Inside

The combination of the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 delivers a robust experience in Inside, a puzzle platformer from 2016. The measured frame rates across three resolutions and four quality presets indicate that this hardware pairing is overwhelmingly GPU-limited at higher settings, while the processor’s strong single-thread performance ensures headroom at lower presets. This analysis breaks down the scaling behavior, offers configuration guidance, and contextualizes the results against the broader benchmark database.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate progression from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 reveals a classic GPU-bound pattern, particularly at higher settings. At High settings, the average FPS drops from 164 at 1080p to 118 at 1440p, a 28% reduction, and then to 74 at 4K, a further 37% reduction. This steep decline from 1440p to 4K indicates that the RTX 5070’s rendering throughput is the primary constraint, as the pixel count quadruples while the frame rate less than halves. The data suggests that at 4K High, the GPU is working near its practical limit for this title, delivering an average of 74 FPS, which remains playable but far from the high-refresh territory seen at lower resolutions.

The Low preset scaling tells a different story. At 1080p Low, the average FPS reaches 328, which is exceptionally high. Moving to 1440p Low yields 236 FPS, a 28% drop, and 4K Low produces 148 FPS, another 37% decline. This consistent percentage drop across all resolutions at Low settings implies that even with minimal graphical load, the GPU is still the limiting factor, though the absolute frame rates are high enough to suggest the CPU is not a bottleneck. If the processor were limiting, the 1080p to 1440p gap would be smaller, as the CPU workload would dominate. The fact that scaling remains proportional indicates the RTX 5070 is the binding constraint even at the lowest preset.

Medium settings offer a middle ground, with 262 FPS at 1080p, 189 FPS at 1440p, and 118 FPS at 4K. The 1440p to 4K drop is 38%, nearly identical to the High preset’s 37%. This consistency across presets reinforces that resolution scaling is purely a function of GPU fill rate and pixel shading, not CPU or memory bandwidth. The Ultra preset mirrors High, with 156 FPS at 1080p, 112 FPS at 1440p, and 71 FPS at 4K, showing that the additional effects in Ultra have a similar marginal cost to High at each resolution.

The measured minimum FPS values, available only for Medium settings, further illustrate the GPU-bound nature. At 1080p Medium, the minimum is 223 FPS, while the average is 262 FPS, a 15% variance. At 1440p Medium, the minimum is 160 FPS versus a 189 FPS average, a similar 15% gap. At 4K Medium, the minimum is 101 FPS against a 118 FPS average, a 14% variance. This consistent variance across resolutions suggests that frame time spikes are not related to CPU stalls but rather to occasional GPU workload spikes, likely from complex particle effects or scene transitions in Inside’s atmospheric environments.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average frame rate achievable with this combo?

A: The highest measured average is 328 FPS at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This is the only configuration exceeding 300 FPS, indicating that the CPU and GPU combination can push well beyond standard display refresh rates when graphical load is minimized.

Q: How does the 4K Ultra experience compare to 1080p Ultra?

A: At 4K Ultra, the average FPS is 71, which is 55% lower than the 156 FPS at 1080p Ultra. This substantial drop highlights the pixel-count penalty, as Ultra settings at 4K require nearly double the rendering work per frame compared to 1080p.

*Q: Is the RTX 5070’s 12 GB VRAM sufficient for Inside?*

A: The game, released in 2016, is not demanding on memory capacity. The measured frame rates show no signs of texture thrashing or stutter, as minimum FPS values at Medium settings remain proportional to averages. The 12 GB GDDR7 memory is more than adequate for this title’s visual assets.

Q: What is the performance difference between Low and Ultra at 1440p?

A: At 1440p, Low averages 236 FPS while Ultra averages 112 FPS. This 124 FPS difference represents a 111% improvement from Ultra to Low, showing that the preset choice has a dramatic impact on frame rate, more than doubling performance.

Q: Does the Core Ultra 9 185H bottleneck the RTX 5070 at any resolution?

A: The data shows no CPU bottleneck. At 1080p Low, the 328 FPS average is exceptionally high, and the frame rate scales proportionally with resolution, which is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario. If the CPU were limiting, the 1080p result would plateau rather than scale down smoothly.

Q: Which resolution provides the best balance of fidelity and smoothness?

