Control

Control is a demanding DirectX 12 title with heavy use of destruction physics and volumetric effects, and pairing it with an unusual combination, a modern Intel Core i7-14700K and an end-of-life AMD Radeon RX 580, produces exactly the kind of lopsided result the database would predict. The recorded measurements show a GPU-limited configuration at every tested resolution, with a CPU that never comes close to being the constraint. The question this page answers is simple: where, if anywhere, does this pairing cross the 60 FPS line?

FAQ

Q: Can the i7-14700K + RX 580 run Control at 60 FPS?

A: Only at one resolution and one preset. At 1920x1080 with Low settings the combo averages 65.1 FPS, which is the sole configuration in the recorded data that clears the 60 FPS playable threshold. At 2560x1440 and 3840x2160, no preset reaches 60 FPS.

Q: What FPS does this combo get at 1080p?

A: Averages of 65.1 FPS on Low, 43.6 FPS on Medium, 41.2 FPS on High, and 37.3 FPS on Ultra at 1920x1080.

Q: Is 4K playable?

A: No. At 3840x2160 the averages range from 19.1 FPS on Ultra to 33.1 FPS on Low, all far below the 60 FPS threshold.

Q: Is the CPU or the GPU the bottleneck in this game?

A: The GPU. The RX 580 sits in the 53rd percentile of all GPUs in the database, while the i7-14700K sits in the 94th percentile of all CPUs. Frame rates fall sharply as resolution rises while the CPU stays constant, the classic signature of a graphics-limited system.

Q: How does this combo rank against others tested in Control?

A: It ranks 3377 out of 3720 tested combinations, placing it near the bottom of the leaderboard for this game.

Q: Does turning settings down help a lot?

A: Moderately. Dropping from Ultra to Low at 1080p lifts the average from 37.3 to 65.1 FPS, a gain large enough to move the combo from unplayable to playable, but at 1440p and 4K the same drop still leaves the frame rate well short of 60.

CPU and GPU Roles

The scaling data tells an unambiguous story about which component governs performance in Control on this system. Moving from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 on Low settings drops the average from 65.1 to 50.4 FPS, and moving again to 3840x2160 drops it to 33.1 FPS. If the CPU were the limiter, raising the pixel count would barely change the frame rate, since the processor workload is largely independent of resolution. Instead, every resolution step costs a large slice of performance, which points squarely at the Radeon RX 580's 6.175 TFLOPS of GCN 4.0 throughput and its 256 GB/s of GDDR5 bandwidth as the ceiling.

The preset scaling reinforces this. At 1080p, going from Low to High costs roughly 24 FPS, and Ultra lands at 37.3 FPS. That is a substantial settings penalty, indicating the engine's High and Ultra effects (the recorded presets only, no individual feature breakdowns) consume far more of the Polaris 20 chip than it can supply at a 60 FPS cadence.

The i7-14700K, meanwhile, is effectively idle in this equation. With 20 cores, 28 threads, a 5.60 GHz boost clock, and benchmark scores like 33440.5 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 2160 in R23 single-core, it sits in the 94th percentile of all CPUs in the database. Control is an action adventure title released in 2019, well within the capability envelope of a Raptor Lake Refresh processor launched in 2023. There is no evidence anywhere in the measured data of a CPU-side frame cap: no resolution shows a flat performance plateau, which is what CPU limiting would look like. The GPU is the component that matters here, at every resolution and every preset tested.

Measured FPS Breakdown

All figures below are measured averages from the database; minimum and maximum frame rates were not recorded for these runs.

At 1920x1080:

• Low: 65.1 FPS average
• Medium: 43.6 FPS average
• High: 41.2 FPS average
• Ultra: 37.3 FPS average

At 2560x1440:

• Low: 50.4 FPS average
• Medium: 34.1 FPS average
• High: 32.7 FPS average
• Ultra: 24.6 FPS average

At 3840x2160:

• Low: 33.1 FPS average
• Medium: 21.0 FPS average
• High: 20.7 FPS average
• Ultra: 19.1 FPS average

A few patterns stand out. First, the gap between Medium and High is consistently small across all three resolutions, roughly 2 to 3 FPS, while the gap between Low and Medium is much larger, over 21 FPS at 1080p and over 16 FPS at 1440p. This suggests the biggest single performance cliff sits between the Low and Medium presets, so players on marginal hardware get the most headroom by staying at Low.

