Control

Control launched in August 2019 and remains one of the more demanding action adventure titles in the database, especially for its heavy use of ray tracing-era rendering features. The pairing here is unusual: a very recent sixteen-core Ryzen 9 9950X3D sitting alongside a GeForce RTX 2060, a card that is now end-of-life. The measurements below show exactly what that imbalance means in practice, and the short version is that the GPU is the deciding factor at every resolution.

FAQ

Q: Can the RTX 2060 run Control at 1080p?

A: Yes. At 1920x1080 the recorded averages are 110.1 FPS on Low, 76.7 FPS on Medium, 67.4 FPS on High, and 58.3 FPS on Ultra. High is the highest preset that clears the 60 FPS playability threshold, and it does so with room to spare.

Q: Is 1440p playable?

A: Only on the Low preset. The 2560x1440 results are 79.3 FPS on Low, 55.8 FPS on Medium, 53 FPS on High, and 44.8 FPS on Ultra. Everything except Low falls below 60 FPS.

Q: Can this setup handle 4K?

A: No. At 3840x2160 the averages peak at 53.9 FPS on Low and drop to 33.1 FPS on Ultra. No preset at 4K reaches the 60 FPS threshold.

Q: Does the Ryzen 9 9950X3D hold this game back?

A: No. The CPU sits in the 95th percentile against all processors in the database, with an average benchmark score of 75779. The frame rates track the GPU's limits, not the processor's.

Q: How does this combination rank against other tested pairings?

A: It ranks 2944 out of 3720 combinations tested in Control, placing it in the back half of results despite the flagship-class CPU.

Q: How far apart are the CPU and GPU in capability?

A: Dramatically. The 9950X3D is a 95th-percentile CPU; the RTX 2060 is a 58th-percentile GPU. That gap defines this build's behavior in Control.

CPU and GPU Roles

Control on this configuration is GPU-limited from top to bottom. The evidence is in the resolution scaling: dropping from 3840x2160 to 1920x1080 on the same Low preset lifts the average from 53.9 FPS to 110.1 FPS, roughly doubling frame rate as pixel count falls. That near-linear scaling is the signature of a graphics-bound game. If the CPU were the constraint, lowering resolution would produce diminishing returns instead.

The Ryzen 9 9950X3D has enormous headroom. Its database profile includes a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 42018, a single-core score of 2259, a Geekbench multi-core result of 26736, and a 3DMark max-threads score of 17184. Control is an action adventure title released in 2019 that simply cannot draw on sixteen cores and 128 MB of L3 cache hard enough to matter when the RTX 2060 is setting the pace. Even at 1080p Ultra, where CPU demands are usually highest, the 58.3 FPS average reflects the GPU's limits.

Preset changes tell the same story. At 1080p, moving from Low to Ultra costs 51.8 FPS (110.1 down to 58.3), a 47 percent drop driven entirely by GPU-side rendering load. The 9950X3D would produce identical numbers if paired with a faster card, the frame rates would simply rise.

Practical takeaway: for this game on this build, the component that matters is unambiguously the RTX 2060, at every resolution and every preset.

Measured FPS Breakdown

All figures below are recorded database measurements for Control running on the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and RTX 2060.

1920x1080:

• Low: 110.1 FPS average
• Medium: 76.7 FPS average
• High: 67.4 FPS average
• Ultra: 58.3 FPS average

This is the sweet spot for the pairing. Low is comfortably beyond the playability threshold, Medium clears it by a wide margin, and High still delivers 67.4 FPS. Ultra is the only casualty, falling 1.7 FPS short of 60.

2560x1440:

• Low: 79.3 FPS average
• Medium: 55.8 FPS average
• High: 53 FPS average
• Ultra: 44.8 FPS average

The Medium preset is the pivot point here, landing just 4.2 FPS shy of the threshold. Low remains smooth at 79.3 FPS. High and Ultra are both clearly in sub-60 territory, with Ultra a substantial 15.2 FPS below the line.

