Control

The AMD Ryzen 5 3600 paired with the Intel Arc B580 presents a mid-range combination tested in Control, a 2019 Action Adventure title. The measured data shows a system that is capable of strong 1080p performance, but which encounters significant limitations as resolution and graphical fidelity increase. This analysis breaks down the benchmark results, focusing on how the CPU and GPU interact to produce the observed frame rates.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1080p to 4K reveals a clear shift in the system's bottleneck. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combination produces an average of 114 FPS. Moving to 2560x1440 at the same settings drops the average to 86 FPS, a 24.6% reduction. The jump to 3840x2160 yields 58 FPS, which is a 32.6% decrease from the 1440p result and a 49.1% decrease from the 1080p baseline. This steep decline as resolution climbs indicates that the Intel Arc B580 is becoming the primary limiting factor at higher pixel counts, as the rendering load on the GPU increases substantially.

At High settings, the pattern is similar but with lower absolute values. The system averages 72 FPS at 1080p, 54 FPS at 1440p (a 25% drop), and 37 FPS at 4K (a 31.5% drop from 1440p). The consistent percentage drop across settings suggests that the scaling penalty is tied more to resolution than to the specific preset. The data implies that at 1080p, the Ryzen 5 3600 with its 6 cores and 12 threads can keep the GPU fed, but as the resolution increases, the GPU's pixel fill rate and shading throughput become the limiting factor.

The Ultra preset tells a similar story. The average frame rate falls from 62 FPS at 1080p to 47 FPS at 1440p (a 24.2% drop), and then to 32 FPS at 4K (a 31.9% drop from 1440p). The 4K Ultra result of 32 FPS is the lowest measured in the entire dataset, showing that the combination struggles to maintain playable frame rates at the highest fidelity and resolution. The data indicates that for smooth 4K gameplay, users would need to use the Low preset, which achieves 58 FPS, or accept a significant compromise in visual quality.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows provide clear guidance for the best experience at each resolution. At 1920x1080, the Ultra preset delivers an average of 62 FPS, which is playable for most genres. However, the High preset at 72 FPS offers a smoother experience with a modest visual downgrade. The Medium preset at 81 FPS provides a good balance, but the data shows that the system has substantial headroom at 1080p, making the High or Ultra presets the best choices for visual fidelity without sacrificing playability.

At 2560x1440, the High preset averages 54 FPS, which is acceptable for slower-paced games but may feel less responsive in action sequences. The Medium preset at 61 FPS is a safer choice for maintaining a consistent frame rate, as it also has a recorded minimum of 52 FPS, ensuring that dips stay above the 50 FPS threshold. The Ultra preset at 47 FPS is borderline, as it approaches the lower end of what is considered smooth. The data suggests that Medium is the optimal preset for 1440p, offering a 7 FPS improvement over High with minimal visual impact.

At 3840x2160, the options are more constrained. The Low preset averages 58 FPS, which is the only preset at 4K that achieves a consistently playable frame rate. The Medium preset drops to 41 FPS, and the High preset falls to 37 FPS. The Ultra preset at 32 FPS is not recommended for a smooth experience. The data strongly indicates that for 4K, the Low preset is the only viable choice for this hardware combination, as the GPU does not have enough headroom for higher settings without significant frame rate penalties.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and Intel Arc B580 ranks 2816 out of 3720 tested combos in Control. This places it in the bottom quarter of all tested configurations, indicating that while the hardware is competent for general use, it is not optimized for this specific title at higher resolutions. The rank reflects the system's inability to maintain high frame rates at 4K Ultra, where it produces only 32 FPS, which is a poor result compared to more powerful combinations.

The percentile data for the individual components provides context. The CPU has a percentile of 71 versus all CPUs, meaning it outperforms 71% of tested processors in general benchmarks. The GPU has a percentile of 68 versus all GPUs. Despite these respectable individual scores, the combined rank in Control is lower than expected, suggesting that the game is particularly demanding on the GPU side, which is the weaker link in this pairing. The combo rank of 2816 out of 3720 shows that many other combinations deliver better performance in this game, likely due to more powerful GPUs or better CPU-GPU balance.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a complete picture of performance across all resolutions and settings. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers the highest average at 114 FPS, with Medium at 81 FPS (with a minimum of 69 FPS and a maximum of 93 FPS), High at 72 FPS, and Ultra at 62 FPS. This shows a clear linear progression, where each step up in settings costs roughly 10-30 FPS.

At 2560x1440, the averages are 86 FPS for Low, 61 FPS for Medium (with a minimum of 52 FPS and a maximum of 70 FPS), 54 FPS for High, and 47 FPS for Ultra. The gap between Medium and High is 7 FPS, while the gap between High and Ultra is also 7 FPS. The 1440p results are consistently 25-30% lower than their 1080p counterparts, confirming the resolution scaling trend.

