Control

The short answer is yes — comfortably. Pairing the Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 for Control produces frame rates that clear the playable threshold at every tested resolution and every preset, including Ultra at 4K. The data below walks through the measured numbers, explains why the RTX 4090 does the heavy lifting in this pairing, and shows where this combo sits among the thousands of configurations tested for this 2019 action-adventure title.

Measured FPS Breakdown

Control was released in 2019, and it shows in how easily modern flagship hardware dispatches it. Every figure here is measured, not estimated.

At 1920x1080, the combo averages 272 FPS on Low, 194 FPS on Medium, 172 FPS on High, and 149 FPS on Ultra. The Medium run is the only one with full frame-time detail recorded: it never dropped below 165 FPS and peaked at 223 FPS. Even the Ultra average sits nearly two and a half times above the 60 FPS playable threshold.

At 2560x1440, the numbers scale down as expected: 206 FPS on Low, 146 FPS on Medium, 130 FPS on High, and 113 FPS on Ultra. The Medium preset again has the most complete data, with a minimum of 124 FPS and a maximum of 168 FPS — meaning the worst measured moment at 1440p Medium still ran at more than double the threshold.

At 3840x2160, the flagship pairing still delivers: 139 FPS on Low, 99 FPS on Medium, 88 FPS on High, and 76 FPS on Ultra. The Medium run at 4K logged a minimum of 84 FPS and a maximum of 114 FPS. The important takeaway is the 4K Ultra figure of 76 FPS — the most demanding combination in the entire test grid still clears 60 FPS by a healthy margin.

Note the shape of the preset ladder. Dropping from Ultra to Low at 4K gains you 63 FPS (from 76 to 139), but at tight frame rates like these there's little practical need to sacrifice visual quality anywhere in the grid.

CPU and GPU Roles

This game is GPU-bound on this hardware at every resolution tested, and the scaling data makes that clear.

Look at how frame rates fall as resolution climbs while the CPU stays constant. At Ultra, going from 1080p to 1440p costs 36 FPS (149 to 113), and 1440p to 4K costs another 37 FPS (113 to 76). At Low, the drop is even steeper — 272 at 1080p falls to 206 at 1440p and 139 at 4K. When frame rate tracks pixel count this closely, the graphics card is the limiting factor. If the CPU were the bottleneck, raising the resolution would barely move the average, and the Ultra and Low curves would converge at low resolution instead of staying separated by over a hundred frames at 1080p.

That said, the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus is no slouch in this role. It sits in the 96th percentile of all tested CPUs with an average benchmark score of 84003, posts a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 51731 and a single-core score of 7303, and its PassMark single-thread result of 4823 indicates it can feed a fast GPU without stalling. Control itself is not a heavily threaded game — it's an action-adventure title from 2019 — so single-thread responsiveness matters more here than the 24-core, 24-thread count suggests. The takeaway: at 1080p you're closer to a CPU-limited scenario than at higher resolutions, but even there the GPU remains the dominant factor given the spread between presets.

The RTX 4090, meanwhile, lands in the 88th percentile of all tested GPUs with a PassMark G3D score of 38194. Its 24 GB of GDDR6X on a 384-bit bus with 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth, plus 128 ray-tracing cores and DirectX 12 Ultimate support, line up well with Control's demands — this game was one of the earlier showcase titles for ray tracing, and the measured frame rates indicate the Ada Lovelace architecture handles its full preset range without strain.

Similar Performance Alternatives

On the CPU side, the nearest rivals to the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus are effectively interchangeable for this game. The Intel Core Ultra 9 285K sits within 0.2 percent of its average score, and AMD's EPYC 4584PX and EPYC 9135 land within 1.1 and 1.2 percent respectively. Even the largest gap among the listed rivals — the AMD EPYC 7F72, which scores slightly higher at a delta of -1.3 percent — is negligible for a game like Control. Any of these processors would produce frame rates essentially indistinguishable from this combo, because the GPU is doing the heavy lifting anyway.

On the GPU side, the listed alternatives score very closely on average: the Intel Arc Pro A60 matches the RTX 4090's average score exactly at a delta of 0 percent, the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 48 sits 0.3 percent behind, the AMD Radeon Pro W6600M is 2.5 percent ahead, and the AMD Radeon PRO V710 is 2.9 percent behind. Based on aggregate database scores alone, these cards would deliver similar overall benchmark behavior — though average scores blend many test types, so for a specific ray-traced game like Control the RTX 4090's 128 RT cores remain the relevant hardware advantage within this fact set.

How This Combo Ranks

Out of 3720 tested hardware combinations for Control, the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus plus RTX 4090 ranks 121st. That places it in roughly the top 3 percent of all tested configurations for this game — well into flagship territory, though not the absolute fastest pairing in the database. Given that the game already runs at 76 FPS at 4K Ultra on this hardware, higher-ranked combos are chasing headroom the game itself doesn't really need.

The Verdict

Yes — this PC runs Control at every tested resolution and preset. All four presets at 1920x1080, 2560x1440, and 3840x2160 clear the 60 FPS playable threshold. The best setting at each resolution is Ultra: 149 FPS at 1080p, 113 FPS at 1440p, and 76 FPS at 4K. Even the worst-case measured moments support this — the 4K Medium minimum of 84 FPS never dipped near the threshold. Practical advice: run Ultra at whatever your native resolution is. If you want high-refresh 4K, dropping to Medium at 4K (99 FPS average, up to 114) is the only adjustment worth considering.

FAQ

Q: Can this setup run Control at 4K on Ultra settings?

A: Yes. The measured average at 3840x2160 Ultra is 76 FPS, comfortably above the 60 FPS playable threshold.

Q: What's the highest frame rate recorded for this combo in Control?

A: 272 FPS, at 1920x1080 on the Low preset.

Q: Does the game ever drop below 60 FPS at 1440p?

A: No. The measured minimum at 2560x1440 Medium is 124 FPS — more than double the threshold. All presets at 1440p average at least 113 FPS.

Q: Is the CPU or the GPU more important for Control on this build?

A: The GPU. Frame rates scale down sharply as resolution rises (149 to 113 to 76 FPS on Ultra from 1080p to 4K), which indicates a graphics-limited workload. The Core Ultra 9 290K Plus's 96th-percentile CPU performance is more than sufficient.

Q: What's the best CPU alternative that would perform similarly?

A: The Intel Core Ultra 9 285K is within 0.2 percent of this CPU's average score, making it the closest match among the tested rivals.

Q: Where does this pairing rank among all tested Control configurations?

A: Rank 121 out of 3720 combos — roughly the top few percent of tested hardware pairings for this game.