Control

Control on the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and AMD Radeon RX 7600 combination presents a clear picture of a system where the graphics card is the primary constraint at higher resolutions, while the processor’s strong single-threaded performance ensures high frame rates at 1080p. The measured data shows a predictable scaling pattern, but the specific frame rate drops reveal how the RX 7600’s 8 GB memory and 128-bit bus interact with the game’s demands. This analysis breaks down the performance across resolutions and settings, focusing strictly on the measured values provided.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate data from 1080p to 4K shows a steep decline that is characteristic of GPU-bound rendering. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 118 at 1920x1080 to 89 at 2560x1440, a 29 FPS reduction, and then falls further to 60 at 3840x2160. This represents a 49% performance loss from 1080p to 4K at Low settings, indicating that the RX 7600 is being pushed to its limits as pixel count increases. The scaling is not linear; the jump from 1440p to 4K costs 29 FPS, while the jump from 1080p to 1440p costs 29 FPS as well, suggesting the GPU hits a bandwidth or fill-rate wall at the higher resolutions.

At High settings, the pattern is similar but with lower absolute numbers. The average FPS is 75 at 1080p, 56 at 1440p, and 38 at 4K. The percentage drop from 1080p to 1440p is 25%, and from 1440p to 4K is 32%. This steeper decline at the top end indicates that the combination of increased resolution and higher quality textures strains the 8 GB VRAM buffer, likely causing texture swapping or compression overhead that compounds the pixel throughput issue. The Ultra preset shows the most severe scaling, with 65 FPS at 1080p dropping to 49 FPS at 1440p and then to 33 FPS at 4K, a 49% reduction from 1440p to 4K alone.

The limiting component is clearly the GPU. The Ryzen 9 9900X, with its 12 cores and 24 threads, does not appear to bottleneck at any resolution, as evidenced by the fact that even at 1080p Low (118 FPS), the frame rate is still high but not exceptionally so, suggesting the CPU has headroom. If the CPU were the constraint, we would expect the FPS to remain relatively flat across resolutions, but the data shows a consistent decline, which is the signature of GPU limitation. The 4K results, particularly the 33 FPS at Ultra, confirm that this combination is not viable for 4K gaming with this title, while 1080p and 1440p offer playable ranges depending on settings.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this CPU/GPU combo in Control?

A: The data indicates that 1920x1080 is the most consistent resolution, with average FPS ranging from 65 (Ultra) to 118 (Low). At 2560x1440, performance drops to a range of 49 to 89 FPS, which is still playable but requires lower settings to maintain high frame rates. 3840x2160 is only playable at Low settings (60 FPS) or Medium (43 FPS), with High and Ultra falling below 40 FPS.

Q: How does the RX 7600 compare to its nearest rivals in this game's context?

A: The RX 7600’s average benchmark score is 15171, placing it in the 57th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 OEM, scores 15199, a delta of -0.2%, meaning the RX 7600 is effectively tied with it. The AMD Radeon Pro 560X is 0.6% slower, and the AMD Radeon 680M is 0.7% slower, indicating that the RX 7600 sits in a tightly clustered performance band at this level.

Q: Is the Ryzen 9 9900X a bottleneck for the RX 7600?

A: No, the CPU is not a bottleneck based on the FPS scaling. The Ryzen 9 9900X scores 2253 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 32172 in multi-core, placing it in the 92nd percentile of all CPUs. The measured FPS drops consistently as resolution increases, which is the expected behavior when the GPU is the limiting factor. If the CPU were the bottleneck, the FPS would plateau at higher resolutions, which does not occur in the data.

Q: What is the performance difference between Low and Ultra settings at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the Low preset achieves an average of 89 FPS, while the Ultra preset achieves 49 FPS. This is a difference of 40 FPS, or a 45% reduction in performance when moving from Low to Ultra. The High preset sits at 56 FPS, and Medium at 64 FPS, showing a steep curve where each step up in quality costs a significant amount of frame rate.

Q: Does the 8 GB VRAM on the RX 7600 cause issues at 4K?

A: The data suggests it might. At 3840x2160, the Medium preset shows a minimum FPS of 36 and a maximum of 49, with an average of 43. The High preset drops to an average of 38 FPS. The frame rate collapse from Low (60 FPS) to Medium (43 FPS) is a 28% drop, which is larger than the drop from 1440p to 4K at Low settings, implying that the increased texture memory usage at Medium and above is causing a significant performance penalty, likely due to VRAM capacity limitations.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested configurations for Control?

A: The combination of the Ryzen 9 9900X and RX 7600 ranks 2608 out of 3720 total combos tested for this game. This places it in the lower half of all configurations, which is consistent with the RX 7600 being a mid-range GPU. The CPU’s high percentile (92nd) does not compensate for the GPU’s lower percentile (57th) in this GPU-intensive title.

Settings Recommendations

Given the measured frame rates, the optimal experience depends heavily on the target resolution. For 1920x1080, the High preset at 75 FPS offers a good balance between visual quality and smoothness, but the Medium preset at 84 FPS is also viable and provides a slight performance buffer. The Ultra preset at 65 FPS is acceptable if visual fidelity is the priority, but the 10 FPS difference between High and Ultra may not justify the extra load. The Low preset at 118 FPS is only recommended for competitive play or if the user has a high refresh rate monitor and prioritizes frame time consistency.

