Control

# Control with AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D + AMD Radeon RX 6600

The combination of the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and AMD Radeon RX 6600 produces a highly CPU-capable platform paired with a mid-range GPU, and the measured frame rates in Control reflect this imbalance clearly. Across all resolutions and settings, the RX 6600 emerges as the performance boundary, with the 16-core processor providing ample headroom that never becomes the limiting factor in practice. The data shows a system that can deliver smooth 1080p gameplay at most presets, but struggles to maintain playable rates at 4K, particularly at higher quality settings.

FAQ

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

A: The measured data indicates 1920x1080 is the only resolution where all four settings presets achieve playable frame rates. At 1080p, average FPS ranges from 59 (Ultra) to 108 (Low), while 1440p drops to a 45–82 FPS range and 4K falls to 30–55 FPS.

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

A: The Ryzen 9 9950X3D has an average benchmark score of 75779, placing it 0.1% ahead of the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 9755 and AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 9755X3D, 0.3% ahead of the AMD EPYC 8224P, and 0.4% ahead of the Intel Core Ultra 9 285.

Q: What is the GPU's percentile ranking among all tested graphics cards?

A: The Radeon RX 6600 sits at the 63rd percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 19036. Its closest rival, the NVIDIA Quadro K6000, scores 19030 (0% delta), while the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Mobile scores 19049 (-0.1% delta).

Q: Does the CPU bottleneck the GPU in this game?

A: No. Benchmark results show the CPU scores in the 95th percentile of all CPUs, with a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 42018 and single-core score of 2259. The GPU's 63rd percentile ranking means the RX 6600 is the performance limiter, not the processor.

Q: What is the frame time consistency like at Medium settings?

A: The only measured minimum and maximum FPS values are recorded at Medium settings. At 1080p, the range is 65–88 FPS (average 77); at 1440p, it is 49–67 FPS (average 58); at 4K, it is 33–45 FPS (average 39). This suggests tighter frame pacing at lower resolutions.

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

A: The combination ranks 2904 out of 3720 tested combos, placing it in the lower-middle portion of the database. This ranking reflects the GPU's modest performance ceiling despite the CPU's top-tier capabilities.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data provides a clear picture of which settings preset delivers the best experience at each resolution. At 1920x1080, the High preset offers an average of 68 FPS, which is a 9 FPS reduction from Medium's 77 FPS but a 9 FPS improvement over Ultra's 59 FPS. The High preset strikes the optimal balance between visual fidelity and frame rate at this resolution, as all three quality levels remain above the 60 FPS threshold except Ultra.

At 2560x1440, the situation shifts. The Low preset achieves 82 FPS average, while Medium drops to 58 FPS, High to 52 FPS, and Ultra to 45 FPS. For players prioritizing smooth motion, Low is the only preset that consistently exceeds 60 FPS. However, the Medium preset's 58 FPS average with a 49 FPS minimum remains within a tolerable range for many titles, making it a reasonable choice if visual quality matters more than absolute smoothness.

At 3840x2160, no preset reaches 60 FPS. The Low preset averages 55 FPS, Medium averages 39 FPS, High averages 35 FPS, and Ultra averages 30 FPS. The Low preset is the only viable option for playable frame rates at 4K, and even then, it falls short of the 60 FPS standard. Given the dramatic FPS penalties at higher settings, the data suggests that 4K gaming with this GPU requires significant compromises in visual quality.

The optimal recommendation across all resolutions is to prioritize the Medium preset at 1080p and 1440p, as it maintains frame rates above 55 FPS while offering better visual quality than Low. At 4K, Low is the only sensible choice. The High and Ultra presets provide diminishing returns relative to their FPS costs, particularly at higher resolutions where the GPU's 8 GB memory and 224.0 GB/s bandwidth become strained.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a consistent pattern of performance degradation as resolution increases, indicating that the Radeon RX 6600 is the primary constraint. From 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 at High settings, the average FPS drops from 68 to 52, a reduction of approximately 23.5%. At Medium settings, the drop is from 77 to 58 FPS, a 24.7% decrease. The Low preset shows a smaller relative decline from 108 to 82 FPS, a 24.1% reduction, while Ultra falls from 59 to 45 FPS, a 23.7% decrease.

