Inside

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265HX paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Mobile delivers a performance profile in Inside that is defined by extreme GPU headroom and a clear shift in bottleneck dynamics as resolution changes. The measured frame rates across the board are exceptionally high, but the patterns between presets and resolutions reveal more about the hardware than any single average frame rate figure.

Resolution Scaling

The most striking observation from the data is how frame rates scale from 1080p to 4K. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combo produces 418 FPS. Moving to 2560x1440 Low, that number drops to 347 FPS, a reduction of roughly 17%. The subsequent jump to 3840x2160 Low yields 218 FPS, another 37% drop. This scaling pattern is non-linear and indicates that the GPU is becoming a more significant limiting factor as pixel count increases, though even at 4K the frame rate remains far beyond what a 60Hz display could utilize.

The data suggests that at 1080p, the system is heavily CPU-bound or engine-limited. The gap between Low (418 FPS) and Medium (386 FPS) at 1080p is only 32 FPS, whereas the gap between Medium and High (241 FPS) is a massive 145 FPS. This cliff-like drop between Medium and High presets at 1080p indicates a specific setting within the High preset that dramatically increases GPU workload. The Ultra preset at 1080p (230 FPS) is only slightly below High, suggesting diminishing returns from the highest quality options.

At 1440p, the scaling becomes more predictable. Low (347 FPS) to Medium (278 FPS) is a 69 FPS drop, Medium to High (174 FPS) is a 104 FPS drop, and High to Ultra (165 FPS) is just 9 FPS. This suggests that at 1440p, the GPU is starting to assert its dominance, but the Ultra preset is still hitting a wall that isn't purely GPU-related—likely a combination of draw call overhead and the engine's handling of specific ultra settings.

The 4K results show a different story entirely. Low (218 FPS) to Medium (175 FPS) is a 43 FPS drop, Medium to High (109 FPS) is a 66 FPS drop, and High to Ultra (104 FPS) is only 5 FPS. The compression of the High-to-Ultra gap across all resolutions (11 FPS at 1080p, 9 FPS at 1440p, 5 FPS at 4K) is telling. It suggests that Ultra is not adding meaningful visual complexity for the GPU cost at lower resolutions, but at 4K the GPU is so saturated that the difference between High and Ultra becomes almost negligible.

What does this imply about the limiting component? At 1080p, the RTX 5090 Mobile is clearly not the bottleneck—the 418 FPS Low result is likely hitting a CPU or engine frame rate ceiling. The Intel Core Ultra 7 265HX, with its 20 cores and 20 threads, provides enough single-thread performance (evidenced by a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 5737) to push Inside's logic-heavy puzzle-platformer mechanics, but the game's rendering pipeline appears to cap out around 418 FPS. At 4K, the GPU becomes the primary constraint, but even then, the 104 FPS Ultra result shows the RTX 5090 Mobile is far from struggling.

FAQ

*Q: Can this combo run Inside at 4K with maximum settings?*

A: Yes. The measured 3840x2160 Ultra preset produces an average of 104 FPS, which is well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. The data shows no frame rate dips below playable levels, as the only recorded minimum FPS values in the dataset—148 FPS at 4K Medium and 328 FPS at 1080p Medium—are both exceptionally high.

Q: How does the RTX 5090 Mobile's performance compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The GPU's average benchmark score of 45152 places it near the AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT (45384), which is 0.5% higher, and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti (44795), which is 0.8% lower. The RTX 5090 Mobile also trails the Intel Arc A730M (45592) by 1% and the NVIDIA RTX 5880 Ada Generation (45972) by 1.8%. These are remarkably close margins for such different hardware classes.

Q: What is the most significant performance gap between presets?

A: The largest single-preset drop occurs at 1080p, where moving from Medium (386 FPS) to High (241 FPS) loses 145 FPS—a 37.6% reduction. This is a much larger relative drop than the same preset transition at 1440p (104 FPS, 37.4%) or 4K (66 FPS, 37.7%), indicating a setting in the High preset that disproportionately impacts performance at lower resolutions.

