Control

# Control — AMD Ryzen 5 8400F + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB

The benchmark data for Control with this combination of AMD Ryzen 5 8400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB shows a system that delivers playable frame rates across all tested resolutions, though the gap between settings tiers widens considerably as resolution increases. The measured results place this combo at rank 1422 out of 3720 tested combinations, indicating a mid-pack position that aligns with the GPU's 19th percentile standing among all GPUs and the CPU's 77th percentile among all CPUs. This analysis walks through the resolution scaling behavior, settings recommendations, competitive positioning, and the individual roles of the CPU and GPU in shaping the observed performance.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K reveals a system that becomes progressively more GPU-bound at higher resolutions, though the CPU still shows meaningful influence at lower settings. At Low settings, the average frame rate falls from 162 FPS at 1920x1080 to 123 FPS at 2560x1440, a 24% reduction, and then to 83 FPS at 3840x2160, another 33% drop. This steep decline at Low settings suggests that the GPU is the primary limiter even when graphical demands are minimal, since the CPU's performance headroom is not the bottleneck at these frame rates.

Moving to Medium settings, the scaling pattern shifts slightly. The 1080p average of 115 FPS drops to 87 FPS at 1440p (a 24% reduction) and then to 59 FPS at 4K (a 32% reduction from 1440p). The consistency of these percentage drops across Low and Medium settings indicates that the RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB's compute and memory bandwidth are being taxed uniformly as pixel count rises, rather than hitting a specific architectural wall at any single resolution.

At High settings, the resolution scaling becomes more pronounced in absolute terms. The 1080p average of 102 FPS falls to 77 FPS at 1440p (a 25% drop) and then to 52 FPS at 4K (a 32% drop from 1440p). The 4K result at High settings dips below the 60 FPS threshold, which is a notable consideration for players targeting smooth gameplay at native 4K. Ultra settings show the most aggressive scaling: 89 FPS at 1080p drops to 67 FPS at 1440p (a 25% drop) and then to 45 FPS at 4K (a 33% drop from 1440p).

The consistent 24-33% reductions across all settings tiers point to a straightforward pixel-bound scenario. The GPU's 128-bit memory bus and 288.0 GB/s bandwidth appear to be the limiting factor, as the 8 GB VRAM capacity is sufficient for Control at these settings but the bandwidth constraints become more evident at 4K. The CPU's role diminishes at higher resolutions, as the frame rate deltas between 1080p and 4K are nearly identical regardless of settings, suggesting that the Ryzen 5 8400F is not introducing a CPU-side bottleneck at any tested configuration.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured frame rates, the Medium preset offers the most balanced experience across all three resolutions. At 1920x1080, Medium delivers 115 FPS with a minimum of 98 FPS and maximum of 132 FPS, providing a comfortable margin above typical 60 FPS displays while retaining headroom for demanding scenes. At 2560x1440, Medium maintains 87 FPS with a 74-100 FPS range, which remains fluid on high-refresh-rate monitors. At 3840x2160, Medium produces 59 FPS with a 50-68 FPS range, hovering right at the 60 FPS target with occasional dips.

For users prioritizing higher visual fidelity, High settings at 1080p (102 FPS) and 1440p (77 FPS) are both playable, but the 4K result of 52 FPS falls short of the 60 FPS standard. The Ultra preset is only recommended at 1080p, where 89 FPS remains smooth; at 1440p the 67 FPS average is borderline, and at 4K the 45 FPS average will likely feel sluggish for action-oriented gameplay. The Low preset, while delivering 162 FPS at 1080p, 123 FPS at 1440p, and 83 FPS at 4K, sacrifices too much visual quality for the performance gain, particularly since Medium offers a substantial quality improvement for a 29-35% frame rate cost.

The data suggests that Medium is the optimal default choice. At 1080p, the jump from Medium to High costs 13 FPS (115 to 102), while the jump from High to Ultra costs another 13 FPS (102 to 89). At 1440p, these deltas are 10 FPS (87 to 77) and 10 FPS (77 to 67) respectively. At 4K, the deltas shrink to 7 FPS (59 to 52) and 7 FPS (52 to 45), showing that the marginal cost of each settings tier diminishes as resolution increases, but Medium consistently provides the best frame rate per visual step.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of AMD Ryzen 5 8400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB ranks 1422 out of 3720 tested combos in Control, placing it in the 38th percentile of all tested systems. This mid-pack position is somewhat surprising given the CPU's strong 77th percentile standing and the GPU's weaker 19th percentile, but the game's performance profile appears to be more heavily influenced by GPU capability.

