Inside

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265HX paired with the AMD Radeon 760M integrated graphics produces a playable but constrained experience in Inside, a 2016 Puzzle Platformer. The measured data shows that this combo ranks near the very bottom of the database, at 2876 out of 2887 tested combinations, indicating that the integrated GPU is the primary bottleneck across most settings. While the CPU offers substantial headroom, the graphics solution limits performance to a narrow band of viable configurations, making preset selection critical for a smooth experience.

Settings Recommendations

The data indicates that the Low preset is the only reliable path to a consistently fluid experience across all tested resolutions. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers an average of 96 FPS, which is the highest measurable frame rate for this combination and provides a comfortable margin above the 60 FPS threshold. The Medium preset at the same resolution drops to 77 FPS average, which remains acceptable, but the gap narrows considerably at higher resolutions. At 2560x1440, Low produces 69 FPS average, while Medium falls to 55 FPS, and at 3840x2160, Low yields 43 FPS against Medium's 35 FPS. Given that the game is a puzzle platformer where timing and precision matter, the extra frames from the Low preset offer a tangible gameplay benefit.

The High and Ultra presets are largely impractical for this hardware. At 1080p, High averages 48 FPS and Ultra averages 46 FPS, both dipping below the 60 FPS target. The situation worsens at 1440p, where High and Ultra produce 34 FPS and 33 FPS respectively, and at 4K, they fall to 22 FPS and 21 FPS. These figures suggest that the visual fidelity gains from High and Ultra are not worth the substantial performance penalty. The Medium preset at 1080p, with its 77 FPS average and a minimum of 65 FPS, represents a reasonable middle ground for users who prioritize visual quality over raw speed, but the Low preset is the safest recommendation for maintaining a stable frame rate throughout the game's darker, more atmospheric sequences.

Benchmark results indicate that the scaling from Low to Medium is relatively efficient, with a 19 FPS drop at 1080p, a 14 FPS drop at 1440p, and an 8 FPS drop at 4K. However, the jump from Medium to High is disproportionately punishing, cutting performance by nearly 40% at 1080p and over 35% at 1440p. This suggests that the Medium preset's additional effects, likely related to lighting and shadow quality, are particularly taxing on the Radeon 760M's limited resources. For a game that relies on atmosphere and subtle environmental cues, the Low preset's stripped-back visuals may actually enhance clarity, as there are fewer distracting effects competing for the GPU's attention.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon 760M is an integrated graphics solution based on the RDNA 3.0 architecture, built on a 4 nm process with 512 shading units. Its clock speeds range from a base of 800 MHz to a boost of 2599 MHz, and it draws from system memory with a shared bandwidth that is dependent on the host platform. The GPU's benchmark scores reflect its entry-level positioning, with a Passmark G3D score of 5310 and a percentile rank of 35 among all GPUs. This places it in direct competition with discrete cards like the AMD Radeon RX 6400, which scores 6001, and the NVIDIA Quadro P2000, which scores 6049, though the 760M trails both by a small margin.

The 760M's memory configuration, being System Shared, means that its performance is heavily influenced by the CPU's memory bandwidth. The Core Ultra 7 265HX supports dual-channel DDR5 with a theoretical bandwidth of 102.4 GB/s, which provides a solid foundation for the integrated GPU. However, the shared nature of this memory means that the GPU and CPU compete for the same resources, potentially causing stutters in scenarios where both are under load. The measured frame times, where available, show some variance, such as the Medium preset at 1080p having a minimum of 65 FPS and a maximum of 88 FPS, indicating that memory contention may cause occasional dips.

The GPU's DirectX 12 Ultimate support and Vulkan 1.4 compliance ensure that it can handle modern rendering techniques, but its raw compute power is limited. The FP32 performance of 5.323 TFLOPS is modest by today's standards, and the pixel rate of 41.58 GPixel/s and texture rate of 83.17 GTexel/s are sufficient for 1080p gaming but struggle at higher resolutions. In Inside, which relies heavily on post-processing effects and volumetric lighting, the 760M's 16 ROPs become a limiting factor, particularly at 4K where the fill rate requirements increase exponentially. The data confirms this, as the 4K High preset manages only 22 FPS, suggesting that the GPU's pixel throughput is saturated.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a clear pattern of GPU limitation. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 96 at 1080p to 69 at 1440p and 43 at 4K, representing a 55% reduction when moving from 1080p to 4K. This scaling is consistent with a GPU-bound scenario, where the number of pixels being rendered quadruples from 1080p to 4K, but performance only drops by roughly half, indicating that other factors such as memory bandwidth or driver overhead are partially mitigating the impact. The Medium preset shows a similar trend, with 77 FPS at 1080p, 55 FPS at 1440p, and 35 FPS at 4K, a 55% drop from 1080p to 4K as well.

The High and Ultra presets exhibit even steeper declines. High goes from 48 FPS at 1080p to 34 FPS at 1440p and 22 FPS at 4K, a 54% reduction from 1080p to 4K. Ultra follows the same trajectory, with 46 FPS at 1080p, 33 FPS at 1440p, and 21 FPS at 4K. The consistency of these percentage drops across all presets strongly suggests that the GPU is the limiting component at every resolution, as the CPU's performance headroom is not being fully utilized. The Core Ultra 7 265HX, with its 20 cores and 20 threads, is more than capable of feeding the GPU at any of these settings, so the performance ceiling is determined entirely by the Radeon 760M's processing power.

