Inside

Inside is a 2016 puzzle platformer that is remarkably light on GPU load, and the combination of the Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus and AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX produces frame rates that are almost absurdly high. The data shows this pairing is far more capable than the game demands, making it a system that will crush this title at any resolution or setting, but the scaling patterns reveal exactly where the bottlenecks lie.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is steep, but the absolute numbers remain so high that the experience is fluid everywhere. At High settings, the average FPS falls from 268 at 1920x1080 to 193 at 2560x1440, a reduction of 75 FPS, and then drops further to 121 at 3840x2160. That represents a 55% decrease in average FPS from 1080p to 4K, which is a substantial hit, but the final 121 FPS at 4K High is still far above the refresh rate of most monitors.

The scaling pattern tells a clear story about the limiting component. At Low settings, the 1080p average of 442 FPS is extraordinarily high, and the 4K Low average of 242 FPS still shows a significant drop. However, the gap between Low and High settings at the same resolution is much smaller than the gap between resolutions, which indicates that the GPU is not the primary constraint. Between 1080p Low and 1080p High, the difference is 174 FPS, while between 4K Low and 4K High, the difference is 121 FPS. This suggests that the CPU is doing more of the heavy lifting at lower resolutions and settings, while the GPU begins to matter more as pixel count rises.

Looking at the Medium preset, which has the only complete min/max data, the pattern is consistent. The 1080p Medium average of 408 FPS drops to 308 FPS at 1440p, and then to 194 FPS at 4K. The min FPS at 4K Medium is 165, which is still excellent, but the max of 223 FPS shows that the frame pacing is consistent. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p is a 24.5% reduction, while the scaling from 1440p to 4K is a 37% reduction, showing that the GPU becomes progressively more important at higher resolutions. The Ultra preset follows the same trend, with 255 FPS at 1080p, 184 FPS at 1440p, and 115 FPS at 4K. This is a game where the CPU dominates at lower resolutions, and the GPU only starts to show its influence at 4K.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX is a high-end card with 24 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 384-bit bus, providing 960.0 GB/s of bandwidth. Its boost clock is 2498 MHz, with a game clock of 2365 MHz, and the base clock sits at 1929 MHz. The card is based on the RDNA 3.0 architecture with a Navi 31 chip, built on a 5 nm process at TSMC. The data shows it has 6144 shading units, 384 texture mapping units, and 192 render output units, along with 96 ray tracing cores. The FP32 performance is 61.39 TFLOPS, and the pixel rate is 479.6 GPixel/s.

For a game like Inside, which is a side-scrolling puzzle platformer with a muted color palette, the GPU is massively overprovisioned. The game does not stress the memory bandwidth or the compute units in any meaningful way. The 24 GB of VRAM is far more than the game could ever need, and the card's 960.0 GB/s bandwidth is irrelevant for the textures and effects in this title. The GPU's role here is almost passive; it is simply rendering frames quickly without ever coming close to its limits.

The benchmark results for the GPU show a passmark G3D score of 31238, which is a solid number, but the percentileVsAllGpus of 64 indicates that this card is not in the top tier of all GPUs tested, despite its high-end positioning. The nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3 GB with a deltaPct of 0.4%, and the NVIDIA Quadro K5200 with a deltaPct of -1%. These are older, less powerful cards, which is a quirk of the benchmark database but does not change the fact that the RX 7900 XTX is more than sufficient for Inside. The GPU scores in DirectX 11 (356) and DirectX 12 (131) are modest, but these are synthetic tests that do not reflect the actual gaming workload here. In this game, the GPU is not the star; it is just along for the ride.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus is the dominant component in this pairing for Inside. It has 24 cores and 24 threads, with a base clock of 3.70 GHz and a boost clock of 5.80 GHz. The CPU is built on a 3 nm process at TSMC with a die size of 243 mm² and 17,800 million transistors. The cache configuration includes 192 KB of L1 per core, 3 MB of L2 per core, and 36 MB of shared L3 cache. The memory support is DDR5 with a dual-channel bus and a bandwidth of 115.2 GB/s.

The benchmark data for the CPU shows exceptional single-threaded performance, which is what matters most for a game like Inside. The Cinebench R23 single-core score is 7303, and the passmark single-thread score is 4823. These numbers indicate that the CPU can handle the game's logic and physics without breaking a sweat. The multi-threaded scores are also high, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 51731 and a passmark multithread score of 60860, but Inside is not a game that uses many threads. The 24 cores are overkill for this title, but the high boost clock of 5.80 GHz is what drives the frame rates at lower resolutions.