Q: Is the CPU holding the GPU back in this game?

A: At 1080p with Low settings, the 418 FPS result appears to be near the engine's practical limit, given that the RTX 5090 Mobile's raw compute (31.80 TFLOPS FP32) could theoretically push higher frame rates in a less CPU-limited scenario. The Core Ultra 7 265HX's Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 40642 and single-core score of 5737 suggest strong CPU capability, but Inside's gameplay likely relies more on single-threaded physics and logic updates.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested systems for this game?

A: The combo ranks 421st out of 3716 tested combinations, placing it in the top 11.3% of all systems. This is a strong result, but the fact that it isn't higher—despite the top-tier GPU—reinforces the notion that Inside is not particularly demanding on modern high-end hardware.

Q: What is the minimum FPS recorded across all tested settings?

A: The lowest minimum FPS in the dataset is 148 FPS, recorded at 3840x2160 with Medium settings. This is the only sub-200 FPS minimum recorded; all other settings with min/max data (1080p Medium and 1440p Medium) show minimums above 236 FPS.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo's rank of 421 out of 3716 total tested combinations places it in the 88.7th percentile of all systems benchmarked with Inside. This is a strong showing, but the rank is somewhat surprising given the hardware involved. The RTX 5090 Mobile sits in the 84th percentile of all GPUs (based on average benchmark scores), and the Core Ultra 7 265HX is in the 93rd percentile of all CPUs. One might expect a combo featuring two top-decile components to rank higher than 88.7% of tested systems.

The explanation lies in the game's age and optimization. Inside was released in 2016, and its rendering engine likely has fixed costs that don't scale with modern hardware. A system with a mid-range GPU and a high-end CPU—or vice versa—could achieve similar frame rates if it hits the same engine ceiling. The 3716 tested combos include many that pair less powerful GPUs with CPUs that have strong single-thread performance, and those systems may achieve frame rates close to what this combo produces at 1080p.

The rank also reflects the fact that Inside is a puzzle platformer with relatively simple geometry and lighting compared to modern AAA titles. The GPU's 24 GB of GDDR7 memory and 896.0 GB/s bandwidth are enormous overkill for a game that likely uses less than 4 GB of VRAM. The data suggests that the combo's rank is more evidence of the game's scalability—or lack thereof—than any deficiency in the hardware.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers 418 FPS on Low, which is the highest frame rate recorded in the entire dataset. Medium drops to 386 FPS (with a minimum of 328 FPS and maximum of 443 FPS), High falls to 241 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 230 FPS. The 1080p results show a clear pattern: Low and Medium are in a different performance tier than High and Ultra, with a 145 FPS gap between Medium and High.

At 2560x1440, Low produces 347 FPS, Medium 278 FPS (minimum 236, maximum 319), High 174 FPS, and Ultra 165 FPS. The relative drops between presets are consistent here—each step down from Low to High costs roughly 87 FPS, but the High-to-Ultra gap narrows to just 9 FPS. This suggests that at 1440p, the Ultra preset's additional settings are not heavily taxing the GPU.

At 3840x2160, the results are 218 FPS on Low, 175 FPS on Medium (minimum 148, maximum 201), 109 FPS on High, and 104 FPS on Ultra. The 4K results show the most balanced scaling across presets—each step from Low to High costs roughly 55 FPS—but the High-to-Ultra gap remains minimal at 5 FPS. The 4K Medium result's minimum of 148 FPS is the lowest recorded minimum in the dataset, yet it is still substantially above display refresh rate requirements.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Mobile is the dominant component in this pairing, and its specifications suggest it should be even more capable than the game demands. The GPU features 10496 shading units, 328 TMUs, and 112 ROPs, with a boost clock of 1515 MHz. Its 24 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 896.0 GB/s of bandwidth—a figure that is entirely untapped by Inside, which is a side-scrolling puzzle platformer with modest texture requirements.

