Control

# Control with AMD Ryzen 7 9700F + AMD Radeon RX 9060

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F paired with the AMD Radeon RX 9060 delivers a playable but not overwhelming experience in Control, a game that leans heavily on GPU throughput at higher resolutions. Measured results across three resolutions and four quality presets show a system that handles 1080p comfortably, struggles at 4K, and sits in the lower-middle tier of tested combinations overall. The combo ranks 2152nd out of 3720 tested combinations, placing it in the 58th percentile of all systems tested for this title — a solid mid-pack result that reflects the GPU's position as a 1080p-focused card with 1440p aspirations.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate curve from 1080p to 4K tells a clear story about where this system's bottleneck lives. At 1080p with High settings, the average sits at 82 FPS, which is smooth for a third-person action-adventure. Dropping to Low at 1080p yields 130 FPS, while Medium hits 92 FPS and Ultra falls to 71 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra at 1080p is 59 FPS, indicating the GPU is doing meaningful work even at this resolution, but the CPU has enough headroom to keep frames flowing.

Moving to 1440p, the High preset average drops to 62 FPS — a 24% reduction from the 1080p High result. Low at 1440p still manages 98 FPS, Medium lands at 70 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 54 FPS. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p at High settings represents a loss of 20 FPS, which is a typical penalty for a 78% increase in pixel count. This suggests the RX 9060 is still reasonably capable at 1440p, though the Ultra preset at 54 FPS is borderline for a game that rewards smooth camera movement.

At 4K, the picture changes dramatically. High settings produce just 42 FPS, Medium drops to 47 FPS, Low manages 66 FPS, and Ultra falls to 36 FPS. The jump from 1440p High to 4K High is a 20 FPS loss, a 32% drop. Comparing 1080p High (82 FPS) to 4K High (42 FPS), the total loss is exactly half the frame rate. This 4K result is below the 60 FPS threshold most players consider comfortable, and even the Low preset at 66 FPS requires significant visual compromise. The scaling pattern — where 4K High is essentially half the 1080p High result — indicates the GPU is the limiting factor at higher resolutions, with the CPU contributing little to the frame rate equation once pixel count rises.

The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is 30 FPS, which is proportionally similar to the 59 FPS gap at 1080p. This consistency suggests the GPU's compute and memory bandwidth are being taxed uniformly across resolution changes, rather than a sudden CPU stall. The measured FPS values at 4K Medium include a min of 40 and max of 54, showing frame pacing is tight even when average FPS is modest.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 9060 is built on the Navi 44 chip using the RDNA 4.0 architecture, fabricated on a 4 nm TSMC process with 29,700 million transistors on a 199 mm² die. It carries 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, delivering 288.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU's base clock is 1700 MHz, with a boost clock of 2990 MHz and a game clock of 2400 MHz. Memory runs at 2250 MHz, translating to 18 Gbps effective. The card has 1792 shading units, 112 texture mapping units, and 64 ROPs, along with 28 ray tracing cores. Its FP32 throughput is 21.43 TFLOPS, and the texture rate is 334.9 GTexel/s, with a pixel rate of 191.4 GPixel/s. The GPU's TDP is 132 W, and it requires a single 8-pin power connector with a suggested 300 W power supply. The bus interface is PCIe 5.0 x16.

In synthetic benchmarks, the RX 9060 scores 17631 in Passmark G3D and 9919 in Passmark GPU Compute. Its 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score is 3322. Geekbench OpenCL yields 88183, and Vulkan scores 39476. The GPU's Passmark DirectX 11 score is 182, while DirectX 12 is just 44 — a notably low number that may reflect driver overhead or specific API workload characteristics. The card's percentile versus all GPUs is 59, and its average benchmark score is 16014.

Relative to its nearest rivals, the RX 9060 sits within a tight cluster. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti averages 16129, just 0.7% higher. The AMD Radeon R9 370X averages 15862, which is 1% lower, and the AMD Radeon RX 7700 averages 15852, also 1% lower. The AMD Radeon Pro W5500 averages 15679, 2.1% below the RX 9060. This places the RX 9060 in a performance band where it trades blows with last-generation mid-range cards, and its 8 GB VRAM capacity is adequate for Control's texture demands at 1080p and 1440p, but 4K High settings with dense particle effects could approach memory limits.

