Control

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti combination is positioned near the very bottom of the performance hierarchy for Control, ranking 1621st out of 1636 tested hardware combos. The CPU is a solid mid-range part, sitting in the 79th percentile of all processors and delivering scores nearly identical to the Intel Core i5-12500 (a -0.1% delta), but the GPU is the bottleneck, resting in just the 30th percentile of all graphics cards. The data shows a system that can render the game, but only at modest settings and resolutions, with the GTX 1050 Ti's 4 GB of VRAM and 112.1 GB/s of bandwidth proving severely limiting for a title as visually demanding as Control.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution to play Control with this hardware?

A: The measured data shows that 1920x1080 is the only resolution where the average frame rate approaches playability. At this resolution, even the Ultra preset achieves an average of 25.1 FPS, while Low settings reach 45.1 FPS. Moving to 2560x1440 drops the Low preset average to 32.2 FPS, and at 3840x2160, no preset exceeds 23.6 FPS.

Q: Why is the performance at 4K so poor?

A: At 3840x2160, the average FPS ranges from 12.8 on Ultra to 23.6 on Low. The GTX 1050 Ti has a 128-bit memory bus delivering 112.1 GB/s of bandwidth, which is insufficient for the pixel throughput required at this resolution. The data indicates a hard GPU bottleneck, as the CPU's performance would not explain such a drastic drop.

Q: How does the GTX 1050 Ti compare to its closest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: In the average benchmark score, the GTX 1050 Ti (scoring 5316) is virtually tied with the NVIDIA GeForce 930A (scoring 5317, a 0% delta) and is only 0.4% ahead of the GeForce 940M (scoring 5297). It is also 0.7% ahead of the AMD Radeon R7 240 (scoring 5280), confirming its position in the entry-level segment.

Q: Is the Ryzen 5 5500 holding back the GTX 1050 Ti?

A: The benchmark results indicate the CPU is not the primary constraint. The Ryzen 5 5500 achieves a 16,429 score in Cinebench R23 multi-core and has a 79th percentile ranking. At 1920x1080, the FPS scales heavily with graphics settings (from 25.1 on Ultra to 45.1 on Low), which is characteristic of a GPU limit rather than a CPU bottleneck.

Q: What is the playable settings profile for a smooth experience?

A: Based on the measured rows, the only configuration that provides an average above 40 FPS is 1920x1080 with Low settings, yielding 45.1 FPS. The Medium preset at the same resolution drops to 35.1 FPS, which is still below the 40 FPS threshold. There is no data showing a 60 FPS average for any tested configuration.

Q: Does the game's VRAM usage explain the performance difference between settings?

A: The GTX 1050 Ti is equipped with 4 GB of GDDR5 memory. The performance gap between Low (45.1 FPS) and Ultra (25.1 FPS) at 1080p suggests that higher presets demand more memory bandwidth and capacity than the card can efficiently provide, leading to a significant frame rate penalty as texture and effect quality increase.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data paints a clear picture: this system is not capable of running Control at high fidelity. The single configuration that achieves an average frame rate above 40 FPS is the 1920x1080 Low preset, with a measured average of 45.1 FPS. This is the only row in the entire dataset that exceeds 40 FPS, making it the definitive recommendation for a reasonably fluid experience. While 45.1 FPS is not ideal for a fast-paced action game, it is the most playable option available in the data.

The Medium preset at 1920x1080 yields an average of 35.1 FPS, a 10 FPS drop from Low. This suggests that the jump from Low to Medium incurs a substantial performance cost for visual improvements that are unlikely to be worth the frame rate sacrifice. The High and Ultra presets at 1080p, with averages of 27.3 and 25.1 FPS respectively, fall below the threshold for comfortable play and are not recommended. At higher resolutions, performance degrades to a point where the game becomes effectively unplayable, with even the Low preset at 2560x1440 dropping to 32.2 FPS and the 3840x2160 Low preset falling to 23.6 FPS.

