Control

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D paired with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti is an extreme mismatch on paper, and the measured frame rates in Control confirm that the graphics card is the overwhelming bottleneck. This combo ranks 2854th out of 2888 tested combos for this game, placing it in the bottom 1.2% of all configurations. That ranking is not surprising given the GPU’s age and class, but the data reveals a clear story about where the performance ceiling lies and how settings and resolution affect the experience.

How This Combo Ranks

The comboRankInGame value of 2854 out of 2888 is a stark indicator of where this pairing sits. Only 34 tested combos perform worse in Control. The primary reason is the GTX 1050 Ti, which sits at the 25th percentile among all GPUs in the database. Its average benchmark score of 4193 places it just 0.6% above the AMD Radeon R5 M330, 1% above the NVIDIA Quadro K2100M, and 1.8% below the AMD Radeon Vega 3. These are all entry-level or mobile-class parts, and the GTX 1050 Ti is essentially at the bottom of the desktop discrete GPU hierarchy.

In contrast, the Ryzen 9 9900X3D is a flagship-class processor. It sits at the 91st percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 54762. That score is 0.6% below the Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF, 1.3% above the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K, 2% above the Intel Xeon 6505P, and 2.1% above the Intel Core i7-14700F. In synthetic CPU tests, the 9900X3D achieves a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 47737, a Geekbench multicore score of 22884, and a 3DMark max threads score of 13795. These are numbers that place it among the fastest desktop processors available.

The gap between the two components is enormous. The CPU is designed to feed high-end GPUs at high refresh rates, while the GTX 1050 Ti was launched in 2016 with 4 GB of GDDR5 memory, 768 shading units, and a boost clock of 1392 MHz. When combined, the measured FPS in Control at 1080p Low is 46, which is the maximum average frame rate recorded across any settings or resolution in this dataset. That is a playable but far from smooth experience, and it demonstrates that the GPU is completely saturated while the CPU likely sits idle waiting for frames.

Settings Recommendations

Given the measured data, the best experience comes from the Low preset at 1920x1080, which delivers an average of 46 FPS. This is the only configuration that breaks past the 40 FPS threshold. The Medium preset at the same resolution drops to 32 FPS, High drops to 29 FPS, and Ultra drops to 25 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 21 FPS, which is a 45.7% improvement from Ultra to Low. For a game like Control, which has fast-paced combat and environmental destruction, maintaining a higher frame rate is generally more important than visual fidelity, especially when the GPU is this weak.

At 1440p, the Low preset yields 34 FPS, which is still playable but noticeably less smooth than 1080p Low. The Medium preset at 1440p averages 24 FPS with a minimum of 21 and a maximum of 28, showing that even the lows are barely above the 20 FPS mark. High and Ultra at 1440p average 22 and 19 FPS respectively, which are below the threshold for comfortable action gaming. At 4K, every preset is effectively unplayable: Low averages 23 FPS, Medium averages 17 FPS with a minimum of 14, High averages 15 FPS, and Ultra averages 13 FPS.

The data suggests that if you want to play Control with this combo, the only realistic option is 1080p Low. Even then, 46 FPS is not a locked 60, and the lack of min FPS data for the Low preset means we cannot assess frametime consistency. The Medium preset at 1080p gives a minimum of 27 FPS and a maximum of 37 FPS, which indicates that the GPU is working hard and frame pacing may be uneven. For a smoother experience, Low is the clear choice. There is no preset at any resolution that approaches 60 FPS, so the recommendation is to accept visual compromises for playability.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is dramatic and reveals the limiting component. At Low settings, the average FPS goes from 46 at 1080p to 34 at 1440p, which is a 26.1% reduction for a 77.8% increase in pixel count. At 4K Low, the average drops to 23 FPS, which is a 50% reduction from 1080p. For Medium settings, the progression is 32 FPS at 1080p, 24 FPS at 1440p, and 17 FPS at 4K. That is a 46.9% drop from 1080p to 4K. High settings go from 29 to 22 to 15 FPS, a 48.3% drop from 1080p to 4K. Ultra settings go from 25 to 19 to 13 FPS, a 48% drop.

The pattern is consistent: each resolution step costs roughly 25-30% of the frame rate. This is a classic symptom of a GPU-bound scenario. If the CPU were the limiting factor, the FPS would remain relatively flat across resolutions because the CPU’s workload does not change with resolution. Here, the frame rate scales inversely with pixel count, which means the GTX 1050 Ti’s fill rate, memory bandwidth, and shading power are the constraints. The GPU has 112.1 GB/s of memory bandwidth and a pixel rate of 44.54 GPixel/s, and those figures are simply too low to handle 4K rendering.

The fact that the drop from 1080p to 1440p is smaller in absolute terms (12 FPS at Low) than the drop from 1440p to 4K (11 FPS at Low) suggests that the GPU’s memory bandwidth becomes even more of a bottleneck at higher resolutions. At 4K, the 4 GB VRAM is likely also a problem, as textures and buffers may spill into system memory, causing stutters. The data does not include min FPS for most 4K presets, but the Medium preset at 4K shows a minimum of 14 FPS, which indicates severe performance instability.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full range of presets was measured. Low is the fastest at 46 FPS average. Medium comes next at 32 FPS, with a minimum of 27 and a maximum of 37. High follows at 29 FPS. Ultra is the slowest at 25 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium is 14 FPS, which is a 30.4% drop. The gap between Medium and High is only 3 FPS, and between High and Ultra is 4 FPS. This suggests that the Low preset likely disables or significantly reduces several GPU-intensive effects, while the differences between Medium, High, and Ultra are less pronounced because the GPU is already saturated.