The GPU's nearest rivals in the 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 benchmark provide context for its positioning. The RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB scores 2913, which is 0.1% above the NVIDIA RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell SFF (2910), 0.2% above the RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB (2907), and 0.7% above the RTX 4010 (2893). The only rival with a higher score is the NVIDIA Quadro P600 at 2923, which beats the 4060 Ti 8 GB by 0.3%. These tiny deltas indicate that the 4060 Ti 8 GB is in a tightly clustered performance band, and the 8 GB memory configuration does not meaningfully disadvantage it against the 16 GB variant in this synthetic test.

On the CPU side, the Ryzen 5 8400F's average benchmark score of 25005 is nearly identical to its nearest rivals. It sits 0.2% above the Ryzen 5 7500F (24964), 0.3% above the Core i7-11850H (24935), and 0.4% above the Core i7-13620H (24911), while trailing the EPYC 9474F (25103) by 0.4%. The CPU's 77th percentile rank among all CPUs reflects its solid multi-threaded performance, but in Control, the game's demands appear to favor GPU throughput over CPU muscle.

The combo's rank of 1422 suggests that many systems with weaker CPUs but stronger GPUs outperform it, while systems with similar GPU class but faster CPUs likely land nearby. The data indicates that for Control specifically, upgrading the GPU would yield larger frame rate gains than upgrading the CPU, given the measured scaling patterns.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full settings ladder shows a clear progression: Low averages 162 FPS, Medium 115 FPS (with a 98-132 range), High 102 FPS, and Ultra 89 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 73 FPS, representing a 45% reduction in frame rate when moving from the least to most demanding preset. The Medium preset's minimum of 98 FPS ensures that even demanding scenes stay well above 60 FPS, while the maximum of 132 FPS provides headroom for variable refresh rate displays.

At 2560x1440, the averages are 123 FPS (Low), 87 FPS (Medium, with 74-100 range), 77 FPS (High), and 67 FPS (Ultra). The Low-to-Ultra gap narrows to 56 FPS, a 46% reduction. The Medium preset's minimum of 74 FPS remains above 60 FPS, but the Ultra preset's 67 FPS average leaves little margin for frame time spikes. The High preset at 77 FPS is the highest settings tier that maintains a comfortable buffer above 60 FPS.

At 3840x2160, the averages drop to 83 FPS (Low), 59 FPS (Medium, with 50-68 range), 52 FPS (High), and 45 FPS (Ultra). The Low-to-Ultra gap is now 38 FPS, a 46% reduction, consistent with the 1440p scaling. The Medium preset's 59 FPS average is just below 60 FPS, and its 50 FPS minimum indicates that some scenes will dip noticeably. The High and Ultra presets at 52 and 45 FPS respectively are likely too low for smooth gameplay on standard 60 Hz displays.

The minimum and maximum frame rate data, available only for Medium settings, reveals the frame pacing characteristics. At 1080p, the 98-132 range represents a 34 FPS spread around the 115 average, indicating moderate variance. At 1440p, the 74-100 range is a 26 FPS spread around 87, showing tighter pacing. At 4K, the 50-68 range is an 18 FPS spread around 59, demonstrating that the variance narrows as resolution increases, likely because the GPU becomes more consistently saturated.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture using the AD106 chip, fabricated on a 5 nm process at TSMC with 22,900 million transistors on a 188 mm² die. The GPU operates at a base clock of 2310 MHz and a boost clock of 2535 MHz, with memory running at 2250 MHz (18 Gbps effective). The 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus provides 288.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which appears to be the primary constraint at 4K resolutions in Control.

The GPU's 4352 shading units, 136 TMUs, and 48 ROPs deliver a pixel rate of 121.7 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 344.8 GTexel/s. The FP32 throughput of 22.06 TFLOPS (and matching FP16 at 22.06 TFLOPS) indicates balanced compute capability. With 34 RT cores and 136 tensor cores, the GPU is equipped for ray tracing and DLSS workloads, though the measured data does not include ray tracing results for Control.

The 160 W TDP and 450 W suggested PSU indicate a power-efficient design, and the dual-slot form factor with a 240 mm length makes it suitable for most cases. The PCIe 4.0 x8 interface, while narrower than x16, does not appear to bottleneck performance in this game based on the measured results. The GPU's 19th percentile rank among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 2913 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, confirms its positioning as a mid-range part.

