Control

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700X paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 delivers a commanding performance profile in Control, positioning the combo in the 95.4th percentile of all tested configurations. With a combo rank of 76 out of 1636, this pairing demonstrates exceptional headroom across all resolutions, though the scaling patterns reveal a nuanced story about where the bottleneck shifts as pixel count increases.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a clear and predictable decline as resolution increases, but the magnitude of that decline varies significantly depending on the selected quality preset. At Low settings, the transition from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 results in a drop from 260.6 FPS to 198 FPS, a reduction of 62.6 frames. Moving further to 3840x2160 brings the average down to 132.4 FPS, meaning the 4K figure represents roughly 50.8% of the 1080p performance at this preset.

The scaling behavior at Ultra settings tells a different story. Here, the 1080p average of 144.8 FPS falls to 107 FPS at 1440p, and then to 70.9 FPS at 4K. The percentage drop from 1080p to 4K at Ultra is 51.0%, nearly identical to the Low preset’s 49.2% reduction. This consistency across presets suggests that the RTX 5080’s rendering pipeline is the primary limiting factor even at the highest quality settings, with the 9700X providing sufficient instruction throughput to keep the GPU fed at all tested resolutions.

Examining the High preset reveals a slightly steeper scaling curve. The 1080p result of 162.4 FPS drops to 125.8 FPS at 1440p (a 22.5% reduction), then to 84.9 FPS at 4K (a 47.7% reduction from 1080p). The Medium preset follows a similar trajectory: 187.1 FPS at 1080p, 140.1 FPS at 1440p, and 97.2 FPS at 4K. The consistent pattern across all four presets indicates that resolution scaling in Control is predominantly GPU-bound, as the 9700X’s 8-core, 16-thread architecture maintains its advantage even when pixel throughput demands increase substantially.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data suggests that the High preset offers the most balanced experience for this hardware combination. At 1920x1080, High delivers 162.4 FPS, which is 17.6% higher than Ultra’s 144.8 FPS while presumably retaining most of the visual enhancements that distinguish it from Medium. The gap between High and Medium at 1080p is 24.7 FPS, but High’s visual quality improvements are substantial enough to justify the performance cost.

Moving to 2560x1440, the High preset’s 125.8 FPS remains well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, while Ultra drops to 107 FPS. For users with high refresh rate displays, High at 1440p provides a 18.8 FPS advantage over Ultra, which could be the difference between maintaining a stable frame rate on a 120Hz panel. At 3840x2160, High’s 84.9 FPS is the only preset besides Low that exceeds 80 FPS, making it the recommended choice for 4K gaming on this setup.

The Low preset’s performance figures—260.6 FPS at 1080p, 198 FPS at 1440p, and 132.4 FPS at 4K—demonstrate the raw capability of this combination when visual fidelity is deprioritized. However, given that Medium at 4K still achieves 97.2 FPS, the data suggests that users can comfortably select Medium or High without sacrificing playability, reserving Low for competitive scenarios where maximum frame rates take precedence. The 187.1 FPS Medium result at 1080p offers a compelling middle ground for esports-style play, though High’s additional visual polish likely justifies its 162.4 FPS output for most users.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080’s 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus delivers 960.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which proves ample for Control’s texture and geometry demands across all tested settings. The GPU’s base clock of 2295 MHz and boost clock of 2617 MHz provide the computational foundation for the measured frame rates, with the Blackwell 2.0 architecture’s 10752 shading units handling the game’s physics-heavy combat sequences efficiently.

The RTX 5080’s 56.28 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 879.3 GTexel/s texture rate directly correlate with the observed scaling patterns. At 4K Ultra, the 70.9 FPS result indicates that the GPU is operating near its practical limits for this title, while the 132.4 FPS Low result at the same resolution shows significant untapped headroom when shader complexity is reduced. The GPU’s 293.1 GPixel/s pixel rate supports the hypothesis that rasterization throughput, rather than memory bandwidth, is the constraining factor at higher resolutions.

The RTX 5080’s 84 RT cores and 336 tensor cores suggest that ray-traced features would impose additional performance penalties, though the measured data does not include such configurations. The GPU’s 360 W TDP and dual-slot design indicate a high-power component, but the benchmark results confirm that this power budget translates into substantial real-world performance. The 16 GB VRAM capacity ensures that texture streaming at 4K Ultra does not encounter memory capacity limitations, as evidenced by the consistent frame times implied by the average FPS figures.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the RTX 5080 paired with the 9700X produces a wide performance envelope across presets. The Low setting achieves 260.6 FPS, representing the absolute ceiling of this configuration’s capabilities at 1080p. Medium follows at 187.1 FPS, High at 162.4 FPS, and Ultra at 144.8 FPS. The 115.8 FPS gap between Low and Ultra demonstrates the significant computational cost of the game’s highest quality settings, which include enhanced lighting and particle effects.

The 2560x1440 resolution presents a more compressed range. Low yields 198 FPS, Medium 140.1 FPS, High 125.8 FPS, and Ultra 107 FPS. The spread between Low and Ultra narrows to 91 FPS, reflecting the increased pixel workload that affects all presets uniformly. Notably, the Medium preset at 1440p outperforms the Ultra preset at 1080p by 4.7 FPS, indicating that resolution scaling has a more pronounced impact on performance than the quality preset selection at these levels.

At 3840x2160, the measured results show 132.4 FPS for Low, 97.2 FPS for Medium, 84.9 FPS for High, and 70.9 FPS for Ultra. The 4K Ultra figure represents a 51.0% reduction from the 1080p Ultra result, while the 4K Low figure shows a 49.2% reduction from its 1080p counterpart. This consistency reinforces the conclusion that the GPU’s pixel processing capacity is the dominant factor across all settings. The 61.5 FPS difference between Low and Ultra at 4K indicates that users seeking maximum visual fidelity will need to accept a substantial frame rate compromise, while those prioritizing smoothness can achieve near-competitive frame rates at reduced settings.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the AMD Ryzen 7 9700X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 achieves a rank of 76 out of 1636 tested combos in Control, placing it in the top 4.6% of all configurations. This ranking reflects the balanced nature of the pairing, where the 9700X’s 89th percentile standing among all CPUs and the RTX 5080’s matching 89th percentile among all GPUs combine to produce synergistic results.

The 9700X’s nearest rivals in CPU benchmarks include the Intel Core i5-14500HX with a 0.2% higher average score, the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845 at 0.6% higher, and the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H at 0.4% lower. These marginal differences indicate that the 9700X sits in a tightly contested performance band, yet its pairing with the RTX 5080 yields a combo ranking that outperforms the vast majority of alternatives. The GPU’s nearest rivals—the Intel Arc A570M at 1.6% higher, the Intel Arc Pro A60 at 1.9% lower, and the Intel Arc A580 at 2.5% higher—similarly show that the RTX 5080 occupies a competitive position in the GPU hierarchy.

The benchmark results indicate that this combo excels particularly at 1080p and 1440p, where the CPU’s strong single-threaded performance (evidenced by a Passmark single-thread score of 4654 and a 3DMark single-thread score of 1280) ensures that the GPU’s capabilities are fully utilized. At 4K, the combo’s ranking remains strong, but the data suggests that other configurations with higher-end GPUs would close the gap. The 76th rank out of 1636 positions this pairing as a top-tier choice for Control, with the measured FPS figures confirming that it delivers exceptional performance across all tested settings and resolutions.