The GPU's role in Control is dominant at higher resolutions. The 4K High result of 42 FPS, compared to 1440p High at 62 FPS, shows the card's raw fill rate and memory bandwidth are the primary constraints. The 288 GB/s bandwidth is sufficient for 1080p and most 1440p scenarios, but the 128-bit bus becomes a limiting factor when pushing 8.3 million pixels at 4K. The boost clock of 2990 MHz is high for a mid-range card, but it cannot compensate for the modest memory subsystem when resolution scales up.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F is an 8-core, 16-thread processor from the 9000 series, built on the Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge) using a 4 nm TSMC process. It has a base clock of 3.80 GHz and a boost clock of 5.50 GHz, with a TDP of 65 W. The CPU supports DDR5 memory in dual-channel configuration, with a memory bandwidth of 89.6 GB/s, and it uses the AMD Socket AM5 platform. It has 8,315 million transistors on a 70.6 mm² die, with 80 KB of L1 cache per core, 1 MB of L2 per core, and 32 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU supports PCIe Gen 5 with 24 lanes, and it has no integrated graphics. Its launch MSRP is $289, and it was released in September 2025.

In synthetic benchmarks, the Ryzen 7 9700F scores 4691 in Passmark single-thread and 36470 in multithread. Its Passmark integer math score is 120788, floating point math is 77955, and extended instructions score 33688. The CPU's data compression score is 421988, encryption is 21488, and random string sorting is 45890. It finds 183 prime numbers in the Passmark test. The average benchmark score is 69996, with a percentile of 94 versus all CPUs.

Relative to rivals, the Ryzen 7 9700F is essentially tied with the nearest competition. The AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX averages 69875, just 0.2% lower. The Intel Core i7-14700KF averages 70163, 0.2% higher. The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X averages 69515, 0.7% lower, and the Intel Core i7-14700K averages 69355, 0.9% lower. This indicates the 9700F is a well-balanced performer in its class, with strong single-threaded capability that benefits games like Control.

In this game, the CPU's role is secondary. At 1080p Low, the system hits 130 FPS, which is likely near the CPU's practical limit for this title's engine. The 5.50 GHz boost clock and 16 threads provide enough headroom to keep frame times consistent at lower resolutions, where the GPU is not the limiting factor. However, the measured FPS data shows that at 1440p and 4K, the GPU's workload dominates, and the CPU's contribution becomes less relevant. The 1080p Ultra result of 71 FPS — only 9 FPS below the High preset — suggests the CPU can feed the GPU adequately even when settings increase, since the frame rate drop is more attributable to GPU load than CPU stalls.

The 89.6 GB/s memory bandwidth and dual-channel DDR5 support are sufficient for Control's streaming needs, and the 32 MB L3 cache helps with the game's asset loading patterns. The CPU's 94th percentile ranking among all processors indicates it is a high-end part, but in this specific title, its performance headroom is only visible at 1080p Low where the frame rate exceeds 120 FPS.

FAQ

*Q: Can this system run Control at 60 FPS on a 1440p monitor?*

A: Yes, at Medium settings you get 70 FPS average (min 59, max 80), and High settings yield 62 FPS. Ultra drops to 54 FPS, so you would need to lower settings to maintain a solid 60 FPS at 1440p.

Q: Is 4K playable with this combo?

A: Only at Low settings, which averages 66 FPS. Medium averages 47 FPS, High averages 42 FPS, and Ultra averages 36 FPS. For a smooth 4K experience, Low is the only viable preset, and even then frame drops may occur in heavy scenes.

Q: How does the RX 9060 compare to the RTX 3060 Ti in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RX 9060's average benchmark score is 16014, while the RTX 3060 Ti scores 16129, a difference of 0.7% in favor of the NVIDIA card. This is within margin of error and indicates near-identical overall performance.

Q: What is the best resolution for this system?

A: 1080p is the sweet spot. High settings produce 82 FPS, and even Ultra stays above 70 FPS. At 1440p, you must choose between High at 62 FPS or Medium at 70 FPS, which is still playable but requires compromise.