The GPU's synthetic benchmark scores paint a picture of a card that sits in an odd performance tier. Its 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 5871 and Geekbench OpenCL score of 201834 are strong, but its Passmark G3D score of 30034 places it in the 84th percentile of all GPUs. The nearest rivals—AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti, Intel Arc A730M, and NVIDIA RTX 5880 Ada Generation—are all within 2% of its average score, which is an unusual clustering for such a new flagship mobile part.

In Inside, the GPU's role is primarily to handle the game's lighting and post-processing effects. The dramatic FPS drop between Medium and High presets across all resolutions suggests that the High preset enables a specific effect—likely dynamic shadows or ambient occlusion—that disproportionately increases GPU load. The RTX 5090 Mobile handles this effect capably at 4K (109 FPS High), but the data indicates that the effect's cost scales with resolution, which is typical for pixel-bound shaders.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured data, the Medium preset offers the best balance of performance and visual quality across all three resolutions. At 1080p, Medium (386 FPS) is only 32 FPS below Low (418 FPS) but likely provides significantly better visuals. The jump from Medium to High at 1080p costs 145 FPS, which is an unreasonable sacrifice for what is likely a marginal visual improvement in a game with Inside's art style.

At 1440p, Medium (278 FPS) maintains a comfortable margin above 240Hz displays, while High (174 FPS) and Ultra (165 FPS) both remain above 144Hz. The 9 FPS difference between High and Ultra at 1440p means that players with high-refresh-rate 1440p monitors could reasonably choose Ultra without sacrificing smoothness.

At 4K, Medium (175 FPS) is the sweet spot—it provides a 66 FPS advantage over High (109 FPS) and a 71 FPS advantage over Ultra (104 FPS). The 4K Medium result also has a recorded minimum of 148 FPS, ensuring no noticeable stutter. For players prioritizing high refresh rates over absolute visual fidelity, Low at 4K (218 FPS) is also viable, but the 43 FPS gain over Medium is less compelling than the visual quality trade-off suggests.

The data implies that High and Ultra presets are poorly optimized for this hardware, as the cost of enabling those settings does not translate to proportional visual improvements. The narrow gaps between High and Ultra at every resolution (11, 9, and 5 FPS respectively) suggest that Ultra is essentially a "High Plus" preset with minimal additional GPU demand.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265HX is a 20-core, 20-thread processor based on the Arrow Lake-HX architecture, built on a 3 nm TSMC process. Its base clock of 2.60 GHz boosts to 5.30 GHz, and it features 30 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU's Cinebench R23 scores—40642 multi-core and 5737 single-core—place it in the 93rd percentile of all CPUs, and its nearest rival, the Intel Core i7-13790F, is essentially tied with a 0.1% higher average score.

In Inside, the CPU's role is less about raw multi-threaded throughput and more about single-threaded responsiveness. The game's puzzle logic, physics interactions, and entity management are typically serialized in a single thread. The 265HX's single-core score of 5737 in Cinebench R23 and Passmark single-thread score of 4500 indicate strong per-core performance, which is critical for maintaining high frame rates when the GPU is not the bottleneck.

The 1080p Low result of 418 FPS is likely constrained by the CPU's ability to feed draw calls and update game state. The fact that increasing resolution to 1440p Low only drops frame rates to 347 FPS—rather than halving them—suggests that at 1080p, the CPU is nearing its practical limit for this game's engine. The 265HX's 20 threads are more than sufficient for Inside, and the game likely uses only a fraction of them. The CPU's 55 W TDP and 102.4 GB/s memory bandwidth are also more than adequate for a game of this scope.

The data indicates that the CPU is not a limiting factor in any of the measured configurations except possibly at 1080p Low. Even there, the 418 FPS result is so far beyond typical display capabilities that the CPU's performance ceiling is effectively irrelevant for real-world play. The 265HX's high single-thread performance ensures that even in the most CPU-intensive moments—such as complex puzzle interactions with multiple moving objects—frame rates will remain stable.