For 2560x1440, the Medium preset stands out as the best choice. It delivers 64 FPS with a minimum of 54 FPS, which keeps the gameplay fluid during heavy action sequences. The High preset at 56 FPS is playable but leaves less headroom for frame drops. The Low preset at 89 FPS is excellent for fast-paced play, but it sacrifices too much visual detail for a game like Control, which relies heavily on atmosphere and lighting effects. The Ultra preset at 49 FPS is marginal; the minimum FPS is not recorded, but the average suggests it will feel stuttery during combat.

At 3840x2160, the only viable option is the Low preset, which achieves 60 FPS. The Medium preset at 43 FPS is playable but not ideal, and the High and Ultra presets at 38 and 33 FPS respectively are not recommended for a smooth experience. For this resolution, we recommend using the Low preset, as the game remains responsive, and the visual downgrade is less noticeable at 4K due to the higher pixel density. The data suggests that Medium is the highest setting that maintains a playable frame rate, but users should expect occasional dips to 36 FPS based on the recorded minimum.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the average frame rates span a wide range. The Low preset achieves 118 FPS, which is the highest recorded value across all configurations. The Medium preset averages 84 FPS, with a minimum of 71 and a maximum of 97, showing a stable frame time distribution. The High preset averages 75 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 65 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra is 53 FPS, indicating that the visual settings have a massive impact on performance at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the average frame rates compress significantly. The Low preset drops to 89 FPS, a 25% reduction from 1080p. The Medium preset averages 64 FPS, with a minimum of 54 and a maximum of 73. The High preset averages 56 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 49 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 40 FPS, which is narrower than at 1080p, showing that the GPU is becoming the limiting factor as resolution increases.

At 3840x2160, the average frame rates fall below 60 FPS for all but the Low preset. The Low preset achieves 60 FPS, which is exactly at the standard monitor refresh rate. The Medium preset averages 43 FPS, with a minimum of 36 and a maximum of 49, indicating significant variance in frame times. The High preset averages 38 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 33 FPS. The drop from Low to Medium is 17 FPS, which is the largest single-step reduction in the entire dataset, highlighting the VRAM pressure at 4K with higher quality textures.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7600 is built on the RDNA 3.0 architecture with the Navi 33 chip, manufactured on a 6 nm process. It features 2048 shading units, 128 texture mapping units, and 64 render output units, along with 32 ray tracing cores. The GPU has a base clock of 1720 MHz and a boost clock of 2655 MHz, with a game clock of 2250 MHz. This configuration yields a pixel rate of 169.9 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 339.8 GTexel/s, which are the specifications that drive the measured frame rates.

The memory subsystem is likely the key bottleneck at higher resolutions. The RX 7600 has 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 288.0 GB/s. This is a narrow bus for a modern GPU, and the data supports this concern. At 1080p, the Low preset’s 118 FPS shows that the GPU can deliver high frame rates when memory pressure is low. However, at 4K, the frame rate drops to 60 FPS at Low, and the Medium preset’s minimum of 36 FPS suggests that the memory bandwidth or capacity is being saturated. The 18 Gbps effective memory speed is not sufficient to feed the 2048 shading units at higher resolutions without causing a performance cliff.

The GPU’s average benchmark score is 15171, placing it in the 57th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 OEM, scores 15199, a delta of -0.2%, meaning the RX 7600 is statistically tied with that card. This places the RX 7600 in a mid-range tier, which is consistent with the measured FPS in Control. The 32 ray tracing cores are present, but the game’s performance at 4K Ultra (33 FPS) suggests that ray tracing features, if enabled, would further degrade performance, though the dataset does not include ray tracing-specific measurements.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X is a 12-core, 24-thread processor based on the Zen 5 architecture, codenamed Granite Ridge, and manufactured on a 4 nm process. It has a base clock of 4.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz, with a TDP of 120 W. The processor features 80 KB of L1 cache per core, 1 MB of L2 cache per core, and a shared 64 MB L3 cache. This large cache and high clock speed are critical for gaming performance, as they reduce memory latency and increase single-threaded throughput.

The CPU’s single-threaded performance is exceptional, as evidenced by its Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2253 and Geekbench single-core score of 3010. In contrast, its multi-core scores are also high, with Cinebench R23 multi-core at 32172 and Geekbench multi-core at 22174. The 3DMark scores show a scaling pattern from 1286 in single-thread to 13929 in max threads, indicating that the processor efficiently utilizes its cores. The Ryzen 9 9900X ranks in the 92nd percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 57498, placing it just 0.1% below the AMD EPYC 9015 and 0.2% above the AMD EPYC 7313.

In Control, the CPU’s role is to feed the GPU with draw calls and process game logic. The measured FPS at 1080p Low (118 FPS) suggests the CPU can handle this workload without becoming a bottleneck. Even at 1080p Ultra (65 FPS), the frame rate is likely limited by the GPU, not the CPU, as the CPU’s single-thread score of 2253 is more than sufficient for a game released in 2019. The 12 cores and 24 threads provide ample headroom for background tasks and streaming, but the game does not appear to utilize more than a few cores effectively, as the frame rate scaling does not improve with lower resolutions, which would be the case if the CPU were the limiting factor. The CPU’s 4 nm process and 5.60 GHz boost clock ensure that it can maintain high frame rates without thermal throttling, though the dataset does not include temperature or power consumption measurements for this specific workload.