Inside

Inside is a 2D puzzle-platformer from 2016, a title whose visual style and physics-based interactions are far less demanding than modern AAA 3D releases. Despite its age, the benchmark data for the Intel Core Ultra 7 265 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti combination reveals a system that utterly overwhelms the game's engine, delivering frame rates that exceed the refresh rates of nearly all displays on the market. The measured results are less about whether the game is playable and more about how headroom scales when a high-end 2025 desktop CPU is paired with an upper-midrange 2023 GPU. The data shows a configuration where the GPU is the primary scaling factor at higher resolutions, but at 1080p, the CPU's high single-thread performance becomes relevant in pushing frame rates to their absolute ceiling.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265 and RTX 4070 Ti combination sits at rank 200 out of 3716 tested combos for Inside. This places the pairing in the top 5.4% of all configurations in the database, a position that reflects the exceptional performance of both components individually. The CPU alone, with an average benchmark score of 64,640, ranks in the 93rd percentile among all tested processors, while the GPU, with an average score of 44,795, sits in the 84th percentile among all GPUs. When combined, this results in a system that is not just fast, but disproportionately so for a game of this genre.

The rank is notable because Inside is not a typical stress test. The game's 2D side-scrolling perspective relies heavily on the CPU for physics simulation and the GPU for rendering the dark, atmospheric scenes. The data suggests that this combo does not bottleneck the game at any point, as even the most demanding preset at 4K only reduces the average frame rate to 116 FPS. This rank reflects the brute-force approach: rather than optimizing settings, users can simply run the game at maximum fidelity and still achieve frame rates well above the 60 FPS threshold. The delta between this combo and the next closest rivals in the CPU's nearestRivals list is minimal, with the AMD EPYC 4464P being -0.3% slower and the Intel Core Ultra 7 265F being 0.3% faster, indicating that the specific CPU variant has negligible impact on the overall ranking for this game.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture, featuring 7680 shading units, 240 texture mapping units, and 80 render output units. Its memory configuration of 12 GB of GDDR6X on a 192-bit bus provides a bandwidth of 504.2 GB/s, which is more than sufficient for Inside's asset streaming. The GPU's clock speeds, with a base of 2310 MHz and a boost of 2610 MHz, are high for a card of its class, and the data shows they are effectively utilized across all resolution presets.

In this game, the GPU's role becomes most apparent when scaling from 1440p to 4K. The measured FPS drops show a consistent pattern: at High settings, the average frame rate falls from 194 FPS at 2560x1440 to 122 FPS at 3840x2160, a 37% reduction. This is a clear indicator that the GPU is the limiting factor at 4K, as the pixel throughput required to render the image increases significantly. The card's FP32 compute power of 40.09 TFLOPS and its pixel rate of 208.8 GPixel/s are being taxed, yet they still deliver playable results. The RTX 4070 Ti is end-of-life per the production status, but its performance in this title remains formidable, with the PassMark G3D score of 31,624 placing it in the 84th percentile of all GPUs.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data provides a clear picture of how the load shifts between the CPU and GPU as resolution increases. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combo achieves an average of 430 FPS. This high frame rate indicates that the CPU, with its 20 cores and 20 threads, is not the bottleneck; rather, the game's rendering pipeline is hitting a ceiling that is likely tied to the GPU's command processor or the engine's draw call limits. When moving to 2560x1440 at Low, the average drops to 385 FPS, and at 3840x2160 at Low, it drops to 243 FPS. The percentage drop from 1080p to 1440p is 10.5%, while the drop from 1440p to 4K is 36.9%. This non-linear scaling is typical of GPU-bound scenarios, where the pixel fill rate becomes the dominant constraint.

At Ultra settings, the pattern is similar but with lower absolute numbers. The average FPS goes from 257 at 1080p, to 184 at 1440p, to 116 at 4K. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 28.4%, and from 1440p to 4K is 37.0%. This suggests that the Ultra preset adds a significant load on the GPU's shading units, but the relative scaling remains consistent. The data indicates that the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU at all resolutions, as the frame rates do not plateau or collapse, which would be a sign of a CPU bottleneck. Instead, the smooth degradation of performance with increasing resolution points to the GPU being the primary limiting factor, especially at 4K where the RTX 4070 Ti is working hardest to maintain 116 FPS on Ultra.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows provide clear guidance for optimal settings. At 3840x2160, the Ultra preset yields an average of 116 FPS, which is perfectly playable on a standard 60 Hz monitor but falls short of high-refresh-rate displays. The High preset at 4K offers a more comfortable 122 FPS, while the Medium preset jumps to 195 FPS with a minimum of 166 FPS, making it the best choice for 4K users with 144 Hz or 165 Hz panels. The Low preset at 4K achieves 243 FPS, but the visual fidelity loss in a game like Inside, which relies on atmospheric lighting and shadows, is likely too severe to justify the frame rate gain.

