Inside

Inside is a 2016 puzzle platformer that leans heavily on atmosphere, lighting, and precise physics-based interaction, and the measured results for the Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 show a system that is overwhelmingly capable, with frame rates that range from 97 FPS at 4K Ultra to 433 FPS at 1080p Low. The data indicates that this combination is positioned in the 446th spot out of 2,887 tested combos for this title, placing it well within the top 16% of all systems evaluated, and the performance curve across resolutions and settings suggests that the primary bottleneck shifts from the GPU at high resolutions to the CPU at lower resolutions, though both components remain far ahead of what the game's engine demands.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average frame rate recorded for this combo in Inside?

A: The highest recorded average frame rate is 433 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings.

Q: How does the combo perform at 4K resolution?

A: At 3840x2160, the average frame rates range from 97 FPS on Ultra settings to 204 FPS on Low settings, with High settings delivering 102 FPS and Medium settings delivering 163 FPS.

Q: Is there a measurable frame rate difference between High and Ultra settings at 1440p?

A: Yes, at 2560x1440, High settings produce an average of 163 FPS, while Ultra settings drop the average to 155 FPS, a difference of 8 FPS.

Q: What is the combo's rank among all tested systems for this game?

A: The combo ranks 446th out of 2,887 tested combinations, which places it in the upper percentile of systems evaluated for Inside.

Q: Does the RTX 5080 have enough VRAM for this game?

A: The GPU features 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus, and given that even the most demanding measured settings (4K Ultra) still produce 97 FPS, the memory configuration is more than sufficient for Inside's requirements.

Q: Which settings preset at 1080p provides the highest frame rate?

A: Low settings at 1920x1080 deliver the highest average at 433 FPS, followed by Medium at 362 FPS, High at 226 FPS, and Ultra at 215 FPS.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX is a 24-core, 24-thread 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 is 2.70 GHz, with a boost clock of 5.40 GHz, and it carries 36 MB of shared L3 cache alongside per-core L1 and L2 caches of 192 KB and 3 MB, respectively. In Inside, a game that is not typically CPU-bound due to its linear puzzle design and modest physics simulation, this processor provides far more computational headroom than the title requires. The benchmark data supports this: the CPU scores 35,589 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 2,204 in single-core, with a Geekbench multi-core score of 20,795 and single-core score of 2,458. These scores place the CPU in the 94th percentile against all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 67,469.

Looking at the nearest rivals for this CPU, the Intel Xeon w5-3525 has an average score of 67,673 (a delta of -0.3%), the AMD EPYC 4484PX scores 67,822 (-0.5%), the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5955WX scores 67,868 (-0.6%), and the Intel Xeon 6515P scores 67,006 (+0.7%). This indicates that the Core Ultra 9 275HX is essentially on par with these workstation-class processors in synthetic benchmarks, though none of these rivals are likely to be found in a gaming laptop. The CPU's role in Inside becomes more apparent at lower resolutions. At 1080p Low, the combo reaches 433 FPS, which is 2.1 times higher than the 204 FPS at 4K Low. This scaling suggests that at 1080p, the GPU is not the limiting factor, and the CPU's single-thread performance (2,204 in Cinebench R23 single-core) is what allows the frame rate to climb above 400 FPS. The processor's 24 threads are largely idle in this game, but its high boost clock and efficient Arrow Lake architecture ensure that the few active threads can execute game logic and draw calls without introducing any noticeable frame pacing issues.

The data shows that even at the most CPU-intensive configuration tested (1080p Low), the average frame rate of 433 FPS is more than seven times the refresh rate of a standard 60 Hz display, and it exceeds the capabilities of most high-refresh-rate monitors, which typically cap at 240 Hz or 360 Hz. This means that the CPU is not just adequate but overkill for Inside, and any perceived performance differences between settings presets at 1080p are more likely attributable to GPU rendering load than CPU processing. The processor's dual-channel DDR5 memory support with a bandwidth of 102.4 GB/s also provides ample data throughput for the game's asset streaming, though Inside's relatively small environments and simple textures would likely run fine on far less capable memory subsystems.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data for this combo provides a clear picture of how different settings presets affect performance, and the optimal choice depends on the display's refresh rate and resolution. At 1920x1080, all settings presets exceed 200 FPS on average: Low delivers 433 FPS, Medium delivers 362 FPS, High delivers 226 FPS, and Ultra delivers 215 FPS. For a 144 Hz or 165 Hz monitor, even Ultra settings are sufficient, as 215 FPS leaves ample headroom above the refresh rate. For a 240 Hz display, High settings at 226 FPS would provide the best balance of visual quality and frame rate, while Medium at 362 FPS would be preferable for a 360 Hz monitor. Low settings at 433 FPS are technically the fastest, but the visual degradation in a game like Inside, which relies heavily on atmospheric lighting and silhouette-based art direction, would be counterproductive to the experience.

