Control

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 combination delivers a commanding performance in Control, a 2019 Action Adventure title that remains demanding at high resolutions. This pairing ranks 64th out of 2,888 tested combos in this game, placing it firmly in the top tier of systems. The data indicates a setup that can handle the game’s atmospheric environments and physics-driven combat with ease, though the relationship between CPU and GPU shifts noticeably across settings and resolutions.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo’s position at rank 64 out of 2,888 tested configurations places it in the top 2.2 percent of all systems measured for Control. This is a strong showing, but it is not the absolute pinnacle, suggesting that other combinations of newer or more specialized hardware can push slightly higher frame rates in this specific title. The benchmark results indicate that the Ryzen 7 9700F and RTX 5090 together form a balanced platform, with neither component acting as a severe bottleneck in most scenarios.

Given the game’s release date, the hardware is significantly newer, which explains the high ranking. The CPU’s benchmark percentile versus all CPUs sits at 94, meaning it outperforms 94 percent of tested processors. The GPU’s percentile versus all GPUs is slightly lower at 92, but the absolute performance of the RTX 5090 is enormous. The data shows that the combination’s rank is driven primarily by the GPU’s raw rasterization power, as the CPU’s role becomes more critical at lower resolutions where frame rates soar.

When compared to the nearest rivals in the database, the Ryzen 7 9700F’s average benchmark score of 69,996 is nearly identical to the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX, which scores 69,875, a delta of just 0.2 percent. The Intel Core i7-14700KF scores 70,163, putting it 0.2 percent ahead of the 9700F, while the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X is 0.7 percent behind at 69,515. The Intel Core i7-14700K trails by 0.9 percent with a score of 69,355. These margins are negligible in real-world gaming, indicating that the 9700F competes directly with flagship desktop and mobile processors from the previous generation.

For the GPU, the RTX 5090’s average benchmark score is 79,842. Its nearest rival, the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB, scores 79,605, a delta of 0.3 percent, meaning the 5090 is slightly ahead. The Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB is 0.6 percent behind at 79,396, and the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT is 1.1 percent behind at 78,940. The AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X scores 80,959, which is 1.4 percent ahead of the 5090. These comparisons show that the RTX 5090’s synthetic benchmark performance is in the same league as professional-grade accelerators, though its gaming-specific capabilities are far superior due to driver optimization.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F is an 8-core, 16-thread processor built on the Zen 5 architecture, codenamed Granite Ridge, and manufactured on a 4 nm process at TSMC. Its base clock is 3.80 GHz, with a boost clock of 5.50 GHz. The CPU has a 65 W TDP, which is remarkably low for a desktop processor with this core count, and it fits into the AMD Socket AM5. The cache structure includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 1 MB of L2 per core, and a shared 32 MB L3 cache. Memory support is DDR5 over a dual-channel bus, with a bandwidth of 89.6 GB/s, and ECC memory is supported.

In Control, the CPU’s role is to manage game logic, physics calculations, and draw calls. The game is not heavily threaded, but the 8-core, 16-thread configuration ensures that background tasks and the main render thread have ample resources. The PassMark single-thread score of 4,691 is strong, which matters for a game that often relies on a single primary thread for frame pacing. The multi-thread score of 36,470 indicates that even if Control uses multiple threads for particle effects and destructible environments, the 9700F has headroom.

The boost clock of 5.50 GHz is significant. Higher clocks reduce frame time variance, which can translate to better minimum frame rates. The benchmark data shows that at 1080p Low settings, the combo achieves 279 FPS, which is likely CPU-limited to some degree. At this setting, the GPU is underutilized, and the CPU’s ability to issue draw calls and update game state becomes the limiting factor. The 9700F’s high single-thread performance helps keep that ceiling high.

