Control

Control paired with an Intel Core i5-9400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 is a showcase of what a strong modern GPU can do even when anchored to an aging mid-range CPU. The game, a 2019 action adventure built on a physically demanding engine, scales heavily with graphics horsepower, and the RTX 4070 brings plenty of it: 5888 shading units, 46 RT cores, 12 GB of GDDR6X on a 192-bit bus with 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth, and 29.15 TFLOPS of FP32 throughput. The i5-9400, a 6-core, 6-thread Coffee Lake Refresh part on Intel's 14 nm process with a 4.10 GHz boost clock, sits at the 47th percentile of all CPUs in the database, while the RTX 4070 sits at the 81st percentile among GPUs. That asymmetry defines the experience. The recorded data covers three resolutions and four presets, and it tells a consistent story: playable everywhere, spectacular at 1080p and 1440p.

Measured FPS Breakdown

Starting at 1920x1080, the pairing is untouchable for this title. Low settings deliver 162 FPS average, Medium rises to 137 FPS with a recorded minimum of 116 and a maximum of 157, High lands at 122 FPS, and even Ultra holds a comfortable 106 FPS average. Every preset at 1080p clears the 60 FPS playability threshold by a wide margin, with the slowest option still delivering more than 75 percent headroom above that bar.

At 2560x1440, the numbers soften but stay firmly in high-refresh territory. Low averages 146 FPS, Medium averages 104 FPS with a minimum of 88 and a maximum of 119, High records 92 FPS, and Ultra averages 80 FPS. Again, all four presets clear 60 FPS, and Ultra at 80 FPS means the highest visual preset is not merely playable but smooth at a resolution many players consider the sweet spot for this game's atmospheric rendering.

3840x2160 is where the RTX 4070 has to work. Low averages 98 FPS, Medium averages 70 FPS with a minimum of 59 and a maximum of 80, High averages 62 FPS, and Ultra drops to 54 FPS. Three of the four presets stay at or above the threshold, while Ultra falls short by six frames. The Medium minimum of 59 is also worth noting: a single frame below 60 at the most graphically intense moments, though the average of 70 keeps the experience comfortably playable.

CPU and GPU Roles

The scaling data makes the role division explicit. From 1080p Low to 4K Low, average FPS falls from 162 to 98, a drop of roughly 40 percent. From 1080p Ultra to 4K Ultra, the fall is from 106 to 54, almost exactly half the frame rate. This steep resolution-driven decline indicates the GPU is the binding constraint at higher resolutions, which is expected: quadrupling the pixel count from 1080p to 4K directly multiplies the workload on the RTX 4070's 64 ROPs and its 158.4 GPixel/s pixel fill capability.

The CPU side shows the opposite signature. At 1080p, where GPU load is lightest, frame rates top out at 162 FPS rather than climbing higher. The i5-9400, with 6 cores and 6 threads and no Hyper-Threading, appears to impose a ceiling at lower resolutions, preventing the RTX 4070 from stretching to frame rates the card could otherwise reach. Its single-core results (935 in Cinebench R23, 392 in R20, 94 in R15) and multi-core results (6629 in R23, 2784 in R20, 668 in R15) place it squarely in mid-pack territory, and in Control that translates to enough throughput for 60-plus FPS at every tested combination but not much surplus once the GPU pressure is removed.

Preset scaling within a fixed resolution reinforces the GPU-bound picture. At 4K, moving from Low to Ultra costs 44 FPS (98 to 54). At 1080p, the same move costs 56 FPS (162 to 106). In proportional terms the 4K hit is far more severe, consistent with a card already near its limit at that pixel count. Notably, Medium is the only preset with minimum and maximum frames recorded, and its 88-to-119 spread at 1440p shows frame pacing that stays tight around the average, with no catastrophic dips.

Best Settings per Resolution

At 1920x1080, the most demanding preset that holds at or above 60 FPS is Ultra, at 106 FPS average. That is the ceiling of the preset ladder, so 1080p players can simply max everything out with roughly 76 percent headroom.

At 2560x1440, the answer is again Ultra, at 80 FPS average. The 33 percent drop from the 1080p Ultra figure is substantial but still leaves a third of headroom over the threshold, making 1440p Ultra arguably the ideal operating point for this hardware pairing.

At 3840x2160, Ultra fails at 54 FPS, so the best preset that clears the bar is High, at 62 FPS average. That is a slim two-frame margin over 60, and given the Medium minimum of 59 at 4K, players sensitive to occasional dips may prefer Medium at 70 FPS average for a more stable 4K experience.

The Verdict

Yes, this PC runs Control, and it runs it well. At 1920x1080, all four presets (Low, Medium, High, Ultra) are playable, with Ultra as the best setting at 106 FPS. At 2560x1440, all four presets are again playable, with Ultra as the best setting at 80 FPS. At 3840x2160, High, Medium, and Low are playable, with High as the best setting at 62 FPS, while Ultra at 54 FPS misses the threshold and is the only tested combination in the entire dataset that fails. In practical terms, the verdict is straightforward: 1440p at maximum settings is the sweet spot, 1080p is overkill for this GPU, and 4K works with one preset step down from the top.

Similar Performance Alternatives

On the CPU side, the i5-9400's nearest rivals in the database are remarkably close, so any of them would produce a similar Control experience. The Intel Core i7-1068NG7 averages within 0.2 percent of the i5-9400's aggregate benchmark score, the Intel Core i7-10710U sits within 0.3 percent, the AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 1500 within 0.4 percent, and the Intel Core i3-10305 within 0.4 percent in the other direction. Because all four deltas are under half a percent, swapping the i5-9400 for any of these parts would leave Control's GPU-bound frame rates effectively unchanged, particularly at 1440p and 4K where the graphics card dominates.

On the GPU side, the RTX 4070's measured neighborhood is more eclectic. The NVIDIA Tesla P4 averages within 0.1 percent of the RTX 4070's composite score, and the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 within 0.4 percent, while the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile sits 1.3 percent ahead and the AMD Radeon PRO W6400 trails by 1.3 percent. In aggregate benchmarks these parts cluster tightly around the 4070, so comparable overall throughput can be expected from them, though Control specifically leverages this card's 46 RT cores and 184 tensor cores, features the rival list does not uniformly share.

How This Combo Ranks

Across the database's Control results, the i5-9400 plus RTX 4070 pairing ranks 1045 out of 3720 tested combinations. That places it in the top third of all tested systems for this game, consistent with the component-level percentiles: a mid-pack CPU at the 47th percentile teamed with an 81st-percentile GPU. The rank confirms the measured behavior, namely that the graphics card is doing the heavy lifting while the processor contributes enough to avoid becoming a serious bottleneck at playable settings. For a pairing that spans two hardware eras, a 2018-era 14 nm CPU alongside a 2023 Ada Lovelace GPU, ranking inside the top third of more than three thousand tested combinations in a demanding action adventure is a strong result, and one that shows Control rewards GPU investment far more than CPU upgrades.