Control

Control on the Intel Core i5-10400F + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER shows a configuration where the GPU is the dominant bottleneck at higher resolutions, while the CPU’s six cores and twelve threads provide adequate headroom for the game’s physics and logic at 1080p. The measured frame rates reveal a clear pattern: at 1080p and 1440p, performance scales predictably with settings, but the jump to 4K exposes the RTX 2070 SUPER’s limits, with average FPS dropping below the 60 FPS threshold at all quality presets. This combo ranks in the 58th percentile of all tested configurations for this title, indicating a solid mid-tier pairing that excels at 1440p High but struggles to deliver a smooth 4K experience.

Resolution Scaling

The data shows a steep performance cliff as resolution increases from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160. At 1080p High, the combo delivers 82 FPS average, which is already a comfortable margin above 60 FPS. Moving to 1440p High, the average drops to 62 FPS, a 24% reduction that still maintains playability. However, at 4K High, the average plummets to 42 FPS, a 49% drop from the 1080p result and a 32% drop from 1440p. This steep decline indicates the GPU is the limiting component at 4K, as the pixel throughput requirement outpaces what the RTX 2070 SUPER can deliver.

The scaling pattern across settings reinforces this conclusion. At 1080p, the spread from Low to Ultra is 130 FPS down to 71 FPS, a 59 FPS range. At 1440p, the same spread is 98 FPS down to 54 FPS, a 44 FPS range. At 4K, the spread narrows to 66 FPS down to 36 FPS, a 30 FPS range. This narrowing at higher resolutions is a classic sign of GPU saturation—when the GPU is fully utilized, changing settings has less impact because the bottleneck is fixed. The 4K Low result of 66 FPS is notably higher than 4K Ultra’s 36 FPS, showing that even at the lowest settings, the GPU still cannot exceed 66 FPS average, whereas at 1080p Low the same GPU reaches 130 FPS.

The 1440p Medium result of 70 FPS with a minimum of 59 FPS and maximum of 80 FPS provides a useful frame-time window. The 21 FPS spread between min and max suggests some scene complexity variation, but the average stays above 60 FPS, making this a viable resolution for this combo. In contrast, the 4K Medium result of 47 FPS with a minimum of 40 FPS and maximum of 54 FPS shows a 14 FPS spread that keeps the entire range below 60 FPS, confirming that 4K is not a target resolution for this configuration.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-10400F brings six cores and twelve threads, with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.30 GHz. This Comet Lake architecture part has a 12 MB shared L3 cache and supports DDR4 memory in dual-channel mode with 42.7 GB/s bandwidth. For Control, which is an action-adventure title with significant physics interactions and AI routines, the CPU’s multi-threaded capacity matters. The benchmark data shows a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 10283 and a single-core score of 1451, placing the CPU in the 68th percentile among all tested processors.

In this game, the CPU role is most evident at lower resolutions where the GPU is not the bottleneck. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 130 FPS, which is the highest measured result across all settings and resolutions. This suggests the CPU can feed the GPU with enough frames to reach that level, but it also indicates that the CPU’s single-thread performance, as reflected in the 3DMark single-thread score of 688, is adequate for Control’s main thread. The 3DMark 8-thread score of 3929 and 16-thread score of 4748 show scaling with thread count, but the game’s engine likely doesn’t fully utilize all 12 threads, as the 2-thread score of 1350 and 4-thread score of 2560 are more indicative of the per-core performance that matters most.

The CPU’s 65W TDP and 14 nm process node are modest by modern standards, but the benchmark results show it holds its own against rivals. The nearest rival, Intel Xeon 6756E, has an average score of 14163 with a delta of 0.2%, meaning the i5-10400F is essentially tied with that server chip. The AMD EPYC 7552 is 0.5% behind, and the Intel Core 7 160UL is 0.3% ahead. This tight grouping indicates the i5-10400F’s performance is well within the norm for its class, and for Control specifically, the CPU is not the limiting factor at 1440p or 4K.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER is built on the Turing architecture with a TU104 chip, featuring 2560 shading units, 160 texture mapping units, and 64 raster output units. It has 40 RT cores and 320 tensor cores, making it capable of hardware-accelerated ray tracing, though the measured FPS data in this pack does not include ray tracing settings. The GPU has 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. Its base clock is 1605 MHz with a boost clock of 1770 MHz, and memory runs at 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective). The GPU’s FP32 performance is 9.062 TFLOPS, and its pixel rate is 113.3 GPixel/s.

The GPU’s role in Control is decisive at higher resolutions. The 4K results show that even at Low settings, the average FPS is 66, which is below the 70+ FPS achievable at 1440p Medium. This indicates that the GPU’s memory bandwidth and compute throughput are the limiting factors at 4K, not the CPU. The 8 GB VRAM is sufficient for the game’s textures at 4K, as no out-of-memory issues are indicated in the data, but the raw shading power is insufficient to maintain high frame rates. The GPU’s 65th percentile ranking among all GPUs places it in the upper-mid tier, and its nearest rivals are close: the Quadro M4000M is 1% ahead, the RTX 3070 Mobile is 1.2% ahead, and the Arc B570 is 1.3% ahead.

