Control

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data for Control with the AMD Ryzen 5 5500 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 combination shows a consistent hierarchy across all three tested resolutions. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers an average of 185 FPS, Medium 131 FPS, High 117 FPS, and Ultra 101 FPS. The gap between Medium and High is 14 FPS, while the step from High to Ultra is 16 FPS, indicating diminishing returns as settings climb. The Medium preset at 1080p, with a recorded minimum of 111 FPS and maximum of 151 FPS, is the only preset at this resolution with a documented frame-time range; this suggests the frame pacing remains stable enough for competitive play, though the average of 131 FPS is well above the 60 FPS baseline.

Moving to 2560x1440, the Low preset averages 140 FPS, Medium 99 FPS, High 88 FPS, and Ultra 77 FPS. The Medium preset again provides the only min/max data—84 FPS minimum and 114 FPS maximum—which brackets the average closely. The difference between Low and Medium is 41 FPS, a substantial drop, while Medium to High is 11 FPS and High to Ultra is another 11 FPS. At 3840x2160, the picture changes: Low averages 94 FPS, Medium 67 FPS, High 60 FPS, and Ultra 52 FPS. Here, the Medium preset's min/max of 57/77 FPS shows that even the minimum stays above the 60 FPS threshold, but only just barely, while High sits exactly at 60 FPS average with no min/max recorded.

For the best experience per the measured rows, the Medium preset is the clear recommendation at both 1080p and 1440p. At 1080p, Medium offers 131 FPS average—a 14 FPS improvement over High—while still maintaining a minimum of 111 FPS, which is comfortably above any 60 Hz display. At 1440p, Medium's 99 FPS average with an 84 FPS minimum provides a smoother experience than High's 88 FPS, and the jump to Ultra at 77 FPS is not worth the visual cost for only a 22 FPS gain over Medium's minimum. At 4K, the choice narrows: Medium at 67 FPS average with a 57 FPS minimum is playable, but High at 60 FPS average is exactly at the refresh boundary; given that High's average matches the 60 FPS target while Medium dips below it in the minimum, High is the safer pick for 4K if the user prioritizes consistency over peak frames.

FAQ

Q: What is the average FPS at 1080p with Ultra settings?

A: The average FPS at 1920x1080 with Ultra settings is 101 FPS.

Q: Does the combo maintain 60 FPS at 4K on any preset?

A: Yes, at 3840x2160, the Low preset averages 94 FPS, Medium averages 67 FPS (with a 57 FPS minimum), and High averages 60 FPS. Ultra drops to 52 FPS, so it does not hold 60 FPS.

Q: Which resolution shows the smallest performance gap between Medium and High?

A: At 2560x1440, the gap between Medium (99 FPS) and High (88 FPS) is 11 FPS, the same as the gap between High and Ultra at that resolution. At 1080p, the Medium-to-High gap is 14 FPS, and at 4K it is 7 FPS.

Q: Is the Ryzen 5 5500 a bottleneck at any resolution?

A: The data shows the CPU's single-thread score of 836 in 3DMark and a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2319; at 1080p Low, the combo reaches 185 FPS, which is high enough that CPU limits could appear, but the measured FPS does not indicate a hard ceiling—the GPU's 29.77 TFLOPS FP32 throughput is the more likely limiter at higher settings.

Q: What is the combo's rank in this game?

A: The combo ranks 1071 out of 3720 tested combinations in Control.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 is built on the GA102 chip using Samsung's 8 nm process, with 28,300 million transistors on a 628 mm² die. Its base clock runs at 1440 MHz and boosts to 1710 MHz, while the memory clock is listed at 1188 MHz with 19 Gbps effective speed. The GPU has 10 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 320-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 760.3 GB/s. Shading units number 8704, with 272 TMUs, 96 ROPs, 68 RT cores, and 272 tensor cores. Pixel rate is 164.2 GPixel/s, texture rate is 465.1 GTexel/s, and FP32 throughput is 29.77 TFLOPS, with FP16 at the same 1:1 rate.

In Control, the GPU's role is evident from the FPS scaling across resolutions. At 1080p Low, the combo hits 185 FPS, but at 4K Low it drops to 94 FPS—a 49% reduction. The 10 GB VRAM capacity is sufficient for the game's textures at all tested settings, as no min FPS anomalies suggest memory swapping; the Medium preset at 4K shows a 57 FPS minimum, which is more likely a GPU compute limit than a VRAM spill. The 760.3 GB/s bandwidth supports the high texture rates required by the game's physics-heavy environments, and the 68 RT cores are present for ray-traced effects, though the measured rows do not specify RT settings—only the standard presets.

