Control

The AMD Ryzen 9 7900X paired with the AMD Radeon RX 580 is a severely mismatched combination for Control, and the benchmark data confirms that the graphics card is the overwhelming bottleneck. The CPU is a high-end 12-core Zen 4 part, but the GPU is a legacy Polaris card from 2017. The measured frame rates show that this pairing struggles to deliver a smooth experience at nearly every setting, making it a configuration best suited for 1080p gaming with significant compromises.

Settings Recommendations

The data shows that the only playable configuration for this combo is at 1920x1080 with Low settings, which delivers an average of 63.2 FPS. This is the only measured setting that clears the 60 FPS threshold, providing a baseline for acceptable performance. Every other preset at this resolution drops below 43 FPS, which will feel sluggish for most action games.

For a more balanced visual experience at 1080p, the Medium preset yields 42.6 FPS. This is a 32.6% drop from Low, but it represents a significant visual upgrade. However, the jump to High at 38.6 FPS offers only a marginal improvement over Medium, suggesting that the cost of High is not worth the performance penalty. The Ultra preset at 32.8 FPS is not recommended, as the visual gains do not justify the near-50% performance loss compared to Low.

At 2560x1440, the situation becomes more difficult. The Low preset achieves 49.6 FPS, which is the only setting above 40 FPS at this resolution. Medium and High are nearly identical at 32.8 and 32.2 FPS respectively, while Ultra drops to 29.2 FPS. The recommendation is to stick with 1080p Low if you prioritize frame rate, or accept 1440p Low if you need the higher resolution and can tolerate the sub-60 FPS experience. The 4K results are effectively unusable, with the best case being 33.2 FPS on Low.

FAQ

*Q: Can this combo run Control at 4K?*

A: No. The measured data shows that even at the lowest settings, the average frame rate at 3840x2160 is only 33.2 FPS. The High preset yields 22.3 FPS, Medium 22.7 FPS, and Ultra a mere 17.8 FPS. These are all far below the threshold for a playable experience.

Q: What is the best performance this system can achieve?

A: The best measured result is 63.2 FPS at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This is the only configuration that breaks the 60 FPS barrier. The next best is 49.6 FPS at 2560x1440 on Low, which is still playable but noticeably less smooth.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its direct rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The Ryzen 9 7900X has an average benchmark score of 50556. It is essentially tied with the Intel Core Ultra 5 235, which is only 0.1% faster. It also trails the AMD Ryzen 9 5900XT by 0.4%, the Intel Core i7-13850HX by 0.5%, and the Intel Core i9-13980HX by 0.8%. The differences are negligible in real-world terms.

Q: Is the RX 580 a capable GPU compared to its peers?

A: The RX 580's average benchmark score is 13559, placing it in the 53rd percentile of all GPUs. It performs on par with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 (0% difference) and is just 0.1% faster than the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950. It is 1.1% faster than the AMD Radeon Pro 455, but 1.1% slower than the NVIDIA P106-090.

*Q: What is the limiting factor in this system for Control?*

A: The data strongly indicates the GPU is the bottleneck. The RX 580 has 8 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, and its compute performance is 6.175 TFLOPS. Meanwhile, the Ryzen 9 7900X is a top-tier processor with a 93rd percentile ranking. The massive disparity in performance class between the two components means the GPU cannot keep up with the CPU's ability to feed it frames.

Q: What are the CPU's key specifications?

A: The Ryzen 9 7900X is a 12-core, 24-thread processor from the 7000 series, based on the Zen 4 architecture. It has a base clock of 4.70 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz. It features 64 MB of shared L3 cache and supports DDR5 memory. Its launch MSRP was $549.

How This Combo Ranks

The benchmark data places this specific combination at rank 1520 out of 1636 tested combos for Control. This puts it in the bottom 7% of all configurations, which is a poor result. The ranking reflects the reality of the pairing: a high-end CPU that is held back by a GPU that is several generations old.

The Ryzen 9 7900X itself is a powerful processor, sitting in the 93rd percentile of all CPUs. Its average benchmark score of 50556 is within 1% of several high-end Intel and AMD parts. However, the RX 580 sits in the 53rd percentile of GPUs, with an average score of 13559. This puts it in the middle of the pack for graphics cards, but its age and architecture limit its DirectX 12 performance, which is critical for Control. The GPU's Passmark DirectX 12 score is 43, which is extremely low compared to its DirectX 11 score of 60. This indicates that the card is not well optimized for modern APIs, further hurting its performance in this game.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured frame rates show a clear pattern of performance degradation as resolution and settings increase. At 1920x1080, the frame rates are 63.2 FPS on Low, 42.6 FPS on Medium, 38.6 FPS on High, and 32.8 FPS on Ultra. The jump from Low to Medium is a 20.6 FPS loss, which is significant. The difference between Medium and High is a smaller 4 FPS drop, while High to Ultra costs another 5.8 FPS.

Moving to 2560x1440, the numbers drop considerably. The Low preset achieves 49.6 FPS, which is a 21.5% decrease from the 1080p Low result. The Medium and High presets are nearly identical at 32.8 and 32.2 FPS respectively, showing that the GPU is becoming the limiting factor. The Ultra preset is 29.2 FPS. At 3840x2160, the performance is critically low. The Low preset is 33.2 FPS, Medium is 22.7 FPS, High is 22.3 FPS, and Ultra is 17.8 FPS. The differences between Medium and High at 4K are negligible, confirming that the GPU is saturated.

Resolution Scaling

The data shows a steep performance drop when moving from 1080p to 1440p, and an even steeper drop to 4K. For the Low preset, the average frame rate falls from 63.2 FPS at 1080p to 49.6 FPS at 1440p, a 21.5% reduction. Moving from 1440p to 4K, the frame rate falls to 33.2 FPS, another 33.1% reduction. This shows that the GPU is heavily strained by the increase in pixel count.

For the High preset, the scaling is similar but with a more pronounced drop at the highest resolution. The frame rate is 38.6 FPS at 1080p, 32.2 FPS at 1440p (a 16.6% reduction), and 22.3 FPS at 4K (a 30.7% reduction from 1440p). The pattern is consistent: the RX 580 simply does not have the raw throughput to handle higher resolutions. The fact that the 4K Medium (22.7 FPS) and High (22.3 FPS) results are almost identical suggests that the GPU's shading units and memory bandwidth are completely exhausted, rendering the settings differences irrelevant.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 7900X is a 12-core, 24-thread processor based on the Zen 4 architecture, built on a 5 nm process. It has a base clock of 4.70 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz, with 64 MB of shared L3 cache. Its synthetic benchmark scores are excellent, with a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 43695 and a single-core score of 6168. It also achieves a Passmark multithread score of 51406 and a single-thread score of 4238.

In the context of Control, however, this CPU power is largely wasted. The game is not CPU-bound at any of the measured settings. The bottleneck is clearly the RX 580. The evidence for this is that frame rates scale dramatically with resolution, which is a GPU-centric workload. If the CPU were the limiting factor, the frame rates would remain relatively constant across resolutions, as the CPU's job of preparing frames would not change significantly.

Furthermore, the GPU's Passmark DirectX 12 score of 43 is exceptionally low, indicating poor API overhead handling. This means the GPU is struggling to process the draw calls and rendering commands that the CPU sends. The Ryzen 9 7900X, with its high single-thread performance, is likely sending frames faster than the RX 580 can render them. This creates a situation where the CPU is waiting for the GPU, resulting in the low frame rates seen in the data. The CPU is not the problem; it is the RX 580 that is the weak link in this chain.