Control

The AMD Ryzen 5 3600 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER delivers a playable but constrained experience in Control, with performance firmly centered on the GPU’s capabilities. The measured data shows a clear pattern: the GTX 1660 SUPER is the limiting component, while the Ryzen 5 3600 provides ample headroom. This combination ranks 1464th out of 1636 tested combos in this title, placing it in the lower tier of systems, yet the frame rates remain viable for 1080p and some 1440p scenarios.

Resolution Scaling

The performance drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and consistent, revealing that the GTX 1660 SUPER is the primary bottleneck. At High settings, the average frame rate falls from 56 FPS at 1920x1080 to 42.1 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of roughly 25%. Moving to 3840x2160, the average drops further to 29.7 FPS, which is nearly half the 1080p figure. This scaling pattern is typical of a GPU-bound scenario, where pixel count directly stresses the render pipeline.

The data becomes even more telling when examining the Low settings. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 89.7 FPS, but this falls to 67.1 FPS at 1440p and then to 44 FPS at 4K. The gap between Low and High settings widens as resolution increases, suggesting that the GPU’s compute and memory bandwidth are being saturated. At 4K Ultra, the average drops to 22.3 FPS, which is barely playable and confirms that this resolution is beyond the card’s intended scope for this game.

The scaling from Medium to Ultra at each resolution shows a consistent penalty for higher visual fidelity. At 1080p, Ultra is 52.3 FPS versus 63.1 FPS for Medium, a difference of about 17%. At 1440p, the gap is smaller numerically (40.5 FPS vs 47.2 FPS), but proportionally similar. This indicates that the game’s Ultra preset introduces effects that heavily tax the GPU, such as volumetric lighting and reflections, which are common in Control’s action-adventure environments.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER, built on the Turing architecture with a 12 nm process, is the decisive factor in these results. Its 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus provides 336.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is sufficient for 1080p but becomes strained at higher resolutions. The card’s boost clock of 1785 MHz and base clock of 1530 MHz drive a FP32 performance of 5.027 TFLOPS, a figure that aligns with the observed frame rates in this title.

The memory capacity is a notable constraint. Control is known for demanding textures, and at 4K with High or Ultra settings, the 6 GB frame buffer likely causes swapping or reduced texture quality, contributing to the low averages of 29.7 FPS and 22.3 FPS. The GPU’s 1408 shading units and 48 ROPs are also taxed, as the pixel rate of 85.68 GPixel/s struggles with 4K output, where the fill rate requirement is quadruple that of 1080p.

The GTX 1660 SUPER’s percentile ranking of 55 among all GPUs places it in the mid-range tier, and the benchmark data supports this. Its nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT, has an average score of 14389, which is only 0.7% higher, indicating that the 1660 SUPER is competitive within its class. However, for Control, the GPU’s raw performance is the ceiling for frame rates, as evidenced by the fact that even at 1080p Low, the system does not exceed 90 FPS, suggesting that the CPU is not the limiting factor in this case.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 3600, with 6 cores and 12 threads based on the Zen 2 architecture, provides a solid foundation that does not bottleneck the GPU in Control. Its base clock of 3.60 GHz and boost clock of 4.20 GHz, combined with 32 MB of shared L3 cache, deliver strong single-threaded performance for game logic and physics. The CPU’s Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 15045 and single-core score of 2124 indicate a balanced processor that handles both threaded workloads and latency-sensitive tasks.

In the measured FPS data, the CPU’s influence is most apparent at lower resolutions and settings. At 1080p Low, the system reaches 89.7 FPS, which is likely close to the CPU’s limit for this game’s draw calls and update loops. However, since the frame rates scale downward predictably with resolution and settings, the CPU is clearly not the primary constraint—if it were, the 1080p and 1440p results would be more similar. The Ryzen 5 3600’s percentile ranking of 76 among all CPUs shows it is well above average, and its nearest rival, the Intel Core i5-11400, has an average score of 18150, a negligible 0.1% difference.

The CPU’s 12 threads are sufficient for Control’s multi-threaded rendering pipeline, but the game’s single-threaded performance is more critical. The 3dmark single-thread score of 696 and 2-thread score of 1361 suggest that the CPU can feed the GPU adequately at 1080p, but the GPU’s fill rate becomes the bottleneck at higher resolutions. The Ryzen 5 3600’s memory bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s via dual-channel DDR4 is also adequate, as Control does not require extreme memory throughput beyond what this platform provides.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a complete picture of this combo’s behavior across all settings and resolutions. At 1920x1080, the lowest setting yields 89.7 FPS, which is smooth and responsive. Medium settings drop to 63.1 FPS, still playable, while High produces 56 FPS, which is acceptable for a game like Control that prioritizes atmosphere over fast action. Ultra settings bring the average down to 52.3 FPS, which is the lowest at this resolution but still within a playable range.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates become more variable. Low settings achieve 67.1 FPS, which is surprisingly high for a mid-range GPU, but Medium drops to 47.2 FPS, and High falls to 42.1 FPS. Ultra at 1440p is 40.5 FPS, which is borderline for a smooth experience, especially in combat-heavy scenes where frame drops are likely. The 1440p results suggest that users must compromise on settings to maintain playability, with Low being the only setting that consistently exceeds 60 FPS.

At 3840x2160, the GPU is clearly overmatched. Low settings yield 44 FPS, which is technically playable but not ideal for a game with intense visual effects. Medium produces 34.9 FPS, High drops to 29.7 FPS, and Ultra is a slideshow at 22.3 FPS. These numbers indicate that 4K is not a viable option for this combo, even with reduced settings. The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is nearly 50%, showing how the game’s more demanding presets amplify the GPU’s workload.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER ranks 1464th out of 1636 tested combos in Control, placing it in the bottom 10% of systems. This ranking is primarily driven by the GPU’s mid-range performance, as the CPU is well above average. The GPU’s percentile of 55 is far lower than the CPU’s 76, confirming that the graphics card is the weak link in this pairing.

Compared to other combos, this system is positioned for 1080p gaming with medium to high settings, but it lags behind more balanced configurations. The data shows that the GTX 1660 SUPER’s nearest rivals, such as the AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 (with a delta of -0.2%) and the Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics (-0.2%), have similar average scores, but these are typically paired with weaker CPUs. The Ryzen 5 3600 provides a strong platform that future GPU upgrades could leverage, but as configured, the system’s rank reflects its GPU-bound nature.

For Control specifically, this combo is best suited for 1080p at High settings (56 FPS) or 1440p at Low settings (67.1 FPS). The 4K results are below playable thresholds, and the 1440p Ultra setting is marginal. The ranking of 1464 out of 1636 indicates that while this system is functional, it is not competitive with higher-end configurations that can maintain 60 FPS at 1440p or better. The data suggests that users seeking a smoother experience would need to either lower resolution expectations or upgrade the GPU, as the CPU has ample headroom to support a more powerful graphics card.