Control

Control, Remedy’s 2019 action-adventure, presents a demanding mix of physics-heavy combat and destructible environments. For the combination of the AMD Ryzen 7 9700X and the AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT, the benchmark data indicates a clear performance hierarchy across settings and resolutions. The most balanced experience is found at 1440p with High settings, where the system delivers 71 FPS, striking an effective compromise between visual fidelity and frame rate. For players prioritizing smoothness above all else, 1080p Low pushes the average to 148 FPS, but this comes at the cost of the game's atmospheric detail. The data suggests that Ultra settings are largely impractical for this pairing at higher resolutions, with 4K Ultra dropping to 42 FPS. This analysis will break down the specific roles of the GPU and CPU, examine how the combo ranks against other tested configurations, and provide a detailed breakdown of the measured frame rates.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data for Control with this hardware pairing reveals a straightforward scaling pattern from Low to Ultra. At 1920x1080, the GPU is rarely the limiting factor, with average frame rates ranging from 148 FPS at Low to 81 FPS at Ultra. The 105 FPS average at Medium settings is particularly notable, as it maintains a high level of responsiveness while providing a more visually coherent world than the Low preset. However, the jump from Medium to High at 1080p shows a significant cost, with the average dropping from 105 FPS to 94 FPS, a reduction that is more pronounced than the visual uplift typically justifies in fast-paced action.

Moving to 2560x1440, the balance shifts. The High preset delivers a 71 FPS average, which is the sweet spot for this combination. It offers a substantial improvement in image clarity over 1080p while remaining comfortably within the range of a high-refresh-rate monitor. The Medium preset at 1440p yields 80 FPS, but the increased resolution exposes more of the game's texture and lighting details, making the visual sacrifices of Medium more apparent. At 1440p Ultra, the average dips to 62 FPS, which is playable but introduces noticeable frame pacing issues in combat-heavy scenes, as indicated by the data's overall trend.

At 3840x2160, the RX 6750 XT is clearly overburdened. Even the High preset only manages a 48 FPS average, which falls below the threshold for a consistently smooth experience on many displays. The Low preset at 4K achieves 76 FPS, but this requires disabling most of the graphical features that define Control's visual style, such as volumetric lighting and ray-traced reflections (qualitatively). Consequently, the recommended preset is High at 2560x1440. This configuration provides the best combination of visual quality, performance, and stability for this specific hardware pairing. For those with 1080p displays, Medium offers the best experience, as the 105 FPS average ensures fluid gameplay without the steep performance penalty of High and Ultra. The Ultra preset is not recommended at any resolution, as the performance cost is too high relative to the visual gains, particularly at 1440p and 4K where the average frame rates fall to 62 and 42 FPS, respectively.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT is the primary driver of performance in Control, especially as resolution increases. Its 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus provides a 432.0 GB/s bandwidth, which is sufficient for the game's high-resolution textures at 1440p. The GPU's specifications, including 2560 shading units and a boost clock of 2600 MHz, allow for a peak FP32 throughput of 13.31 TFLOPS. This raw compute power is what enables the 71 FPS average at 1440p High, a result that places this GPU in a specific tier of performance.

The data shows a clear GPU bottleneck emerging at 4K. The frame rate drops from a 94 FPS average at 1080p High to 48 FPS at 4K High, a reduction of over 48%. This steep decline indicates that the RX 6750 XT's compute and memory resources are saturated at the higher pixel count. The GPU's percentile ranking against all GPUs is 71, and its average benchmark score of 26011 places it in a competitive position against rivals like the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Mobile, which scores 25740, a 1.1% difference. This context is important; while the RX 6750 XT is not a top-tier card, it performs admirably at 1080p and 1440p in this title.

The difference between Low and Ultra settings at any resolution is stark, highlighting the GPU's workload. At 1440p, the average FPS jumps from 112 on Low to 62 on Ultra. This 50 FPS gap is almost entirely due to the increased shading and texture work demanded by the higher preset. The GPU's 40 ray-tracing cores are present, but the data does not include specific ray-tracing benchmarks, so their impact cannot be quantified here. However, the substantial performance drop at Ultra suggests that the most demanding features, which likely include advanced lighting effects, are heavily taxing the GPU's 13.31 TFLOPS of compute power. The GPU is the definitive limiting component at 4K and at all resolutions when the Ultra preset is enabled.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700X plays a supporting role in this pairing, providing enough headroom to avoid bottlenecking the RX 6750 XT. With 8 cores and 16 threads based on the Zen 5 architecture, the CPU's multi-threaded capabilities are substantial. Its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 20485 and single-core score of 2211 indicate strong performance that is more than adequate for Control's game logic and physics calculations. The CPU's 32 MB of shared L3 cache and 89.6 GB/s of memory bandwidth ensure that data can be fed to the GPU efficiently.

The benchmark data suggests that the CPU is not the limiting factor in most scenarios. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 148 FPS, which is a high frame rate that still leaves room before the CPU's maximum throughput is reached. The 3DMark single-thread score of 1280 and multi-thread score of 9771 confirm that the processor has the single-thread and multi-thread strength to handle the game's demands. The CPU's 65 W TDP and boost clock of 5.50 GHz allow for sustained performance without thermal throttling in most systems.

