Control

The AMD Ryzen 5 9600X paired with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3080 comfortably runs Control at every mainstream resolution, and the measured data settles any doubt about 4K: Ultra at 3840x2160 lands at 55 FPS — just under the 60 FPS playability threshold — while Medium hits 70.2 FPS and High reaches 59.4 FPS, a hair short of the line. At 1440p and 1080p the pairing clears every preset including Ultra, at 78.9 and 102.6 FPS respectively. This is a GPU-bound configuration in a game famous for its ray-tracing load, and the RTX 3080's Ampere architecture with its dedicated RT cores is the reason the combo still performs well at the top settings. The pairing ranks 1057 out of 3720 tested combinations in Control — solidly in the upper third, though not flagship territory.

Best Settings per Resolution

The most demanding preset that stays at or above 60 FPS at each resolution, per the measured data:

• 1920x1080 — Ultra, 102.6 FPS average. Every preset is playable at 1080p; even Ultra clears the threshold by over 40 frames.
• 2560x1440 — Ultra, 78.9 FPS average. Again, all four presets stay above 60 FPS, so the ceiling preset is the correct choice.
• 3840x2160 — Medium, 70.2 FPS average. This is where the RTX 3080 runs out of headroom. High averages 59.4 FPS — technically just below the 60 FPS bar — and Ultra drops to 55 FPS. Medium is the most demanding preset that holds a comfortable margin above the threshold.

The practical takeaway: turn everything up at 1080p and 1440p, and step down one notch from High to Medium at 4K for a framerate that never flirts with the threshold.

CPU and GPU Roles

Control is a GPU-heavy title on this configuration, and the scaling data makes that unambiguous. Moving from 1080p Ultra to 1440p Ultra costs 23.7 FPS (102.6 down to 78.9), and pushing to 4K Ultra costs another 23.9 FPS (78.9 down to 55). That steady, resolution-driven framerate collapse — roughly 23 percent, then 30 percent — is the signature of a graphics-limited system: the RTX 3080's pixel workload scales with resolution while the Ryzen 5 9600X's workload barely changes.

The preset scaling tells the same story. At 4K, dropping from Ultra to Low nearly doubles the framerate (55 to 91.7 FPS). At 1080p the spread is wider in absolute terms (183.7 at Low versus 102.6 at Ultra), but note that even the cheapest preset at 1080p doesn't reach beyond 183.7 FPS — the game engine and the CPU set the ceiling there. The Ryzen 5 9600X is more than adequate for that ceiling: with a single-thread Passmark score of 4570, a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2183.5, and a 5.40 GHz boost clock on its Zen 5 architecture, it sits in the 81st percentile of all CPUs. Control's action-adventure simulation load never threatens that level of performance; the 10 GB of GDDR6X on the RTX 3080 and its 68 RT cores are the components doing the heavy lifting.

How This Combo Ranks

Within Control specifically, this pairing ranks 1057 out of 3720 tested combinations. That places it around the 28th percentile from the top — better than roughly two-thirds of tested hardware pairings in this game. The composition explains the rank: the CPU is a strong modern part (81st percentile versus all CPUs, avgBenchmarkScore 29713), but the GPU, while still capable (68th percentile versus all GPUs, avgBenchmarkScore 23172), is an end-of-life Ampere card. Control is one of the most demanding ray-tracing titles ever released, which disproportionately rewards newer GPU architectures. The result is a balanced-but-not-elite rank: fast enough for Ultra at 1440p, not fast enough for Ultra at 4K.

Similar Performance Alternatives

For CPUs, the nearest rivals to the Ryzen 5 9600X by aggregate score are remarkably close: the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5755GE (avgScore 29656, 0.2 percent behind), the Ryzen 7 7840H (29868, 0.5 percent ahead), the Ryzen 7 5800XT (29879, 0.6 percent ahead), and the Ryzen 7 8845HS (29955, 0.8 percent ahead). All four sit within a single percentage point of the 9600X's overall benchmark score, so any of them would deliver effectively identical Control performance — the game is GPU-bound here, so the CPU's exact identity within this cluster is essentially irrelevant to framerate.

For GPUs, the nearest rivals are more eclectic: the NVIDIA P106-100 (avgScore 23249, 0.3 percent behind the RTX 3080's overall score), the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16 (23250, 0.3 percent behind), the Radeon RX 6600M (23273, 0.4 percent ahead), and the Radeon R9 M290X (23276, 0.4 percent ahead). These aggregate scores land within a fraction of a percent of the 3080, so on raw composite benchmarks they behave similarly — though in a DirectX 12 Ultimate title like Control, where the 3080's dedicated RT cores and Tensor cores come into play, aggregate-similarity does not guarantee identical ray-traced performance. Still, as a guide to nearby hardware, those four GPUs are the closest matches in the database.

Measured FPS Breakdown

All figures are measured averages from this exact pairing; minimum and maximum frametimes were not recorded in this dataset.

3840x2160 (4K):

• Low: 91.7 FPS
• Medium: 70.2 FPS
• High: 59.4 FPS
• Ultra: 55 FPS

Only Low and Medium clear the 60 FPS playable threshold at 4K. High misses by less than a single frame per second, making it a borderline case, while Ultra falls 5 FPS short.

2560x1440:

• Low: 137.7 FPS
• Medium: 102 FPS
• High: 88.4 FPS
• Ultra: 78.9 FPS

Every preset is playable at 1440p, and even Ultra retains nearly a 19-FPS cushion over the threshold. The framerate curve is remarkably flat across the preset range, indicating well-balanced engine load.

1920x1080:

• Low: 183.7 FPS
• Medium: 130.6 FPS
• High: 117.6 FPS
• Ultra: 102.6 FPS

All presets playable with large margins. Ultra at 1080p delivers more than 70 percent headroom above the threshold, suitable for high-refresh-rate play at reduced settings.

FAQ

Q: Can the Ryzen 5 9600X + RTX 3080 run Control at 4K?

A: Yes, but not at maximum settings. Medium is the best preset at 3840x2160 with a 70.2 FPS average. High (59.4 FPS) and Ultra (55 FPS) fall below the 60 FPS playability threshold.

Q: What settings should I use for 1440p?

A: Ultra. It averages 78.9 FPS at 2560x1440, and every other preset runs faster still — all the way up to 137.7 FPS at Low.

Q: Is this game CPU-limited or GPU-limited with this hardware?

A: GPU-limited. Framerates drop sharply as resolution rises (102.6 to 78.9 to 55 FPS at Ultra from 1080p to 4K), which is the classic pattern of graphics-bound scaling. The Ryzen 5 9600X, in the 81st percentile of all CPUs, is never the constraint.

Q: How does this combo rank against other hardware tested in Control?

A: It ranks 1057 out of 3720 tested combinations — roughly the top third of pairings, held back mainly by the end-of-life RTX 3080 rather than the CPU.

Q: Which CPUs would perform about the same in this game?

A: The Ryzen 7 PRO 5755GE, Ryzen 7 7840H, Ryzen 7 5800XT, and Ryzen 7 8845HS all sit within 0.8 percent of the 9600X's aggregate benchmark score, and since Control is GPU-bound here, any of them would produce effectively the same framerates.

Q: Does the RTX 3080 have the feature support Control needs?

A: Yes. The card supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), Vulkan 1.4, and OpenGL 4.6, and carries 68 RT cores plus 272 Tensor cores — the hardware blocks Control's ray-traced and AI-upscaling features are built around.