Inside

Inside is a modestly demanding puzzle platformer from 2016, but the measured data for this configuration—Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus paired with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080—shows a system that never breaks a sweat, delivering triple-digit frame rates even at 4K Ultra. The benchmark results reveal a GPU-bound scenario at higher resolutions, but at 1080p the frame rates climb so high that CPU and engine limits become the primary constraint. This analysis breaks down the resolution scaling, per-setting performance, and the specific roles of the CPU and GPU in producing these numbers.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is dramatic, but the pattern is not uniform across all settings. At High settings, the average FPS falls from 305 at 1920x1080 to 219 at 2560x1440, a reduction of 28.2%, and then further to 138 at 3840x2160, which is a 54.8% drop from the 1080p result. This steep decline indicates that the GPU is the limiting component as resolution increases, with the RTX 5080’s pixel throughput being the bottleneck.

Low settings show a different scaling curve. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 442 FPS average, which drops to 396 at 1440p (a 10.4% decrease) and then to 275 at 4K (a 37.8% decrease from 1080p). The relatively small penalty from 1080p to 1440p suggests that at these lower settings, the CPU or game engine is limiting performance more than the GPU, as the RTX 5080 is not being fully utilized at 1080p Low.

Medium settings provide the most complete data, including minimum and maximum frame rates. The average FPS scales from 408 at 1080p, to 350 at 1440p (a 14.2% drop), and to 220 at 4K (a 46.1% drop). The minimum FPS at 4K Medium is 187, which is still far above any playability threshold, but the 66 FPS gap between the 4K average (220) and the 1440p average (350) highlights how much work the GPU is doing at the higher resolution.

Ultra settings show the largest absolute drop. The average FPS is 290 at 1080p, 209 at 1440p (a 27.9% decrease), and 131 at 4K (a 54.8% decrease). The fact that 4K Ultra still maintains an average above 130 FPS indicates that this GPU is overkill for the game’s visual demands, but the scaling pattern confirms that the render resolution is the dominant factor in performance variation.

The data suggests that at 1080p, the system is likely hitting a CPU or engine-level frame cap, as evidenced by the small difference between Low (442 FPS) and Medium (408 FPS) settings. As resolution increases, the GPU load grows, and the frame rate becomes more sensitive to pixel count, with the gap between settings narrowing at 4K where the GPU is consistently the limiting factor.

FAQ

Q: What is the maximum average frame rate recorded for this configuration in Inside?

A: The highest average FPS is 442, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This is 22% higher than the 1080p Medium average of 408 FPS, indicating that the Low preset removes significant GPU load that would otherwise limit performance.

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

A: At 3840x2160, the Ultra preset delivers an average of 131 FPS, which is 7 FPS lower than the High preset’s 138 FPS. This 5.1% performance penalty is small, suggesting that the visual difference between High and Ultra is not heavily taxing the RTX 5080.

Q: Is there a large difference between Low and Medium settings at 1440p?

A: Yes, the average FPS at 2560x1440 jumps from 350 on Medium to 396 on Low, a 13.1% increase. The Medium preset also has a minimum FPS of 298, which is still well above the 1440p High average of 219, showing that Medium offers a substantial performance headroom over High.

Q: Which resolution shows the smallest performance gap between Low and Ultra settings?

A: At 1920x1080, the difference between Low (442 FPS) and Ultra (290 FPS) is 152 FPS, a 34.4% reduction. At 4K, the gap between Low (275 FPS) and Ultra (131 FPS) is 144 FPS, a 52.4% reduction. The absolute FPS gap is similar, but the relative drop is larger at 4K.

Q: Does the system maintain a playable frame rate at all tested settings?

A: Yes, the lowest average FPS recorded is 131 at 4K Ultra, which is far above the 60 FPS threshold. The lowest minimum FPS is 187 at 4K Medium, indicating no frame rate dips below 180 FPS in the measured data.

Q: How does the 1440p Medium result compare to the 1080p Ultra result?