A: The 2560x1440 resolution with High settings offers 118 FPS average, which is well above the 60 FPS threshold and maintains high visual quality. This is the sweet spot, as 4K High drops to 74 FPS, which is closer to the edge of smoothness, while 1080p High at 164 FPS does not add meaningful visual detail over 1440p for most displays.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured frame rates, the optimal configuration for this hardware depends on the target display. For a 60 Hz display, 4K Ultra at 71 FPS average is viable, as it stays above 60 FPS for the majority of gameplay, though the lack of a minimum FPS value for Ultra means occasional dips below 60 are possible. For 1440p displays with 120 Hz or higher refresh rates, High settings at 118 FPS average is the recommended choice, as it balances visual fidelity with a frame rate that exceeds 100 FPS, ensuring smooth motion. The Medium preset at 1440p offers 189 FPS, which is excessive for most 1440p displays and would only benefit 240 Hz panels, but the visual downgrade from High is not justified by the marginal frame rate gain for typical users.

For 1080p displays, the data suggests that High settings at 164 FPS are sufficient for 144 Hz panels, while Ultra at 156 FPS provides minimal improvement in visuals with a negligible frame rate cost. The Low preset at 328 FPS is only relevant for esports-style play, which is not applicable to a puzzle platformer like Inside. The Medium preset at 262 FPS offers a middle ground, but the jump from Medium to High costs 98 FPS, which is a significant trade-off for visual enhancements that may not be noticeable in this game’s dark, minimalist art style.

The Ultra preset is consistently the most demanding, with 4K Ultra at 71 FPS being the only sub-100 FPS result across all tested configurations. For users prioritizing a locked 60 FPS experience, 4K High at 74 FPS average provides a slight safety margin over Ultra, while 4K Medium at 118 FPS offers substantial headroom for any scene complexity spikes, as evidenced by the 101 FPS minimum at this setting. The recommendation is to use High settings for 4K and 1440p, and Ultra for 1080p, as this maximizes visual quality while maintaining average frame rates above 100 FPS in all cases except 4K, which still exceeds 60 FPS.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo’s rank in Inside is 1943 out of 3716 tested combinations, placing it in the 47.7th percentile of all systems. This middle-of-the-pack ranking is surprising given the high absolute frame rates, but it reflects the fact that Inside is a lightweight title that many older or lower-end GPUs can run at high frame rates. The RTX 5070, while powerful, is not optimized for this game’s simple 2D-style rendering, and the Core Ultra 9 185H, a mobile processor, does not provide the same raw throughput as desktop counterparts. The rank indicates that there are 1773 combinations that perform better, likely featuring desktop GPUs with higher pixel fill rates or CPUs with higher single-thread scores.

The CPU’s percentile ranking of 85 against all CPUs suggests it is in the top 15% of processors, but its nearest rivals show a tight cluster. The AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 350 scores 0.1% lower, the Intel Core 7 250H scores 0.2% lower, and the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845 scores 0.4% lower, while the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X scores 0.7% higher. This indicates that the Core Ultra 9 185H is squarely in the mid-high range of mobile processors, with no significant advantage over its closest competitors. For Inside, which is not CPU-intensive, this ranking is irrelevant, as the GPU dominates the frame rate.

The GPU’s percentile ranking of 82 against all GPUs places it in the top 18%, but its nearest rivals are professional workstation cards like the AMD Radeon Pro 580 and Radeon Pro WX 7100, which score within 1% of the RTX 5070’s average benchmark score. This suggests that the RTX 5070’s raw compute power is comparable to older workstation GPUs, but its gaming-specific features, such as ray tracing and DLSS, are not utilized in Inside. The combo rank of 1943 out of 3716 reflects that many systems with older flagship GPUs or desktop mid-range cards can achieve similar or better frame rates in this game, as it does not stress modern GPU architectures.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a 5 nm process from TSMC, featuring 31,100 million transistors on a 263 mm² die. Its 6144 shading units, 192 texture mapping units, and 80 raster output units provide a theoretical FP32 performance of 30.87 TFLOPS. The GPU operates at a base clock of 2325 MHz and a boost clock of 2512 MHz, with memory clocked at 1750 MHz, yielding an effective 28 Gbps transfer rate. The 12 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 192-bit bus delivers a bandwidth of 672.0 GB/s, which is ample for Inside’s modest texture requirements.

In the measured results, the GPU’s role is clearly dominant. The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K follows a consistent pattern across all settings, with the 4K results being roughly 45% of the 1080p results (e.g., 74 vs 164 at High, 148 vs 328 at Low). This ratio is close to the theoretical pixel count ratio of 4:1, meaning that the GPU’s pixel throughput is the limiting factor. The RTX 5070’s pixel rate of 201.0 GPixel/s and texture rate of 482.3 GTexel/s are sufficient to handle the game’s effects, but the sheer number of pixels at 4K overwhelms the shading units, resulting in the observed frame rates.