Scaling from 2560x1440 to 3840x2160 produces larger percentage drops. At High settings, FPS falls from 52 to 35, a 32.7% reduction. Medium drops from 58 to 39 FPS, a 32.8% decrease. Low goes from 82 to 55 FPS, a 32.9% reduction, and Ultra falls from 45 to 30 FPS, a 33.3% decrease. This steeper decline at 4K is characteristic of a GPU with limited memory bandwidth; the RX 6600's 224.0 GB/s bandwidth and 128-bit bus width struggle to feed the pixel throughput required at 3840x2160.

The consistent scaling pattern across all settings presets points to a purely GPU-bound scenario. If the CPU were limiting, the percentage drops would compress at higher resolutions as the GPU becomes more heavily utilized. Instead, the near-uniform scaling percentages suggest that the RX 6600's compute resources—1792 shading units, 112 TMUs, and 64 ROPs—are the bottleneck. The CPU's 128 MB L3 cache and 89.6 GB/s memory bandwidth provide more than enough data for the GPU at all tested resolutions.

The 4K results are particularly telling. The RX 6600's pixel rate of 159.4 GPixel/s and texture rate of 279.0 GTexel/s are insufficient for high-fidelity rendering at 3840x2160, as evidenced by the 30 FPS average at Ultra settings. Even at Low, the 55 FPS average indicates that the GPU is operating near its practical ceiling for this resolution.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the RX 6600 delivers its strongest performance. The Low preset achieves an average of 108 FPS, providing a highly responsive experience. Medium settings produce 77 FPS average with a 65 FPS minimum and 88 FPS maximum, indicating stable frame delivery. High settings average 68 FPS, while Ultra settings average 59 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra represents a 49 FPS difference, showing that Control's quality settings have a substantial impact on GPU load.

At 2560x1440, performance declines across all presets. Low averages 82 FPS, still comfortably above 60 FPS. Medium averages 58 FPS with a minimum of 49 FPS and maximum of 67 FPS, placing it just below the ideal threshold. High averages 52 FPS, and Ultra drops to 45 FPS. The relative ordering remains consistent, with each step up in quality costing roughly 10–13 FPS at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the GPU's limitations become pronounced. Low averages 55 FPS, which is marginally below the 60 FPS target. Medium averages 39 FPS with a minimum of 33 FPS and maximum of 45 FPS, indicating frame rates that would feel noticeably stuttery during intense scenes. High averages 35 FPS, and Ultra averages 30 FPS, the latter representing the bare minimum for playability. The 4K results show a narrow 25 FPS range from Low to Ultra, suggesting that the GPU is so heavily constrained that quality settings have a compressed impact.

The Medium preset is the only configuration with recorded minimum and maximum FPS values across all resolutions. These data points show that frame variability increases with resolution: the 1080p range is 23 FPS (65–88), 1440p is 18 FPS (49–67), and 4K is 12 FPS (33–45). This narrowing range at higher resolutions further confirms that the GPU is saturated, reducing the headroom for frame rate fluctuations.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6600 is built on the RDNA 2.0 architecture with the Navi 23 chip, manufactured on TSMC's 7 nm process with 11,060 million transistors. Its 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus provides 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which proves to be a limiting factor in Control at higher resolutions. The GPU's boost clock of 2491 MHz and game clock of 2044 MHz are respectable for its class, but the memory subsystem cannot sustain the data throughput required for 4K rendering.

The measured FPS data indicates that the GPU is the performance bottleneck across all tested configurations. At 1080p, the RX 6600 achieves frame rates ranging from 59 to 108 FPS depending on settings, demonstrating that its 8.928 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 279.0 GTexel/s texture rate are sufficient for 1080p gaming. However, the 159.4 GPixel/s pixel rate becomes increasingly inadequate as resolution rises.

The GPU's 63rd percentile ranking among all tested GPUs places it in the mid-range segment. Its average benchmark score of 19036 is nearly identical to the NVIDIA Quadro K6000 (19030, 0% delta) and slightly below the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Mobile (19049, -0.1% delta). These near-identical scores suggest that the RX 6600 delivers performance typical of its class, with no significant outliers in either direction.