A: The 1440p Medium average is 350 FPS, which is 60 FPS higher than the 1080p Ultra average of 290 FPS. This shows that the GPU has enough headroom to run a higher resolution at Medium settings faster than a lower resolution at Ultra settings.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 is the primary driver of the frame rates at higher resolutions. Its 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus provides a memory bandwidth of 960.0 GB/s, which is more than sufficient for a game like Inside that does not feature large texture sets. The GPU’s 10752 shading units and 112 ROPs deliver a pixel rate of 293.1 GPixel/s, which explains the strong 4K performance.

The GPU clocks are set at a base of 2295 MHz and a boost of 2617 MHz, with memory running at 1875 MHz (30 Gbps effective). These clock speeds are high for a 50-series card, and the benchmark results confirm that the RTX 5080 is able to sustain high utilization without thermal throttling, as evidenced by the consistent scaling from 1080p to 4K. The GPU’s 56.28 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is not a limiting factor in this game, as the visual effects are relatively simple.

The GPU’s average benchmark score is 56083, placing it in the 87th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE, which scores 57367 (2.2% higher), and the AMD Radeon 8060S, which scores 55757 (0.6% lower). These small deltas indicate that the RTX 5080 is positioned near the top of the performance stack, but not the absolute fastest, which is consistent with its 4K results in Inside.

The measured FPS data shows that the GPU becomes the bottleneck at 4K, where the frame rate drops by roughly half compared to 1080p at the same settings. For example, at High settings, the 4K average of 138 FPS is 54.8% lower than the 1080p average of 305 FPS. This is a classic sign of pixel-bound rendering, where the GPU’s fill rate and memory bandwidth are the deciding factors.

At 1080p, the GPU is not fully utilized, as evidenced by the small gap between Low (442 FPS) and Medium (408 FPS) settings. The RTX 5080 has enough headroom to run the game at higher frame rates, but the CPU or game engine limits the output. This is not a criticism of the GPU, but rather an indication that Inside’s rendering pipeline is simple enough to be handled easily by this hardware.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 3840x2160, the RTX 5080 delivers an average of 275 FPS on Low settings, which drops to 220 FPS on Medium, 138 FPS on High, and 131 FPS on Ultra. The Medium preset is the only one at this resolution with full min/max data, showing a range of 187 to 253 FPS. The 220 FPS average for Medium is 60% higher than the 138 FPS High average, highlighting the significant performance cost of the High preset’s additional effects.

At 2560x1440, the Low preset averages 396 FPS, Medium averages 350 FPS (with a min/max of 298/403), High averages 219 FPS, and Ultra averages 209 FPS. The 1440p results show a similar pattern to 4K, but with higher absolute numbers. The gap between Medium and High at 1440p is 131 FPS, which is a 59.8% increase in favor of Medium.

At 1920x1080, the Low preset averages 442 FPS, Medium averages 408 FPS (with a min/max of 347/469), High averages 305 FPS, and Ultra averages 290 FPS. The 1080p results show the smallest relative differences between settings, with Ultra being only 34.4% slower than Low. This is because the CPU is starting to become a limiting factor at these high frame rates, reducing the impact of GPU settings.

The data shows a consistent hierarchy: Low is always the fastest, followed by Medium, then High, and finally Ultra. The difference between High and Ultra is small across all resolutions, averaging just 5-6% in favor of High. This suggests that the Ultra preset adds minimal visual improvements over High in this game, while the Medium preset offers a large performance boost over High (ranging from 59.8% at 1440p to 65.2% at 4K).

The minimum FPS values are only recorded for Medium settings, with the lowest being 187 at 4K and the highest being 347 at 1080p. These minimums are all well above 60 FPS, confirming that the system never experiences frame rate drops that would be noticeable to the player. The maximum FPS values follow a similar pattern, with the highest being 469 at 1080p Medium.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus is a 24-core, 24-thread processor with a base clock of 3.70 GHz and a boost clock of 5.80 GHz. This is a high-end desktop CPU that scores 51731 in the Cinebench R23 multi-core test and 7303 in the single-core test, placing it in the 96th percentile of all CPUs. Its nearest rival is the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, which has an average score of 83807 versus the 290K Plus’s 84003, a delta of just 0.2%.

