Control

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X paired with the AMD Radeon RX 580 presents a stark study in bottlenecking when running Control. The data shows a system where a top-tier 12-core processor is consistently held back by a legacy graphics card, resulting in frame rates that rarely approach playable levels at higher settings. This combination ranks 1527th out of 1636 tested combos for this title, placing it in the bottom 7% of all pairings, which immediately signals a severe imbalance in capability.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a predictable yet pronounced pattern of performance degradation as resolution increases. At 1080p with Low settings, the system achieves an average of 62.8 FPS, which is the only configuration in the entire dataset that crosses the 60 FPS threshold. Moving to 1440p at the same Low settings drops performance to 45.6 FPS, a 27% reduction. At 4K Low, the average falls further to 31.9 FPS, representing a 49% loss compared to the 1080p baseline.

The scaling behavior becomes more severe when examining higher quality presets. At High settings, the transition from 1080p (38 FPS) to 1440p (28.8 FPS) costs 24% of performance, while the jump to 4K (20.4 FPS) results in a 46% total reduction. The Ultra preset shows similar characteristics: 36.7 FPS at 1080p, 27.7 FPS at 1440p, and 21.2 FPS at 4K. Interestingly, the Medium preset at 1080p (44.7 FPS) actually outperforms the Low preset at 1440p (45.6 FPS) by a negligible margin, suggesting that resolution has a more significant impact on this GPU than texture quality settings.

This scaling pattern indicates that the Radeon RX 580's memory bandwidth and pixel throughput are the limiting factors. The GPU's 256-bit memory bus and 256.0 GB/s bandwidth become progressively more strained as pixel count increases. The fact that Low settings at 4K (31.9 FPS) still outperform High settings at 1080p (38 FPS) by comparison to other presets suggests that the GPU is struggling with fill-rate demands rather than shader complexity, as the 32 ROPs and 42.88 GPixel/s pixel rate are simply insufficient for 4K workloads.

FAQ

Q: What is the best settings preset for achieving 60 FPS with this hardware combination?

A: The data shows that only the 1080p Low preset achieves an average of 62.8 FPS. All other combinations of resolution and settings fall below 60 FPS, with the next closest being 1080p Medium at 44.7 FPS.

Q: How does the RX 580 compare to its nearest rivals in overall GPU benchmarks?

A: The RX 580's average benchmark score of 13559 places it essentially tied with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 (13564, 0% delta) and GTX 950 (13549, 0.1% delta). It sits 1.1% ahead of the AMD Radeon Pro 455 and 1.1% behind the NVIDIA P106-090.

Q: Is the Ryzen 9 9900X the bottleneck in this system?

A: No. The CPU's benchmark scores are exceptionally high, with a 94th percentile ranking among all CPUs and an average score of 54450. The GPU's 53rd percentile ranking indicates the graphics card is the limiting component.

Q: What is the performance difference between the Ryzen 9 9900X and its closest rival?

A: The Ryzen 9 9900X3D scores 54681, which is 0.4% higher than the 9900X's 54450. The Intel Core i7-14700F scores 54097, putting it 0.7% behind the 9900X.

Q: Can this system run Control at 4K with any settings?

A: Technically yes, but the results are not playable. The best 4K result is 31.9 FPS at Low settings, while Ultra drops to 21.2 FPS and High falls to 20.4 FPS.

Q: Does increasing resolution have a larger impact than increasing quality settings?

A: Yes. Comparing Low settings across resolutions shows a drop from 62.8 FPS at 1080p to 31.9 FPS at 4K, a 49% reduction. In contrast, at 1080p, moving from Low to Ultra only reduces performance from 62.8 to 36.7 FPS, a 42% reduction.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 580 is a Polaris 20 chip built on a 14 nm process from GlobalFoundries, featuring 5,700 million transistors on a 232 mm² die. This legacy architecture, released in 2017, has clearly aged out of modern AAA titles like Control. The GPU's 8 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 256.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is a significant limitation at high resolutions. The measured FPS data confirms this, as performance degrades sharply when moving from 1080p to 1440p and further to 4K.

