Control

Control, an action-adventure release dating to August 2019, remains a demanding DirectX 12 title, and the pairing of Intel's Core i7-12700KF with the Arc B580 raises a genuinely interesting question: can a mid-tier Battlemage GPU backed by an Alder Lake CPU hold the 60 FPS line in a game known for its heavy ray-mapped environments? The measured data below answers that question resolution by resolution, and the pattern it reveals is more nuanced than a simple yes or no.

Measured FPS Breakdown

Starting at 1920x1080, the numbers are comfortably strong across the entire preset range. On Low, the combo averages 112.7 FPS. Medium lifts visual quality while still averaging 80.1 FPS, High drops to 72.6 FPS, and even Ultra holds a 63.5 FPS average — above the 60 FPS playable threshold, if only by a margin slim enough that demanding scenes will likely dip below it. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 49.2 FPS, which tells you the Arc B580 has genuine headroom at this resolution but pays heavily for maximum settings.

At 2560x1440, the picture changes. Low still delivers 87.3 FPS, but Medium falls to 59.1 FPS — just under the threshold — High lands at 56 FPS, and Ultra at 49.2 FPS. Only the Low preset clears 60 FPS here, and Medium sits within a single frame of it, suggesting that minor in-game tweaks could push it over the line.

4K, at 3840x2160, is where the pairing runs out of GPU. Low manages 60.8 FPS, a bare pass. Medium averages 42.3 FPS, High 38.3 FPS, and Ultra 33.2 FPS. That is a 27.6 FPS spread between the lowest and highest presets, and none of the upper tiers come close to playable framerates.

CPU and GPU Roles

The scaling data points firmly at a GPU-bound configuration at every resolution. Moving from 1080p to 1440p on the Low preset costs 25.4 FPS (112.7 down to 87.3), and moving from 1440p to 4K costs another 26.5 FPS (87.3 down to 60.8). If the Core i7-12700KF were the limiting factor, framerates would plateau as resolution climbs; instead, they fall in near-linear fashion with pixel count.

The CPU-side evidence supports this. The i7-12700KF sits in the 85th percentile against all CPUs in the database, with 12 cores and 20 threads, a 1043 single-thread score and a 9983 max-thread score in the database's thread-scaling tests. Thread scaling from 2 to 8 threads (2065 to 7211) shows strong parallel throughput. Control's engine simply does not ask that much of a CPU in this class.

Notably, the preset scaling itself flattens as resolution rises. At 1080p, dropping Ultra to Low buys 49.2 FPS; at 4K, the same drop buys only 27.6 FPS. The GPU's fixed overhead at 4K dominates regardless of settings — the 12 GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus delivering 456 GB/s of bandwidth is being saturated by the pixel load itself. The 20 ray tracing cores on the BMG-G21 die carry a heavy burden in Control's Ultra preset at high resolutions.

FAQ

Q: Can the i7-12700KF + Arc B580 run Control at 60 FPS?

A: Yes, at 1080p on every preset including Ultra (63.5 FPS average), at 1440p on Low (87.3 FPS), and at 4K on Low only, at 60.8 FPS — a marginal pass.

Q: What is the highest setting that stays above 60 FPS at 1440p?

A: By the measured averages, Medium misses at 59.1 FPS and Low clears at 87.3 FPS, so Low is the only preset officially at or above the threshold. Medium is effectively a borderline case within one frame.

Q: How much performance is lost going from 1080p to 4K on Low settings?

A: Average framerate drops from 112.7 FPS to 60.8 FPS — roughly a 46 percent reduction, nearly proportional to the fourfold increase in pixel count.

Q: Is the CPU or the GPU the bottleneck in this pairing for Control?

A: The GPU. Framerates scale down consistently with resolution while the i7-12700KF sits in the 85th percentile of all CPUs, indicating ample processor headroom.

Q: Does Ultra ever make sense with this hardware?

A: Only at 1920x1080, where it averages 63.5 FPS. At 1440p it yields 49.2 FPS and at 4K just 33.2 FPS.

Q: How does this combo rank against other tested pairings for Control?

A: It ranks 2766 out of 3720 tested combos in this game — below the midpoint, reflecting the GPU-limited nature of the pairing rather than any CPU weakness.

How This Combo Ranks

A rank of 2766 out of 3720 places this pairing in the bottom third of tested configurations for Control. That placement is consistent with the component percentiles: the Arc B580 sits in the 68th percentile of all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 23021, while the i7-12700KF's 85th-percentile CPU score of 35365 is dragged down in gaming contexts by the weaker half of the pairing.

The rank also hints at Control's demands. This is a game where a large number of tested combos achieve higher framerates, and the B580's position — above roughly a third of the GPU field but well below flagship territory — is precisely the zone where Control's heavier presets start to hurt.

Similar Performance Alternatives

On the CPU side, the data shows remarkably tight clustering. The i7-12700KF's nearest rivals are the Intel Core i7-13700T (deltaPct -0.1), Intel Core i5-13600T (0.2), Intel Core 5 213PE (-0.2), and Intel Core i7-12700K (0.2). All four sit within a fraction of a percent of its average benchmark score, meaning any of them would produce near-identical results in Control given the same GPU — the game simply is not CPU-constrained at this performance level.

On the GPU side, the Arc B580's nearest rivals are a more eclectic set: the AMD Radeon RX 580 2048SP (-0.2), NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 (0.6), NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 (-0.7), and NVIDIA P106-100 (-1). With deltas under one percent for most, the data suggests these cards would behave similarly in aggregate benchmarks — though Control's DirectX 12 Ultimate feature set and the B580's dedicated hardware for it may differentiate real-world results from what the averaged scores imply. The presence of the P106-100, a mining-oriented part, in this cluster is a curiosity worth noting: averaged scores can obscure capability differences that specific games expose.

The Verdict

Can this PC run Control? Yes — with clear qualifications. At 1920x1080, the answer is unreserved: all four presets clear 60 FPS, with Ultra at 63.5 FPS and Low reaching 112.7 FPS. This is a fully playable 1080p configuration.

At 2560x1440, the verdict narrows to Low settings at 87.3 FPS, with Medium hovering at 59.1 FPS — effectively at the threshold but not above it on average.

At 3840x2160, the verdict is marginal: only Low qualifies at 60.8 FPS, and even small scene-to-scene variance would push it below 60. Medium, High, and Ultra at 4K average 42.3, 38.3, and 33.2 FPS respectively — not playable by the 60 FPS standard.

In short: a strong 1080p machine, a conditional 1440p machine, and a 4K machine only in the loosest sense.

Best Settings per Resolution

• 1920x1080 — Ultra, 63.5 FPS average. The most demanding preset still clears 60 FPS; nothing needs to be sacrificed.
• 2560x1440 — Low, 87.3 FPS average. Medium at 59.1 FPS just misses the threshold, so Low is the highest preset that stays at or above 60 FPS by the measured data.
• 3840x2160 — Low, 60.8 FPS average. The only preset at 4K that meets the threshold, and only barely.

The pattern across resolutions is consistent: the Arc B580 handles Control well at 1080p, trades settings for framerate at 1440p, and reaches its limit at 4K, while the i7-12700KF never comes close to being the constraint.