Compared to its rivals, the 9700F’s performance is essentially a wash. The 0.2 percent delta versus the Ryzen 9 7940HX and the 0.2 percent deficit against the Core i7-14700KF are within run-to-run variance. In practical terms, no player would notice a difference between these processors in Control. The 9700F’s advantage lies in its lower TDP and newer architecture, which offers better efficiency, but the benchmark scores do not show a decisive win in raw compute.

The CPU’s benchmark results in specific tests reveal its strengths. The PassMark data compression score of 421,988 and integer math score of 120,788 suggest strong general-purpose performance. The floating-point math score of 77,955 is also robust. For gaming, the extended instructions score of 33,688 indicates good support for modern instruction sets. The physics score of 2,122 is moderate, but Control relies more on GPU physics than CPU physics for many effects.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is the flagship of the GeForce 50-series, built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with the GB202 chip, manufactured on a 5 nm process at TSMC. It packs 92,200 million transistors on a 750 mm² die, with a transistor density of 122.9 million per mm². The GPU has 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s. The base clock is 2017 MHz, with a boost clock of 2407 MHz, and memory runs at 1750 MHz, effective 28 Gbps.

The RTX 5090 features 21,760 shading units, 680 TMUs, and 176 ROPs. It has 170 RT cores and 680 tensor cores. The pixel rate is 423.6 GPixel/s, and the texture rate is 1,636.8 GTexel/s. FP32 performance is 104.8 TFLOPS, with FP16 at the same rate (1:1). The GPU has a TDP of 575 W, requires a 16-pin power connector, and suggests a 950 W PSU. It is a dual-slot card, 304 mm long, 137 mm tall, and 40 mm wide.

In Control, the GPU is the dominant component at higher resolutions and settings. The game features extensive use of ray tracing and high-resolution textures, both of which stress the GPU’s memory bandwidth and compute units. The 32 GB VRAM is overkill for this title, as Control does not need more than 8 GB even at 4K Ultra, but the sheer amount of memory ensures zero texture swapping and allows for maximum streaming distance.

The RTX 5090’s PassMark G3D score of 39,650 is the highest in its benchmark suite, and its DirectX 12 score of 185 is notable, though the DirectX 11 score of 341 and DirectX 10 score of 226 are lower. The Geekbench OpenCL score of 334,370 and Vulkan score of 376,728 show strong compute capabilities. For Control, which uses DirectX 12, the performance is excellent, as evidenced by the measured FPS.

The GPU’s nearest rivals in the database are professional Tesla cards and a mobile Radeon, which underscores that the RTX 5090 is in a class of its own for consumer gaming. The 0.3 percent lead over the Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB is irrelevant, as that card is not designed for gaming. The RTX 5090’s advantage in Control comes from its dedicated RT cores and high memory bandwidth, which enable smooth frame rates even with ray tracing enabled.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data for this combo covers three resolutions (1080p, 1440p, 4K) and four settings (Low, Medium, High, Ultra). At 1920x1080, the average frame rates are 279 FPS on Low, 198 FPS on Medium, 176 FPS on High, and 153 FPS on Ultra. The Medium setting has a minimum FPS of 168 and a maximum of 228, showing a range of 60 FPS, which indicates some scene-to-scene variance. At 1080p, the frame rates are exceptionally high, so any display with a high refresh rate will be fully utilized.

At 2560x1440, the averages drop to 211 FPS on Low, 150 FPS on Medium, 133 FPS on High, and 116 FPS on Ultra. The Medium setting shows a minimum of 127 FPS and a maximum of 172 FPS, again a 45 FPS spread. These numbers show that even at 1440p, the combo remains well above 100 FPS on all settings, making it suitable for high-refresh-rate gaming at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the averages are 142 FPS on Low, 101 FPS on Medium, 90 FPS on High, and 78 FPS on Ultra. The Medium setting has a minimum of 86 FPS and a maximum of 116 FPS. This is the first resolution where Ultra settings fall below 80 FPS, but 78 FPS is still playable on most displays. The 4K Low setting at 142 FPS shows that the GPU is capable of high frame rates even at 4K if settings are reduced.

