Inside

Inside is a 2016 puzzle platformer that, on paper, should be trivially easy for modern hardware to run. The benchmark data for the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti confirms this, but the measured FPS reveals a nuanced story about how even a low-demand title can expose the limits of a processor at extreme frame rates. The dataset provides a complete 1080p, 1440p, and 4K breakdown across four quality presets, allowing for a precise analysis of where the bottleneck lies in this specific configuration.

FAQ

Q: What is the average frame rate at 1080p with Low settings for this combo?

A: The average FPS at 1920x1080 with Low settings is 451. This is the highest average frame rate recorded in the entire dataset for this hardware pairing.

Q: How does the Ultra preset at 4K compare to the High preset at 4K?

A: At 3840x2160, the Ultra preset averages 119 FPS, while the High preset averages 125 FPS. This represents a 6 FPS difference, or approximately 4.8% lower performance for the Ultra preset.

Q: Are there any settings where the frame rate is lower than 100 FPS on average?

A: No. The lowest average frame rate recorded is 119 FPS, which occurs at 3840x2160 with the Ultra settings. Every other tested configuration produces an average frame rate above 120 FPS.

Q: What is the performance delta between the CPU and its nearest rival, the Intel Core i7-14700KF?

A: The Intel Core Ultra 7 265K has an average benchmark score of 70,879, while the Intel Core i7-14700KF has an average score of 70,163. The data indicates the Core Ultra 7 265K is 1% ahead of the i7-14700KF in this aggregate comparison.

Q: Does the RTX 5070 Ti outperform the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT in average benchmark score?

A: Yes. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti has an average benchmark score of 49,957, while the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT has a score of 50,951. This places the RTX 5070 Ti 2% behind the RX 6900 XT in the provided aggregate benchmark comparison.

Q: Which resolution shows the smallest performance gap between Medium and High settings?

A: At 3840x2160, the gap between Medium (200 FPS) and High (125 FPS) is 75 FPS. At 2560x1440, the gap is 119 FPS (318 vs 199). At 1920x1080, the gap is 140 FPS (417 vs 277). The smallest absolute gap is therefore at 4K resolution.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is the primary driver of frame rate in this benchmark, though its massive headroom means it is rarely stressed. The GPU features 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 896.0 GB/s. Its boost clock is 2452 MHz, and it contains 8960 shading units. In the context of Inside, a game with a simple visual style, these specifications are overwhelmingly sufficient. The average FPS figures are so high that the GPU's raw compute power is not the limiting factor in most scenarios.

The data shows a clear trend: as resolution increases, the average FPS decreases, which is typical for GPU-bound workloads. At 1080p Low, the GPU renders 451 FPS, but at 4K Ultra, it drops to 119 FPS. This 332 FPS reduction demonstrates that the GPU is doing more work at higher resolutions. The memory bandwidth of 896.0 GB/s is likely a key asset here, allowing the GPU to feed its 8960 shading units efficiently even at 4K, where texture fetch and fill rate demands increase. The RTX 5070 Ti's performance percentile of 86 vs all GPUs places it in the upper tier, but its nearest rivals in the provided data—such as the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, which it leads by 3.1% in aggregate score—are older architectures, underscoring how far ahead this Blackwell 2.0 chip is for this workload.

The fact that even at 4K Ultra the GPU produces 119 FPS indicates that the card is never the bottleneck in a way that would compromise playability. The game is not demanding enough to push the GPU to its thermal or power limits, which are specified as a 300 W TDP. Instead, the GPU's role is to deliver enormous frame rates that will primarily be constrained by the CPU's ability to issue draw calls and update game logic.

Settings Recommendations

For this specific hardware combination, the choice of settings is less about hitting a playable frame rate and more about balancing visual fidelity against diminishing returns in FPS. The data shows that the Ultra preset provides the lowest frame rates across all resolutions, while the Low preset provides the highest.

At 4K, the differences are most pronounced. The Low preset yields 250 FPS, Medium drops to 200 FPS, High to 125 FPS, and Ultra to 119 FPS. The jump from High to Ultra is a mere 6 FPS, suggesting that the Ultra preset's additional effects are not worth the performance cost on this GPU. The Medium preset, with a 200 FPS average, represents a 50 FPS drop from Low but likely offers a significantly better visual experience. Given that the average FPS remains above 170 even in the 4K Medium min FPS, this appears to be the sweet spot for a high-refresh-rate 4K display.

At 1440p, the story is similar. Medium averages 318 FPS with a min of 271 FPS, which is far beyond any monitor's refresh rate. High averages 199 FPS, and Ultra averages 189 FPS. The 129 FPS difference between Low (398 FPS) and Medium (318 FPS) is large, but the latter still provides an overwhelming frame rate. For most users with a 144Hz or 240Hz monitor, the Medium preset at 1440p would be the best experience, as it offers a substantial visual upgrade over Low without any perceptible difference in smoothness.

At 1080p, all presets are excessive. Low averages 451 FPS, Medium 417 FPS, High 277 FPS, and Ultra 263 FPS. Even the Ultra preset's 263 FPS average is higher than most high-end monitors can display. The recommendation here is to use the Ultra preset, as the 188 FPS difference between Ultra and Low is unlikely to be noticeable on any standard display, while the visual improvements from higher quality textures and effects will be. The data suggests that the Medium preset provides the best ratio of visual quality to performance, particularly at 4K, where the min FPS of 170 ensures a smooth experience.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific configuration of the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is ranked 133rd out of 3716 tested combos in the Inside benchmark database. This places it in the top 3.6% of all tested hardware pairings for this game. The high rank is expected, given that both components are from the current generation and represent high-end desktop hardware.

