4157, supports its capability to handle modern games, but the measured FPS in Inside shows it is far from being stressed. The GPU's 51st percentile ranking among all GPUs indicates it is a mid-to-high-tier card, but in this specific game, its performance is exceptional, suggesting the game's engine is well-optimized for the RDNA 3.0 architecture.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average frame rate achievable with this combo at 1080p?

A: The highest average frame rate recorded is 415 FPS, achieved at the Low preset. The Medium preset also provides a very high 332 FPS average.

Q: Can this system maintain a 60 FPS experience at 4K?

A: Yes, the data shows that at 3840x2160, the Ultra preset averages 89 FPS, the High preset averages 94 FPS, and the Medium preset averages 150 FPS, all of which are well above the 60 FPS threshold.

Q: How does the Ultra preset compare to High in terms of performance cost?

A: The performance cost of using Ultra over High is relatively small but consistent. At 1080p, Ultra is 10 FPS slower (198 vs. 208). At 1440p, it is 7 FPS slower (142 vs. 149). At 4K, it is 5 FPS slower (89 vs. 94).

Q: Is there a significant performance jump from Medium to High?

A: Yes, the jump from Medium to High incurs a notable performance penalty. At 1440p, the average FPS drops from 239 to 149, a reduction of 90 FPS. At 1080p, it drops from 332 to 208.

Q: What is the minimum FPS recorded for the Medium preset?

A: The minimum FPS values are only recorded for the Medium preset. At 4K, the minimum is 128 FPS, at 1440p it is 203 FPS, and at 1080p it is 282 FPS, indicating very stable frame times.

Q: Does the 16 GB VRAM of the RX 7800 XT appear to be a limiting factor?

A: No, based on the high frame rates and the game's release date in 2016, the 16 GB of VRAM is far beyond what is required. The performance scaling is consistent with rendering resolution and settings, not memory capacity limitations.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The dataset provides average FPS for all presets, with minimum and maximum FPS only for the Medium preset. At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves an average of 415 FPS, followed by Medium at 332 FPS (with a min of 282 and max of 382), High at 208 FPS, and Ultra at 198 FPS. This resolution shows the CPU's single-threaded strength is sufficient to feed the GPU, as even the lowest preset produces an incredibly high frame rate.

At 2560x1440, the performance scales down. The Low preset averages 299 FPS, while Medium averages 239 FPS (min 203, max 275). The High preset drops to 149 FPS, and Ultra to 142 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium is 60 FPS, while the gap between High and Ultra is only 7 FPS, suggesting that the Ultra preset is less efficient than High. The 1440p results show a more balanced load between CPU and GPU, but the overall frame rates remain exceptionally high.

At 3840x2160, the GPU becomes the dominant factor. The Low preset still manages an average of 188 FPS, which reflects the GPU's raw power. The Medium preset averages 150 FPS (min 128, max 173), High averages 94 FPS, and Ultra averages 89 FPS. The difference between High and Ultra at 4K is just 5 FPS, making Ultra a viable option if visual quality is the absolute priority, but High offers better performance with minimal visual compromise. The Medium preset at 4K is the most interesting data point, as it shows a 56 FPS improvement over High, indicating that the High preset's visual features are disproportionately expensive at higher resolutions.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals the GPU-bound nature of this workload at higher resolutions. At the High preset, moving from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 reduces the average FPS from 208 to 149, a 28.4% drop. Moving from 1440p to 2160p (4K) reduces it further to 94 FPS, a 36.9% drop from the 1440p figure. The total reduction from 1080p to 4K is 114 FPS, or 54.8%. This non-linear scaling is typical for rasterization workloads, as the pixel count increases by a factor of 2.25 from 1080p to 4K, but the frame rate does not drop proportionally, suggesting that other bottlenecks, such as draw call processing, become relatively less significant as resolution increases.

At the Low preset, scaling is more dramatic. The 1080p result is 415 FPS, which drops to 299 FPS at 1440p (a 28% drop) and then to 188 FPS at 4K (a 37% drop from 1440p). The fact that the Low preset at 4K (188 FPS) is nearly as fast as the High preset at 1080p (208 FPS) highlights how much of the performance headroom is consumed by higher quality settings. This pattern indicates that the GPU's pixel throughput is the primary limiter at 4K, while at 1080p, the CPU's ability to issue draw calls becomes a more significant factor, as evidenced by the 415 FPS ceiling. The scaling suggests that for this combination, the system is well-balanced; neither component is a severe bottleneck at any resolution, but the GPU's load increases predictably with pixel count.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265 is a 20-core, 20-thread processor based on the Arrow Lake architecture, with a base clock of 2.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz. In a game like Inside, which is not heavily multithreaded, the high boost clock is more relevant than the core count. The CPU's single-core performance is reflected in its Cinebench R23 single-core score of 5960 and its Passmark single-thread score of 4689. These scores indicate strong per-core performance, which is crucial for maintaining high frame rates in games that rely on a main game thread.

The data shows that at 1080p with Low settings, the system reaches 415 FPS, which is likely near the CPU's practical limit for this game engine. The CPU's 20 cores are mostly idle, but the few active cores are running at high clock speeds to process the game's logic and render commands. The CPU's 30 MB of shared L3 cache helps reduce memory latency, which is beneficial for the game's object state tracking. The benchmark results for the CPU, such as a Passmark multithread score of 49682 and a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 42216, are high, but these are irrelevant for this specific workload. The CPU's 93rd percentile ranking among all CPUs confirms it is a high-end part, but its role in Inside is to provide a high single-threaded ceiling, which it does admirably, as evidenced by the 415 FPS at 1080p Low. The CPU is not the limiting factor at higher resolutions or settings, as the frame rate drops are consistent with an increasing GPU load.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the benchmark database for Inside, this specific combination of the Intel Core Ultra 7 265 and AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT holds a rank of 670 out of 2887 tested combinations. This places it in the top 23.2% of all tested systems, which is a strong showing given the game's age and the hardware's modern specifications. However, the rank is not higher because many other tested combinations likely include more powerful GPUs or CPUs with even higher single-threaded performance. The combo's rank reflects that while the hardware is capable, the game's low system requirements mean that even mid-range components from 2023 or 2024 can achieve high frame rates, and the absolute top-tier components will naturally rank higher.

The GPU's performance percentile is 51st, and its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 and the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT, which are both significantly less powerful in general compute. This indicates that in synthetic benchmarks, the RX 7800 XT is in a mid-pack position, but in this specific game, its performance is far superior to those rivals. The CPU's nearest rivals include server processors like the AMD EPYC 4464P and the EPYC 9124, which have different performance profiles. The combo's rank of 670 suggests that while it is not the absolute fastest configuration for Inside, it is comfortably in the upper quartile, offering a high-refresh-rate experience at all settings and resolutions. The data shows that this combo is more than sufficient for the game, and the rank is a reflection of the many other high-end combinations in the database, not a deficiency of this particular pairing.