For 2560x1440, the High preset at 194 FPS is the sweet spot, as it balances visual quality with a frame rate that exceeds most 1440p monitors' refresh rates. The Ultra preset at 184 FPS is also viable, but the 5% performance cost over High may not be worth the marginal visual improvements. At 1920x1080, the High preset at 269 FPS is the recommended starting point, as it provides a substantial frame rate buffer. The Ultra preset at 257 FPS is also excellent, and given the high frame rates, users can enable Ultra without any risk of dropping below 60 FPS. The Medium preset at 1080p yields 397 FPS, but the visual downgrade is unnecessary when Ultra is only 35% slower.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the Intel Core Ultra 7 265 and RTX 4070 Ti deliver exceptional performance across all presets. The Low preset achieves an average of 430 FPS, which is the highest measured frame rate in the entire dataset. The Medium preset averages 397 FPS, with a minimum of 337 FPS and a maximum of 456 FPS, showing excellent frame pacing. The High preset averages 269 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 257 FPS. The difference between High and Ultra is a mere 12 FPS, suggesting that the Ultra preset's additional effects are not taxing the hardware heavily at this resolution.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance scales down predictably. The Low preset averages 385 FPS, while the Medium preset averages 310 FPS with a minimum of 263 FPS and a maximum of 356 FPS. The High preset averages 194 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 184 FPS. The 1440p results show a more pronounced gap between Low and Medium, with a 19.5% drop, compared to the 7.7% drop between Medium and High. This suggests that the Medium preset introduces a significant shader load, but the hardware still handles it comfortably.

At 3840x2160, the GPU is clearly the limiting factor. The Low preset averages 243 FPS, which is still exceptionally high for 4K. The Medium preset averages 195 FPS, with a minimum of 166 FPS and a maximum of 224 FPS, providing a very smooth experience. The High preset averages 122 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 116 FPS. The drop from Medium to High at 4K is 37.4%, which is the largest single-preset drop in the dataset, indicating that the High preset enables computationally expensive effects that heavily tax the GPU's ROPs and texture units.

FAQ

Q: Can this combo run Inside at 4K with a 144 Hz monitor?

A: Yes, but only if you use the Medium preset, which achieves an average of 195 FPS. The High and Ultra presets fall below 144 FPS, with averages of 122 and 116 FPS respectively.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the bottleneck at 1080p?

A: The data shows that at 1080p Low, the combo reaches 430 FPS, which is likely near the engine's limit. The CPU's high single-thread performance, with a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 5960, is sufficient to feed the GPU, so the GPU is the primary limiter even at this resolution.

Q: How does the RTX 4070 Ti compare to its nearest rivals in this game?

A: The RTX 4070 Ti has an average benchmark score of 44,795, which is -0.8% lower than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Mobile and -1.3% lower than the AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT. It is 1.6% faster than the NVIDIA RTX A6000.

Q: What is the minimum FPS recorded for this combo?

A: The only preset with a recorded minimum FPS is Medium, which shows 166 FPS at 4K, 263 FPS at 1440p, and 337 FPS at 1080p. No minimum FPS data is available for Low, High, or Ultra presets.

Q: Is the Ultra preset worth the performance cost at 1440p?

A: The Ultra preset averages 184 FPS at 1440p, which is 10 FPS lower than High. Given that both presets exceed 144 Hz, the Ultra preset is viable, but the 5% performance reduction may not be justified for a game like Inside.

Q: Does the game benefit from the CPU's 20 cores?

A: Inside is a 2D puzzle platformer that is unlikely to use all 20 cores of the Intel Core Ultra 7 265. The CPU's high boost clock of 5.30 GHz and its Cinebench R23 single-core score of 5960 are more relevant for this title, as the game's physics and logic are typically single-threaded.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265 is a 20-core, 20-thread desktop processor based on the Arrow Lake architecture, manufactured on a 3 nm process by TSMC. Its base clock is 2.40 GHz, with a boost clock of 5.30 GHz, and it features 30 MB of shared L3 cache. For a game like Inside, which was released in 2016 and is not designed to scale across many cores, the CPU's single-thread performance is the critical factor. The Cinebench R23 single-core score of 5960, combined with the high boost clock, ensures that the game's physics calculations and game logic are processed with minimal latency.

The benchmark results show that the CPU is not a bottleneck at any resolution or setting. At 1080p Low, the frame rate of 430 FPS is likely limited by the GPU's geometry processing or the game's engine, not the CPU. The CPU's PassMark single-thread score of 4689, which ranks it in the 93rd percentile of all CPUs, supports this conclusion. The processor's 65 W TDP and memory bandwidth of 102.4 GB/s are more than adequate for the game's modest requirements. The data indicates that the CPU's role in this combo is to provide a stable, high-frequency foundation that allows the GPU to perform at its best, even at low resolutions where CPU overhead is often the limiting factor. The Intel Core Ultra 7 265's nearest rivals, such as the AMD EPYC 4464P, show negligible performance differences, confirming that the CPU's architecture is well-suited for this workload.