Inside

# Inside: Intel Core Ultra 7 265HX + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti

The measured frame rates for Inside on this mobile platform reveal a puzzle platformer that is anything but demanding on modern hardware. With the Intel Core Ultra 7 265HX paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, the data shows triple-digit average FPS across every resolution and settings combination tested. This combination ranks 875th out of 2,887 tested combos, placing it in the 70th percentile overall for this title.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K demonstrates that Inside's rendering engine scales almost perfectly with pixel count, a hallmark of a game that is heavily GPU-bound at higher resolutions. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 386 at 1920x1080 to 278 at 2560x1440, a 28% reduction, and then to 175 at 3840x2160, a further 37% drop. This is a textbook example of resolution-bound performance: each step up in pixel count produces a proportional decrease in frame rate.

The scaling pattern shifts slightly at higher quality presets. With High settings, the transition from 1080p to 1440p sees average FPS fall from 193 to 139, a 28% decrease. Moving from 1440p to 4K High brings a further drop from 139 to 87, a 37% reduction. The Ultra preset follows a nearly identical trajectory: 184 FPS at 1080p, 132 at 1440p, and 83 at 4K. The consistency of these percentage drops across different presets suggests that the RTX 5070 Ti's rendering pipeline is being exercised uniformly, with no single component creating a bottleneck that would flatten the scaling curve.

Medium settings provide the only rows with min and max frame data, and these numbers reinforce the scaling trend. At 4K Medium, the average is 140 FPS with a minimum of 119 and maximum of 161. Dropping to 1440p Medium raises the average to 222, with min and max of 189 and 256 respectively. At 1080p Medium, the average climbs to 309, with a minimum of 263 and maximum of 356. The spread between minimum and maximum frames remains relatively tight at each resolution, indicating stable frame delivery without severe hitches.

The data suggests that at 1080p, the system is approaching a ceiling where even the lowest settings cannot push average FPS beyond 386. This is not a limitation of the RTX 5070 Ti, which is capable of far higher frame rates in less demanding scenes. Rather, it reflects the engine's internal frame pacing limits and the sheer simplicity of Inside's side-scrolling visuals. At 4K, the GPU is clearly the limiting component, as evidenced by the dramatic scaling from Low to Medium to High to Ultra settings: 175, 140, 87, and 83 FPS respectively.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265HX is a 20-core, 20-thread mobile processor based on the Arrow Lake-HX architecture, built on a 3 nm process by TSMC with 17,800 million transistors on a 243 mm² die. Its base clock of 2.60 GHz can boost up to 5.30 GHz, and it carries 30 MB of shared L3 cache. In CPU benchmarks, this chip scores 40,642 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 5,737 in single-core, with a PassMark multi-thread score of 47,985 and single-thread score of 4,500.

For a game like Inside, the CPU's role is minimal. The game is a 2.5D puzzle platformer with simple physics and sparse on-screen elements, so even a modest processor would likely deliver playable frame rates. The data confirms this: at 1080p Low settings, the system achieves 386 FPS as the average, which is likely near the engine's practical rendering ceiling. The 265HX's single-thread performance, as measured by its 5,737 Cinebench R23 score and 4,500 PassMark single-thread rating, is more than sufficient to feed the GPU at these frame rates.

The core count and threading characteristics of the 265HX appear irrelevant to Inside's performance. With 20 cores and 20 threads, this processor is designed for heavily threaded workloads like video encoding or 3D rendering, not 2D puzzle platformers. The game's engine is unlikely to spawn more than a few threads, so the massive multi-core capability—evidenced by a 40,642 Cinebench R23 multi-core score and 511,817 PassMark data compression score—goes largely unused.

In the broader CPU landscape, the 265HX sits at the 93rd percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 63,173. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i7-13790F (avg score 63,080, a 0.1% difference) and the AMD Ryzen AI 7 450G (avg score 63,331, a -0.2% difference). These rivals are effectively identical in raw compute capability, confirming that the 265HX is a high-end mobile part. For Inside, however, the CPU's performance headroom is irrelevant; the measured FPS at 1080p Low (386) is limited by other factors, not by the processor's instruction throughput.

The 265HX's memory bandwidth of 102.4 GB/s over a dual-channel DDR5 interface is another specification that does not meaningfully impact this game's performance. Inside's memory footprint is small, and the game's data streaming requirements are modest. The PassMark random string sorting score of 62,458 and floating point math score of 161,605 are metrics that matter for scientific computing, not for rendering a boy running through a monochromatic industrial nightmare.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is the primary driver of Inside's frame rates, and the data shows it is vastly overqualified for this title. With 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus providing 896.0 GB/s of bandwidth, the GPU has more than enough memory capacity and bandwidth for Inside's textures and effects. The GPU's 8,960 shading units, 280 texture mapping units, and 96 ROPs are all deeply underutilized at every tested settings level.

The RTX 5070 Ti's clock behavior is telling: base clock of 2,295 MHz with a boost of 2,452 MHz. In a game as light as Inside, the GPU is likely to spend most of its time at or near the boost clock, since thermal and power headroom are plentiful. The 300 W TDP and dual-slot design indicate this is a full-power mobile implementation, not a cut-down variant. The GPU's FP32 throughput of 43.94 TFLOPS is enormous for a side-scroller, and the 686.6 GTexel/s texture rate and 235.4 GPixel/s pixel rate are similarly excessive for this workload.