The data also shows that the gap between resolutions narrows as settings increase. At Low, the difference between 1080p and 1440p is 27 FPS, while at Ultra, the same resolution step costs only 13 FPS. This is because at Ultra settings, the GPU is already struggling at 1080p, so the additional pixel load at 1440p has a proportionally smaller impact. This behavior is typical of a GPU that is saturated even at the lowest resolution, confirming that no amount of CPU headroom can compensate for the integrated graphics' fundamental limitations.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full range of settings produces a spread from 46 to 96 FPS. The Low preset leads with 96 FPS average, followed by Medium at 77 FPS with a minimum of 65 FPS and a maximum of 88 FPS. High drops to 48 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 46 FPS. The 1080p results are the most playable, with Low and Medium both offering frame rates above 60 FPS, but the shift from Medium to High is severe, costing 29 FPS. The minimum frame rate data for Medium suggests that even at 1080p, there are moments of significant load, likely during scenes with heavy particle effects or complex geometry.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance drops across the board. Low averages 69 FPS, which is still above 60 FPS and represents a playable experience. Medium averages 55 FPS with a minimum of 47 FPS and a maximum of 63 FPS, indicating that the frame rate can dip below the 60 FPS threshold during demanding sequences. High and Ultra both fall below 35 FPS, with averages of 34 FPS and 33 FPS respectively, making them unsuitable for smooth gameplay. The 1440p results show that the GPU is beginning to struggle, as even the Low preset cannot maintain the 96 FPS seen at 1080p, and the Medium preset's minimum of 47 FPS suggests occasional stutters.

At 3840x2160, the experience is largely unplayable except at Low settings. Low averages 43 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS target but technically playable for a slower-paced puzzle game. Medium drops to 35 FPS with a minimum of 29 FPS and a maximum of 40 FPS, indicating that the frame rate is consistently in the 30-40 FPS range. High and Ultra are effectively non-functional, averaging 22 FPS and 21 FPS respectively. These 4K numbers confirm that the Radeon 760M is not designed for high-resolution gaming, and users should stick to 1080p or 1440p with lower settings to achieve a smooth experience.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core Ultra 7 265HX and AMD Radeon 760M ranks 2876 out of 2887 tested combos in Inside, placing it in the bottom 0.4% of all configurations. This rank is a direct consequence of the GPU's limited capabilities, as the CPU is a high-end mobile processor. The Core Ultra 7 265HX, on its own, sits at the 93rd percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 63173, which is nearly identical to the Intel Core i7-13790F (63080, 0.1% lower) and the AMD Ryzen AI 7 450G (63331, 0.2% higher). This indicates that the CPU is not the bottleneck.

In contrast, the Radeon 760M's GPU benchmark scores place it at the 35th percentile among all GPUs, with an average score of 6019. This is within 0.5% of the NVIDIA Quadro P2000 (6049) and within 0.3% of the AMD Radeon RX 6400 (6001), showing that it is a mid-to-low range part. The disparity between the CPU's high percentile and the GPU's low percentile is the primary reason for this combo's poor ranking in Inside. The game's CPU requirements are minimal, so the 265HX's 20 cores and 20 threads provide no advantage, while the GPU's 512 shading units and 16 ROPs are insufficient for the game's rendering demands.

The ranking suggests that users with this combo would see significant improvements by pairing the Core Ultra 7 265HX with a discrete GPU, as the CPU has substantial headroom. However, as configured, the system is heavily GPU-limited, and the measured FPS reflects this. The 2876th rank out of 2887 combos places it just above the very worst performing systems, indicating that there are only 11 tested configurations that perform worse in Inside. This is a stark contrast to the CPU's standalone performance, which rivals desktop processors like the Intel Core i7-13790F.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265HX is a 20-core, 20-thread processor based on the Arrow Lake architecture, built on a 3 nm process by TSMC. It has a base clock of 2.60 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz, with 30 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU's benchmark results are impressive, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 40642 and a single-core score of 5737. In Passmark, it scores 47985 in multi-thread and 4500 in single-thread, placing it well above average. These figures indicate that the CPU is more than capable of handling the physics and game logic of Inside, which is not a demanding title.

In this specific game, the CPU's role is largely secondary. Inside is a 2D puzzle platformer with relatively simple geometry and limited on-screen entities, so the CPU's workload is minimal. The 20 cores and 20 threads are overkill for this title, and the game likely uses only a handful of threads for rendering and game logic. The CPU's high single-core performance, as evidenced by its Cinebench R15 single-core score of 578, ensures that it can keep up with the GPU's frame output, but the measured FPS shows that the GPU is the limiting factor at all settings.

The CPU's memory support for DDR5 with a bandwidth of 102.4 GB/s is crucial for the integrated GPU, as the Radeon 760M relies on system memory for its frame buffer. The 265HX's dual-channel memory controller provides adequate bandwidth for 1080p gaming, as seen in the 96 FPS Low preset result. However, at 4K, the memory bandwidth becomes a secondary bottleneck after the GPU's compute limits, contributing to the low 43 FPS at Low settings. The CPU's 3 nm process and 55 W TDP also mean that it runs efficiently, leaving thermal headroom for the GPU, but this does not translate into higher frame rates in Inside.

The CPU's performance in other benchmarks, such as its Passmark data compression score of 511817 and floating point math score of 161605, confirms its strength in general-purpose computing. However, these capabilities are irrelevant to Inside's rendering workload. The data indicates that even a significantly weaker CPU would produce identical frame rates with the same GPU, as the bottleneck is entirely on the graphics side. The Core Ultra 7 265HX is thus a powerful component that is wasted in this configuration for gaming purposes, though it would excel in CPU-intensive tasks like video encoding or 3D rendering.