However, the CPU's influence becomes more apparent at lower resolutions and settings where the GPU has less work to do. The gap between 1080p Low (148 FPS) and 1080p Medium (105 FPS) is 43 FPS, which is a GPU-side cost. Yet, the fact that the 1080p Low result is the highest in the entire dataset indicates that the CPU can push frame rates well beyond 144 FPS in lighter scenes. The CPU's percentile ranking is 86, and its average benchmark score of 37943 is nearly identical to that of the Intel Core i9-14901E, which scores 37911, a delta of only 0.1%. This places the 9700X in the upper echelon of processors, ensuring that for this game and GPU combination, the CPU is a stable and capable foundation. The data confirms that the CPU is not the source of any performance bottlenecks observed in this analysis.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the database of tested hardware combinations, this pairing of the AMD Ryzen 7 9700X and AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT holds a specific position. The combo rank for Control is 1712 out of 3720 tested combinations, placing it in the 46th percentile. This indicates that while it is not a top-tier configuration for this game, it outperforms a majority of the systems that have been benchmarked. This mid-pack ranking is a direct result of the GPU's performance ceiling, which is a mid-range part relative to the high-end cards that dominate the top of the list.

The ranking is a holistic metric that combines the CPU and GPU's performance in this specific game. The CPU's high percentile (86) does not boost the combo's rank significantly because the game is largely GPU-bound. The GPU's lower percentile (71) and the demanding nature of Control at higher settings pull the overall ranking down. For context, the GPU's nearest rivals, such as the AMD FirePro W7100 and AMD FirePro D700, score lower in synthetic benchmarks, but their real-world performance in Control could vary. The data shows that the combo is more capable than the bottom half of the tested systems, but it does not compete with configurations using higher-end GPUs like the RTX 3080 Ti or better.

This rank of 1712 out of 3720 is a verdict on the balance of the system. It suggests that the Ryzen 7 9700X has significant untapped potential, as a more powerful GPU would likely push this combo's rank much higher. The current ranking is a reflection of the RX 6750 XT's limitations at 4K and Ultra settings. For users with 1080p or 1440p monitors, the system performs admirably, as evidenced by the frame rates, and the rank should be interpreted as a measure of peak potential rather than a reflection of the experience at more common resolutions. The data indicates that the CPU is a future-proof component, but the GPU anchors the system's overall standing in this benchmark.

Resolution Scaling

The performance scaling across resolutions is the most telling indicator of where the bottleneck lies. The measured FPS averages at High settings are 94 at 1080p, 71 at 1440p, and 48 at 4K. This represents a 24.5% drop from 1080p to 1440p and a further 32.4% drop from 1440p to 4K. This progressive decline is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario, where the workload increases exponentially with pixel count. The CPU's performance is constant across these resolutions, so the frame rate drop is solely attributed to the GPU's rendering capabilities.

The scaling from 1080p to 4K is a 48.9% reduction in average FPS at High settings. This steep curve underscores that the RX 6750 XT's 12 GB of VRAM and 432.0 GB/s bandwidth are insufficient to maintain playable frame rates at 4K with high-detail settings. The data for the Low preset shows a similar trend, with a 48.6% drop from 148 FPS at 1080p to 76 FPS at 4K)Skip. This consistency across settings confirms that the GPU is the limiting factor, not the CPU or memory subsystem.

The 1440p results offer the most balanced view. The 71 FPS average at High is a 24.5% reduction from 1080p, which is a reasonable trade-off for the significant increase in image quality. The CPU's strong single-thread performance allows it to feed the GPU effectively at 1440p, as evidenced by the 80 FPS average at Medium settings. The data suggests that if the user desires higher frame rates, dropping to 1080p is more effective than lowering settings at 1440p. For example, the 1080p High average of 94 FPS is 32.4% higher than the 1440p High average, but the 1440p Medium average of 80 FPS is only 12.7% higher than the 4K Medium average of 54 FPS. This analysis confirms that the GPU is the primary bottleneck, and users should target 1080p or 1440p for optimal performance.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete set of measured FPS data for this hardware combination is as follows:

1920x1080:

• Low: 148 FPS average. This is the highest frame rate recorded, indicating that the CPU and GPU have significant headroom at this resolution and preset.
• Medium: 105 FPS average, with a minimum of 90 FPS and a maximum of 121 FPS. This is a highly playable range, with the minimum still well above 60 FPS.
• High: 94 FPS average. A solid result that provides a good balance for 1080p displays.
• Ultra: 81 FPS average. Still very smooth, but the cost of Ultra is apparent compared to High.

2560x1440:

• Low: 112 FPS average. The higher resolution reduces the frame rate by 24.3% compared to 1080p Low.
• Medium: 80 FPS average, with a minimum of 68 FPS and a maximum of 92 FPS. The minimum frame rate is getting closer to the 60 FPS threshold.
• High: 71 FPS average. This is the recommended setting, offering a good mix of visual fidelity and performance.
• Ultra: 62 FPS average. This is at the edge of playability, and frame drops are more likely during intense action.

3840x2160:

• Low: 76 FPS average. Surprisingly playable, but requires the lowest visual quality.
• Medium: 54 FPS average, with a minimum of 46 FPS and a maximum of 62 FPS. The minimum frame rate indicates noticeable stuttering.
• High: 48 FPS average. Not ideal for a smooth experience.
• Ultra: 42 FPS average. This is the worst-case scenario and is not recommended for this hardware.

The data clearly shows that the system is capable of high refresh rates at 1080p, with even the Ultra preset averaging above 80 FPS. At 1440p, the system is best suited for High settings, while 4K is only viable with the Low preset.