Control

The Intel Core i3-12100F paired with the AMD Radeon RX 580 delivers a playable but constrained experience in Control, with performance heavily dictated by resolution and graphical presets. As a measured configuration, the data reveals a system that can handle the game at 1080p with adjusted settings, but struggles to maintain smooth frame rates as resolution scales upward.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate trajectory from 1080p to 4K demonstrates a classic GPU-bound curve, with the biggest absolute drop occurring between 1440p and 4K. At High settings, the average FPS falls from 41 at 1920x1080 to 29.1 at 2560x1440, a reduction of roughly 29%. Moving to 3840x2160, the average plummets to 19.1 FPS, which is a 53% decrease from the 1440p figure. This steep decline indicates that the RX 580’s rendering capabilities are the primary bottleneck at higher resolutions, with the pixel throughput requirements overwhelming the Polaris 20 chip.

The scaling pattern across settings at each resolution reinforces this interpretation. At 4K, the gap between Low (34.1 FPS) and Ultra (20.3 FPS) is a substantial 13.8 FPS, showing how much headroom the GPU has when effects are reduced. Conversely, at 1080p, the spread from Low (64.6 FPS) to Ultra (37 FPS) is 27.6 FPS, a larger absolute range but with the Low preset achieving a smooth 60+ FPS experience. The data suggests that at 1080p, the CPU can feed the GPU sufficiently, but the RX 580’s compute units become saturated as settings increase.

The 1440p results are telling for this combo’s sweet spot. Medium settings yield 37.2 FPS, while High drops to 29.1 FPS. This narrow band of playable frame rates around 30 FPS indicates that users must make a trade-off between visual fidelity and responsiveness. The Ultra preset at 1440p (23.6 FPS) is nearly unplayable, confirming that this configuration is best suited for 1080p gaming or modest 1440p with reduced quality settings. The resolution scaling data clearly shows that the limiting component at 4K is the GPU, as even the lowest settings cannot break the 35 FPS barrier.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 580’s specifications directly explain its performance ceiling in Control. With 8 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, the card offers 256.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is adequate for 1080p textures but becomes strained at higher resolutions. The base clock of 1257 MHz and boost clock of 1340 MHz are modest by modern standards, yet the 2304 shading units and 144 texture mapping units provide enough raw compute for this 2019 title.

The card’s FP32 throughput of 6.175 TFLOPS places it in the mid-range tier, and its benchmark percentile of 53 versus all GPUs confirms its position. The measured results show that the RX 580’s memory subsystem is not the primary constraint at 1080p, as the card manages 64.6 FPS on Low settings. However, the 4K Ultra result of 20.3 FPS highlights the GPU’s fill rate limitations, with the 32 ROPs struggling to output the required pixels at that resolution.

The 8 GB VRAM capacity is sufficient for Control’s asset streaming, as evidenced by the consistent frame rates across settings at each resolution. If VRAM were insufficient, the Low preset at 4K would show more erratic performance than the measured 34.1 FPS. The card’s DirectX 12 support (version 12_0) allows it to leverage the game’s modern rendering pipeline, but the GCN 4.0 architecture lacks the dedicated ray tracing hardware that newer titles exploit. The RX 580’s position relative to peers—within 1.1% of the AMD Radeon Pro 455 and 0% of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570—shows it is a competent but aging solution for this workload.

FAQ

*Q: What is the best resolution to play Control with this combo for a smooth experience?*

A: The data shows that 1920x1080 on Low settings achieves 64.6 FPS average, which is the only preset/resolution combination that comfortably exceeds 60 FPS. Medium and High at 1080p deliver 43 and 41 FPS respectively.

*Q: How does the RX 580 perform at 4K in Control?*

A: The card averages 19.1 FPS at 4K High settings and 20.3 FPS at Ultra. Even on Low settings at 4K, the average is only 34.1 FPS, indicating that 4K is not viable for smooth gameplay.

Q: Does the i3-12100F bottleneck the RX 580 in this game?

A: The frame rate scaling suggests the GPU is the limiting factor. At 1080p Low, the CPU delivers 64.6 FPS, but the RX 580’s performance ceiling prevents higher frame rates at increased settings, indicating the CPU has headroom.

Q: What is the difference between 1080p and 1440p performance at High settings?

A: The average FPS drops from 41 at 1080p to 29.1 at 1440p, a decrease of 11.9 FPS or approximately 29%. This shows a significant performance penalty for the resolution increase.

*Q: Is the 8 GB VRAM sufficient for Control?*

A: Yes, the measured frame rates show stable performance across settings, with no evidence of VRAM-related stuttering. The 8 GB capacity is adequate for this game’s textures at the tested resolutions.

Q: How does the RX 580 compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The GPU’s average benchmark score of 13559 is virtually identical to the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 (13564, 0% delta) and the GTX 950 (13549, 0.1% delta), showing near-parity with those older cards.

How This Combo Ranks

The i3-12100F + RX 580 combination ranks 1507 out of 1636 tested combos in Control, placing it in the bottom 8% of configurations. This low ranking is consistent with the measured frame rates, which show the system struggling to maintain playable performance at higher settings. The rank reflects that most other tested builds deliver higher average FPS, likely due to more powerful GPUs or CPUs.

Despite the low overall rank, the data reveals that this combo is not uniformly poor. At 1080p Low, the 64.6 FPS average would place the system in a more favorable position compared to other budget configurations. The rank likely weights the full range of settings and resolutions, where the RX 580’s 4K performance (19.1 FPS at High) drags the overall score down. The percentile ranking of the CPU (72nd vs all CPUs) and GPU (53rd vs all GPUs) suggests the processor is above average while the graphics card is near the median, yet the combo’s game-specific rank is significantly lower.

This discrepancy indicates that Control is particularly demanding on the GPU, and the RX 580’s mid-range standing in synthetic benchmarks does not translate to strong real-world performance in this title. The rank of 1507 out of 1636 also suggests that many users with lower-tier CPUs but better GPUs outperform this combo, reinforcing that the graphics card is the critical component for this game. The data positions this build as a baseline 1080p machine, not a high-refresh-rate or high-resolution contender.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i3-12100F brings a capable foundation to this combo, 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 architecture chip sits on the Intel Socket 1700 platform and features 12 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU’s benchmark scores show strong single-thread performance—a Geekbench single-core score of 2224 and a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1681—which is crucial for games like Control that rely on a few heavily loaded threads.

The CPU’s multi-threaded capabilities are also respectable, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 11912 and a Passmark multi-thread score of 14015. These results place the i3-12100F in the 72nd percentile versus all CPUs, indicating it outperforms the majority of processors. The nearest rival data confirms this positioning: it sits within 1.8% of the Intel Core i7-7700K and 0.6% of the Core i3-10105, with a delta of -0.1% against the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3975WX.

In the context of Control, the CPU’s role appears to be secondary to the GPU. The frame rates at 1080p Low (64.6 FPS) demonstrate that the CPU can drive the RX 580 to its limits without bottlenecking. The 3DMark 4-thread score of 2859 and 8-thread score of 4026 indicate that the CPU can handle the game’s physics and logic workloads. The boost clock of 4.30 GHz is particularly beneficial for maintaining consistent frame times, as Control features complex scenes with destructible environments and particle effects. However, the 58 W TDP and locked multiplier mean there is no overclocking headroom, but the stock performance is sufficient for this GPU pairing.