Control

The Intel Core i3-12100F paired with the AMD Radeon RX 570 delivers a playable but constrained experience in Control, with performance that varies dramatically based on resolution and preset. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 59.9 FPS, nearly reaching the 60 FPS target, but this headroom evaporates quickly as settings and resolution increase. The measured results indicate a system where the GPU is the primary bottleneck at higher resolutions, while the CPU’s four cores provide sufficient, though not exceptional, support at lower settings.

Resolution Scaling

The performance drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and clearly illustrates the GPU’s limitations. At High settings, the average frame rate falls from 37.3 FPS at 1080p to 30.1 FPS at 1440p, and then plummets to 17.5 FPS at 4K. This represents a 53% reduction in frame rate from 1080p to 4K. The pattern is similar across all presets, with the gap widening as resolution increases. For instance, at Low settings, the transition from 1080p (59.9 FPS) to 1440p (42 FPS) is a 30% drop, while moving to 4K (27.7 FPS) constitutes another 34% reduction from the 1440p figure.

This scaling behavior indicates that the limiting component is overwhelmingly the GPU. The RX 570’s 224.0 GB/s memory bandwidth and 5.095 TFLOPS of compute power are simply insufficient for the pixel throughput demanded at 4K. The fact that Ultra settings at 4K (17.2 FPS) perform nearly identically to High settings at 4K (17.5 FPS) suggests that the renderer is already saturated at this resolution, regardless of the quality preset. The 1080p results are more telling: the jump from Low (59.9 FPS) to Medium (40.4 FPS) is a 33% reduction, whereas the jump from Medium to High (37.3 FPS) is only an 8% reduction. This diminishing penalty at higher settings implies that at 1080p, the GPU is still the primary constraint, but the CPU is not entirely idle either, as the scaling is not perfectly linear.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 570, built on the Polaris 20 chip with GCN 4.0 architecture, is the decisive factor in this combo’s Control performance. With 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, the card offers 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The benchmark data shows this is insufficient for high-fidelity rendering at modern resolutions. The GPU’s base clock of 1168 MHz and boost clock of 1244 MHz, combined with 2048 shading units, yield a pixel rate of 39.81 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 159.2 GTexel/s. These figures directly explain the 4K results: the card can only manage 17.5 FPS at High settings, which is below playable thresholds.

The GPU’s percentile ranking of 74 among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 30158, places it near the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 (deltaPct 0.2) and AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT (deltaPct 0.2). This is a misleading comparison, however, as those rival scores come from synthetic benchmarks like 3DMark Steel Nomad, where the RX 570 scores 880. In real-world Control gameplay, the 4 GB VRAM capacity becomes a liability at 1440p and above, where texture data exceeds this limit. The measured frame rates at 1440p High (30.1 FPS) versus 1080p High (37.3 FPS) show a 19% penalty, which is consistent with memory bandwidth saturation rather than compute limits. The card’s end-of-life production status and 150 W TDP suggest it was designed for 1080p gaming, and the data confirms this niche.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i3-12100F provides a modest foundation for this GPU. With 4 cores and 8 threads, running at a base clock of 3.30 GHz and a boost clock of 4.30 GHz, this Alder Lake-S processor delivers strong single-thread performance. Its Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1681 and multi-core score of 11912 demonstrate that it is not the primary bottleneck in most scenarios. The CPU’s 12 MB of shared L3 cache and support for DDR4 and DDR5 memory are adequate for feeding the GPU at lower resolutions.

The data suggests the CPU matters most at 1080p Low, where the combo reaches 59.9 FPS. This near-60 FPS result indicates that the CPU can maintain frame pacing when the GPU is not overburdened. However, the CPU’s 3DMark scores reveal its limits: 2859 for 4 threads and 4026 for 8 threads. In Control, a game that can utilize multiple cores, the 4-core design may cause occasional dips in complex scenes, but the measured average FPS does not show a clear CPU limit. The CPU’s percentile ranking of 72 and average benchmark score of 13516 place it near the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3975WX (deltaPct -0.1), which is a 64-core workstation part—highlighting that the i3’s synthetic score is competitive for its class, but its real-world gaming performance is limited by its physical core count. The fact that the combo’s 1080p High score (37.3 FPS) is much lower than 1080p Low (59.9 FPS) suggests the GPU, not the CPU, is the limiting factor, as the CPU would likely maintain higher frame rates if the GPU could deliver them.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested hardware combinations for Control, this pairing ranks 1551 out of 1636 combos, placing it in the bottom 5% of all tested systems. This is a poor ranking that reflects the GPU’s age and the game’s demanding nature. The RX 570’s performance is markedly below modern standards, despite its 74th percentile ranking among all GPUs in synthetic tests. This discrepancy between synthetic and real-world performance is common for older architectures. The CPU’s ranking is better than the GPU’s relative position, but it cannot compensate for the graphics card’s deficiencies.

The combo’s rank is particularly concerning given that the GPU’s nearest rivals, such as the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 (deltaPct 0.2), score similarly in synthetic benchmarks but would likely perform far better in Control due to newer architecture and more VRAM. The data shows that this pairing is only suitable for 1080p gaming at low to medium settings. At 1080p Medium, the combo achieves 40.4 FPS, which is playable but not smooth by modern standards. At 1440p, the best result is 42 FPS at Low settings, but this drops below 30 FPS at High settings. The 4K results are uniformly unplayable, with the highest average being 27.7 FPS at Low settings. This combination of an entry-level CPU from 2022 with an entry-level GPU from 2017 results in a system that is obsolete for high-resolution gaming.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured frame rates, the optimal experience for this combo is at 1080p with Low settings, which yields 59.9 FPS. This is the only configuration that approaches the 60 FPS target, making it the recommended preset for smooth gameplay. The Low preset at 1080p provides nearly double the frame rate of the High preset (37.3 FPS), indicating that the visual quality gains from higher presets are not worth the performance cost. At 1080p Medium, the frame rate drops to 40.4 FPS, which is still playable but may feel less responsive during combat sequences. The High preset at 1080p (37.3 FPS) and Ultra preset (33.7 FPS) are below the 40 FPS threshold, making them less desirable.

For users who prefer higher resolutions, 1440p Low is the only viable option, delivering 42 FPS. This is a 30% reduction from the 1080p Low result, and the visual fidelity improvement from 1080p to 1440p may not justify the frame rate loss. The 1440p Medium (28.4 FPS) and High (30.1 FPS) results are below 30 FPS, which is generally considered the minimum for playable action games. At 4K, no preset is recommended, as even the Low setting (27.7 FPS) fails to reach 30 FPS. The Ultra preset at 1080p (33.7 FPS) offers no meaningful advantage over High (37.3 FPS) given the substantial performance penalty. In summary, the data strongly suggests that 1080p Low is the only configuration that provides a consistently smooth experience, with 1080p Medium as a secondary option for users who prioritize visual quality over frame rate.