Control

Settings Recommendations

The measured data for Control with the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER reveals a clear hierarchy across presets, with the High setting delivering the most balanced experience. At 1080p, High produces 134.2 FPS average, which is a substantial 16.8 FPS above the Ultra preset's 117.4 FPS, while remaining visually demanding enough to justify the settings tier. The Medium preset sits between these at 151.4 FPS, but the gap between Medium and High (17.2 FPS) is nearly identical to the gap between High and Ultra (16.8 FPS), suggesting diminishing returns as settings climb.

At 1440p, the pattern holds with High achieving 103 FPS, which comfortably exceeds the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay while maintaining fidelity. Ultra at this resolution drops to 88.6 FPS, still playable but with a 14.4 FPS penalty compared to High. The 4K results tell a more nuanced story: High delivers 72.1 FPS, which is above the 60 FPS target, while Ultra falls to 59.5 FPS—just below that threshold. This makes High the recommended preset for 4K, as it provides the best visual quality while maintaining a playable frame rate.

For users prioritizing maximum frame rates, Low at 1080p achieves 213.1 FPS, but the visual compromise is severe. The data indicates that High is the sweet spot across all resolutions: it delivers 134.2 FPS at 1080p, 103 FPS at 1440p, and 72.1 FPS at 4K. This consistency across resolutions—where High maintains a lead over Ultra of roughly 12-15%—suggests the preset scales predictably with resolution, making it the optimal choice for this hardware combination.

GPU Role

The RTX 4070 SUPER brings 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus, yielding 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth. Its boost clock of 2475 MHz and base clock of 1980 MHz position it as a capable performer, with the memory running at 1313 MHz (21 Gbps effective). These specifications translate into a PassMark G3D score of 29995 and a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 4627, placing the GPU in the 84th percentile of all GPUs.

In Control, the GPU's role becomes evident when examining the scaling between Low and Ultra presets. At 1080p, the jump from Low (213.1 FPS) to Ultra (117.4 FPS) represents a 95.7 FPS drop—a 44.9% reduction in performance. This substantial penalty indicates that Ultra settings heavily tax the GPU's shading units and memory subsystem. The 7168 shading units and 224 texture mapping units are clearly being pushed to their limits at Ultra, particularly with the 56 ray tracing cores engaged for the game's physics and lighting effects.

The GPU's 35.48 TFLOPS FP32 performance and 198.0 GPixel/s pixel rate are sufficient to handle Control's demands at High settings, but the data shows that Ultra at 4K (59.5 FPS) falls just short of a locked 60 FPS experience. This suggests the 12 GB VRAM buffer is adequate for the game's textures at 4K High, but the memory bandwidth of 504.2 GB/s becomes a limiting factor when Ultra settings increase texture streaming and post-processing loads.

FAQ

Q: What is the best preset for 4K gaming with this hardware?

A: High settings at 3840x2160 produce 72.1 FPS average, which is comfortably above the 60 FPS target. Ultra drops to 59.5 FPS, making High the recommended choice for 4K.

Q: How much performance difference exists between Low and Ultra at 1080p?

A: Low achieves 213.1 FPS at 1920x1080, while Ultra manages 117.4 FPS—a difference of 95.7 FPS, representing a 44.9% reduction from Low to Ultra.

Q: Does the RTX 4070 SUPER maintain 1440p at high refresh rates?

A: Yes, at 2560x1440 with High settings, the average FPS is 103, which supports refresh rates up to 100 Hz. Medium achieves 118.9 FPS, and Low reaches 164.5 FPS.

Q: What is the GPU's percentile ranking among all tested GPUs?

A: The RTX 4070 SUPER ranks in the 84th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 42576.

Q: How does the CPU's single-thread performance compare to its multi-thread?

A: The Ryzen 7 7700X scores 4281 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 30325 in multi-core. Its Geekbench scores are 2985 single-core and 15538 multi-core.

Q: Is the 12 GB VRAM sufficient for Control at high settings?

A: The data shows High at 4K producing 72.1 FPS, indicating the 12 GB buffer handles the game's requirements at this preset without performance collapse.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700X paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER achieves a combo rank of 271 out of 1636 tested combinations in Control. This places the pairing in the top 16.6% of all tested systems, a strong showing for a mid-range to upper-mid-range configuration. The rank reflects the balanced nature of this pairing—neither component significantly bottlenecks the other in this title.

The CPU's average benchmark score of 34313 places it in the 89th percentile of all CPUs, while the GPU's 42576 average score sits in the 84th percentile of all GPUs. Both components are near the top of their respective distributions, which explains the high combo ranking. The CPU's nearest rival, the Intel Core Ultra 7 165H, scores 34584—a 0.8% delta—while the GPU's closest competitor, the NVIDIA RTX A6000, scores 42653 with a -0.2% delta. These tight margins indicate the combo is well-matched, with neither component falling far from its peer group's performance.

