Control

Control remains one of the most demanding ray-tracing-era action adventures in the benchmark database, and pairing it with an Intel Core i3-12100F and AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT produces results that sit squarely in mid-range territory. The RX 7700 XT brings 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus with 432 GB/s of bandwidth, 3456 shading units, and 35.17 TFLOPS of FP32 compute, while the i3-12100F contributes four Alder Lake cores, eight threads, and a 4.30 GHz boost clock. The measured data shows this combination is comfortably playable at two of the three tested resolutions — with only 4K Ultra falling short.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the pairing is outright fast. Low settings average 164.1 FPS, Medium climbs down only slightly to 116.9 FPS, High holds 105.1 FPS, and even the Ultra preset clears the 60 FPS threshold with room to spare at 90 FPS. That 90 FPS Ultra figure is the headline number for 1080p gamers: it means every visual feature Control offers can be enabled without sacrificing smoothness at this resolution.

Scaling to 2560x1440 shifts the frame rates down but keeps every preset above the playable threshold. Low averages 120.7 FPS, Medium 86.6 FPS, High 76.8 FPS, and Ultra lands at 64.9 FPS — still above 60, though with a thinner margin. The drop from 1080p Ultra (90 FPS) to 1440p Ultra (64.9 FPS) is significant, indicating the RX 7700 XT is doing the heavy lifting as pixel counts rise.

3840x2160 is where the limits appear. Low averages 81.7 FPS, which is genuinely smooth. Medium reaches 59.8 FPS — a hair under the 60 FPS playable line. High delivers 52.5 FPS, and Ultra manages 47.7 FPS. In practical terms, 4K on this combo means dropping to Low settings, since the step from Medium to Low at 4K is the difference between borderline and comfortable.

Across the board, the spread between the lowest and highest preset at each resolution is consistent: roughly 70-75 FPS at 1080p, 56 FPS at 1440p, and 34 FPS at 4K. The min/max FPS fields were not captured in this dataset, so the analysis rests on average frame rates.

How This Combo Ranks

Out of 3720 tested CPU/GPU combinations in Control, the i3-12100F plus RX 7700 XT ranks 1402nd. That places it in the top half of the database — roughly the 38th percentile — which aligns with where the individual components sit. The RX 7700 XT sits in the 67th percentile against all tested GPUs with an average benchmark score of 22549, and the i3-12100F lands in the 68th percentile against all CPUs with an average benchmark score of 13494.

The rank also tells a story about balance: a 67th-percentile GPU paired with a 68th-percentile CPU produces a combo that performs like what it is — a coherent mid-range build rather than a mismatched pairing dragging one component down. For a game released in 2019, ranking in the top half of tested combinations is a solid result, especially given Control's reputation as a GPU stress test.

FAQ

Q: Can the i3-12100F + RX 7700 XT run Control at 1080p with max settings?

A: Yes. Ultra at 1920x1080 averages 90 FPS, well clear of the 60 FPS playable threshold.

Q: Is 4K playable on this combo?

A: Only at Low settings, which average 81.7 FPS. Medium (59.8 FPS), High (52.5 FPS), and Ultra (47.7 FPS) all fall short of 60 FPS at 3840x2160.

Q: What is the best overall settings choice for 1440p?

A: Ultra is technically playable at 2560x1440 with a 64.9 FPS average, but High at 76.8 FPS offers a wider performance cushion.

Q: How much performance is lost going from Low to Ultra?

A: At 1080p, the drop is from 164.1 FPS to 90 FPS. At 1440p it is 120.7 to 64.9 FPS, and at 4K it is 81.7 to 47.7 FPS.

Q: Where does this combo rank among tested Control configurations?

A: Rank 1402 out of 3720 tested combinations, placing it in the top half of the database.

Q: Does the CPU hold the GPU back in Control?

A: The 1080p Low result of 164.1 FPS shows the quad-core i3-12100F can feed the RX 7700 XT at high frame rates in this title, and the steep resolution-driven falloff at 1440p and 4K points to GPU limitation rather than CPU limitation.

Similar Performance Alternatives

On the GPU side, the RX 7700 XT's nearest rivals in the database are the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Mobile (average score 22435, 0.5% behind), the RTX 4060 Mobile (22729, 0.8% ahead), the RTX 2080 (22895, 1.5% ahead), and AMD's own RX 5700 (22170, 1.7% behind). All four sit within a couple of percent of the RX 7700 XT's aggregate score, meaning Control frame rates on any of these cards would land in a nearly identical band — the RTX 2080 marginally ahead, the RX 5700 marginally behind.

On the CPU side, the i3-12100F's rivals are the Intel Core 3 N355 (13492, dead even at 0% delta), the Core i5-9500 (13452, 0.3% behind), the Core 5 120UL (13594, 0.7% ahead), and the Core i7-1250U (13351, 1.1% behind). Swapping the i3-12100F for any of these processors would produce effectively indistinguishable Control results, since the game's performance on this build is GPU-bound at the resolutions that matter.

CPU and GPU Roles

The data points clearly to a GPU-limited configuration at every resolution above 1080p. Consider the Ultra preset: 90 FPS at 1080p, 64.9 FPS at 1440p, and 47.7 FPS at 4K. If the CPU were the bottleneck, raising the resolution would not reduce frame rates — the four-core, eight-thread i3-12100F would cap throughput at a fixed ceiling. Instead, frame rates fall by roughly 28% going from 1080p to 1440p and by another 27% from 1440p to 4K, the signature of a graphics card absorbing the additional pixel load.

The CPU's moment comes at 1080p Low, where 164.1 FPS approaches territory where CPU throughput typically becomes the limiter. The i3-12100F's credentials support this: a single-thread Passmark score of 3444 and a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1674 show strong per-core performance from the Alder Lake architecture, which matters more than raw thread count in most games. Its multi-threaded results — 11860 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 14015 in Passmark multithread — are modest by modern standards, but Control does not demand heavy thread counts to feed a mid-range GPU.

Within a fixed resolution, the preset scaling also tells the GPU story: at 1080p, moving Low to Ultra costs 74 FPS, and the i3-12100F keeps pace across that entire range. For practical purposes, the RX 7700 XT determines the experience in Control at 1440p and 4K, while the CPU's influence is confined to the highest frame-rate scenarios at 1080p.

The Verdict

Yes — this PC runs Control, and runs it well at the two most common gaming resolutions. At 1920x1080, every preset from Low through Ultra clears 60 FPS, topping out at 90 FPS on Ultra. At 2560x1440, the verdict is the same: all four presets are playable, with Ultra at 64.9 FPS marking the floor and Low at 120.7 FPS the ceiling. 3840x2160 is the exception — only Low settings average above 60 FPS at 81.7 FPS, while Medium at 59.8 FPS sits just under the line and the higher presets fall further behind. For a 2019 action adventure that still punches above its era in visual demand, a mid-tier pairing ranking 1402nd of 3720 tested combos delivering max-settings 1080p and 1440p playability is a clear pass.