Control

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER delivers a playable yet distinctly GPU-bound experience in Control, with performance scaling that clearly identifies the graphics card as the limiting component across most settings and resolutions. This combination ranks in the 60th percentile of all tested combos for this title, indicating a mid-pack position that reflects the GPU's age relative to the CPU's modern architecture.

Resolution Scaling

The measured frame rates across the three tested resolutions reveal a pronounced and predictable decline as pixel count increases, a pattern that unequivocally points to the RTX 2070 SUPER as the primary bottleneck. At 1920x1080 with High settings, the combo produces 85.1 FPS, which drops to 59.3 FPS at 2560x1440 (a 30.3% reduction), and further to 45 FPS at 3840x2160 (a 24.1% reduction from 1440p). This scaling curve is characteristic of a GPU that is saturated at lower resolutions and becomes increasingly overwhelmed as the render load grows.

The gap between Low and Ultra settings at each resolution provides additional insight into the limiting component. At 1080p, the spread from 128.7 FPS (Low) to 70.6 FPS (Ultra) represents a 45.1% performance penalty for maximum visual quality. At 1440p, this same spread narrows to 44.5% (99.8 FPS Low versus 55.4 FPS Ultra), while at 4K it compresses to 40.5% (65.1 FPS Low versus 38.7 FPS Ultra). The shrinking relative penalty at higher resolutions is a classic sign of GPU saturation—when the graphics card is fully utilized, additional settings changes have less proportional impact because the renderer is already near its throughput ceiling.

Notably, the Medium preset at 4K produces 45.4 FPS, nearly identical to the High preset's 45 FPS. This near-parity suggests that at 2160p, the GPU is so constrained that the difference between these two settings levels is largely immaterial to the final frame rate. The data indicates that for smooth 4K gameplay, users would need to either accept Low settings (65.1 FPS) or consider a more powerful GPU, as the RTX 2070 SUPER's 8 GB GDDR6 memory and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth are simply insufficient for sustained high-detail 4K rendering in this title.

FAQ

*Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in Control?*

A: The data shows 1920x1080 is the only resolution where this combo consistently exceeds 60 FPS across all settings. At 1080p, even Ultra settings produce 70.6 FPS, while 1440p drops below 60 FPS at High (59.3 FPS) and Ultra (55.4 FPS). At 4K, only Low settings (65.1 FPS) reach playable levels.

Q: How does the CPU's core configuration affect gameplay performance?

A: The Ryzen 9 9900X provides 12 cores and 24 threads with a 5.60 GHz boost clock. Given that the FPS drops are almost entirely attributable to resolution increases rather than CPU-bound scenarios, the processor's substantial thread count and high single-thread performance (Cinebench R23 single-core score of 6555) are more than adequate for Control's demands, leaving the GPU as the limiting factor.

Q: Is the RTX 2070 SUPER capable of 4K gaming in this title?

A: The measured results show 4K performance ranging from 38.7 FPS (Ultra) to 65.1 FPS (Low). Only the Low preset achieves a comfortable frame rate; Medium (45.4 FPS) and High (45 FPS) are borderline playable, while Ultra falls below 40 FPS. This suggests 4K is only feasible with significant quality compromises.

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

A: At 2560x1440, Low settings produce 99.8 FPS while Ultra drops to 55.4 FPS, a 44.4 FPS difference (44.5% reduction). This is a substantial quality-to-performance trade-off, with Medium (69.9 FPS) and High (59.3 FPS) offering intermediate options.

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

A: The combination ranks 992nd out of 1636 total combos tested, placing it in the upper-middle tier. This position reflects a balanced pairing where the modern CPU is held back by an older, end-of-life GPU in this specific game.

Q: Does the GPU's memory capacity limit performance at higher resolutions?

A: With 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, the RTX 2070 SUPER has a memory bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s. The steep performance drop from 1440p to 4K—roughly 24% reduction at High settings—is consistent with the GPU exceeding its comfortable memory and compute envelope at 2160p, though the data does not isolate memory capacity as the sole cause.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X is a 12-core, 24-thread processor based on the Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge) manufactured on a 4 nm process. Its base clock of 4.40 GHz and boost clock of 5.60 GHz provide exceptional single-thread performance, as evidenced by a 3DMark single-thread score of 1286 and a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 6555. In Control, this CPU headroom is not the decisive factor; the measured FPS scaling across resolutions and settings follows GPU-bound trajectories.

