Control

Control, Remedy’s 2019 action-adventure title, presents a demanding workload that scales significantly with both resolution and graphical presets. This analysis examines the measured performance of the Intel Core i3-12100F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER, based on benchmark data collected across three resolutions and four settings levels. The data reveals a system that is heavily GPU-bound at higher resolutions, but which shows distinct CPU limitations at 1080p, particularly at lower settings where frame rates approach and exceed 200 FPS.

Resolution Scaling

The performance delta from 1080p to 4K is substantial, highlighting the GPU as the primary bottleneck at higher resolutions. At High settings, the average frame rate drops from 137.9 FPS at 1920x1080 to 104.1 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of 24.5%. Moving to 3840x2160, the frame rate falls further to 72.1 FPS, representing a 47.7% decrease from the 1080p baseline. This scaling pattern is characteristic of a GPU-limited scenario, where the RTX 4070 SUPER’s rendering throughput becomes the limiting factor as pixel count increases.

The scaling behavior becomes more pronounced when examining the Low settings data. At 1920x1080, the system achieves 215.9 FPS, but this drops to 160.1 FPS at 1440p and 108.9 FPS at 4K. The percentage drop from 1080p to 4K at Low settings is 49.6%, which is nearly identical to the 47.7% drop observed at High settings. This consistency suggests that the GPU’s compute resources are being saturated in both cases, though the absolute frame rates indicate that the CPU is also contributing to the performance ceiling at lower resolutions.

The most telling indicator of the bottleneck lies in the Ultra settings results. At 4K Ultra, the system produces 59.1 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold commonly targeted for smooth gameplay. This is despite the RTX 4070 SUPER’s strong benchmark scores, including a Passmark G3D score of 29995 and a percentile rank of 84 among all GPUs. The data suggests that Control’s Ultra preset, with its advanced rendering features, places an extreme load on the GPU that even this high-end card cannot fully overcome at 4K.

FAQ

Q: How does the Intel Core i3-12100F perform in Control at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, the CPU-GPU combination delivers 215.9 FPS on Low settings, 155.3 FPS on Medium, 137.9 FPS on High, and 118.1 FPS on Ultra. The large gap between Low and Medium settings (60.6 FPS) indicates that the CPU is capable of pushing very high frame rates, but the GPU begins to limit performance as settings increase.

Q: What is the maximum 4K performance achievable with this combo?

A: The highest 4K average frame rate is 108.9 FPS, achieved at Low settings. At Medium settings, performance drops to 76 FPS, and at High settings it falls to 72.1 FPS. The Ultra preset yields 59.1 FPS, which is the only configuration tested that falls below 60 FPS.

Q: Is the RTX 4070 SUPER’s 12 GB VRAM sufficient for Control at 4K?

A: The measured data shows playable frame rates at 4K across all settings, with the lowest result being 59.1 FPS at Ultra. The GPU’s 12 GB of GDDR6X memory, paired with a 504.2 GB/s bandwidth, appears adequate for this game, as no memory-related performance anomalies are evident in the scaling patterns.

Q: How does the i3-12100F’s multi-threaded performance compare to its rivals?

A: The i3-12100F’s average benchmark score of 13516 places it 0.1% behind the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3975WX (13534), and 0.4% ahead of the Intel Core i7-1250U (13462). It also outperforms the Intel Core i3-10105 by 0.6% and the Intel Core i7-7700K by 1.8%.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between High and Ultra settings at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the High preset averages 104.1 FPS, while Ultra averages 88.1 FPS, a difference of 16 FPS (15.4% reduction). This is a smaller relative gap than the 19.8 FPS difference seen at 1080p, suggesting the GPU load becomes more uniform across presets at higher resolutions.

Q: Does the data indicate any CPU bottleneck at 1080p?