In GPU benchmarks, the RTX 5070 Ti achieves a PassMark G3D score of 32,974 and a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 6,604. Its OpenCL score of 212,363 and Vulkan score of 225,122 in Geekbench further confirm its position as a high-end mobile GPU, sitting at the 86th percentile among all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 49,957. The nearest rivals are the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 (avg score 50,001, a -0.1% difference) and the Intel Arc A550M (avg score 49,737, a 0.4% difference), though these comparisons are based on synthetic benchmarks that do not reflect Inside's specific rendering demands.

The measured frame rates show that the RTX 5070 Ti scales predictably with settings. At 4K, the difference between Low (175 FPS) and Ultra (83 FPS) is a 52% reduction, indicating that the Ultra preset adds substantial rendering work through effects like volumetric lighting, shadow quality, and post-processing. At 1080p, the same settings span produces a drop from 386 to 184 FPS, a 52% reduction as well. This consistent percentage scaling suggests that the GPU's shader units are the primary resource being consumed by higher settings, and that memory bandwidth (896.0 GB/s) is not a constraint even at 4K Ultra.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data provides clear guidance for optimizing the Inside experience on this hardware. At 1080p, every settings preset delivers well above 144 Hz average FPS, with Low at 386, Medium at 309, High at 193, and Ultra at 184. For players with 60 Hz or 120 Hz displays, the Medium preset at 309 FPS average offers the best combination of visual quality and performance headroom, ensuring that even the most demanding scenes stay well above refresh rate limits.

At 1440p, the Medium preset delivers 222 FPS average with a minimum of 189 and maximum of 256. This is an exceptional experience, providing enough frame rate for 144 Hz displays while maintaining the visual improvements over Low settings. The High preset at 139 FPS average is also viable for 120 Hz displays, but the Medium preset's higher minimum frame rate (189 vs. no min data for High) suggests more consistent frame pacing.

For 4K, the Medium preset at 140 FPS average is the sweet spot. It provides a minimum of 119 FPS and maximum of 161, comfortably exceeding 60 Hz and approaching 120 Hz territory. The High preset at 87 FPS and Ultra at 83 FPS are both playable but do not offer enough visual improvement over Medium to justify the 38% and 41% frame rate penalties respectively. The Low preset at 175 FPS is unnecessarily fast and likely sacrifices visual fidelity that Inside's art direction relies upon.

The Ultra preset, while visually richest, imposes a significant performance cost: 83 FPS at 4K, 132 at 1440p, and 184 at 1080p. Given that the difference between High and Ultra is small in frame rate terms (87 vs. 83 at 4K, 139 vs. 132 at 1440p, 193 vs. 184 at 1080p), players seeking maximum quality should consider whether the marginal visual gains justify the reduced frame rates. The data indicates that Medium provides the best balance across all resolutions, with the highest minimum frame rates and still-substantial average FPS.

FAQ

*Q: Can this system run Inside at 4K 120 FPS?*

A: Yes, at Medium settings the average FPS is 140 at 3840x2160, with a minimum of 119 and maximum of 161. This exceeds the 120 FPS threshold for the majority of the experience.

Q: What is the maximum frame rate achievable at 1080p?

A: At Low settings, the measured average FPS is 386 at 1920x1080. This is the highest average frame rate recorded across all tested settings and resolutions.

Q: How much performance is lost going from 1080p to 4K at High settings?

A: The average FPS drops from 193 at 1920x1080 to 87 at 3840x2160, a 55% reduction. This is consistent with the 4x increase in pixel count.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor at 1080p Low settings?

A: The data suggests neither component is the primary limiter, as the 386 FPS average is likely near the game engine's rendering ceiling. The GPU has substantial headroom, and the CPU's single-thread performance is more than adequate.

Q: Which settings preset provides the highest minimum frame rate at 1440p?

A: The Medium preset has the only recorded minimum frame rate at 1440p, with a minimum of 189 FPS and an average of 222 FPS. This ensures consistent frame delivery.

Q: How does the RTX 5070 Ti compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 5070 Ti has an average benchmark score of 49,957, which is 0.1% lower than the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 (50,001) and 0.4% higher than the Intel Arc A550M (49,737). It trails the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT by 2% and leads the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT by 3.1%.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers maximum performance across all settings. Low settings produce an average of 386 FPS. Medium settings yield an average of 309 FPS, with minimum and maximum values of 263 and 356 respectively. High settings reduce the average to 193 FPS. Ultra settings produce the lowest 1080p result at 184 FPS average.

Moving to 2560x1440, frame rates remain exceptionally high. Low settings average 278 FPS. Medium settings average 222 FPS, with a minimum of 189 and maximum of 256. High settings average 139 FPS. Ultra settings average 132 FPS, representing a 52% reduction from the Low settings result at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the RTX 5070 Ti still delivers playable-to-excellent frame rates. Low settings average 175 FPS. Medium settings average 140 FPS, with a minimum of 119 and maximum of 161. High settings average 87 FPS. Ultra settings average 83 FPS, the lowest measured frame rate in the entire dataset.

The complete data set shows a clear pattern: Medium settings offer the best balance of visual quality and performance at every resolution, with the only recorded minimum frame rates exceeding 119 FPS even at 4K. The system's overall ranking of 875 out of 2,887 tested combinations places it in the top 30% for Inside performance, though the game's modest requirements mean even lower-end hardware can run it smoothly.