In Control, the GPU's role is decisive at 4K. The 45 FPS Ultra result and 52 FPS High result suggest that the 8 GB VRAM capacity is not the limiting factor (the game fits within 8 GB at these settings), but rather the 288.0 GB/s bandwidth and 128-bit bus struggle to feed the shader cores at 3840x2160. The 4K Low result of 83 FPS demonstrates that even with minimal settings, the GPU cannot exceed roughly 83 FPS, confirming a hard architectural limit at this resolution.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in Control?

A: The measured data shows 1920x1080 delivers the most consistent experience, with all settings tiers averaging above 89 FPS. At 2560x1440, Medium and High presets remain above 77 FPS, while 3840x2160 only achieves playable frame rates at Low (83 FPS) and Medium (59 FPS) settings.

Q: How does the RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB compare to the 16 GB version?

A: In the 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 benchmark, the 8 GB version scores 2913, which is 0.2% higher than the 16 GB version's 2907. The measured Control data does not include comparisons, but the synthetic scores suggest near-identical performance in scenarios that do not exceed 8 GB VRAM.

Q: Does the Ryzen 5 8400F bottleneck the RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB in this game?

A: The 1080p Low result of 162 FPS suggests the CPU can drive high frame rates, and the consistent 24-33% frame rate drops across settings tiers when moving to 4K indicate GPU-bound scaling. The CPU's 77th percentile rank and 12 threads provide sufficient headroom for Control's demands.

Q: What frame rates can I expect at 1440p with High settings?

A: The measured average is 77 FPS at 2560x1440 with High settings, with no minimum or maximum data recorded for this configuration. The 67 FPS Ultra result and 87 FPS Medium result bracket this figure, indicating High sits between these values.

Q: Is the 8 GB VRAM sufficient for Control at 4K?

A: The measured results show playable frame rates at 4K Medium (59 FPS) and 4K Low (83 FPS), indicating the game operates within 8 GB at these settings. The 4K High (52 FPS) and 4K Ultra (45 FPS) results are more likely limited by bandwidth and compute than VRAM capacity.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested systems?

A: It ranks 1422 out of 3720 combinations, placing it in the 38th percentile. The CPU's nearest rivals are within 0.4% in average benchmark score, and the GPU's nearest rivals are within 0.7%, suggesting the combo's rank is driven more by the GPU's mid-pack positioning.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 8400F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 4 architecture (Phoenix codename), fabricated on a 4 nm process at TSMC with 25,000 million transistors on a 178 mm² die. It operates at a base clock of 4.20 GHz and a boost clock of 4.70 GHz, with a 65 W TDP. The cache configuration includes 64 KB of L1 per core, 1 MB of L2 per core, and 16 MB of shared L3 cache. Memory support is dual-channel DDR5 with 83.2 GB/s bandwidth, and the CPU connects via PCIe Gen 4 with 20 lanes.

The CPU's benchmark results show strong multi-threaded performance: Cinebench R23 multicore scores 20851, while single-core scores 2943. The 3DMark results scale from 1874 (2 threads) to 6165 (max threads), with 8-thread performance at 5275. PassMark multi-thread scores 24389, and single-thread scores 3685. The CPU's 77th percentile rank among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 25005, places it slightly above the Ryzen 5 7500F (24964, 0.2% delta) and Core i7-13620H (24911, 0.4% delta).

In Control, the CPU's role is most apparent at 1080p Low settings, where the 162 FPS average suggests the processor can feed the GPU well beyond typical display refresh rates. The 12 threads handle the game's physics and AI workloads without becoming a constraint, as evidenced by the minimal frame rate variance across settings at 1080p (89-162 FPS range). The CPU's 4.70 GHz boost clock provides strong single-thread performance for game logic, while the 16 MB L3 cache reduces memory latency for frequently accessed data.

The data does not indicate any CPU-bound scenarios in the measured results. Even at 4K Low, where the GPU is least stressed, the 83 FPS result is likely GPU-limited given the 128-bit memory bus. The CPU's nearest rivals in average benchmark score are all within 0.4%, yet none of these rivals appear in the Control combo rankings, suggesting that CPU choice within this performance class has minimal impact on this game's frame rates. The 8400F's 4 nm process and 65 W TDP also contribute to thermal headroom, allowing sustained boost clocks during extended gaming sessions, though the measured data does not include temperature or clock behavior during Control.