For users who prioritize visual quality over frame rate, the 1920x1080 Medium preset at 35.1 FPS offers a compromise, but the data firmly supports Low settings as the best balance for this hardware combination. There is no configuration in the measured data that achieves a 60 FPS average, indicating that this pairing is fundamentally limited to lower settings for a playable experience.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 reveals an extreme GPU-bound scenario. At Low settings, the average frame rate drops from 45.1 FPS at 1080p to 32.2 FPS at 1440p, a 28.6% reduction. Scaling further to 4K, the Low preset average falls to 23.6 FPS, which represents a 47.7% drop from the 1080p figure. This steep decline is consistent across all settings presets.

The pattern is even more pronounced at higher quality settings. With the Ultra preset, the average drops from 25.1 FPS at 1080p to 20.5 FPS at 1440p (an 18.3% reduction), and then to 12.8 FPS at 4K, a 49% decrease from the 1080p baseline. This non-linear scaling, where the drop from 1440p to 4K is much steeper than the drop from 1080p to 1440p, points to a hard memory bandwidth wall. The GTX 1050 Ti's 112.1 GB/s bandwidth is simply overwhelmed by the pixel count at 4K.

The data indicates that the limiting component is unequivocally the GPU. The Ryzen 5 5500's strong multi-threaded performance (16,429 in Cinebench R23) would not cause such dramatic frame rate swings based on resolution alone. The 4K results, which hover between 12.8 and 23.6 FPS, are well below playable thresholds and suggest that the GPU's 4 GB VRAM capacity and 128-bit memory interface are insufficient for the texture and geometry loads at that resolution. The resolution scaling analysis shows that 1080p is the only viable target, and even then, only at lower settings.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the data shows a clear hierarchy of settings. The Low preset achieves an average of 45.1 FPS, which is the highest measured value in the entire dataset. The Medium preset drops to 35.1 FPS, a 10 FPS step down. High settings produce 27.3 FPS, and Ultra brings up the rear at 25.1 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra is a substantial 20 FPS, illustrating the high cost of the game's visual effects on this GPU.

Moving to 2560x1440, the averages compress significantly. Low settings yield 32.2 FPS, Medium produces 25.7 FPS, High reaches 22.1 FPS, and Ultra falls to 20.5 FPS. The spread between Low and Ultra narrows to just 11.7 FPS, as the GPU becomes the limiting factor regardless of settings. None of these values are comfortably playable, but the Low preset is the least objectionable.

At 3840x2160, the performance collapses. Low settings average 23.6 FPS, Medium drops to 17.6 FPS, High falls to 14.9 FPS, and Ultra manages only 12.8 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra shrinks to 10.8 FPS, but all values are firmly in unplayable territory. The data shows that increasing resolution has a more profound impact on frame rate than lowering settings, confirming that the GPU is the sole bottleneck at 4K. The 1080p Low setting is the only measured configuration that exceeds 40 FPS, making it the sole viable option for gameplay.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti is the decisive factor in this system's performance. Its 4 GB of GDDR5 memory, operating on a 128-bit bus with 112.1 GB/s of bandwidth, is the primary constraint in Control. The card's base clock of 1291 MHz and boost clock of 1392 MHz, combined with 768 shading units, deliver a measured FP32 performance of 2.138 TFLOPS. These specifications place it in the 30th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 5316, putting it on par with the GeForce 930A and 940M.

The GPU's role is evident in the frame rate data. At 1080p, the performance difference between Low and Medium settings (a 10 FPS drop) indicates that the card's memory bandwidth is being saturated as texture quality increases. The 4 GB VRAM capacity is also a concern for a game like Control, which features detailed environments and complex effects. The measured FPS at 4K, which never exceeds 23.6 FPS even on Low, demonstrates that the card lacks the raw throughput to handle high pixel counts.

The GPU's synthetic benchmark scores corroborate the in-game results. Its Passmark G3D score of 6340 and DirectX 12 score of 26 are low, reflecting its entry-level positioning. The card's 75 W TDP and lack of power connectors suggest a design focused on efficiency rather than performance. In the context of Control, the GTX 1050 Ti is the limiting component, and the data shows that the Ryzen 5 5500's processing power is largely untapped due to the GPU's inability to feed frames quickly enough. The CPU's 79th percentile ranking and robust Cinebench scores are irrelevant when the GPU delivers an average of 25 FPS at Ultra settings.