Control

Control is an action-adventure title that stresses both the GPU and CPU depending on the settings and resolution chosen. The data measured for this combination of an AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D and an AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT shows a system that is well-balanced at 1440p, with clear performance ceilings at 4K and plenty of headroom at 1080p for high-refresh-rate displays. The benchmark results provide a complete picture of how the 12 GB VRAM buffer and the 6-core/12-thread processor interact with the game's rendering demands.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows show a clear hierarchy across all three resolutions. At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves an average of 141 FPS, which is the highest score recorded in the entire dataset. The Medium preset drops to 100 FPS average, while High sits at 89 FPS and Ultra at 77 FPS. For competitive or high-refresh-rate play, the Low preset is the only option that fully saturates a 144 Hz panel, but the jump from Low to Medium costs 41 FPS, suggesting that the Low preset is removing a significant amount of rendering work. Given that the game is a single-player action-adventure title, the 100 FPS average of Medium is still very smooth and represents a better balance of visual quality and responsiveness.

At 2560x1440, the story changes slightly. The Low preset averages 107 FPS, which remains excellent, but the Medium preset drops to 76 FPS. The High preset at 67 FPS and Ultra at 59 FPS are both playable, but the margin between Medium and High is only 9 FPS, while the margin between Low and Medium is 31 FPS. This indicates that the Medium preset is the sweet spot for 1440p, as it retains a 76 FPS average without the steep performance penalty of High or Ultra. The 4K results reinforce this: Medium at 3840x2160 averages 51 FPS with a minimum of 44 FPS and a maximum of 59 FPS, which is the only 4K preset with a recorded minimum frame time. This suggests that Medium is the most stable option at 4K, as the Low preset jumps to 72 FPS but the High and Ultra presets fall to 46 FPS and 40 FPS respectively.

The data suggests that the Medium preset provides the most consistent experience across all resolutions. At 1080p, it delivers 100 FPS, which is well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. At 1440p, it maintains 76 FPS, which is still comfortably playable. At 4K, it drops to 51 FPS, which is borderline but acceptable for a slower-paced action-adventure game. The High preset is only recommended for 1080p, where it holds 89 FPS, but the 67 FPS at 1440p and 46 FPS at 4K make it less attractive. Ultra should be avoided outside of 1080p, where the 77 FPS average is the only scenario that keeps it above 60 FPS.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT is the primary driver of performance differences across settings. The GPU features 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, yielding 384.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The core clocks are reported as a base of 2321 MHz, a game clock of 2424 MHz, and a boost clock of 2581 MHz. The memory runs at 2000 MHz with 16 Gbps effective speed. The chip is built on the RDNA 2.0 architecture with 2560 shading units, 160 TMUs, and 64 ROPs, alongside 40 ray tracing cores. These specifications place the GPU in the 72nd percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 27425.

The measured FPS data shows a clear GPU bottleneck at 4K. Going from Low to Ultra at 3840x2160 drops the average from 72 FPS to 40 FPS, a total loss of 32 FPS. The Medium preset at 4K shows a minimum of 44 FPS and a maximum of 59 FPS, indicating that the GPU is struggling to maintain a consistent frame rate under load. The 12 GB VRAM buffer is likely sufficient for the game's textures at 4K, as the Low preset still achieves 72 FPS, but the compute load of the higher presets overwhelms the 13.21 TFLOPS of FP32 performance. The GPU's nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Mobile, has an average score of 27435 with a deltaPct of 0, meaning they are statistically identical in synthetic benchmarks. However, the RX 6700 XT is also within 0.5% of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090, which is a much higher-tier card, suggesting that Control is well-optimized for the RDNA 2.0 architecture.

At 1440p, the GPU still dominates the performance curve. The Low preset hits 107 FPS, but the Ultra preset falls to 59 FPS. The gap between Medium and High at 1440p is only 9 FPS, which is smaller than the 22 FPS gap between Low and Medium. This suggests that the Medium preset is the point where the GPU's shading units and TMUs are being fully utilized, and the additional load from High and Ultra settings (likely shadows and volumetric effects) does not scale linearly. The pixel rate of 165.2 GPixel/s and texture rate of 413.0 GTexel/s are the limiting factors at higher presets, as the game's rendering requires more pixel fill and texture filtering than the card can deliver at 4K.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D provides the foundation for the frame rates seen in the data. It is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture (Vermeer) on a 7 nm process. The base clock is 3.00 GHz with a boost clock of 4.00 GHz. The cache configuration is notable: 64 KB of L1 per core, 512 KB of L2 per core, and a massive 96 MB of shared L3 cache, which is a characteristic of the X3D series. The processor has a TDP of 105 W and supports DDR4 memory in a dual-channel configuration with 51.2 GB/s of bandwidth. It sits in the 85th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 37018.

The CPU's role in Control is less prominent than the GPU, but still measurable. At 1080p with Low settings, the average FPS is 141, which is high enough that the CPU could be a limiting factor if the frame rate were any higher. The PassMark single-thread score of 2941 and multithread score of 20363 indicate that the processor has solid single-core performance for game logic and adequate multi-core performance for background tasks. The nearest rival is the AMD Ryzen 5 5600F, which has an average score of 36945 and a deltaPct of 0.2, meaning the 5500X3D is effectively tied with it. The Intel Core i9-12900T is also within 0.3% with a score of 37112, showing that the X3D's large L3 cache does not provide a significant advantage in this particular synthetic benchmark.