Q: Does the Ryzen 7 9700F bottleneck the RX 9060?

A: No, not in this game. At 1080p Low, the system reaches 130 FPS, showing the CPU can push high frame rates. At higher resolutions, the GPU becomes the limiting factor, and the CPU's 8 cores and 16 threads are more than sufficient.

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

A: It ranks 2152nd out of 3720 tested combinations, placing it in the lower-middle of the pack. This is consistent with a mid-range GPU paired with a high-end CPU, where the GPU holds back overall performance.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo ranking of 2152 out of 3720 tested combinations places this system in the 58th percentile for Control performance. This means roughly 58% of tested systems perform better, and 42% perform worse. The ranking reflects the GPU's position as the limiting factor: the Ryzen 7 9700F is a top-tier CPU (94th percentile among all CPUs), but the RX 9060 sits at the 59th percentile among all GPUs. When combined, the system's overall performance is dragged down by the graphics card.

The rank of 2152 is not a poor result — it indicates a capable 1080p gaming system that can handle 1440p with settings adjustments. However, it is far from the top tier, where systems with higher-end GPUs would achieve 4K Ultra at 60+ FPS. The gap between the CPU's high percentile and the GPU's mid-range percentile explains why this system lands in the lower-middle of the overall ranking. In Control specifically, the game's visual effects and physics simulation are GPU-intensive, so the CPU's strength does not translate into a higher rank.

For context, the nearest GPU rivals — the RTX 3060 Ti, R9 370X, RX 7700, and Pro W5500 — all have average scores within 2.1% of the RX 9060. This means swapping the GPU for any of these would produce nearly identical frame rates in Control, and the combo ranking would likely shift by only a few dozen positions. The CPU's nearest rivals (Ryzen 9 7940HX, Core i7-14700KF, Ryzen 9 7950X, Core i7-14700K) are all within 0.9% of the 9700F, so CPU changes would have even less impact on the ranking.

The takeaway from the ranking is that this system is balanced at the bottom end of what is considered a modern gaming rig. It will not impress enthusiasts seeking maximum frame rates, but it is far from a low-end configuration. Players targeting 1080p with high refresh rates will find the system adequate, while those seeking 1440p or 4K will need to make significant settings compromises.

Settings Recommendations

For 1080p gaming, the High preset at 82 FPS is the best balance of visual quality and performance. It provides a smooth experience well above the 60 FPS threshold, with enough headroom for occasional dips. If you have a 120 Hz or 144 Hz monitor, the Low preset at 130 FPS is the only option that approaches those refresh rates, but the visual downgrade is substantial. Medium at 92 FPS is a reasonable compromise if you want higher refresh rates without going to minimum settings. Ultra at 71 FPS is viable but offers marginal visual gains over High for a 13% performance cost.

At 1440p, the Medium preset at 70 FPS (min 59, max 80) is the recommended choice. It stays above 60 FPS on average and provides a playable experience with acceptable frame pacing. High at 62 FPS is also playable if you prefer better shadows and texture filtering, but the min frame rate is not recorded, so stability is uncertain. Low at 98 FPS is overkill for most 60 Hz monitors and sacrifices too much visual fidelity. Ultra at 54 FPS should be avoided unless you prioritize image quality over smoothness.

For 4K, the only sensible option is Low at 66 FPS. Medium at 47 FPS is below the 60 FPS threshold and will feel less responsive, while High at 42 FPS and Ultra at 36 FPS are not recommended for action sequences. If you own a 4K display, consider this system a 4K Low machine for Control — it works, but you will see reduced texture detail, simpler lighting, and lower shadow quality. The 8 GB VRAM is sufficient at 4K Low, as the game's memory footprint at lower settings stays within budget.

Overall, the best experience per the measured data is 1080p High at 82 FPS. This delivers the visual fidelity that Control's art direction deserves — its shifting environments and particle effects look best with higher settings — while maintaining a frame rate that feels responsive. For 1440p owners, Medium at 70 FPS is the practical choice. For 4K owners, Low at 66 FPS is the only way to stay above 60 FPS, and even then, the experience is marginal. The system's strengths lie in 1080p, where the CPU and GPU work together effectively, and this is where players should aim to play.