At 2560x1440, Low averages 34 FPS, Medium averages 24 FPS with a minimum of 21 and a maximum of 28, High averages 22 FPS, and Ultra averages 19 FPS. The ordering is the same as 1080p, but the absolute numbers are lower. The delta between Low and Medium at 1440p is 10 FPS, which is a 29.4% drop. The delta between Medium and High is 2 FPS, and between High and Ultra is 3 FPS. Again, the Low preset provides a noticeably better frame rate than any other setting.

At 3840x2160, Low averages 23 FPS, Medium averages 17 FPS with a minimum of 14 and a maximum of 19, High averages 15 FPS, and Ultra averages 13 FPS. The delta between Low and Medium is 6 FPS, between Medium and High is 2 FPS, and between High and Ultra is 2 FPS. At 4K, the GPU is so overwhelmed that even the settings differences compress. The minimum FPS at 4K Medium is 14, which is below the average of 4K Ultra at 13 FPS. This indicates that the GPU is hitting hard limits on memory and compute.

The 1080p Low result of 46 FPS is the only data point that reaches a playable level. The 1080p Medium result of 32 FPS is borderline, but the minimum of 27 FPS suggests that during intense scenes, the frame rate can dip into the mid-20s, which is not ideal for a game that requires precise aiming. The 1440p Low result of 34 FPS is similar in playability to 1080p Medium, but the lack of min FPS data leaves uncertainty about consistency.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti is the clear limiting factor in this combo. Its specifications are from a bygone era: 768 shading units, 48 TMUs, 32 ROPs, a base clock of 1291 MHz, and a boost clock of 1392 MHz. The memory configuration is 4 GB of GDDR5 on a 128-bit bus, yielding 112.1 GB/s of bandwidth. The pixel rate is 44.54 GPixel/s and the texture rate is 66.82 GTexel/s. The FP32 performance is 2.138 TFLOPS. These numbers are minuscule compared to modern GPUs, and the benchmark scores reflect that.

The GPU’s average benchmark score is 4193, which places it at the 25th percentile. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon R5 M330 (0.6% higher score), NVIDIA Quadro K2100M (1% higher), NVIDIA Quadro K3000M (1.1% lower), and AMD Radeon Vega 3 (1.8% lower). This is the company of integrated graphics and low-end mobile parts. The GTX 1050 Ti is not a gaming GPU by modern standards; it was an entry-level desktop card at its 2016 launch.

In Control, the GPU’s 4 GB VRAM is a concern. The game’s texture quality at High and Ultra likely exceeds 4 GB at higher resolutions, which could cause texture streaming issues. The measured FPS at 4K Ultra is 13, and at 4K High is 15, both of which are unplayable. Even at 1080p Ultra, the average is only 25 FPS. The GPU’s fill rate and bandwidth are simply insufficient for the game’s rendering demands.

The GTX 1050 Ti supports DirectX 12 (12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, so it is API-compatible with Control. However, the Pascal architecture lacks hardware ray tracing and has no tensor cores, so any advanced features that rely on those technologies are either absent or run through inefficient software paths. The measured data does not include ray tracing tests, so we cannot quantify the impact, but the low FPS across all settings suggests that even standard rasterization is a struggle.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D is a 12-core, 24-thread processor based on Zen 5 architecture, codenamed Granite Ridge. It has a base clock of 4.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.50 GHz. The cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 1 MB of L2 per core, and 128 MB of L3 cache. This CPU is built on a 4 nm process at TSMC with 16,630 million transistors on two 70.6 mm² dies. It supports DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration with a bandwidth of 89.6 GB/s, and it has 24 PCIe Gen 5 lanes.

The CPU’s benchmark results are exceptional. Its Cinebench R23 multicore score is 47737, and the single-core score is 6739. The Geekbench multicore score is 22884, and the single-core score is 3041. The 3DMark 16-thread score is 12490, and the max threads score is 13795. The Passmark multithread score is 56154, and the single-thread score is 4646. These are top-tier numbers that place the CPU at the 91st percentile among all CPUs.

In this combo, the CPU’s role is to feed the GPU as fast as possible, but the GTX 1050 Ti cannot accept frames at the rate the CPU can produce them. The measured FPS in Control is entirely GPU-limited, as evidenced by the resolution scaling behavior. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would see similar FPS at 1080p and 4K, but instead we see a halving of performance from 1080p to 4K. The CPU is essentially idle, waiting for the GPU to finish rendering each frame.

The Ryzen 9 9900X3D’s 128 MB of L3 cache is a feature designed to reduce memory latency in games, which can improve FPS in CPU-bound scenarios. However, in this pairing, that advantage is irrelevant because the GPU is so slow that the CPU’s memory access patterns never become a limiting factor. The CPU’s boost clock of 5.50 GHz is also wasted, as the GPU cannot produce enough frames to require that level of single-thread performance.

The CPU’s 120 W TDP and 4 nm process are characteristics of a high-end desktop part, but they have no bearing on the gaming experience with this GPU. The measured FPS values are what they are: the GPU maxes out at 46 FPS at 1080p Low, and no amount of CPU headroom can change that. If you were to pair this CPU with a modern high-end GPU, the results would be vastly different, but that is not the configuration under analysis. The data shows that the CPU is massively underutilized, and the GPU is the sole determinant of performance in Control.