Control

FAQ

Q: How does the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 compare to its closest rival in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The Ryzen 5 3600 scores 18,129 in average benchmark score, placing it 0.1% behind the Intel Core i5-11400 (18,150) and 0.2% ahead of the AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS (18,101). It also edges out the Ryzen 5 1600 (18,158) by 0.2% and the EPYC 9274F (18,189) by 0.3%, showing remarkable consistency across a range of competing architectures.

Q: What is the GTX 1660 Ti's standing among all tested GPUs?

A: The GTX 1660 Ti sits at the 55th percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 13,925. Its closest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 570X, scores 13,871 (0.4% behind), while the NVIDIA RTX A2000 Mobile trails by 0.8% at 13,821, and the GTX 680 is also 0.8% behind at 13,812.

Q: What frame rates can this combo achieve at 1080p in Control?

A: At 1920x1080, the combo delivers 92 FPS on Low settings, 64.2 FPS on Medium, 58.3 FPS on High, and 54.2 FPS on Ultra. The gap between Low and Ultra is 37.8 FPS, indicating that settings scaling has a substantial impact on performance at this resolution.

Q: How does performance scale when moving from 1080p to 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, average FPS drops to 68.1 on Low, 48.5 on Medium, 46.1 on High, and 40 on Ultra. This represents a 26% reduction on Low (from 92 to 68.1) and a 26.2% reduction on Ultra (from 54.2 to 40), showing consistent scaling across the settings range.

Q: Is 4K playable with this hardware combination?

A: At 3840x2160, the combo reaches only 45.7 FPS on Low and 31.3 FPS on Medium, falling to 28.8 on High and 25.9 on Ultra. These figures are below the typically accepted smooth-play threshold, suggesting 4K is only viable for less demanding scenarios or with reduced expectations.

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

A: The Ryzen 5 3600 + GTX 1660 Ti combo ranks 1,438 out of 1,636 tested combinations, placing it in the lower 12.1% of all configurations. This ranking reflects the GPU's mid-range position and the game's demanding nature at higher resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data indicates that the Medium preset at 1920x1080 provides the optimal balance of visual quality and performance for this combination. At 64.2 FPS, this setting clears the 60 FPS threshold while maintaining a 6.7% improvement over the High preset's 58.3 FPS. The jump from Medium to High costs 5.9 FPS (9.2% reduction), which may be noticeable during fast-paced combat sequences but not severe enough to compromise playability.

For users prioritizing smoothness over visual fidelity, the Low preset at 1080p delivers 92 FPS, a 43.3% improvement over Medium. This represents the largest single-settings jump in the entire dataset, making Low an attractive option for competitive or high-refresh-rate play. However, the visual compromise may not be worth the performance gain for a single-player action-adventure title like Control.

At 2560x1440, the Medium preset drops to 48.5 FPS, which falls below the 60 FPS target. The Low preset at 68.1 FPS remains viable for 1440p gaming, though the visual quality reduction is more pronounced at this resolution. Users with 1440p displays should consider whether 68.1 FPS on Low outweighs the 46.1 FPS on High, as the latter provides a more immersive experience despite the lower frame rate.

The Ultra preset at 1080p (54.2 FPS) and 1440p (40 FPS) fails to maintain smooth gameplay, making it unsuitable for this combo. The data suggests that Ultra settings are best reserved for systems with more capable GPUs, as the GTX 1660 Ti cannot sustain playable frame rates at this quality level across any resolution tested.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo's rank of 1,438 out of 1,636 tested configurations places it in the 12.1% percentile, indicating that it trails the vast majority of combinations tested for Control. This ranking is consistent with the GTX 1660 Ti's 55th percentile standing among all GPUs and the Ryzen 5 3600's 76th percentile among all CPUs. The CPU's relatively strong position does little to compensate for the GPU's mid-range performance, as Control appears to be heavily GPU-bound based on the FPS scaling across resolutions.

The rank suggests that users with higher-tier GPUs will see substantially better results, particularly at higher resolutions and settings. The combo's position in the lower quartile of tested configurations aligns with the GPU's age and tier, though the Ryzen 5 3600's strong synthetic scores (15,045 in Cinebench R23 multi-core) indicate the CPU is not the primary bottleneck in most scenarios.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its most playable results across all settings. The Low preset achieves 92 FPS, representing the peak performance in the entire dataset. Medium follows at 64.2 FPS, High at 58.3 FPS, and Ultra at 54.2 FPS. The scaling from Low to Ultra shows a 41.1% reduction in average FPS, which is a moderate penalty for the visual improvements offered by higher presets.

Moving to 2560x1440, all settings see significant declines. Low drops to 68.1 FPS (a 26% reduction from 1080p), Medium to 48.5 FPS (24.5% reduction), High to 46.1 FPS (20.9% reduction), and Ultra to 40 FPS (26.2% reduction). The consistency of these reductions suggests that the GPU's memory bandwidth and shading throughput are the limiting factors, rather than any single setting.

At 3840x2160, performance becomes marginal across the board. Low manages 45.7 FPS, which is the only 4K setting that approaches playability. Medium drops to 31.3 FPS, High to 28.8 FPS, and Ultra to 25.9 FPS. The 4K results show a 43.4% reduction from Low to Ultra, indicating that the most demanding settings impose an increasing burden at higher resolutions.

The data reveals a clear pattern: at 1080p, the combo can handle Medium settings comfortably, while at 1440p, only Low remains above 60 FPS. At 4K, no setting achieves 60 FPS, with even Low falling 14.3 FPS short of that target.

GPU Role

The GTX 1660 Ti's 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus provides 288.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which becomes a critical factor in Control's performance across resolutions. The 4K results, where even Low settings drop to 45.7 FPS, suggest that memory bandwidth and the 5.437 TFLOPS FP32 throughput are insufficient for the game's higher-resolution demands.

The GPU's clocks of 1500 MHz base and 1770 MHz boost, combined with 1536 shading units, 96 TMUs, and 48 ROPs, produce pixel and texture rates of 84.96 GPixel/s and 169.9 GTexel/s respectively. These figures explain the relatively small performance gaps between Medium and High at each resolution, as the GPU's fixed-function units become saturated before the shading units reach their limits.

With a 55th percentile ranking among all GPUs and a PassMark G3D score of 12,871, the GTX 1660 Ti demonstrates capable mid-range performance. However, Control's measured FPS data shows that the GPU's 6 GB VRAM capacity is adequate for 1080p and 1440p but may face pressure at 4K with higher textures. The lack of RT cores and Tensor cores means the GPU relies entirely on traditional rasterization, which aligns with the game's release period and the GPU's Turing architecture without ray-tracing acceleration.

The GPU's 12 nm process and 120 W TDP indicate an efficient design, though the 288.0 GB/s bandwidth appears to be the primary constraint at higher resolutions. The measured results show that reducing settings from Ultra to Low provides a 77.2% FPS increase at 4K (from 25.9 to 45.7), which is a larger relative gain than at lower resolutions, suggesting that memory bandwidth and texture fill rates become increasingly limiting as pixel count rises.