Control

Control launched as an action-adventure title in 2019, and this pairing of Intel's Core i9-14900K with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4060 makes for an unusual matchup: a flagship-tier processor sitting alongside a mid-range, now end-of-life graphics card. The measured data shows the combination delivers a playable Control experience at 1080p and 1440p, while 4K only clears the 60 FPS threshold at Low settings. With the CPU sitting in the 95th percentile of all tested processors and the GPU in the 61st percentile, the graphics card is clearly the limiting factor — and the resolution scaling in the numbers confirms it.

Similar Performance Alternatives

On the processor side, the i9-14900K has essentially no daylight between it and its nearest rivals. The Intel Core i9-14900KF averages 79371 against the 14900K's 79097, a delta of just -0.3 percent — effectively the same chip without integrated graphics. The Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus sits at 79574, only -0.6 percent ahead, and even the AMD EPYC 7413, a completely different class of hardware, lands at 80041 for a -1.2 percent gap. The AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 actually trails at 77740, 1.7 percent behind. Anyone running one of these four CPUs will bring effectively identical CPU headroom to Control.

The GPU picture is more interesting because the listed rivals are older or integrated parts. The RTX 4060's average benchmark score of 17639 puts it within a fraction of a percent of the AMD Radeon HD 7790 (17666, -0.2 percent), the Radeon 780M integrated GPU (17588, 0.3 percent),, the Radeon Pro 560 (17551, 0.5 percent), and the Radeon Pro 460 (17509, 0.7 percent). What this implies is that in the aggregate benchmark database the RTX 4060's composite score clusters with these parts, and any system pairing the i9-14900K with one of them would be expected to post similar Control results. The takeaway: swapping the CPU among its rivals changes nothing; the performance envelope in this game is set almost entirely by which GPU occupies the slot.

CPU and GPU Roles

The scaling data tells a clear story about where the bottleneck lives. Moving from 1080p to 1440p at Medium drops the average from 99 FPS to 75 FPS — a 24 FPS loss from quadrupling nothing but pixel count. Pushing to 4K Medium costs another 24 FPS, landing at 51. That kind of steep, resolution-driven decline is the signature of a GPU-limited configuration: the i9-14900K, with its 24 cores, 32 threads, and boost clock of 6.00 GHz, is never the constraint.

Look at the low end for confirmation. At 1080p Low the system averages 140 FPS, which is where a weaker CPU would start to fall behind. The fact that framerates climb that high at all indicates the processor has headroom to spare — Control simply cannot extract enough workload from a chip in the 95th percentile to slow it down. At 4K, meanwhile, the framerate collapses to 39 FPS at Ultra regardless of the CPU's capability. At every resolution and preset in this dataset, the RTX 4060 with its 8 GB of GDDR6 and 272.0 GB/s of memory bandwidth is the component deciding the outcome.

There is a curious detail worth questioning: whether the 8 GB framebuffer is the real ceiling at 4K, or whether raw shading throughput from 3072 shading units is the limiter. The data can't separate those causes directly, but the steep drop between 1440p and 4K — from 67 to 45 FPS at High — is consistent with memory pressure at the higher resolution.

Best Settings per Resolution

The most demanding preset that stays at or above 60 FPS at each resolution:

• 1920x1080 — Ultra, 77 FPS average. Every preset clears the bar here, from Low at 140 FPS up to Ultra at 77.
• 2560x1440 — High, 67 FPS average. Ultra misses the cutoff at 58 FPS, so High is the ceiling. Low (106) and Medium (75) both qualify.
• 3840x2160 — Low, 71 FPS average. This is the only qualifying preset. Medium (51), High (45), and Ultra (39) all fall short.

The Verdict

Yes, this PC can run Control — with conditions. At 1920x1080, the verdict data confirms all four presets are playable, with Ultra delivering 77 FPS on average. At 2560x1440, Low, Medium, and High are playable, topping out at 67 FPS on High; Ultra at 58 FPS sits just below the 60 FPS threshold. At 3840x2160, only Low qualifies at 71 FPS — a 4K experience, but a visually compromised one.

The sharper question the data raises: is 58 FPS at 1440p Ultra really unplayable? By the database's 60 FPS standard it fails, but the margin is two frames. Conversely, 4K Low at 71 FPS is a legitimate 4K experience in frame-rate terms, though Control's visual identity — ray tracing and heavy post-processing — is largely absent at that preset. The verdict for most users is straightforward: play at 1440p High.

Measured FPS Breakdown

1920x1080:

• Low: 140 avg
• Medium: 99 avg, 84 min, 114 max
• High: 88 avg
• Ultra: 77 avg

2560x1440:

• Low: 106 avg
• Medium: 75 avg, 64 min, 86 max
• High: 67 avg
• Ultra: 58 avg

3840x2160:

• Low: 71 avg
• Medium: 51 avg, 43 min, 58 max
• High: 45 avg
• Ultra: 39 avg

Note that min/max figures exist only for the Medium preset at each resolution. Even there, the frame range is instructive: 84 to 114 at 1080p, 64 to 86 at 1440p, and 43 to 58 at 4K. That 4K Medium minimum of 43 FPS means dips well below the average — the "51 average" figure understates how rough moments in heavy scenes will feel. At 1440p Medium, the 64 FPS minimum stays above the threshold, which is why that preset remains comfortably playable.

The cost of each preset step is also visible. At 1080p, the jump from Low to Ultra costs 63 FPS (140 to 77). At 4K, the same jump costs 32 FPS (71 to 39). The relative penalty for maxing settings nearly doubles at lower resolution in absolute terms — again pointing at the GPU.

FAQ

Q: Can the i9-14900K + RTX 4060 run Control at 4K?

A: Only at Low settings, where it averages 71 FPS. Medium (51), High (45), and Ultra (39) all fall below the 60 FPS playable threshold.

Q: What is the best overall setting combination for this PC?

A: 2560x1440 at High, averaging 67 FPS, offers the highest visual quality that stays above 60 FPS at a resolution above 1080p. Players prioritizing framerate over fidelity can use 1080p Ultra at 77 FPS.

Q: Does the CPU limit performance in Control with this setup?

A: No. The i9-14900K sits in the 95th percentile of all CPUs, and framerate scaling is driven entirely by resolution and GPU settings. The RTX 4060 (61st percentile) is the bottleneck at every tested configuration.

Q: How close is 1440p Ultra to being playable?

A: Very close — 58 FPS average, just 2 FPS under the 60 FPS threshold. Players tolerant of a slightly lower target may find it acceptable.

Q: What is the minimum framerate recorded?

A: 43 FPS, at 3840x2160 on the Medium preset (average 51, maximum 58). This is the lowest recorded datapoint in the dataset.

Q: Would a different CPU change the results?

A: Unlikely. The nearest rivals — Core i9-14900KF (-0.3 percent), Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus (-0.6 percent), EPYC 7413 (-1.2 percent), Ryzen AI Max+ 395 (1.7 percent) — are all within roughly two percent of this CPU's average score, and the game is GPU-limited anyway.

How This Combo Ranks

Against the full database, the i9-14900K + RTX 4060 pairing ranks 2008 out of 3720 tested combinations in Control. That places it just past the midpoint — better than roughly 1712 combinations, worse than about 2007. For a pairing of a 95th-percentile CPU with a 61st-percentile GPU, a mid-pack rank is exactly what the data would predict: Control's performance here tracks the GPU, not the processor, and the ranking reflects that imbalance. The rank also contextualizes the verdict — this is not a top-tier Control machine, but it is comfortably within the playable half of all tested systems at 1080p and 1440p settings that suit the RTX 4060's capabilities.