Control

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 combination delivers a split personality in Control, with performance that scales from fluid at 1080p to borderline at 4K. The measured data shows that the "High" preset is the most consistent choice across all resolutions, offering the best balance between visual fidelity and framerate stability. At 1080p, High yields 91.6 FPS, which is smooth, while dropping to Low pushes the engine to 145.9 FPS—a substantial margin that suggests the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU far more frames than the High settings demand. At 1440p, High provides 71.9 FPS, a figure that remains well within the range for a responsive experience. The story changes at 4K, where High drops to 50.9 FPS; this is playable but not ideal for fast-paced action sequences, making Medium (53.2 FPS) a marginal improvement and Ultra (42.9 FPS) the only option that dips below the 45 FPS threshold.

For users prioritizing a locked experience, the "Medium" preset is the safest bet for 4K, as it stays above 50 FPS while still providing a visually rich environment. The difference between Medium and High at 4K is just 2.3 FPS, which is negligible in real-world terms, but High's additional visual effects may be worth the slight trade-off. At 1440p, High is the clear winner, as it maintains 71.9 FPS while Ultra only manages 60.7 FPS—a drop of 11.2 FPS that is unlikely to justify the extra graphical load. At 1080p, High is again the recommended setting, since it hits 91.6 FPS, and the jump to Ultra (79.2 FPS) costs 12.4 FPS for marginal gains. The data supports a strategy of using High for 1080p and 1440p, and either Medium or High at 4K depending on whether the user prioritizes framerate or image quality.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination ranks 818th out of 1636 tested combos in Control, placing it in the upper half of the database. This percentile position is respectable, but it indicates that the pairing is not a top-tier performer for this specific title. The CPU, however, is a strong component on its own, sitting at the 89th percentile against all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 36029. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i5-14500HX (35940, 0.2% ahead) and the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845 (35802, 0.6% ahead), while the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H (36165, -0.4%) and Intel Core Ultra 5 225H (36328, -0.8%) trail slightly. This suggests the 9700X is well-matched against its peers, but the GPU is the limiting factor in this combo.

The RTX 5060 holds the 73rd percentile against all GPUs, with an average score of 30109. Its nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT, has a near-identical score of 30097 (0% delta), indicating the two are essentially interchangeable in raw compute. The NVIDIA Tesla M60 (29969, 0.5%) and RTX 5070 Mobile (29928, 0.6%) are also close, but the RX 570 (30158, -0.2%) is an outlier that performs slightly better in this metric. Given the 9700X's strong CPU scores, the 818th rank suggests that the RTX 5060's mid-tier positioning prevents the combo from climbing higher. The GPU's 8 GB GDDR7 memory and 128-bit bus are adequate for 1080p, but they become a bottleneck at higher resolutions, as evidenced by the framerate scaling.

GPU Role

The RTX 5060's memory configuration is central to its performance in Control. It features 8 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 128-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s. This is a modest amount for a game that can be demanding on memory bandwidth, especially at 4K. The GPU's base clock is 2280 MHz, boosting to 2497 MHz, which is a moderate frequency range for the Blackwell architecture. The 3840 shading units and 120 TMUs provide the raw compute, but the 48 ROPs are relatively low, which can limit fill-rate-heavy scenes. The pixel rate is 119.9 GPixel/s, and the texture rate is 299.6 GTexel/s, both figures that align with a mid-range card.

In Control, the GPU's role becomes more pronounced as resolution increases. At 1080p, the CPU can feed the GPU enough frames to max out at 145.9 FPS on Low, showing that the 9700X is not a bottleneck. However, at 4K, the GPU's 8 GB VRAM and bandwidth constraints show, as the framerate drops to 76.2 FPS on Low and 50.9 FPS on High. The difference between Low and High at 4K is 25.3 FPS, which is a significant gap that highlights the GPU's struggle with higher-quality textures and effects. The RTX 5060's FP32 performance is 19.18 TFLOPS, which is decent for rasterization, but the 30 RT cores are likely underutilized in this title on non-Ultra settings.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a clear picture of the combo's behavior across resolutions and settings. At 1920x1080, the scores are as follows: Low (145.9 FPS), Medium (103.5 FPS), High (91.6 FPS), and Ultra (79.2 FPS). The spread from Low to Ultra is 66.7 FPS, indicating that the CPU has headroom to spare, but the GPU's performance scaling is not linear. At 2560x1440, the scores drop to Low (112.2 FPS), Medium (78.4 FPS), High (71.9 FPS), and Ultra (60.7 FPS). The gap between Low and Ultra narrows to 51.5 FPS, showing that the GPU is becoming more strained. At 3840x2160, the scores are Low (76.2 FPS), Medium (53.2 FPS), High (50.9 FPS), and Ultra (42.9 FPS). The Low-to-Ultra gap shrinks further to 33.3 FPS, and the absolute numbers suggest that the GPU is the dominant limiter.

The data shows that the 9700X is never the bottleneck at 1080p, as the framerate can reach 145.9 FPS, which is far above typical monitor refresh rates. At 1440p, the CPU still has headroom, but the GPU's load increases, as evidenced by the 112.2 FPS on Low. At 4K, the GPU is clearly the limiting factor, with even Low settings failing to exceed 76.2 FPS. The jump from High to Ultra at each resolution is consistent: -12.4 FPS at 1080p, -11.2 FPS at 1440p, and -8.0 FPS at 4K. This pattern suggests that Ultra settings impose a fixed additional cost that scales with resolution, but the GPU's capacity to absorb it diminishes as pixel count rises.

Resolution Scaling

The framerate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic GPU-bound scenario. At High settings, the average FPS goes from 91.6 at 1080p, to 71.9 at 1440p, and finally to 50.9 at 4K. This represents a 22.2% drop from 1080p to 1440p, and a 29.2% drop from 1440p to 4K. The total reduction from 1080p to 4K is 44.5%, which is a substantial loss but not as steep as a pure pixel-count scaling would suggest. If the GPU were fully saturated, the 4K framerate would be approximately 25% of the 1080p framerate (due to 4x the pixels), but the actual 50.9 FPS is 55.5% of the 1080p value. This indicates that the GPU is not entirely pixel-bound, and that other factors, such as memory bandwidth and cache efficiency, are playing a role.

At Low settings, the scaling is different: 145.9 FPS at 1080p drops to 112.2 FPS at 1440p (a 23.1% reduction) and then to 76.2 FPS at 4K (a 32.1% reduction). The 4K value is 52.2% of the 1080p value, which is closer to the High setting's ratio. This suggests that the GPU's memory subsystem is the limiting factor, as the 8 GB GDDR7 buffer is likely saturated at 4K regardless of settings. The Ultra preset follows a similar trend: 79.2 FPS at 1080p, 60.7 FPS at 1440p, and 42.9 FPS at 4K, with the 4K value being 54.2% of 1080p. The consistency of these ratios across settings indicates that the RTX 5060's 128-bit memory bus is the primary constraint at higher resolutions, rather than the shading units or texture units. The data confirms that this combo is best suited for 1080p or 1440p gaming, where the CPU and GPU are more evenly balanced, while 4K performance is acceptable only on lower presets.