Control

Control on an Intel Core Ultra 5 225 paired with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 is a clear pass at every standard resolution. The measured data shows this pairing clears the 60 FPS playable threshold at 1080p and 1440p on every preset tested, including Ultra, and it holds a 60 FPS average at 4K on the High preset. Control launched in August 2019 as an action adventure title, and while its ray-traced and destruction-heavy rendering was demanding for its era, the RTX 3080's Ampere architecture — with 68 RT cores and 29.77 TFLOPS of FP32 throughput — handles it comfortably at mainstream resolutions. The Core Ultra 5 225, a 10-core, 10-thread Arrow Lake-S processor with a 4.90 GHz boost clock, sits in the 85th percentile of all CPUs in the database and never bottlenecks this game at 1440p or 4K.

Best Settings per Resolution

The most demanding preset that holds at or above 60 FPS at each resolution, based on measured averages:

• 1920x1080 — Ultra, 101 FPS average. Every preset is viable at 1080p; Ultra is the ceiling and still delivers a triple-digit average.
• 2560x1440 — Ultra, 77 FPS average. Ultra remains above the threshold here too, making 1440p Ultra the sweet spot for this combo.
• 3840x2160 — High, 60 FPS average. At 4K, Ultra dips to 52 FPS and falls below the threshold, so High is the most demanding preset that lands exactly at 60 FPS. Medium is the safer pick at 67 FPS with a 57 FPS minimum.

One nuance worth flagging: the database lists High as the best playable 4K preset at exactly 60 FPS, but the Medium run measured a higher 67 FPS average with a recorded 57 FPS minimum. Players sensitive to frame drops at 4K should treat Medium as the comfort choice and High as the boundary.

How This Combo Ranks

Out of 3720 tested CPU/GPU combinations in Control, this pairing ranks 1071st — roughly the top third of the field. That placement aligns with the component-level percentiles: the RTX 3080 sits in the 68th percentile of all GPUs and the Core Ultra 5 225 in the 85th percentile of all CPUs, so the GPU is the defining constraint in this pairing.

Against its nearest rivals by aggregate benchmark score, the Core Ultra 5 225 is effectively dead-even. The AMD Ryzen 5 5600F matches it exactly at a 0 percent delta, the Ryzen 5 5500X3D trails by 0.2 percent, the Ryzen AI 7 PRO 450 by 0.4 percent, and the Intel Core i9-12900T by 0.5 percent. In other words, swapping in any of these CPUs would not meaningfully change Control's frame rates.

The RTX 3080's rival list is similarly tight: the NVIDIA P106-100 and AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16 are within 0.3 percent of its average score, and the Radeon RX 6600M and R9 M290X within 0.4 percent. The practical takeaway is that Control performance for this combo is driven by GPU-class positioning, not by marginal CPU differences.

Measured FPS Breakdown

All numbers below are measured averages from the database; minimum and maximum figures are only recorded for the Medium preset runs.

1920x1080:

| Preset | Avg FPS | Min | Max |

|---|---|---|---|

| Low | 185 | — | — |

| Medium | 131 | 111 | 151 |

| High | 117 | — | — |

| Ultra | 101 | — | — |

At 1080p the spread between Low and Ultra is 84 FPS, and even the Ultra average of 101 FPS sits well above the 60 FPS line. The Medium run's minimum of 111 FPS confirms headroom is consistent, not just an artifact of a high average.

2560x1440:

| Preset | Avg FPS | Min | Max |

|---|---|---|---|

| Low | 140 | — | — |

| Medium | 99 | 84 | 114 |

| High | 88 | — | — |

| Ultra | 77 | — | — |

Stepping up to 1440p costs roughly a quarter of the frame rate relative to 1080p on each preset, but every setting remains playable. The Medium minimum of 84 FPS and maximum of 114 show tight frame delivery, and even Ultra at 77 FPS leaves a 17 FPS cushion over the threshold.

3840x2160:

| Preset | Avg FPS | Min | Max |

|---|---|---|---|

| Low | 94 | — | — |

| Medium | 67 | 57 | 77 |

| High | 60 | — | — |

| Ultra | 52 | — | — |

4K is where the RTX 3080's 10 GB of GDDR6X starts to feel the load. Low still delivers 94 FPS, Medium 67, and High lands exactly at 60. Ultra at 52 FPS is the only sub-threshold result in the entire dataset. The Medium minimum of 57 FPS dips slightly below 60, indicating occasional stutter potential at that preset despite the healthy average.

