Control

The AMD Ryzen 9 5900X and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER combo delivers a playable experience in Control, but only when settings are managed carefully. The data shows this pairing is best suited for 1080p gaming, where it can achieve smooth frame rates at most presets, while 1440p and 4K require significant compromises in visual fidelity.

Settings Recommendations

For the optimal balance of visual quality and performance, the High preset at 1920x1080 is the recommended starting point. This configuration produces an average of 59.3 FPS, which is right at the threshold of smooth gameplay. If a higher frame rate is preferred for a more responsive feel, dropping to Medium at 1080p yields 66.1 FPS, a noticeable improvement of nearly 12% over High. The Low preset at 1080p offers the highest performance ceiling at 89.3 FPS, but this comes at a significant cost to graphical detail.

At 2560x1440, the situation changes dramatically. The Low preset is the only viable option for maintaining fluid motion, producing an average of 72 FPS. Moving up to Medium at this resolution drops the average to 47.5 FPS, which may feel stuttery in fast-paced action sequences. The High and Ultra presets at 1440p fall below 41 FPS, making them unsuitable for a game that relies on precise timing and environmental awareness.

The 3840x2160 resolution is largely impractical for this hardware. Even the Low preset struggles to maintain 48.4 FPS, while Medium, High, and Ultra all dip below 35 FPS. The data indicates that 4K gaming is not a realistic option for this combo, as the GPU becomes the primary bottleneck regardless of the CPU's capabilities.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER is the defining component in this pairing. Its 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus provides 336.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which proves insufficient for the demands of Control at higher resolutions. The GPU's 1408 shading units and 48 ROPs, operating at a boost clock of 1785 MHz, deliver a raw FP32 performance of 5.027 TFLOPS. This is a modest figure by modern standards, and the benchmark results reflect this limitation.

The GPU sits at the 55th percentile among all GPUs, indicating it is an average performer. Its nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT, scores 0.7% higher in average benchmarks, placing the GTX 1660 SUPER at a slight disadvantage. The card's Turing architecture, built on a 12 nm process, lacks dedicated ray tracing cores, which is particularly relevant for Control — a game known for its heavy use of ray-traced reflections and lighting. Without these cores, the GPU must rely on traditional rasterization techniques, further limiting its performance in this title.

The VRAM capacity of 6 GB is also a limiting factor at higher settings. The data shows a steep drop in performance when moving from Low to Medium settings at any resolution, suggesting that the memory buffer is quickly saturated as texture quality increases. This is most evident at 4K, where the difference between Low (48.4 FPS) and Medium (35 FPS) is a 27.7% reduction in frame rate.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific configuration of the Ryzen 9 5900X and GTX 1660 SUPER ranks 1445 out of 1636 tested combos in Control, placing it in the bottom 12% of all possible pairings. This low ranking is primarily attributable to the GPU, as the CPU is a high-end part that ranks in the 90th percentile among all processors.

The combo's position indicates that it is far from an ideal match for this game. The CPU is capable of feeding the GPU with data at a much higher rate than the graphics card can process, creating a significant bottleneck. This is a case where the CPU's potential is largely wasted, as the GTX 1660 SUPER cannot utilize the full computational throughput of the Ryzen 9 5900X.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the performance envelope is clearly defined. The Low preset achieves 89.3 FPS, providing a comfortable margin above 60 FPS. Medium delivers 66.1 FPS, which is still playable. High produces 59.3 FPS, just below the 60 FPS target. Ultra drops to 50.7 FPS, which is noticeably less smooth.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates decline across all presets. Low maintains a respectable 72 FPS, but Medium falls to 47.5 FPS. High manages 40.3 FPS, while Ultra drops to 37.8 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium at this resolution is 34%, indicating a significant performance penalty for increased visual fidelity.

At 3840x2160, the GPU is clearly overwhelmed. Low produces 48.4 FPS, which is the only preset that approaches playability. Medium drops to 35 FPS, High to 26.8 FPS, and Ultra to 27.5 FPS. The difference between High and Ultra at 4K is minimal, suggesting that the GPU is hitting a hard performance ceiling regardless of settings.