The processor's synthetic benchmarks reveal its positioning relative to close rivals. The Ryzen 9 9900X's average benchmark score of 54450 places it 0.4% behind the Ryzen 9 9900X3D (54681) and 0.7% ahead of the Intel Core i7-14700F (54097). Against the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K (55304) and 245KF (55421), the AMD chip trails by 1.5% and 1.8% respectively. These small deltas indicate that the 9900X is firmly in the top tier of desktop processors, with a 94th percentile ranking among all CPUs.

In the context of Control, the CPU's 64 MB shared L3 cache and 89.6 GB/s memory bandwidth provide ample resources for game logic and physics. The fact that 1080p Low settings yield 128.7 FPS—a figure well above the 60 FPS target—while 4K Ultra drops to 38.7 FPS demonstrates that the CPU is never the bottleneck. Even at 1080p, the 45.1% performance gap between Low and Ultra settings is characteristic of GPU load variations, not CPU limitations. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 12552 and max-thread score of 13929 confirm that the processor has substantial multi-threaded capacity that remains underutilized in this title.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the Ryzen 9 9900X and RTX 2070 SUPER holds a rank of 992 out of 1636 tested combos in Control, placing it in the 60.6th percentile of all configurations. This mid-tier ranking is consistent with the GPU's positioning: the RTX 2070 SUPER achieves a 65th percentile score among all GPUs (average benchmark score of 22206), while the CPU sits at the 94th percentile. The combination's rank is therefore dragged down by the GPU's relative age and performance class.

The GPU's nearest rivals illustrate its competitive standing. The RTX 2070 SUPER's average score of 22206 is 0.5% higher than the NVIDIA RTX A400 (22307, deltaPct -0.5) and 0.9% above the GeForce GTX TITAN Z (22006, deltaPct 0.9). It trails the RTX 4060 Mobile by 2.3% (22729) and leads the Radeon RX 5700 by 2.5% (21670). These figures place the 2070 SUPER in a crowded mid-range segment where small performance deltas separate competitors.

The rank of 992 suggests that roughly 60% of tested combos outperform this pairing in Control, while 40% are slower. This is a reasonable outcome given that the GPU is end-of-life and was launched in 2019, while the CPU is a 2024 release. The data indicates that the combo is neither severely mismatched nor optimally balanced; rather, it represents a pairing where a high-end modern CPU is partially wasted on a GPU that cannot fully exploit its capabilities at higher resolutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a comprehensive picture of performance across three resolutions and four settings levels:

1920x1080: Low settings produce the highest frame rate at 128.7 FPS, followed by High at 85.1 FPS, Medium at 92.6 FPS, and Ultra at 70.6 FPS. The ordering is notable—High outperforms Medium by 7.5 FPS, which is an anomaly suggesting either a measurement artifact or settings-specific optimization. The spread from Low to Ultra is 58.1 FPS, with each progressive settings tier exacting a significant toll on performance.

2560x1440: Low settings yield 99.8 FPS, which drops to 69.9 FPS at Medium (a 29.9% reduction), 59.3 FPS at High (a 40.6% reduction), and 55.4 FPS at Ultra (a 44.5% reduction). The step from Medium to High is the largest single drop at 10.6 FPS, while the High to Ultra transition is more modest at 3.9 FPS, suggesting diminishing returns at the highest quality settings.

3840x2160: Low settings produce 65.1 FPS, the only preset above 60 FPS at this resolution. Medium (45.4 FPS) and High (45 FPS) are nearly identical, with a negligible 0.4 FPS difference, while Ultra falls to 38.7 FPS. The 4K results show a compressed performance range of 26.4 FPS between Low and Ultra, reinforcing the conclusion that the GPU is severely constrained at this resolution.

Across all resolutions, the RTX 2070 SUPER's pixel rate of 113.3 GPixel/s and texture rate of 283.2 GTexel/s provide theoretical ceilings that align with the observed scaling. The 9.062 TFLOPS FP32 performance is the primary constraint at 4K, where the fill-rate demands of Control's action-adventure environments overwhelm the GPU's capabilities. The data shows no scenario where the Ryzen 9 9900X's 4 nm Zen 5 architecture becomes the limiting factor, confirming this as a GPU-bound configuration in virtually all tested conditions.