The CPU's percentileVsAllCpus is 96, meaning it is in the top 4% of all CPUs tested. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K with a deltaPct of 0.2%, and the AMD EPYC 4584PX with a deltaPct of 1.1%. The 290K Plus edges out the 285K by a hair, but the difference is negligible. For Inside, this CPU is the primary reason why the frame rates are so high at 1080p. The game's logic is likely single-threaded, and the 5.80 GHz boost clock allows the CPU to feed the GPU with frames faster than the GPU can render them at low resolutions. The data shows that at 1080p Low, the average FPS of 442 is likely CPU-bound, because the GPU is not being taxed at that resolution and settings level.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo of the Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus and AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX ranks 136th out of 2887 tested combinations for Inside. This puts it in the top 4.7% of all combos tested, which is a strong showing. However, given the individual components, one might expect a higher rank. The CPU is in the 96th percentile, and the GPU is in the 64th percentile, but the combo rank suggests that there are many other pairings that perform better in this specific game.

The reason for this is likely the GPU's percentile. While the RX 7900 XTX is a capable card, its 64th percentile score is not exceptional, and in a game like Inside where the GPU is not a bottleneck, the card's lower relative performance compared to other GPUs does not matter much. However, other combos with stronger GPUs may have higher frame rates, even if the CPU is not as fast. The combo rank of 136 is still impressive, but it is not the top-tier result that the CPU alone might suggest. The data indicates that this combination is well-balanced for most games, but for Inside specifically, the CPU is the star, and the GPU is sufficient but not extraordinary.

It is importantly the combo rank is based on the measured FPS data, and with an average FPS of 121 at 4K High, this system is far from struggling. The rank of 136 out of 2887 is a solid result, and it means that only about 5% of all tested combos produce higher frame rates in this game. This is a system that will deliver a flawless experience in Inside, regardless of the resolution or settings chosen.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the data shows a wide range of frame rates depending on the preset. The Low preset delivers an average of 442 FPS, which is the highest recorded for this resolution. The Medium preset averages 408 FPS, with a minimum of 347 FPS and a maximum of 469 FPS. The High preset drops to an average of 268 FPS, and the Ultra preset is the lowest at 255 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra is 187 FPS, which shows that the graphics settings have a significant impact even at 1080p. The min FPS for Medium is 347, which is still extremely high, indicating that the frame pacing is smooth and there are no noticeable stutters.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates remain high but begin to show the GPU's influence. The Low preset averages 385 FPS, which is a 57 FPS drop from 1080p. The Medium preset averages 308 FPS, with a minimum of 262 FPS and a maximum of 355 FPS. The High preset averages 193 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 184 FPS. The pattern is consistent: Low is the fastest, followed by Medium, then High, and finally Ultra. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1440p is 201 FPS, which is larger than at 1080p, showing that the GPU is becoming more of a factor. The min FPS for Medium is 262, which is still far above the 60 FPS threshold, and the max of 355 FPS shows that the system can burst to very high frame rates when the scene is simple.

At 3840x2160, the frame rates are still impressive but show the GPU is now the limiting factor. The Low preset averages 242 FPS, which is a 143 FPS drop from 1080p Low. The Medium preset averages 194 FPS, with a minimum of 165 FPS and a maximum of 223 FPS. The High preset averages 121 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 115 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is 127 FPS, which is smaller than at lower resolutions, indicating that the GPU is saturating. The min FPS for Medium is 165, which is still excellent, and the max of 223 FPS shows that the system can maintain high frame rates even at 4K. The Ultra preset at 115 FPS is the lowest recorded, but it is still well above 60 FPS, making it perfectly playable.

Settings Recommendations

The data shows that the High and Ultra presets are nearly identical in performance, with a difference of only 13 FPS at 1080p, 9 FPS at 1440p, and 6 FPS at 4K. This suggests that the Ultra preset is not significantly more demanding than High, likely because the game's visual effects are not GPU-intensive. The Ultra preset at 4K produces an average of 115 FPS, which is still very smooth, so there is no reason to avoid it if you want the best visual quality. The Medium preset offers a significant jump in frame rate over High, with a 140 FPS increase at 1080p, a 115 FPS increase at 1440p, and a 73 FPS increase at 4K. The min FPS for Medium is also excellent, at 347 FPS at 1080p, 262 FPS at 1440p, and 165 FPS at 4K.

For the best experience, the Ultra preset is the clear choice for most users. The game is a puzzle platformer with a dark, atmospheric art style, and the Ultra settings will provide the highest level of shadow detail and texture quality. The frame rate penalty is negligible, and the system can easily maintain 115 FPS at 4K Ultra. If you have a high-refresh-rate monitor, such as a 240 Hz or 144 Hz display, the Medium preset is also a strong option. At 1440p Medium, the average of 308 FPS will easily max out a 240 Hz monitor, and the min of 262 FPS ensures that you will rarely drop below that threshold.

The Low preset is unnecessary for this system, as the frame rate gains over Medium are modest (34 FPS at 1080p, 77 FPS at 1440p, and 48 FPS at 4K) but come at a significant visual cost. The High preset is a good middle ground for those who want a balance between visual quality and frame rate, but given that Ultra is only slightly slower, it is the recommended choice. In short, the data strongly suggests using the Ultra preset at any resolution, as the system has more than enough headroom to run the game at its maximum settings with frame rates that are always above 100 FPS.