3840x2160:

• Low: 53.9 FPS average
• Medium: 38.9 FPS average
• High: 34.7 FPS average
• Ultra: 33.1 FPS average

4K is off the table. Even the Lowest preset misses 60 FPS by 6.1 FPS, and the higher presets cluster in the mid-30s. The spread between Medium and Ultra at 4K is only 5.8 FPS, indicating the GPU is saturated and additional quality settings barely change the outcome.

Across all twelve measurements, the min and max frame rates were not recorded, so the averages are the definitive figures. The pattern is consistent: the RTX 2060 delivers 60-plus FPS only where the pixel count is low enough and the settings are trimmed.

Similar Performance Alternatives

On the CPU side, the 9950X3D's nearest rivals in the database are effectively interchangeable for gaming purposes. The AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 9755 (average score 75738, within 0.1 percent), the Ryzen 7 PRO 9755X3D (75716, also 0.1 percent), the AMD EPYC 8224P (75582, 0.3 percent), and the Intel Core Ultra 9 285 (75488, 0.4 percent) all score within half a percent of this chip. Since Control never stresses even a fraction of this CPU's capability, swapping in any of these would leave the frame rates unchanged. The GPU remains the bottleneck regardless of which of these processors drives it.

On the GPU side, the RTX 2060's nearest rivals are more interesting because they define what "similar" means for this game. The database lists the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 (average score 15283, 0 percent delta), the AMD Radeon 680M integrated graphics (15270, 0.1 percent), the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 OEM (15199, 0.6 percent), and the AMD Radeon RX 7600 (15171, 0.8 percent) as statistical neighbors. Any of these would land within roughly a percent of the RTX 2060's Control performance, meaning the 1080p High and 1440p Low results would carry over almost exactly. Notably, that list includes an integrated GPU, which underscores how far the discrete card's relative standing has slipped since its introduction.

For anyone building specifically for Control at 60 FPS, the data suggests keeping a CPU from this performance tier is fine, in fact generous, but the GPU is where any upgrade should go, since everything from the GTX 580 to the RX 7600 behaves essentially the same as the RTX 2060 here.

The Verdict

Yes, this PC can run Control, with clear conditions.

At 1920x1080, three of four presets clear 60 FPS: Low at 110.1, Medium at 76.7, and High at 67.4. High is the recorded best playable setting, delivering 67.4 FPS. Ultra at 58.3 FPS is the only 1080p preset that misses the threshold, and it misses narrowly.

At 2560x1440, only Low qualifies, at 79.3 FPS. Medium, High, and Ultra all fall short, at 55.8, 53, and 44.8 FPS respectively.

At 3840x2160, nothing qualifies. The best result is 53.9 FPS on Low, and the recorded data shows no playable settings at this resolution.

The blunt summary: play at 1080p High for the best balance of image quality and frame rate, drop to Low if a higher refresh rate matters, and treat 1440p as a Low-preset-only option. 4K is not viable. The 9950X3D contributes essentially nothing to these outcomes beyond eliminating any processor-side concern; every frame rate in the dataset is a direct read on the RTX 2060's remaining capability in a game that punishes older GPUs.

How This Combo Ranks

Out of 3720 hardware combinations tested in Control, this pairing ranks 2944. That placement is instructive: it sits well into the lower half of the field despite containing one of the strongest CPUs in the database. Control's results are dominated by GPU capability, and a 58th-percentile GPU paired with a 95th-percentile CPU produces the frame rates of a 58th-percentile GPU.

The ranking also confirms the practical reading of the measurements. Combinations ranked above this one are almost certainly there on graphics strength, not processor strength, since the 9950X3D outranks the vast majority of CPUs it could be paired against. Anyone satisfied with the 1080p High result of 67.4 FPS can treat this as a confirmed playable configuration. Anyone aiming for 1440p at higher settings or any 4K experience should understand that no amount of CPU headroom in this build will close that gap; the data places that boundary firmly at the GPU.