The clock speeds of 1257 MHz base and 1340 MHz boost are modest by modern standards, and the 6.175 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is insufficient for Control's physics-heavy environments. The GPU's 53rd percentile ranking among all GPUs places it in the middle of the pack, with its average benchmark score of 13559 being nearly identical to the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 (13564) and GTX 950 (13549). This near-parity with decade-old hardware illustrates the RX 580's position as a budget-oriented card that struggles with demanding modern titles.

At 1080p Low settings, the RX 580 manages 62.8 FPS, but this is the only playable outcome. The 42.88 GPixel/s pixel rate and 193.0 GTexel/s texture rate are the primary constraints, as Control's visual effects require substantial fill-rate performance. The GPU's DirectX 12 support (12_0) is present, but its PassMark DirectX 12 score of 43 suggests poor optimization for modern APIs. The 8 GB VRAM capacity is adequate for 1080p, but the bandwidth limitations become apparent at higher resolutions where the memory subsystem cannot keep pace with the rendering demands.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete FPS dataset reveals a clear hierarchy of performance. At 1920x1080, the system achieves its best results: 62.8 FPS on Low, 44.7 FPS on Medium, 38 FPS on High, and 36.7 FPS on Ultra. The gap between Low and Medium is substantial at 18.1 FPS, while the difference between High and Ultra is minimal at just 1.3 FPS, suggesting diminishing returns from the highest quality settings.

Moving to 2560x1440, performance drops noticeably across all presets. Low settings produce 45.6 FPS, which dips to 32 FPS on Medium, 28.8 FPS on High, and 27.7 FPS on Ultra. The relative ordering remains consistent, but the Low-to-Medium gap narrows to 13.6 FPS, while High-to-Ultra shrinks to just 1.1 FPS. This indicates that at 1440p, the GPU's shading units are becoming saturated, and quality presets have less impact on the final frame rate.

At 3840x2160, the results are uniformly poor. Low settings yield 31.9 FPS, Medium drops to 24.1 FPS, High falls to 20.4 FPS, and Ultra barely manages 21.2 FPS. Interestingly, the Ultra preset at 4K (21.2 FPS) slightly outperforms High (20.4 FPS), which is unusual and likely reflects variance in the measured scene complexity rather than a true performance reversal. The 4K results across all settings fall within a narrow 11.5 FPS range, demonstrating that the GPU is completely overwhelmed by pixel throughput demands at this resolution.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X is an exceptionally powerful processor that is entirely wasted in this configuration. With 12 cores and 24 threads based on the Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge), this CPU operates at a 4.40 GHz base clock and boosts to 5.60 GHz. The 64 MB of shared L3 cache and 89.6 GB/s of DDR5 memory bandwidth ensure that the processor can feed data to the GPU far faster than the RX 580 can consume it.

The CPU's benchmark scores reinforce this imbalance. The Cinebench R23 multicore score of 46438 and single-core score of 6555 place it in the 94th percentile of all CPUs. Its average benchmark score of 54450 is nearly identical to the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D (54681, -0.4% delta) and slightly ahead of the Intel Core i7-14700F (54097, 0.7% delta). The 3DMark scores show strong scaling from 1286 in single-thread to 13929 in max-threads, indicating excellent multi-threading capabilities.

In Control, this CPU has no trouble maintaining frame delivery, but the GPU cannot keep up. The measured FPS data shows no signs of CPU limitation, as frame rates scale predictably with resolution and settings rather than exhibiting stutter or inconsistency. The 5.60 GHz boost clock and 4 nm process from TSMC represent current-generation technology, but they cannot compensate for the RX 580's 14 nm GCN architecture. This pairing demonstrates a fundamental mismatch where the CPU's 120 W TDP and $499 launch MSRP are entirely overshadowed by a GPU that was end-of-life well before Control's release. The system's rank of 1527 out of 1636 combos in this game is a direct consequence of this GPU bottleneck, not any deficiency in the processor.