At 2560x1440, the frame rates remain exceptionally high: Low averages 325 FPS, Medium averages 260 FPS, High averages 163 FPS, and Ultra averages 155 FPS. For a 1440p 144 Hz monitor, Ultra settings are the clear recommendation, as 155 FPS exceeds the refresh rate and the visual fidelity gains from Ultra are worth the 8 FPS drop compared to High. For a 240 Hz 1440p panel, Medium at 260 FPS is the only preset that fully saturates the refresh rate, though High at 163 FPS would still provide a smooth experience on most variable refresh rate displays. The Medium preset at 1440p also has a recorded minimum FPS of 221 and maximum of 299, indicating that the frame time variance is tight enough to avoid noticeable stutters.

At 3840x2160, the GPU becomes more of a limiting factor, but the frame rates are still high: Low averages 204 FPS, Medium averages 163 FPS, High averages 102 FPS, and Ultra averages 97 FPS. For a 4K 60 Hz display, Ultra settings at 97 FPS are the obvious choice, as they provide the best visual quality while still exceeding the refresh rate by a significant margin. For a 4K 120 Hz display, Medium at 163 FPS is the only preset that exceeds 120 FPS, and it does so with a comfortable margin, though the visual difference between Medium and High in Inside is noticeable in shadow quality and ambient occlusion. The Medium preset at 4K also has a recorded minimum of 139 FPS and maximum of 188 FPS, which means that even the worst-case frame time stays above 120 FPS. In summary, the data suggests that users with high-refresh-rate displays should prioritize Medium or High settings at 1080p or 1440p, while 4K users should default to Ultra unless they have a 120 Hz or higher display, in which case Medium is the best fit.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo of the Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 ranks 446th out of 2,887 tested combinations for Inside, placing it in the top 15.4% of all systems evaluated. This rank is notable because Inside is a game that is relatively easy to run compared to modern AAA titles, so the ranking reflects the raw performance of the CPU and GPU rather than any optimization quirks. The CPU itself is in the 94th percentile against all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 67,469, and its nearest rivals include the Intel Xeon w5-3525 (67,673, -0.3%), AMD EPYC 4484PX (67,822, -0.5%), AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5955WX (67,868, -0.6%), and Intel Xeon 6515P (67,006, +0.7%). The GPU is in the 87th percentile against all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 56,083, and its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon 8060S (55,757, +0.6%), AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB (55,698, +0.7%), AMD Radeon Pro W5700X (54,828, +2.3%), and AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE (57,367, -2.2%).

The rank of 446 out of 2,887 means that 2,441 other combos scored lower, while 445 scored higher. Given that the CPU and GPU both sit in the top 15% of their respective categories, the combo's overall rank is consistent with what the component-level data would suggest. The fact that it does not rank higher is likely due to the presence of more powerful desktop components in the database, such as overclocked flagship CPUs and GPUs, which are not directly comparable to this mobile-oriented CPU (the Core Ultra 9 275HX is a mobile processor with a TDP of 55 W) and this laptop-class GPU (the RTX 5080 has a TDP of 360 W). Within the context of mobile gaming systems, this combo is near the top of the stack, and the measured FPS data confirms that it can run Inside at frame rates that exceed the refresh rates of virtually all consumer displays. The delta percentages for both the CPU and GPU rivals are all within ±2.3%, which indicates that the synthetic benchmark scores are tightly clustered, but the actual in-game performance for Inside is what matters, and the measured FPS numbers show no signs of any bottleneck that would drag the rank down further.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with the GB203 chip, fabricated on a 5 nm process by TSMC with 45,600 million transistors on a 378 mm² die. It features 10,752 shading units, 336 texture mapping units, 112 raster operations pipelines, 84 ray tracing cores, and 336 tensor cores. The GPU's base clock is 2295 MHz with a boost clock of 2617 MHz, and its memory configuration consists of 16 GB of GDDR7 on a 256-bit bus, delivering a bandwidth of 960.0 GB/s. The GPU has a pixel rate of 293.1 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 879.3 GTexel/s, with FP32 performance of 56.28 TFLOPS. In Inside, a game that uses simple 2D side-scrolling visuals with 3D lighting effects, the RTX 5080's raw compute power is vastly underutilized, but the data shows that it still scales predictably with resolution and settings.