The CPU’s role in Inside is primarily to feed the GPU with draw calls and physics calculations. The game is not heavily threaded, but the 290K Plus’s high boost clock of 5.80 GHz ensures that single-threaded performance is excellent, as evidenced by the 7303 Cinebench R23 single-core score. This is critical for maintaining high frame rates at 1080p, where the CPU can become a bottleneck.

The benchmark data suggests that the CPU is a limiting factor at 1080p Low, where the average FPS is 442. This is likely close to the engine’s frame rate cap or the CPU’s ability to process the game’s logic. The fact that increasing settings from Low to Medium at 1080p only reduces the average FPS by 34 (from 442 to 408) indicates that the GPU is not the primary constraint at this resolution.

At 4K, the CPU has more headroom, as the GPU is clearly the limiting component. The 4K Low average of 275 FPS is 37.8% lower than the 1080p Low average, a drop that is directly attributable to the increased pixel load on the GPU. The CPU’s 24 cores and 24 threads are more than sufficient for this game, and its 36 MB of shared L3 cache helps with any data-intensive tasks.

The CPU’s memory bandwidth of 115.2 GB/s from dual-channel DDR5 is adequate for the game’s requirements, and its 20 PCIe Gen 5 lanes allow the RTX 5080 to communicate at full bandwidth. The CPU’s high average benchmark score of 84003, which is 0.2% higher than the 285K and 1.1% higher than the AMD EPYC 4584PX, shows that it is among the fastest processors available, making it an ideal match for a high-end GPU.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS data, the Medium preset offers the best balance of visual quality and performance across all resolutions. At 1080p, Medium delivers an average of 408 FPS with a minimum of 347 FPS, which is more than enough for any display. At 1440p, Medium averages 350 FPS, and at 4K, it averages 220 FPS with a minimum of 187 FPS. The Medium preset is the only one with recorded minimum FPS values, and all of them are above 180 FPS, ensuring a consistently smooth experience.

The High and Ultra presets offer diminishing returns. At 4K, High averages 138 FPS and Ultra averages 131 FPS, which are still excellent numbers, but they are 37-40% lower than the Medium average. The visual difference between Medium and High is not specified, but the performance cost is significant, making Medium the recommended choice for players who prioritize frame rate.

For players with a 4K 120Hz display, the Medium preset is the best choice, as its 220 FPS average provides enough headroom to maintain a locked 120 FPS without dips below the refresh rate. The Low preset at 4K averages 275 FPS, which is even faster, but it likely sacrifices too many visual effects for a negligible benefit in this game.

At 1440p, all presets are playable, but Medium is the clear winner for its combination of high average FPS (350) and the availability of min/max data, which shows a tight range of 298 to 403 FPS. The 1440p High average of 219 FPS is still excellent, but the 59.8% performance gain from switching to Medium makes it a more sensible default.

The Ultra preset is not recommended for any resolution in this game, as it provides only a 5-6% performance reduction compared to High while delivering the lowest average FPS at every resolution. The data indicates that the visual upgrade from High to Ultra is not worth the frame rate cost, especially when Medium offers such a large performance advantage.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 ranks 52nd out of 2887 tested combos for Inside, placing it in the top 1.8% of all configurations. This high ranking is expected given the individual performance of both components, which are each in the top percentiles of their respective categories.

The combo’s position is driven by the GPU’s strong 4K performance and the CPU’s ability to avoid bottlenecking at lower resolutions. The RTX 5080’s average benchmark score of 56083 is 87th percentile, while the CPU’s 84003 average score is 96th percentile. When combined, this creates a system that can handle the game’s demands at any setting without compromise.

The ranking relative to other combos is more meaningful than the absolute FPS numbers, as it accounts for the fact that Inside is an older game with low system requirements. The fact that this combo ranks 52nd out of 2887 suggests that there are 51 other configurations that perform slightly better, likely with even more powerful GPUs or CPUs that can push frame rates even higher at 1080p.

However, the practical difference between 52nd and 1st place is minimal in this game, as the measured FPS are already so high that any improvement would be imperceptible. The combo’s rank of 52 indicates that it is a top-tier configuration for Inside, and the data shows that it delivers a flawless experience at all tested resolutions and settings.