At 1080p, the GPU is not the bottleneck, as evidenced by the 130 FPS Low result. The GPU’s boost clock of 1770 MHz allows it to scale effectively when the CPU can provide enough draw calls. However, the 4K Ultra result of 36 FPS shows the GPU’s limits are clearly reached, as the 9.062 TFLOPS FP32 throughput is insufficient for the pixel workload. The RTX 2070 SUPER’s 215W TDP and dual-slot design suggest it is a power-hungry part, but the benchmark results indicate it delivers consistent performance within its thermal envelope.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo’s rank in Control is 2152 out of 3720 tested combinations, placing it in the 58th percentile of all configurations. This means that approximately 42% of tested combos perform better in this game, while 58% perform worse. Given that the CPU is in the 68th percentile and the GPU is in the 65th percentile, the combined rank being lower than either component’s individual percentile suggests that the pairing is not perfectly optimized for this title. This could be due to the CPU’s 12 threads not being fully utilized by Control, or the GPU’s VRAM and bandwidth being slightly under-provisioned for the game’s demands at higher settings.

Looking at the measured FPS data, the combo’s best performance relative to its rank is at 1440p Medium, where it achieves 70 FPS average. This is a playable frame rate for an action-adventure game. At 1080p Ultra, it hits 71 FPS, which is also solid. The weakest performance relative to expectations is at 4K Ultra, where 36 FPS is below the 40 FPS threshold that many consider the minimum for playable single-player experiences. The combo’s rank of 2152 suggests that a significant number of other configurations—likely those with newer GPUs like the RTX 3070 Mobile or Arc B570, which are within 1.5% of the RTX 2070 SUPER’s average score—could offer better 4K performance.

For context, the GPU’s nearest rival, the Intel Arc B570, has an average score of 20556 with a delta of -1.3% compared to the RTX 2070 SUPER’s 20282. This small difference in synthetic benchmarks does not translate to a large difference in real-world gaming, but at 4K, even a 1-2% performance advantage could push frame rates above a playable threshold. The combo rank of 2152 out of 3720 is a mid-pack result, suggesting that this configuration is a reasonable choice for 1080p and 1440p gaming, but not for 4K.

FAQ

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

A: The data shows that 1440p Medium achieves 70 FPS average with a minimum of 59 FPS, which is the highest frame rate that stays above 60 FPS at a resolution above 1080p. At 1080p, Ultra delivers 71 FPS average, but 1440p Medium offers a better balance of visual quality and performance.

Q: Is this combo capable of 60 FPS at 4K?

A: No. The highest 4K result is 66 FPS at Low settings, but the next setting up, Medium, drops to 47 FPS average. At High, the average is 42 FPS, and at Ultra it is 36 FPS. None of the 4K Medium, High, or Ultra results reach 60 FPS.

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

A: The i5-10400F has an average benchmark score of 14185. The Intel Xeon 6756E is 0.2% behind with a score of 14163, the AMD EPYC 7552 is 0.5% behind with 14115, and the Intel Core 7 160UL is 0.3% ahead with 14232. The AMD Ryzen 3 7320C is 0.6% ahead with 14277.

Q: What is the GPU’s VRAM capacity and bandwidth?

A: The RTX 2070 SUPER has 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This is sufficient for Control’s texture data at all tested resolutions, as no VRAM-related stuttering is indicated in the FPS data.

Q: Does this combo perform better in synthetic benchmarks or real-world gaming?

A: The CPU ranks in the 68th percentile and the GPU in the 65th percentile, but the combo ranks in the 58th percentile for Control specifically. This suggests the pairing is slightly less effective in this game than its components’ individual scores would predict.

Q: What is the frame rate range at 1440p Medium?

A: The 1440p Medium setting shows an average FPS of 70, with a minimum of 59 FPS and a maximum of 80 FPS. This 21 FPS spread indicates some scene-to-scene variability, but the average remains above the 60 FPS target.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers the following average FPS across settings: Low at 130 FPS, Medium at 92 FPS with a minimum of 78 FPS and maximum of 106 FPS, High at 82 FPS, and Ultra at 71 FPS. The 1080p Medium result shows a 28 FPS spread between min and max, which is the widest range of any resolution at that setting, indicating that the CPU and GPU are both contributing to frame time variability at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the results are: Low at 98 FPS, Medium at 70 FPS with a minimum of 59 FPS and maximum of 80 FPS, High at 62 FPS, and Ultra at 54 FPS. The 1440p Medium result has a 21 FPS spread, which is narrower than 1080p Medium, suggesting that the GPU bottleneck is starting to reduce frame time variance. The step from Medium to High at 1440p is 8 FPS, which is a smaller drop than the 22 FPS step from Low to Medium, indicating diminishing returns as settings increase.

At 3840x2160, the results are: Low at 66 FPS, Medium at 47 FPS with a minimum of 40 FPS and maximum of 54 FPS, High at 42 FPS, and Ultra at 36 FPS. The 4K Medium result has a 14 FPS spread, which is the narrowest of any setting, confirming that the GPU is fully saturated at this resolution. The 4K Low result of 66 FPS is the only 4K measurement above 60 FPS, but it comes at a significant visual quality cost. The 4K Ultra result of 36 FPS represents the lowest measured performance, which is 55% lower than the 1080p Ultra result of 71 FPS.