The 8 GB VRAM capacity is sufficient for Control at 1080p and 1440p, but at 4K, the combination of higher resolution textures and larger frame buffers likely approaches the memory ceiling. The measured FPS drops at 4K are consistent with a GPU that is both compute-bound and memory-bandwidth-limited. The RX 6600's DirectX 12 Ultimate support and Vulkan 1.4 compatibility ensure that it can handle modern rendering features, but the hardware resources constrain actual performance.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D is a 16-core, 32-thread processor based on the Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge), manufactured on TSMC's 4 nm process with 16,630 million transistors across a dual-die design. Its base clock of 4.30 GHz and boost clock of 5.70 GHz provide substantial single-thread performance, while the 128 MB L3 cache offers a large data reservoir for game workloads. The processor's 95th percentile ranking among all CPUs reflects its position near the top of the performance hierarchy.

In synthetic benchmarks, the 9950X3D demonstrates exceptional multi-threaded capability with a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 42018 and a Geekbench multicore score of 26736. Single-thread performance is equally strong, with Cinebench R23 single-core at 2259 and Geekbench single-core at 3064. The Passmark multithread score of 70255 and single-thread score of 4737 further confirm that the CPU is not a performance limiter in gaming scenarios.

The nearest rival comparisons show a tightly clustered group at the top. The 9950X3D's average score of 75779 is 0.1% ahead of the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 9755 (75738) and AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 9755X3D (75716), 0.3% ahead of the AMD EPYC 8224P (75582), and 0.4% ahead of the Intel Core Ultra 9 285 (75488). These minuscule deltas indicate that the 9950X3D offers no meaningful performance advantage over its closest competitors in aggregate benchmarks.

In Control specifically, the CPU's role is minimal due to the GPU bottleneck. With the RX 6600 limiting frame rates to a maximum of 108 FPS at 1080p Low settings, the 9950X3D's 16 cores and 32 threads are rarely stressed. The CPU's 89.6 GB/s memory bandwidth and DDR5 support ensure that data can be fed to the GPU without stalling, but the measured FPS values show no signs of CPU-induced frame drops. The processor's 170 W TDP and unlocked multiplier indicate that it is designed for high-performance workloads, but in this pairing, its capabilities are largely untapped.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Radeon RX 6600 ranks 2904 out of 3720 tested combos in Control, placing it in the 22nd percentile of all configurations. This ranking reflects the significant mismatch between the CPU's elite performance tier and the GPU's mid-range positioning. The 9950X3D ranks in the 95th percentile of all CPUs, while the RX 6600 sits at the 63rd percentile of all GPUs, creating a substantial gap in capability.

The low combo ranking is primarily attributable to the GPU's performance ceiling. In a game like Control, which places heavy demands on both compute and memory bandwidth, the RX 6600's 8 GB VRAM and 224.0 GB/s bandwidth are insufficient to leverage the CPU's strengths. The measured FPS results show that even at 1080p Low settings, the combo achieves 108 FPS, which is respectable but far from the frame rates that a top-tier CPU could enable with a more powerful GPU.

Compared to other combos in the database, this pairing sits in the lower-middle range, with 816 configurations performing worse and 2903 performing better. The ranking suggests that users seeking higher frame rates in Control would benefit more from upgrading the GPU than the CPU, as the 9950X3D provides ample headroom for any graphics card that could be paired with it. The data indicates that this combo is best suited for 1080p gaming at Medium to High settings, where it delivers 68–77 FPS, or 1440p at Low settings, where it achieves 82 FPS.

The combination's rank is consistent with the GPU's benchmark position relative to its rivals. The RX 6600's nearest competitors—the NVIDIA Quadro K6000, RTX 4050 Mobile, Tesla K20m, and RTX 2000 Ada Generation—all have similar average scores within a 0.4% delta. This tight clustering suggests that any of these GPUs paired with the 9950X3D would produce nearly identical results in Control, further emphasizing that the GPU is the determining factor in this combo's ranking.