In the game data, the CPU does not appear to be the bottleneck at any resolution. The FPS drops from 1080p to 1440p to 4K are consistent with a GPU-bound scenario. For example, at Medium settings, the FPS drops from 100 at 1080p to 76 at 1440p to 51 at 4K, which is a 24% and 49% reduction respectively. These reductions align with the increase in pixel count, indicating that the GPU is doing the heavy lifting. The CPU's 12 threads are likely sufficient to feed the GPU at 1080p Low, where the 141 FPS average is achieved without any visible stutter in the data. The fact that the Low preset at 1080p reaches 141 FPS suggests that the CPU can handle high frame rates, but the game's engine does not appear to be heavily multithreaded, as the multithread score of 20363 is not exceptional.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combination to maintain 60 FPS?

A: The 2560x1440 Medium preset delivers a 76 FPS average, which is the highest resolution and settings combination that stays well above 60 FPS. The 1440p High preset at 67 FPS also clears the threshold, but the 4K Medium preset at 51 FPS falls below it.

Q: How does the RX 6700 XT compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RX 6700 XT has an average benchmark score of 27425, which is identical to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Mobile (deltaPct of 0). It is 0.5% behind the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 and 1.5% behind the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 20, but 1.1% ahead of the NVIDIA RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell.

Q: Is the Ryzen 5 5500X3D a limiting factor at 1080p Low settings?

A: The data shows a 141 FPS average at 1080p Low, which is the highest score in the dataset. The CPU's single-thread score of 2941 is strong enough to support this frame rate, and the lack of a recorded minimum FPS suggests no significant frame drops, so the CPU is not a clear bottleneck.

Q: What is the performance difference between Medium and Ultra at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the Medium preset averages 76 FPS, while the Ultra preset averages 59 FPS. This is a 17 FPS difference, or roughly 22% lower performance, which is a noticeable drop but still playable for a single-player title.

Q: Does the 12 GB VRAM cause any issues at 4K?

A: The 4K Low preset achieves 72 FPS, and the Medium preset achieves 51 FPS with a minimum of 44 FPS. The 12 GB VRAM does not appear to be a limiting factor, as the GPU's compute performance is the more likely constraint based on the scaling from Low to Ultra.

Q: How stable is the 4K Medium preset?

A: The 4K Medium preset has an average of 51 FPS with a minimum of 44 FPS and a maximum of 59 FPS. The 8 FPS spread between minimum and maximum indicates some variance, but it is the only 4K preset with a recorded minimum, suggesting it is the most stable option at that resolution.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a consistent scaling pattern from 1080p to 4K that points to the GPU as the primary limiting component. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 141 at 1920x1080 to 107 at 2560x1440, a 24% reduction, and then to 72 at 3840x2160, a 49% reduction from the 1080p baseline. This scaling aligns closely with the pixel count increase: 1440p has 1.78 times the pixels of 1080p, and 4K has 4 times the pixels. The FPS does not drop proportionally to the pixel count, which indicates that the GPU is not fully saturated at 1080p, but the trend is clear.

At Medium settings, the scaling is more pronounced. The 1080p average of 100 FPS drops to 76 FPS at 1440p (24% reduction) and then to 51 FPS at 4K (49% reduction). The relative consistency of these percentage drops across Low and Medium suggests that the game's rendering pipeline scales predictably with resolution. At High settings, the 1080p average of 89 FPS drops to 67 FPS at 1440p (25% reduction) and 46 FPS at 4K (48% reduction). The Ultra preset shows the same pattern: 77 FPS at 1080p, 59 FPS at 1440p (23% reduction), and 40 FPS at 4K (48% reduction).

The data indicates that the CPU is not a limiting factor in this scaling. If the CPU were the bottleneck, the FPS would stay relatively flat as resolution increases, but the consistent 23-25% reduction from 1080p to 1440p and 48-49% reduction from 1080p to 4K across all presets points to the GPU's rendering capabilities. The RX 6700 XT's 384.0 GB/s of memory bandwidth and 13.21 TFLOPS of FP32 performance are the likely constraints at higher resolutions, as the game requires more pixel fill and texture bandwidth. The 4K Low preset at 72 FPS is the exception, showing that the GPU can still deliver high frame rates when the visual effects are stripped back.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete dataset provides exact numbers for every resolution and settings combination. At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves an average of 141 FPS, which is the highest score recorded. The Medium preset averages 100 FPS with a minimum of 85 FPS and a maximum of 115 FPS. The High preset averages 89 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 77 FPS. No minimum or maximum values are recorded for Low, High, or Ultra at 1080p, indicating that the frame pacing is consistent enough that the benchmark only captured the average.

At 2560x1440, the Low preset averages 107 FPS. The Medium preset averages 76 FPS with a minimum of 65 FPS and a maximum of 87 FPS. The High preset averages 67 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 59 FPS. The 18 FPS gap between Medium and High at 1440p is larger than the 11 FPS gap at 1080p, suggesting that the higher resolution amplifies the performance cost of the High preset. The Ultra preset at 59 FPS is the only 1440p result below 60 FPS, making it marginal for smooth gameplay.

At 3840x2160, the Low preset averages 72 FPS, which is surprisingly high for 4K. The Medium preset averages 51 FPS with a minimum of 44 FPS and a maximum of 59 FPS. The High preset averages 46 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 40 FPS. The 4K Medium preset is the only 4K option with a recorded minimum and maximum, showing a variance of 15 FPS between the lowest and highest frame rates. The Ultra preset at 40 FPS is the lowest score in the entire dataset, confirming that this setting is not playable at 4K with this hardware. The combination ranks 1484 out of 2888 total combos in the game, placing it in the upper half of tested systems.