Given that 1636 combos were tested, ranking 271st means the system outperforms roughly 1365 other configurations. This is particularly noteworthy because the RTX 4070 SUPER is listed as end-of-life, yet it still competes effectively in this older title. The combination's strong ranking suggests that Control's engine benefits from both the CPU's 8-core, 16-thread configuration and the GPU's Ada Lovelace architecture, which handles the game's physics-based destruction and particle effects efficiently.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700X features 8 cores and 16 threads based on the Zen 4 architecture, with a base clock of 4.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.40 GHz. This CPU, built on a 5 nm process at TSMC with 6,570 million transistors on a 71 mm² die, delivers strong single-thread performance—critical for Control's gameplay logic and physics calculations. The Geekbench single-core score of 2985 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4281 indicate excellent per-thread performance.

The CPU's 32 MB of shared L3 cache and 1 MB L2 cache per core provide ample data locality for game assets, while its dual-channel DDR5 memory support with 83.2 GB/s bandwidth ensures the GPU receives data without starvation. In Control, the CPU's role becomes more apparent at lower resolutions where frame rates exceed 200 FPS. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 213.1 FPS, which approaches the CPU's ability to feed draw calls and physics updates to the GPU.

The 3DMark multi-threaded scores show the CPU scales well: 8859 for 16 threads, 7057 for 8 threads, 4074 for 4 threads, and 2112 for 2 threads. This scaling pattern indicates that Control benefits from multiple cores, as the game's asynchronous compute and physics threads can utilize the CPU's 16 threads effectively. The PassMark multi-thread score of 35686 and physical score of 2007 further confirm the CPU's capability to handle the game's simulation load without becoming the limiting factor.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data covers three resolutions and four settings presets, providing a comprehensive view of performance. At 1920x1080, the system delivers 213.1 FPS on Low, 151.4 FPS on Medium, 134.2 FPS on High, and 117.4 FPS on Ultra. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a steady decline, with the largest single-step drop occurring between Low and Medium (61.7 FPS), followed by a 17.2 FPS drop to High, and a 16.8 FPS drop to Ultra.

At 2560x1440, the results are 164.5 FPS on Low, 118.9 FPS on Medium, 103 FPS on High, and 88.6 FPS on Ultra. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p shows a consistent reduction of roughly 23-27% across all presets: Low drops 48.6 FPS, Medium drops 32.5 FPS, High drops 31.2 FPS, and Ultra drops 28.8 FPS. This pattern suggests that higher settings are relatively more efficient at 1440p, as the percentage drop from 1080p diminishes with increasing preset quality.

At 3840x2160, the system achieves 106.5 FPS on Low, 79.9 FPS on Medium, 72.1 FPS on High, and 59.5 FPS on Ultra. The transition from 1440p to 4K reveals more significant drops: Low falls 58 FPS (35.3%), Medium falls 39 FPS (32.8%), High falls 30.9 FPS (30%), and Ultra falls 29.1 FPS (32.9%). These reductions indicate that 4K places substantial pressure on the GPU, with the pixel throughput requirement quadrupling from 1080p.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K reveals important insights about the system's bottleneck. At Low settings, the average FPS falls from 213.1 at 1080p to 106.5 at 4K—a 106.6 FPS reduction, or exactly 50%. This halving of performance from a 4x increase in pixel count indicates that at Low settings, the GPU is the primary constraint, as the CPU has enough headroom to maintain high frame rates but the GPU cannot render pixels fast enough.

At Medium settings, the drop from 151.4 FPS at 1080p to 79.9 FPS at 4K represents a 71.5 FPS reduction (47.2%). High settings show a 62.1 FPS drop (from 134.2 to 72.1), a 46.3% reduction. Ultra settings exhibit the smallest absolute drop at 57.9 FPS (from 117.4 to 59.5), a 49.3% reduction. These percentage reductions hovering around 47-50% across all presets suggest that resolution scaling is consistent regardless of settings, pointing to the GPU's pixel throughput as the dominant factor.

The fact that even at Low settings the 4K performance (106.5 FPS) is less than half of 1080p performance (213.1 FPS) indicates that the RTX 4070 SUPER's 198.0 GPixel/s pixel rate and 504.2 GB/s memory bandwidth are the limiting resources. The GPU's 12 GB VRAM capacity is not the constraint here, as the data shows consistent scaling rather than a sudden drop at 4K that would indicate memory overflow. This analysis suggests that users seeking higher 4K frame rates would benefit more from a GPU with higher pixel throughput than from CPU upgrades, as the Ryzen 7 7700X's single-thread performance (Geekbench 2985) and multi-thread capability (Cinebench R23 30325) provide ample processing power for this game.