Control

The pairing of an Intel Core i5-12600KF with an AMD Radeon RX 580 is a study in imbalance, and Control makes that imbalance obvious. The CPU sits in the 79th percentile of all processors in the database with an average benchmark score of 27799, while the GPU occupies the 53rd percentile with an average score of 12928 and carries an end-of-life production status. In practice, this means the processor has significant headroom that the aging Polaris-based graphics card cannot use, and the recorded frame rates for Control reflect exactly that dynamic.

Similar Performance Alternatives

For anyone shopping around this performance band, the database shows several hardware alternatives that would behave nearly identically.

On the CPU side, the Core i5-12600KF is bracketed by rivals within a fraction of a percent of its aggregate score. The Intel Core i9-10900K averages 27872, a delta of just -0.3 percent. The AMD Ryzen 7 6800U sits at 27887, also -0.3 percent, and the Ryzen 7 5800X3D averages 27896, again -0.3 percent. The Ryzen 5 8500GE lands at 27712, only 0.3 percent away. Any of these processors would deliver essentially the same experience in Control with this class of GPU, because the game at these frame rates is not CPU-limited. The 12600KF itself brings 10 cores and 16 threads, a 3.70 GHz base clock and a 4.90 GHz boost clock on the Alder Lake architecture, with a single-thread Cinebench R23 score of 3302 and a multi-thread score of 23391, so it is comfortably ahead of what this game demands.

The GPU side is where alternatives matter more. The Radeon RX 580's nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER at an average score of 12986, just -0.4 percent from the RX 580's 12928, and the GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Mobile at 12940, a -0.1 percent delta. On the AMD side, the Radeon 740M averages 12870, 0.5 percent away, and the FirePro W5100 sits at 12847, 0.6 percent off. In other words, a GTX 1660 SUPER desktop card or even an RTX 3050 Ti laptop chip would produce frame rates in Control within rounding distance of what the RX 580 manages here. The RX 580's own benchmark profile includes a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1005 and a PassMark G3D result of 8813, numbers that place it firmly in the midrange of its generation rather than the current one.

How This Combo Ranks

Out of 3720 tested combinations in Control, this pairing ranks 3429. That places it in the bottom tenth of the database's results table for this title, which is a direct consequence of Control's famously heavy engine meeting a Polaris-era card. The RX 580 supports DirectX 12 at feature level 12_0 and Vulkan 1.3, so the game runs without compatibility problems, but the card lacks the hardware to push Control's demanding visual feature set. The rank is not a reflection of the whole system: it is a GPU bottleneck from top to bottom, as the CPU percentile of 79 versus the GPU percentile of 53 makes clear.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The recorded data covers three resolutions at four presets each, and the picture is consistent: this hardware struggles at everything above 1080p Low.

At 1920x1080, the Low preset averages 66.1 FPS, the only result in the entire dataset that clears the 60 FPS playable threshold. Medium drops to 45.4 FPS, High lands at 40.1 FPS, and Ultra manages 38.2 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra at 1080p is substantial, meaning visual settings have a real, measurable effect on this card in Control.

At 2560x1440, every preset falls well short. Low averages 45.9 FPS, Medium 31.8 FPS, High 27.6 FPS, and Ultra 27.2 FPS. Notably, High and Ultra are nearly indistinguishable at this resolution, a common pattern when a GPU is fully saturated: once the card is the limiting factor, raising settings barely moves the average because the hardware is already maxed out.

At 3840x2160, the results become slideshow territory. Low averages 32 FPS, Medium 21.4 FPS, Ultra 19 FPS, and High 17.6 FPS. The inversion between High and Ultra at 4K is within measurement noise and confirms that the RX 580 has no headroom whatsoever at that resolution. Minimum and maximum frame rates were not recorded for these runs, but the averages alone tell the story.

The Verdict

Can this PC run Control? Only in a narrow sense. At 1920x1080 on the Low preset, the answer is yes: 66.1 FPS average clears the 60 FPS threshold with a small margin. Every other resolution and preset combination in the recorded data fails. At 1080p Medium, High, and Ultra, the system delivers between 38.2 and 45.4 FPS, which is below the playable bar. At 1440p, nothing exceeds 45.9 FPS. At 4K, nothing exceeds 32 FPS. The verdict data confirms this directly: 1080p lists Low as the only playable settings option, while both 2560x1440 and 3840x2160 list no playable settings at all. Anyone using this configuration should treat 1080p Low as the ceiling for a smooth experience and consider upscaling or further reductions if the game still feels sluggish during combat-heavy scenes.

CPU and GPU Roles

Control on this configuration is GPU-bound at every resolution tested. The evidence is in the scaling data. Moving from 1080p Low to 1440p Low cuts the average from 66.1 to 45.9 FPS, a drop of roughly 31 percent, and 4K Low falls further to 32 FPS. If the CPU were the limiting factor, raising the resolution would not produce such steep declines, because the processor's workload stays largely constant while the GPU's grows. The fact that frame rate scales down sharply with pixel count points squarely at the RX 580's 6.175 TFLOPS of FP32 throughput and 256 GB/s of memory bandwidth running out of capacity.

The preset scaling reinforces this. At 1080p, going from Low to Ultra costs 27.9 FPS, from 66.1 down to 38.2. At 1440p, the same step costs 18.7 FPS, from 45.9 to 27.2. At 4K, the loss shrinks to 13 FPS, from 32 to 19. The diminishing impact of settings at higher resolutions is classic GPU saturation: the card is so overloaded at 1440p and 4K that changing the detail level matters less and less.

Meanwhile, the Core i5-12600KF has capacity to spare. Its PassMark multithread score of 27575 and single-thread score of 3925 place it in the 79th percentile of all CPUs, and its nearest rivals include processors like the Ryzen 7 5800X3D that are known gaming performers. None of that throughput translates into extra frames here because the RX 580, sitting in the 53rd GPU percentile, sets the ceiling. Upgrading the graphics card would lift frame rates at all three resolutions; upgrading the CPU would change essentially nothing in this game.

Best Settings per Resolution

Based strictly on the recorded averages and the 60 FPS threshold:

• 1920x1080: Low is the only preset that qualifies, at 66.1 FPS average. Medium (45.4 FPS), High (40.1 FPS), and Ultra (38.2 FPS) all fall short.
• 2560x1440: No preset reaches 60 FPS. The best result is Low at 45.9 FPS, followed by Medium at 31.8, High at 27.6, and Ultra at 27.2.
• 3840x2160: No preset is playable. Low leads at 32 FPS, with Medium at 21.4, Ultra at 19, and High at 17.6.

The practical takeaway is simple: this configuration runs Control acceptably only at 1080p with settings dialed down. The CPU, launched at an MSRP of $264 with an unlocked multiplier and support for both DDR4 and DDR5 memory, has plenty of room to grow into a stronger graphics card. The RX 580, launched at an MSRP of 229 USD, is the component that decides what this system can do in Control, and at anything beyond 1080p Low, the answer is: not much.