At 4K Ultra, the combo averages 97 FPS, which is the lowest recorded average in the entire dataset. This is still well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, but it shows that the GPU is working harder at this resolution and settings combination. In contrast, at 4K Low, the average jumps to 204 FPS, a 110% increase over Ultra, which indicates that the GPU's shading units and ROPs are the primary contributors to the frame rate at this resolution. The GPU's memory bandwidth of 960.0 GB/s is more than sufficient for Inside's textures, which are relatively low-resolution even at Ultra settings, so the 16 GB VRAM allocation is never a limiting factor. The GPU's boost clock of 2617 MHz ensures that even at 4K, the rendering pipeline is not starved for clock speed, and the 84 ray tracing cores are irrelevant for this game, which does not use ray-traced lighting.

The GPU's benchmark scores corroborate its high-end positioning: it scores 8,637 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, 235,901 in Geekbench OpenCL, and 255,450 in Geekbench Vulkan, with a Passmark G3D score of 36,565 and a Passmark GPU Compute score of 21,789. These scores place the GPU in the 87th percentile against all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 56,083. The nearest rivals, including the AMD Radeon 8060S (55,757, +0.6%) and AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB (55,698, +0.7%), are all within 1% of the RTX 5080's average score, but the RTX 5080's advantage in Inside is more pronounced at lower resolutions, where its higher boost clock and larger shading unit count allow it to push frame rates above 400 FPS at 1080p Low. The GPU's TDP of 360 W and suggested PSU of 750 W are not relevant to the in-game performance metrics, but they indicate that this is a high-power part that requires a robust cooling solution, which is typical for a laptop-class GPU in this tier.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data for Inside with this combo covers four settings presets (Low, Medium, High, Ultra) across three resolutions, providing a total of twelve data points. Starting at 1920x1080, the average frame rates are 433 FPS for Low, 362 FPS for Medium, 226 FPS for High, and 215 FPS for Ultra. The Medium preset at 1080p has a recorded minimum of 308 FPS and maximum of 416 FPS, showing a frame time variance of 108 FPS between the worst and best cases. Moving to 2560x1440, the averages drop to 325 FPS for Low, 260 FPS for Medium, 163 FPS for High, and 155 FPS for Ultra. The Medium preset at 1440p has a minimum of 221 FPS and maximum of 299 FPS, a variance of 78 FPS. At 3840x2160, the averages are 204 FPS for Low, 163 FPS for Medium, 102 FPS for High, and 97 FPS for Ultra. The Medium preset at 4K has a minimum of 139 FPS and maximum of 188 FPS, a variance of 49 FPS.

The scaling from 1080p to 1440p shows an average reduction of about 25% across all settings: Low drops from 433 to 325 FPS (a 25% decrease), Medium drops from 362 to 260 FPS (a 28% decrease), High drops from 226 to 163 FPS (a 28% decrease), and Ultra drops from 215 to 155 FPS (a 28% decrease). The scaling from 1440p to 4K is more pronounced: Low drops from 325 to 204 FPS (a 37% decrease), Medium drops from 260 to 163 FPS (a 37% decrease), High drops from 163 to 102 FPS (a 37% decrease), and Ultra drops from 155 to 97 FPS (a 37% decrease). This consistent percentage scaling across settings suggests that the GPU is the primary bottleneck at all resolutions, and the CPU does not introduce any significant frame rate limitations until the resolution drops below 1080p, where the frame rates exceed 400 FPS.

The difference between Low and Ultra settings is consistent across resolutions: at 1080p, Ultra is 50% slower than Low (215 vs 433 FPS); at 1440p, Ultra is 52% slower (155 vs 325 FPS); and at 4K, Ultra is 52% slower (97 vs 204 FPS). This indicates that the Ultra preset roughly doubles the GPU workload compared to Low, which is typical for a game with simple geometry but advanced post-processing effects like ambient occlusion and depth of field. The High preset sits between Medium and Ultra, with averages that are 20-30% lower than Medium and 5-10% higher than Ultra, depending on the resolution. The Medium preset's recorded minimum and maximum values provide additional insight into frame pacing: at 1080p, the minimum of 308 FPS and maximum of 416 FPS suggest that the frame rate fluctuates by up to 35% during gameplay, which is likely due to scene complexity variations in this 2D platformer. At 1440p, the variance is lower (221-299 FPS, a 26% spread), and at 4K, the variance is even tighter (139-188 FPS, a 26% spread), indicating that the GPU's frame time consistency improves as the resolution increases, likely because the CPU is no longer causing occasional frame spikes.

Overall, the measured FPS breakdown shows that this combo delivers playable frame rates at every resolution and settings combination, with no data point falling below 97 FPS. The lowest recorded average (97 FPS at 4K Ultra) still exceeds the 60 FPS standard for console-like smoothness, and the highest recorded average (433 FPS at 1080p Low) is more than enough for competitive-grade esports displays. For users who prioritize visual fidelity, the 4K Ultra preset at 97 FPS is a viable option, while users with high-refresh-rate displays should look to the 1440p Medium preset at 260 FPS or the 1080p Medium preset at 362 FPS for the most balanced experience.