A: Yes, the Low preset at 1080p achieves 215.9 FPS, which is 55.8 FPS higher than the Medium preset’s 155.3 FPS. This unusually large jump between Low and Medium settings indicates that the CPU can render frames faster than the GPU can process them at the lowest settings, creating a CPU-imposed ceiling.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER is the dominant component in this configuration, with a boost clock of 2475 MHz and a base clock of 1980 MHz. Its 12 GB of GDDR6X memory operates at 1313 MHz with a 21 Gbps effective data rate, yielding a memory bandwidth of 504.2 GB/s across a 192-bit bus. These specifications position the GPU well above the 84th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 42576.

In Control, the GPU’s role becomes increasingly critical as resolution scales. At 4K, the GPU’s 35.48 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 56 RT cores are heavily utilized, particularly at Ultra settings where the average frame rate drops to 59.1 FPS. The GPU’s 80 ROPs and 224 TMUs contribute to a pixel rate of 198.0 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 554.4 GTexel/s, which are likely the limiting factors at 4K given the game’s detailed environments and particle effects.

The GPU’s benchmark results provide context for its gaming performance. Its Passmark G3D score of 29995 places it in the top tier of graphics cards, while its Geekbench OpenCL score of 192684 and Vulkan score of 179271 indicate strong compute capabilities. The data shows that the RTX 4070 SUPER trails the NVIDIA RTX A6000 by 0.2% and the AMD Radeon RX 7650 GRE by 0.3% in average benchmark scores, but leads the AMD Radeon Pro 580X by 1.4% and the NVIDIA Tesla M40 by 1.6%.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system demonstrates its highest performance ceiling. Low settings produce 215.9 FPS, Medium settings 155.3 FPS, High settings 137.9 FPS, and Ultra settings 118.1 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a 45.3% reduction in frame rate, with the largest single drop occurring between Low and Medium (60.6 FPS, or 28.1%). This suggests that the Medium preset introduces significant GPU workload increases, such as higher-resolution textures or more complex shading.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates are 160.1 FPS (Low), 118.4 FPS (Medium), 104.1 FPS (High), and 88.1 FPS (Ultra). The percentage drop from Low to Ultra at 1440p is 45.0%, which is remarkably consistent with the 1080p result. However, the absolute difference between Low and Medium is now 41.7 FPS (26.1%), slightly less than at 1080p, indicating that the GPU is beginning to be the primary limiter.

At 3840x2160, performance compresses further: 108.9 FPS (Low), 76 FPS (Medium), 72.1 FPS (High), and 59.1 FPS (Ultra). The Low to Ultra drop is 45.7%, maintaining the consistent pattern. Notably, the gap between Medium and High at 4K is only 3.9 FPS, whereas at 1080p it is 17.4 FPS. This convergence suggests that at 4K, the GPU is so saturated that the differences between Medium and High settings have a minimal impact on frame rate, as the GPU cannot render either preset at its full potential.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i3-12100F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER combination ranks 262nd out of 1636 tested combos in Control, placing it in the 84th percentile of all configurations. This ranking is consistent with the GPU’s individual percentile of 84, suggesting that the combo’s overall performance is largely determined by the graphics card rather than the CPU.

The CPU’s performance in this context is adequate but not exceptional. With a passmark multithread score of 14015 and a 3DMark max threads score of 4023, the i3-12100F provides enough processing power to avoid being a major bottleneck at most settings. However, the 1080p Low setting result of 215.9 FPS indicates that the CPU’s 4 cores and 8 threads, with a boost clock of 4.30 GHz, can exceed the GPU’s rendering capabilities at lower graphical loads.

The ranking of 262 out of 1636 places this combo in the upper tier of tested systems. This is expected given the RTX 4070 SUPER’s position in the GPU hierarchy, but the data also reveals that the i3-12100F’s single-thread performance, evidenced by its 3DMark single-thread score of 893 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1681, is sufficient to support high frame rates in this game. The combo’s performance is particularly strong at 1440p, where it delivers over 88 FPS even at Ultra settings, making it a viable option for high-refresh-rate 1440p gaming.