The data shows a clear pattern: as settings increase, frame rates drop, but the relative drop is larger at 4K than at 1080p. From Low to Ultra at 1080p, the FPS drops from 279 to 153, a 45 percent reduction. At 1440p, the drop is from 211 to 116, a 45 percent reduction as well. At 4K, the drop is from 142 to 78, a 45 percent reduction. This consistent percentage suggests that the GPU is the primary bottleneck across all settings, with the CPU’s role remaining constant relative to resolution.

Resolution Scaling

The scaling from 1080p to 4K is steep, but the combo handles it gracefully. At Low settings, the average FPS goes from 279 at 1080p to 211 at 1440p (a 24 percent drop) and then to 142 at 4K (a 33 percent drop from 1440p). The total drop from 1080p to 4K at Low is 49 percent. At Medium settings, the numbers are 198, 150, and 101, with drops of 24 percent and 33 percent, totaling 49 percent. At High, the values are 176, 133, and 90, with drops of 24 percent and 32 percent, totaling 49 percent. At Ultra, the values are 153, 116, and 78, with drops of 24 percent and 33 percent, again totaling 49 percent.

This consistent 49 percent reduction from 1080p to 4K across all settings indicates that the limiting component is the GPU’s pixel throughput and memory bandwidth. The RTX 5090’s 1.79 TB/s bandwidth is massive, but the sheer number of pixels at 4K (over 8 million) still requires more time to render. The CPU’s role does not increase with resolution because the number of draw calls and game logic updates remains the same; only the GPU’s workload scales.

The fact that the percentage drop is identical across settings suggests that the game is not becoming CPU-bound at any point. If the CPU were a bottleneck at 1080p, we would see a smaller percentage drop from 1080p to 4K, because the GPU would have more headroom to work while the CPU remained saturated. The data shows the opposite, confirming that the Ryzen 7 9700F is sufficient to feed the RTX 5090 even at 1080p Low, where the frame rate exceeds 270 FPS.

The scaling also reveals that the RTX 5090’s performance in Control is not limited by VRAM, as the 32 GB capacity is far beyond what the game requires. The 4K Ultra setting at 78 FPS is likely limited by the GPU’s compute units and ROPs, not memory. The pixel rate of 423.6 GPixel/s translates to a theoretical maximum of about 423.6 million pixels per second, and 4K has 8.3 million pixels, so the GPU can theoretically fill over 50 frames per second, but actual performance is lower due to shading and texture work.

FAQ

*Q: What is the combo’s rank in Control and how many total combos were tested?*

A: The combo ranks 64th out of 2,888 tested combinations, placing it in the top 2.2 percent for this game.

Q: How does the Ryzen 7 9700F compare to its nearest CPU rivals in benchmark scores?

A: The 9700F scores 69,996, which is 0.2 percent ahead of the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX (69,875) and 0.2 percent behind the Intel Core i7-14700KF (70,163). It is 0.7 percent ahead of the Ryzen 9 7950X (69,515) and 0.9 percent ahead of the Core i7-14700K (69,355).

Q: What is the highest average FPS achieved at 1080p and at what settings?

A: The highest average FPS at 1080p is 279, achieved on Low settings. On Ultra settings, the average drops to 153 FPS.

Q: At 4K Ultra, what is the average FPS and is it playable?

A: At 4K Ultra, the average FPS is 78, which is above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay on most displays, though not ideal for high-refresh-rate monitors.

*Q: Does the CPU or GPU limit performance in Control?*

A: The GPU is the limiting component. The FPS drops by a consistent 49 percent from 1080p to 4K across all settings, indicating that the CPU is not a bottleneck even at low resolutions with high frame rates.

Q: What is the RTX 5090’s benchmark score and how does it compare to its nearest rival?

A: The RTX 5090 has an average benchmark score of 79,842. It is 0.3 percent ahead of the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB (79,605) and 1.1 percent ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (78,940). The AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X is 1.4 percent ahead with a score of 80,959.