At 3840x2160, the averages are 58 FPS for Low, 41 FPS for Medium (with a minimum of 35 FPS and a maximum of 48 FPS), 37 FPS for High, and 32 FPS for Ultra. The 4K results are dramatically lower, with the Medium preset's minimum of 35 FPS showing that even mid-range settings can cause stutters. The data shows that the system is only suitable for 4K gaming on the lowest settings, and even then, the frame rate is not stable enough for competitive play.

FAQ

*Q: What is the best resolution for this CPU and GPU combination in Control?*

A: The data shows that 1920x1080 is the best resolution, as the system achieves an average of 72 FPS on High settings and 114 FPS on Low settings. At 2560x1440, the performance is acceptable on Medium (61 FPS), but at 3840x2160, only the Low preset (58 FPS) is playable.

*Q: Can this system handle 4K gaming in Control?*

A: Yes, but only on the Low preset, which averages 58 FPS. The Medium preset drops to 41 FPS, and the Ultra preset falls to 32 FPS, which is not smooth. For a consistent 60 FPS experience at 4K, the hardware is insufficient.

Q: How does the CPU's core count affect performance in this game?

A: The AMD Ryzen 5 3600 has 6 cores and 12 threads. The benchmark results show that at 1080p, the CPU can maintain high frame rates (114 FPS on Low), indicating that the core count is sufficient for this game's CPU demands. The performance drop at higher resolutions is more attributable to GPU load than CPU limitations.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Medium and High settings at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the Medium preset averages 61 FPS, while the High preset averages 54 FPS. This 7 FPS difference is relatively small, suggesting that the visual upgrade from Medium to High is not very costly in terms of performance.

Q: Is the Intel Arc B580 a bottleneck at 1080p?

A: No, the data shows that at 1920x1080, the system can achieve 114 FPS on Low and 62 FPS on Ultra. This indicates that the GPU is not the limiting factor at this resolution, as the frame rates scale predictably with settings. The CPU is sufficient to drive the GPU to these levels.

Q: How does the combination's rank compare to its individual component percentiles?

A: The CPU has a percentile of 71, and the GPU has a percentile of 68, but the combination ranks 2816 out of 3720 in Control. This suggests that the game is more demanding on the GPU than the average workload, and that the pairing is not as strong in this specific title as it is in general benchmarks.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 3600 is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 2 architecture, with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 4.20 GHz. In Control, the CPU's role is to handle game logic, physics, and draw calls, which are typically single-threaded or lightly threaded tasks. The benchmark results show that the CPU is not a bottleneck at 1080p, as the system achieves 114 FPS on Low settings, which is a high frame rate for a game of this era.

The CPU's synthetic benchmark scores, such as a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 15045 and a single-core score of 2124, indicate that it has solid processing power for its generation. The 32 MB of shared L3 cache helps with memory latency, which is beneficial for gaming. However, the data from Control shows that the CPU's performance is sufficient to keep up with the GPU at lower resolutions, but as the resolution increases, the GPU becomes the limiting factor, not the CPU.

The CPU's 51.2 GB/s memory bandwidth and dual-channel DDR4 support are adequate for this workload. The measured FPS at 1080p High (72 FPS) and Medium (81 FPS) are consistent with a CPU that can handle the game's demands without issue. The fact that the frame rates drop uniformly across settings at each resolution suggests that the CPU is not causing any sudden bottlenecks, but rather that the GPU is unable to render frames fast enough at higher resolutions.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B580 is based on the Xe2-HPG architecture and features 2560 shading units, 160 texture mapping units, and 80 render output units. It has a boost clock of 2670 MHz and 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, providing a memory bandwidth of 456.0 GB/s. In Control, the GPU is the primary determinant of frame rate at higher resolutions, as evidenced by the significant FPS drops from 1080p to 4K.

The GPU's 13.67 TFLOPS of FP32 compute power and 20 ray tracing cores are capable of handling the game's rendering requirements at lower settings. The data shows that at 1080p, the GPU can achieve 114 FPS on Low, but this drops to 58 FPS at 4K on Low, a 49.1% reduction. This indicates that the GPU's pixel fill rate (213.6 GPixel/s) and texture rate (427.2 GTexel/s) are not sufficient to maintain high frame rates at 4K resolutions.

The 12 GB of VRAM is not a limiting factor in this game, as Control is not a VRAM-heavy title at these settings. The GPU's performance percentile of 68 shows that it is an average performer among tested GPUs. The benchmark results in Control show that the GPU struggles with the Ultra preset at 4K (32 FPS), which is a clear indication that the B580 is better suited for 1080p or 1440p gaming rather than 4K. The GPU's role in this pairing is to provide playable frame rates at medium-to-high settings at 1080p and 1440p, but it falls short of delivering a smooth 4K experience.