The GPU's benchmark scores place it at the 68th percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 23172. Its nearest rivals in the GPU benchmark pool are the NVIDIA P106-100 (avg score 23249, deltaPct -0.3%), the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16 (23250, -0.3%), the AMD Radeon RX 6600M (23273, -0.4%), and the AMD Radeon R9 M290X (23276, -0.4%). These deltas are negligible, meaning the RTX 3080 sits in a tightly clustered performance band in synthetic tests. However, in Control specifically, the measured FPS shows the GPU handling 4K Ultra at 52 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS target, indicating that the 29.77 TFLOPS compute is the limiting factor at maximum settings rather than memory capacity.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 5500 and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 ranks 1071 out of 3720 tested combos in Control. This places it in the top 28.8% of all configurations tested for this game. The percentile is derived from the measured FPS data across all resolutions and settings, with the combo achieving a maximum average of 185 FPS at 1080p Low and a minimum of 52 FPS at 4K Ultra. The rank reflects the balance between the CPU's 6-core/12-thread configuration and the GPU's high-end compute.

To contextualize the rank, the CPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks include the AMD Ryzen AI 5 430 (avg score 19617, deltaPct -0.1%), the Intel Core i5-12500 (19668, -0.4%), the Intel Core i7-10700F (19499, +0.5%), and the Intel Core i5-11600KF (19723, -0.7%). These scores show the Ryzen 5 5500 is within 1% of all four rivals, meaning CPU-side differences are minimal. The GPU's nearest rivals, as noted, are all within 0.4% of the RTX 3080's average benchmark score. Given that both components are near the middle of their respective peer groups, the combo's rank in Control is driven primarily by the game's engine scaling rather than any single component being an outlier.

The rank of 1071 out of 3720 is not exceptional but respectable. In comparison, a hypothetical combo with a higher-ranked GPU—say, one at the 90th percentile—would likely push the rank higher, but the data only shows this specific pairing. The measured FPS at 1440p High (88 FPS) and 4K High (60 FPS) indicates the combo is well-suited for 1440p gaming, while 4K requires settings compromises. The rank also reflects that Control is a demanding title at higher presets; the drop from 4K Medium (67 FPS) to 4K Ultra (52 FPS) is a 22% performance loss, which is significant for a single settings tier.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS data shows a clear pattern: as resolution increases, the average FPS decreases proportionally, but the rate of decline is steeper at higher settings. At Low settings, the averages are 185 FPS (1080p), 140 FPS (1440p), and 94 FPS (4K). The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 45 FPS (24.3% reduction), and from 1440p to 4K is 46 FPS (32.9% reduction). At Medium settings, the averages are 131, 99, and 67 FPS—drops of 32 FPS (24.4%) and 32 FPS (32.3%), respectively. At High settings, the averages are 117, 88, and 60 FPS—drops of 29 FPS (24.8%) and 28 FPS (31.8%). At Ultra, the averages are 101, 77, and 52 FPS—drops of 24 FPS (23.8%) and 25 FPS (32.5%).

The percentage reductions are remarkably consistent across settings: roughly 24% from 1080p to 1440p and 32% from 1440p to 4K, regardless of preset. This uniformity suggests the limiting component scales linearly with pixel count. The RTX 3080's pixel rate of 164.2 GPixel/s and texture rate of 465.1 GTexel/s are the primary drivers; as resolution increases, the number of pixels to fill grows by 2.25x from 1080p to 4K, but the measured FPS does not drop by that factor—the 1080p Low average of 185 FPS versus 4K Low of 94 FPS is a 49% reduction, not the 78% that pure pixel count would predict. This indicates the game is not purely pixel-bound at lower settings; CPU overhead and draw call limits play a role at 1080p, where the Ryzen 5 5500's 6 cores are more likely to be the ceiling.

At higher settings, the FPS scales closer to pixel count. The 1080p Ultra average of 101 FPS versus 4K Ultra of 52 FPS is a 48.5% reduction, similar to Low. The consistency across settings implies the GPU's memory bandwidth (760.3 GB/s) and compute (29.77 TFLOPS) are the bottlenecks at all resolutions, but the CPU's single-thread performance (3DMark single-thread score of 836, Cinebench R23 single-core 2319) prevents the combo from reaching higher frame rates at 1080p. Evidence: the 1080p Low average of 185 FPS is far below the GPU's theoretical capability—the RTX 3080's passmark G3D score of 25086 suggests it could push higher—but the CPU's 3DMark multi-thread score of 5386 (16 threads) indicates a limit around that range.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured averages are: Low 185 FPS, Medium 131 FPS (min 111, max 151), High 117 FPS, Ultra 101 FPS. The Medium preset is the only one with min/max data, showing a 40 FPS spread between min and max, which is a 30.5% variation from the average. This suggests frame pacing is consistent but not perfectly flat. The step from Low to Medium is 54 FPS (29.2% drop), Medium to High is 14 FPS (10.7% drop), and High to Ultra is 16 FPS (13.7% drop). The largest performance hit occurs when moving from Low to Medium, likely due to increased texture and shadow complexity.