Second, the Ultra penalty relative to High grows with resolution: about 4 FPS at 1080p, roughly 8 FPS at 1440p, and a small drop at 4K where the frame rate is already so low that differences compress. By 4K even Low settings deliver only 33.1 FPS, meaning the GPU is saturating on raw pixel throughput before the quality settings even enter the picture.

Third, the Low preset is the only one that scales into playable territory anywhere: 65.1, 50.4, and 33.1 FPS from 1080p through 4K. Every other preset tops out below 44 FPS at every resolution.

The Verdict

The verdict data is blunt. At 1920x1080, the only playable settings list contains exactly one entry: Low, at 65.1 FPS average. At 2560x1440 the playable settings list is empty and there is no best settings entry. At 3840x2160 the playable settings list is likewise empty.

So, can this PC run Control? Conditionally, yes. It runs Control at 1080p on Low settings above the 60 FPS threshold, with a 5.1 FPS cushion over the line. That cushion is thin enough that dips below 60 in demanding scenes are plausible even though minimum frame rates were not recorded. Anything beyond 1080p Low, and anything above the Low preset even at 1080p, falls short: Medium at 1080p manages 43.6 FPS, and the situation deteriorates from there.

It is worth pausing on how unusual this pairing is. The i7-14700K is a 94th-percentile CPU with an average database benchmark score of 69355, paired with a GPU in the 53rd percentile with an average score of 12928. That imbalance means the processor's headroom is entirely wasted in this game. A weaker CPU would likely produce nearly identical frame rates, because the RX 580 runs out of capability long before the processor does.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the Control leaderboard, this configuration ranks 3377 out of 3720 tested combinations. That places it in the bottom tier of results for this game, which tracks with the measured frame rates: a single playable configuration out of twelve tested runs is not a strong showing.

The rank also contextualizes the CPU's irrelevance here. The same i7-14700K paired with a faster GPU would rank dramatically higher, since Control's engine clearly scales with graphics capability in this dataset. The rank is a property of the pairing, not of either component alone, and it is the RX 580 that drags the combination down the leaderboard.

Best Settings per Resolution

Based on the recorded averages and the 60 FPS threshold:

• 1920x1080: Low is the most demanding preset that stays at or above 60 FPS, delivering 65.1 FPS. Medium, the next step up, falls to 43.6 FPS and out of contention.
• 2560x1440: No preset qualifies. Low is the best available at 50.4 FPS, which misses the threshold by nearly 10 FPS. If a 60 FPS target is non-negotiable, this resolution should be avoided entirely with this GPU.
• 3840x2160: No preset qualifies. Low manages 33.1 FPS, barely half the target, and Ultra drops to 19.1 FPS.

The practical takeaway from the database is that 1080p Low is the only configuration worth selecting, and the jump to Medium costs too much to justify given that it lands well under the threshold.

Similar Performance Alternatives

For readers wondering what other hardware would behave similarly in Control, the nearest rivals in the database offer close analogues.

On the GPU side, the Radeon RX 580's average score of 12928 is nearly identical to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Mobile (12940, within 0.1 percent), the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER (12986, within 0.4 percent), the AMD Radeon 740M (12870, within 0.5 percent), and the AMD FirePro W5100 (12847, within 0.6 percent). The GTX 1660 SUPER is the most instructive comparison for desktop builders: a card within a fraction of a percent of the RX 580's overall score would be expected to land in the same ballpark in Control, hovering around the 60 FPS line at 1080p Low and falling short everywhere else. The Radeon 740M is an integrated solution with a nearly identical average score, which underscores how far the discrete-GPU landscape has moved since the Polaris generation went end-of-life.

On the CPU side, the i7-14700K's average score of 69355 is statistically indistinguishable from the AMD EPYC 9115 (69288, 0.1 percent away), the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (69515, 0.2 percent away), the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX (69875, 0.7 percent away), and the AMD Ryzen 7 9700F (69996, 0.9 percent away). Any of these processors paired with an RX 580-class GPU would produce effectively the same Control results, because the frame rate ceiling is set entirely by the graphics card. Swapping the 14700K for a Ryzen 9 7950X would change nothing measurable in this game with this GPU attached.

The broader conclusion the data supports: this combination is a GPU upgrade away from being a strong Control machine. The 94th-percentile CPU has enormous reserve, and every measured frame rate is a function of the 53rd-percentile graphics card. Until the GPU changes, 1080p Low at 65.1 FPS is the ceiling of comfortable play.