Looking at preset-to-preset scaling within each resolution: going from Low to Ultra costs 49 percent of the frame rate at 4K (94 to 52), 45 percent at 1440p (140 to 77), and 45 percent at 1080p (185 to 101). The uniformity of that cost across resolutions indicates settings load and resolution load are largely independent multipliers here.

FAQ

Q: Can the RTX 3080 run Control at 4K Ultra?

A: No. The measured average at 3840x2160 Ultra is 52 FPS, below the 60 FPS playable threshold. Dropping to High gets exactly 60 FPS, and Medium raises that to 67 FPS with a 57 FPS minimum.

Q: What is the best overall settings choice for this combo?

A: 1440p Ultra at 77 FPS average. It is the highest preset that clears 60 FPS at the highest resolution where Ultra is playable, offering the best combination of image quality and frame rate in the dataset.

Q: How fast is Control at 1080p on this hardware?

A: Very fast. Every preset exceeds 100 FPS at 1920x1080: Low hits 185, Medium 131 (min 111, max 151), High 117, and Ultra 101.

Q: Does the CPU hold this pairing back?

A: No. The Core Ultra 5 225 ranks in the 85th percentile of all CPUs, and its aggregate benchmark score is within 0.5 percent of rivals like the Ryzen 5 5600F and Core i9-12900T. Control's performance here is GPU-bound at higher resolutions.

Q: Where does this combo rank among tested configurations for Control?

A: Rank 1071 out of 3720 tested combinations — the top third of the database.

Q: Does any resolution and preset combination dip below 60 FPS?

A: Only two: 4K Ultra at 52 FPS average, and the 4K Medium minimum of 57 FPS on a per-frame basis. Everything else stays at or above the threshold.

CPU and GPU Roles

Control is GPU-bound on this combo at 1440p and 4K, and the resolution scaling data makes that unambiguous. Moving from 1080p to 1440p cuts frame rates by roughly 25 percent per preset, and moving from 1440p to 4K cuts them by another 30 to 34 percent. That steady decline as pixel count rises — while the CPU stays constant — is the classic signature of a GPU-limited scenario. The RTX 3080's 320-bit memory bus and 760.3 GB/s of bandwidth are doing the heavy lifting, and its 10 GB frame buffer is the component under pressure at 3840x2160.

At 1080p the picture shifts slightly. The Ultra average of 101 FPS and Medium maximum of 151 FPS begin to approach territory where the processor and its memory subsystem matter more. The Core Ultra 5 225's dual-channel DDR5 support with 102.4 GB/s of bandwidth, 4.90 GHz boost clock, and strong single-thread results (3655 in Cinebench R23 single-core, 4412 in PassMark single-thread) mean it is well equipped for that role, but the data indicates the GPU remains the primary limiter even at 1920x1080, since no preset approaches a CPU ceiling.

The preset scaling reinforces this. Dropping settings at a fixed resolution recovers large frame-rate gains at every resolution — 84 FPS recovered between Ultra and Low at 1080p, 63 FPS at 1440p, and 42 FPS at 4K — because rendering load, not simulation or draw-call throughput, dominates Control's cost profile on this hardware. Players chasing higher frame rates should adjust presets before worrying about the processor.

The Verdict

Yes — this PC runs Control, and runs it well. The verdict by resolution:

• 1920x1080: Fully playable on all presets — Low, Medium, High, and Ultra. Best setting is Ultra at 101 FPS average.
• 2560x1440: Fully playable on all four presets. Best setting is Ultra at 77 FPS average, making 1440p Ultra the recommended configuration.
• 3840x2160: Playable on High (60 FPS), Medium (67 FPS), and Low (94 FPS). Ultra at 52 FPS is the single miss.

Ultimately: the Intel Core Ultra 5 225 and RTX 3080 deliver a top-third Control experience out of 3720 tested combinations, with flawless 60-plus FPS performance at 1080p and 1440p on maximum settings and a viable 4K experience one preset below Ultra. For a 2019 action adventure title, that is a comfortable win, and the only compromise required lives at 4K Ultra.