FAQ

*Q: What is the best resolution to play Control with this hardware?*

A: The data shows that 1920x1080 is the only resolution where this combo can consistently achieve playable frame rates across multiple presets. At 1080p, the High preset produces 59.3 FPS, while Medium reaches 66.1 FPS.

*Q: Can this setup handle 4K gaming in Control?*

A: No. At 3840x2160, even the Low preset only manages 48.4 FPS, and all other presets fall below 35 FPS. The 6 GB VRAM and the GPU's compute capabilities are insufficient for this resolution.

Q: How does the GTX 1660 SUPER compare to its closest competitors?

A: The GPU's average benchmark score is 14286, which is 0.7% lower than the AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT. It also trails the Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics by 0.2% and the AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 by 0.2%.

Q: Is the Ryzen 9 5900X a bottleneck in this configuration?

A: No, the CPU is not the limiting factor. The Ryzen 9 5900X ranks in the 90th percentile among all CPUs, while the GTX 1660 SUPER ranks in the 55th percentile. The GPU is the clear performance ceiling.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Low and Ultra at 1440p?

A: The Low preset at 2560x1440 achieves 72 FPS, while the Ultra preset drops to 37.8 FPS. This represents a 47.5% reduction in average frame rate.

Q: Should I use the High or Ultra preset at 1080p?

A: The High preset at 1080p produces 59.3 FPS, which is more stable than the Ultra preset's 50.7 FPS. The data suggests High offers a better balance of visual quality and performance.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 5900X is a 12-core, 24-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture, codenamed Vermeer. It operates at a base clock of 3.70 GHz and can boost up to 4.80 GHz. This CPU is a powerhouse in synthetic benchmarks, achieving a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 33150 and a single-core score of 4680. Its 64 MB of L3 cache and dual-channel DDR4 memory support provide ample bandwidth for feeding a discrete GPU.

However, in Control, the CPU's role is largely secondary. The game's engine is more dependent on GPU throughput, and the benchmark results show that the Ryzen 9 5900X is not the limiting component in this pair. The CPU's nearest rival, the Intel Core i7-13700, scores 1% higher in average benchmarks, while the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 8845HS scores 0.7% lower. This indicates that the CPU is performing at an expected level, but its capabilities are not fully utilized in this gaming scenario.

The combination of 12 cores and 24 threads is more than sufficient for Control's threading model, but the GPU cannot keep pace. The data shows that frame rates are consistently constrained by the graphics card, not the processor. For this game, the Ryzen 9 5900X's high single-thread performance, evidenced by its Geekbench single-core score of 2202, is irrelevant when the GPU is the bottleneck.

Resolution Scaling

The performance scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals the GPU-bound nature of this setup. At Low settings, the frame rate drops from 89.3 FPS at 1080p to 72 FPS at 1440p (a 19.4% decrease) and then to 48.4 FPS at 4K (a 32.8% decrease from 1440p). This pattern indicates that the GPU is struggling to fill the increasing pixel count, with the memory bandwidth of 336.0 GB/s becoming a critical constraint.

At High settings, the scaling is even more pronounced. The frame rate falls from 59.3 FPS at 1080p to 40.3 FPS at 1440p (a 32% decrease) and then to 26.8 FPS at 4K (a 33.5% decrease from 1440p). This steeper decline suggests that higher quality textures are overwhelming the 6 GB VRAM buffer, forcing the GPU to swap data more frequently.

The Ultra preset shows a similar trend, with 50.7 FPS at 1080p, 37.8 FPS at 1440p, and 27.5 FPS at 4K. The relatively small difference between High and Ultra at 4K (26.8 vs 27.5 FPS) further confirms that the GPU has hit a hard performance ceiling. The data clearly shows that the limiting component is the GPU, as the CPU's performance remains constant across all resolutions.