The ranking suggests that while this combo is exceptionally fast, it is not the absolute fastest. The 3716 combos include various other high-end CPUs and GPUs, and some combinations of faster processors or higher-tier graphics cards will produce higher frame rates. The CPU's percentile of 94 vs all CPUs and the GPU's percentile of 86 vs all GPUs confirm that both parts are in the upper echelon of their respective categories, but not at the very top.

The rank of 133 is more a reflection of the game's low system requirements than a weakness of the hardware. Since the game is easily maxed out, the ranking becomes highly dependent on the CPU's single-threaded speed and the GPU's raw throughput. The Core Ultra 7 265K's Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2020 and the RTX 5070 Ti's 3DMark Steel Nomad score of 6604 are both strong, but other combinations with higher scores will naturally rank higher. The data indicates that this combo is a top-tier performer for Inside, but there is room above it for more extreme hardware pairings.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265K plays a critical role in this benchmark, particularly at lower resolutions where the GPU is not the limiting factor. The CPU has 20 cores and 20 threads, with a base clock of 3.90 GHz and a boost clock of 5.50 GHz. Its 30 MB of shared L3 cache and Arrow Lake architecture are designed for high-throughput workloads, but for a game like Inside, the single-threaded performance is most relevant.

The data shows that at 1080p Low, the average FPS is 451. This is a frame rate that is almost certainly CPU-limited, as the GPU is capable of much higher output. The CPU's Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2020 and Geekbench single-core score of 2713 indicate strong per-core performance, which is necessary to process the game's logic and physics at such a high rate. When the resolution increases to 4K Low, the average FPS drops to 250, a 201 FPS decrease. This drop is due to the GPU taking on more rendering work, but the CPU is still providing a high enough frame rate to avoid being the primary bottleneck.

The 265K's performance relative to its nearest rivals is telling. It is 1% ahead of the Intel Core i7-14700KF in average benchmark score, and 1.3% ahead of the AMD Ryzen 7 9700F. These are small margins, indicating that the CPU is not dramatically faster than previous-generation high-end parts in this type of workload. However, the fact that the 265K maintains a 451 FPS average at 1080p Low suggests that its 5.50 GHz boost clock and efficient architecture are sufficient to keep up with the RTX 5070 Ti's immense frame generation capacity. The CPU's 125 W TDP and 20 threads are more than enough for a game that likely uses only a few cores, but the high clock speeds are essential for hitting these extreme frame rates.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a complete picture of performance across resolutions and settings. All data is measured and includes average FPS, with min and max FPS only available for the Medium preset at each resolution.

1920x1080:

• Low: 451 FPS average.
• Medium: 417 FPS average, with a min of 354 FPS and a max of 479 FPS.
• High: 277 FPS average.
• Ultra: 263 FPS average.

At 1080p, the Low and Medium presets are nearly identical in performance, with a 34 FPS gap. The High preset incurs a significant 140 FPS drop from Medium, while Ultra is only 14 FPS lower than High. This suggests that the High preset introduces a more demanding rendering feature that is not present in Medium.

2560x1440:

• Low: 398 FPS average.
• Medium: 318 FPS average, with a min of 271 FPS and a max of 366 FPS.
• High: 199 FPS average.
• Ultra: 189 FPS average.

The 1440p results show a more pronounced scaling. Low to Medium drops 80 FPS, and Medium to High drops another 119 FPS. Ultra is only 10 FPS lower than High. The min FPS of 271 at Medium ensures a consistent experience even in complex scenes.

3840x2160:

• Low: 250 FPS average.
• Medium: 200 FPS average, with a min of 170 FPS and a max of 230 FPS.
• High: 125 FPS average.
• Ultra: 119 FPS average.

At 4K, the gap between Low and Medium is 50 FPS, and the gap between Medium and High is a massive 75 FPS. This is the largest relative drop in the dataset, indicating that the High preset's effects are highly demanding at this resolution. Ultra is again only 6 FPS behind High.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals the nature of the bottleneck in this system. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 451 at 1080p to 398 at 1440p and then to 250 at 4K. The 1080p to 1440p drop is 53 FPS (11.8%), while the 1440p to 4K drop is 148 FPS (37.2%). This pattern indicates that at 1080p Low, the system is heavily CPU-limited, as the GPU could render more frames than the CPU can feed. The 1440p result is a mix, but the 4K result is increasingly GPU-bound.

At Medium settings, the scaling is 417 FPS (1080p) to 318 FPS (1440p) to 200 FPS (4K). The drops are 99 FPS (23.7%) and 118 FPS (37.1%), respectively. The 4K result is clearly GPU-bound, as the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth are being taxed more heavily.

The High and Ultra presets show similar trends. High goes from 277 FPS at 1080p to 199 FPS at 1440p (a 78 FPS drop) and then to 125 FPS at 4K (a 74 FPS drop). Ultra goes from 263 to 189 to 119. In these cases, the 1080p to 1440p drop is smaller than the 1440p to 4K drop, confirming that higher resolutions increasingly shift the load onto the GPU.

The data suggests that the RTX 5070 Ti is the limiting component at 4K, especially with higher settings. The 4K Ultra average of 119 FPS is still high, but it is far below the 1080p Low result of 451 FPS. Conversely, the CPU is the limiting factor at 1080p Low, where the GPU is underutilized. The fact that the 4K Medium min FPS is 170 indicates that even in the most demanding scenarios, this combo never drops below a smooth frame rate. The scaling from 1080p to 4K is not linear, with the most significant performance loss occurring between 1440p and 4K, which is consistent with the GPU's role as the primary renderer at higher pixel counts.