Control

Control launched in August 2019 as an action adventure built around heavy use of real-time ray tracing, and it remains one of the better stress tests for GPU horsepower. The pairing of AMD's Ryzen 9 9900X3D with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4090 sits near the top of the performance charts in this game's benchmark database, ranking 121st out of 3720 tested CPU/GPU combinations — inside the top few percent of all results recorded for this title. The 9900X3D is a 12-core, 24-thread Zen 5 processor with a 4.40 GHz base clock, a 5.50 GHz boost clock, and 128 MB of L3 cache, placing it in the 91st percentile versus all CPUs tracked. The RTX 4090 brings 24 GB of GDDR6X on a 384-bit bus with 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth and 128 RT cores, sitting in the 88th percentile versus all GPUs. All figures below are measured results.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo produces its highest numbers. The Low preset averages 272 FPS, Medium averages 194 FPS with a minimum of 165 and a maximum of 223, High averages 172 FPS, and Ultra averages 149 FPS. Even the most demanding preset stays well above double the 60 FPS playability threshold, and the Medium frame-time spread — 165 to 223 — shows tight consistency rather than wide swings.

Moving to 2560x1440, Low averages 206 FPS, Medium averages 146 FPS with a minimum of 124 and a maximum of 168, High averages 130 FPS, and Ultra averages 113 FPS. The drop from 1080p Ultra to 1440p Ultra is 36 FPS, a moderate decline that still leaves nearly double the playability threshold intact at maximum settings.

At 3840x2160, the RTX 4090 finally starts to work. Low averages 139 FPS, Medium averages 99 FPS with a minimum of 84 and a maximum of 114, High averages 88 FPS, and Ultra averages 76 FPS. The 4K Medium spread of 84 to 114 is notable: even the minimum frame rate during that measured run sits comfortably above 60, which means dips do not threaten playability. Ultra at 76 FPS average clears the threshold with headroom to spare. Minimum and maximum values were not captured for every preset, but where they exist, they reinforce the averages.

Best Settings per Resolution

Because every preset at every resolution clears 60 FPS average, the "best" setting at each resolution is simply the most demanding one available:

• 1920x1080 — Ultra, 149 FPS average. No reason to touch anything lower.
• 2560x1440 — Ultra, 113 FPS average. Still nearly double the threshold.
• 3840x2160 — Ultra, 76 FPS average. This is the tightest result in the dataset, but it remains above 60 with room for the frame-rate dips that ray-traced scenes inevitably produce.

The practical takeaway: this hardware never needs to compromise on settings in Control. Ultra is the answer at all three resolutions, and the only scenario worth watching is 4K Ultra, where the 76 FPS average leaves less cushion than elsewhere. Given Control's ray-tracing emphasis, that 4K Ultra figure is exactly where the RTX 4090's 128 RT cores earn their keep.

CPU and GPU Roles

The scaling data points clearly to a GPU-bound game at every resolution tested. Going from 1080p Ultra to 4K Ultra cuts the average from 149 FPS to 76 FPS — roughly halving performance as pixel count quadruples. If the CPU were the limiter, frame rates would stay comparatively flat across resolutions, because the processor workload does not change with pixel count. It drops by half instead. That is GPU limitation, pure and simple.

The preset scaling tells the same story from the other direction. At 1080p, dropping from Ultra to Low buys 123 additional FPS (149 to 272). At 4K, the same drop buys 63 FPS (76 to 139). The gap between presets narrows as resolution rises, which is the classic signature of a GPU running out of headroom — at 4K the card can't exploit lower settings as fully because it is saturated either way.

That does not mean the 9900X3D is irrelevant. Its single-thread performance (a 3041 Geekbench single-core score, 6739 in Cinebench R23 single-core) and 128 MB of L3 cache keep frame delivery smooth, and the measured minimums at Medium — 165 at 1080p, 124 at 1440p, 84 at 4K — show no evidence of processor-side stutter. But the data indicates the GPU is the component doing the heavy lifting in Control at all three resolutions. Anyone choosing between upgrading the CPU or the GPU for this title should put every effort into the graphics card.

The Verdict

Yes — emphatically. The verdict data shows all four presets — Low, Medium, High, and Ultra — as playable at all three tested resolutions:

• 1920x1080: playable at Low, Medium, High, and Ultra; best is Ultra at 149 FPS.
• 2560x1440: playable at Low, Medium, High, and Ultra; best is Ultra at 113 FPS.
• 3840x2160: playable at Low, Medium, High, and Ultra; best is Ultra at 76 FPS.

There is no combination in the measured dataset where this pairing falls below the 60 FPS threshold. A 12-core Zen 5 CPU combined with a triple-slot Ada Lovelace card carrying 24 GB of GDDR6X simply overshoots what Control asks of hardware. The realistic question for a builder running this combo is not "can it run Control" but "which higher-framerate target should I aim for" — and the numbers support high-refresh play at 1440p (146 FPS at Medium) and comfortable 4K Ultra at 76 FPS. For a 4K high-refresh monitor, dropping to High (88 FPS) or Medium (99 FPS) at 2160p closes most of the gap without visual sacrifice that most players would notice in motion.

Similar Performance Alternatives

On the CPU side, the 9900X3D's nearest rivals by average benchmark score are the Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF (0.6% ahead), the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K (1.3% behind), the Intel Xeon 6505P (2% behind), and the Intel Core i7-14700F (2.1% behind). All four sit within roughly two percent of this chip's aggregate score, and since Control is GPU-bound here, any of them would produce essentially identical frame rates when paired with the same graphics card. The Core i7-14700F is the most conventional gaming alternative of that group; the delta is small enough that the data shows no meaningful separation for this title.

On the GPU side, the measured nearest rivals by average score are the Intel Arc Pro A60 (dead even at 0% delta), the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 48 (0.3% behind), the AMD Radeon Pro W6600M (2.5% ahead), and the AMD Radeon PRO V710 (2.9% behind). These are aggregate benchmark scores rather than Control-specific results, so treat them as general performance neighborhoods rather than guarantees in a ray-tracing-heavy game — Control's RT workload is exactly the kind of test where architecture-specific strengths diverge from averaged numbers. Still, as a database-neighborhood guide, cards scoring in that band would be expected to land in the same general performance territory.

How This Combo Ranks

Out of 3720 CPU/GPU combinations tested in Control, this pairing ranks 121st. That places it in roughly the top three percent of all tested configurations for this game — a strong result, though not the absolute ceiling, meaning a modest number of combos (120 of them) measure faster. Given that every preset at every resolution clears 60 FPS with the best result being 76 FPS at 4K Ultra, the ranking confirms what the raw frame rates suggest: this is a high-end configuration for Control, and the remaining gap to the number-one spot would only matter to players chasing maximum frame rates rather than playability. For everyone else, the data shows this combo handles the game at its most demanding settings across all tested resolutions.