At 2560x1440, the averages are: Low 140 FPS, Medium 99 FPS (min 84, max 114), High 88 FPS, Ultra 77 FPS. The Medium min/max spread is 30 FPS (30.3% of average), similar to 1080p. The drops are: Low to Medium 41 FPS (29.3%), Medium to High 11 FPS (11.1%), High to Ultra 11 FPS (12.5%). The percentage drops from Low to Medium are nearly identical to 1080p (29.2% vs 29.3%), reinforcing that the scaling is resolution-independent. The absolute FPS at 1440p is 75.7% of 1080p for Low (140/185), 75.6% for Medium (99/131), 75.2% for High (88/117), and 76.2% for Ultra (77/101).

At 3840x2160, the averages are: Low 94 FPS, Medium 67 FPS (min 57, max 77), High 60 FPS, Ultra 52 FPS. The Medium min/max spread is 20 FPS (29.9% of average). The drops are: Low to Medium 27 FPS (28.7%), Medium to High 7 FPS (10.4%), High to Ultra 8 FPS (13.3%). Notably, the 4K Medium minimum of 57 FPS is below the 60 FPS threshold, while the average is 67 FPS, meaning the game will occasionally stutter below 60 FPS. High at 4K averages exactly 60 FPS, which is borderline; without min/max data, it is unclear if it dips below. The 4K Ultra average of 52 FPS is the only preset that fails to reach 60 FPS average across all resolutions.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 3 (Cezanne) architecture, fabricated on TSMC's 7 nm process. It has a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 4.20 GHz, with a TDP of 65 W. The cache hierarchy includes 64 KB L1 per core, 512 KB L2 per core, and 16 MB L3 shared. Memory support is DDR4 with dual-channel bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s. The CPU uses PCIe Gen 3 and has an unlocked multiplier. Its release date is April 2022, and its launch MSRP is $159.

In Control, the CPU's role is most apparent at lower resolutions and settings. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 185 FPS, which is high but not exceptional for a game of this era. The CPU's 3DMark single-thread score is 836, and its Cinebench R23 single-core score is 2319; these are moderate for a 5000-series chip. The multi-thread results—Cinebench R23 multi-core 16429, Geekbench multi-core 7976, and Passmark multi-thread 19330—show a 6-core part that scales well but is not a top-tier performer. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 5386 and max-thread score of 5411 indicate that adding threads beyond 12 yields almost no gain, confirming the 6-core/12-thread configuration is fully utilized.

The game's engine appears to favor single-thread performance for scene management and physics, given that the 1080p Low FPS (185) is not limited by the GPU—the RTX 3080's 29.77 TFLOPS could theoretically push higher. The CPU's Passmark single-thread score of 3058 and 3DMark 2-thread score of 1645 suggest that the 4.20 GHz boost clock is the ceiling for frame generation at low settings. Evidence: at 1440p Low, the FPS drops to 140, a 24% reduction, which aligns with the pixel count increase, but at 4K Low, the drop to 94 FPS is only 32.9% from 1440p, indicating the GPU is now the primary limiter. The CPU's 16 MB L3 cache and 51.2 GB/s memory bandwidth are sufficient for Control's asset streaming; the game's levels are not large enough to cause cache misses that would bottleneck the GPU.

The CPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks—all within 0.7% delta—suggest that any of these processors would perform similarly in Control. However, the Ryzen 5 5500's lower boost clock compared to the Intel Core i5-12500 (which has a higher avg score but similar delta) might show minor differences in CPU-bound scenarios, but the measured FPS data does not isolate this. The percentile vs all CPUs is 73, meaning the CPU is stronger relative to the CPU pool than the GPU is relative to the GPU pool (68th percentile). This imbalance suggests the GPU is the more limiting factor in this combo, which is consistent with the FPS scaling: at 4K Ultra, the combo drops to 52 FPS, a 49% reduction from 1080p Ultra (101 FPS), while the CPU's performance would not worsen with resolution. The GPU's compute and memory bandwidth are the bottlenecks at high settings, while the CPU only becomes relevant at 1080p Low where the frame rate exceeds 180 FPS.