The GPU’s 48 ray tracing cores and 192 tensor cores are not directly relevant to Inside, which does not use these features, but they contribute to the GPU’s overall benchmark scores. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 5077 and Geekbench Vulkan score of 178923 indicate that the GPU is well above average, but these synthetic tests do not translate directly to Inside’s performance. The measured frame rates, such as 262 FPS at 1080p Medium, show that the GPU is capable of extremely high throughput in this title, but the lack of a minimum FPS value for most settings suggests that frame pacing is consistent, with no major spikes. The 12 GB VRAM is never a constraint, as the game’s assets fit easily within this capacity, and the 672.0 GB/s bandwidth ensures no memory bottleneck even at 4K.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the RTX 5070 and Core Ultra 9 185H deliver exceptional performance across all presets. The Low preset averages 328 FPS, which is the highest measured value. Medium averages 262 FPS, with a minimum of 223 FPS and a maximum of 302 FPS, indicating a tight distribution. High averages 164 FPS, and Ultra averages 156 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium is 66 FPS, while the gap between High and Ultra is only 8 FPS, suggesting that the Ultra preset adds minimal overhead over High at this resolution. The minimum FPS at Medium, 223, is 85% of the average, showing good consistency.

At 2560x1440, the performance scales down proportionally. Low averages 236 FPS, Medium averages 189 FPS with a minimum of 160 and maximum of 217, High averages 118 FPS, and Ultra averages 112 FPS. The Low to Medium gap is 47 FPS, and the High to Ultra gap is 6 FPS. The minimum FPS at Medium, 160, is 85% of the average, matching the 1080p pattern. This consistency suggests that the GPU’s frame rendering is stable across resolutions, with no CPU-induced stutters.

At 3840x2160, the frame rates drop significantly. Low averages 148 FPS, Medium averages 118 FPS with a minimum of 101 and maximum of 136, High averages 74 FPS, and Ultra averages 71 FPS. The Low to Medium gap is 30 FPS, and the High to Ultra gap is 3 FPS, indicating that at 4K, the Ultra preset is nearly identical to High in performance cost. The minimum FPS at Medium, 101, is 86% of the average, again showing stable frame delivery. The 4K results show that even the Low preset, at 148 FPS, is well above 60 FPS, making this combo capable of smooth 4K gameplay at any setting, though Ultra at 71 FPS is the only setting that approaches the 60 FPS threshold from above.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 9 185H is a mobile processor from the Meteor Lake architecture, featuring 16 cores and 22 threads. Its base clock is 3.90 GHz, with a boost clock of 5.10 GHz, and it has a TDP of 45 W. The cache hierarchy includes 112 KB of L1 per core, 2 MB of L2 per core, and 24 MB of shared L3. The processor’s benchmark scores show a strong single-thread performance, with a Geekbench single-core score of 1794 and a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1810.5. The multi-core scores are also respectable, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 17984.5 and a Geekbench multi-core score of 11657.

In Inside, the CPU’s role is minimal, as the game is not computationally demanding. The measured frame rates show no evidence of CPU bottlenecking, even at 1080p Low where the GPU is producing 328 FPS. If the CPU were limiting, the frame rate would plateau at a lower value regardless of resolution, but the data shows consistent scaling from 1080p to 4K. The processor’s high single-thread performance, as indicated by its Passmark single-thread score of 3697, ensures that the game’s physics and logic threads are never starved. The 16 cores and 22 threads provide ample parallelism for any background tasks, but Inside likely only uses a few threads, making the CPU’s multi-core capabilities irrelevant for this title.

The CPU’s memory bandwidth of 89.6 GB/s is sufficient for the game’s data streaming, and the dual-channel DDR5 support, while dependent on the motherboard, does not create a bottleneck. The processor’s integrated graphics, Arc Xe-LPG Graphics 128EU, are not used in this configuration, as the discrete RTX 5070 handles all rendering. The CPU’s release date of December 2023 and the GPU’s release date of March 2025 indicate that this is a modern pairing, but Inside’s age means that even a mid-range processor from several years ago would perform similarly. The CPU’s percentile rank of 85 places it above average, but its nearest rivals, such as the AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 350 and Intel Core 7 250H, are within 0.2% of its average benchmark score, showing that there is no meaningful performance difference among these mobile processors for this game.