Control

The Intel Core i5-12400 paired with the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT delivers a solid, predictable performance profile in Control, with the data showing a clear shift in bottleneck behavior as resolution increases. The measured results place this combination in the 1144th position out of 1636 tested combos, indicating it sits in the lower-middle tier of systems benchmarked for this title, though the absolute frame rates remain playable under the right settings.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS degradation from 1080p to 4K is steep, revealing a system that transitions from a CPU-leaning workload at lower resolutions to a heavily GPU-bound scenario at 4K. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo reaches 116.7 FPS, but this drops to 91.1 FPS at 1440p and further to 60.9 FPS at 4K. That represents a 47.8% reduction in frame rate from 1080p to 4K at Low settings, which is substantial but not catastrophic, indicating the RX 6600 XT still has enough headroom to maintain playable numbers.

The scaling becomes more aggressive at higher presets. With High settings, the average FPS falls from 74.1 at 1080p to 54 at 1440p (a 27.1% drop), then to 37.1 at 4K (a 31.3% drop from 1440p). The Ultra preset shows the most severe scaling, moving from 65.2 FPS at 1080p to 52.1 at 1440p, and finally to 35.9 at 4K. The data suggests that at 1080p, the i5-12400's six cores and 12 threads are sufficient to feed the GPU, but as resolution climbs, the GPU's 8 GB of VRAM and 256.0 GB/s bandwidth become the limiting factor, particularly at Ultra where the gap between 1440p and 4K narrows to just 16.2 FPS.

The difference between Low and Ultra presets also widens with resolution. At 1080p, Ultra is 51.5 FPS slower than Low (65.2 vs 116.7), but at 4K that gap shrinks to 25 FPS (35.9 vs 60.9). This compression indicates that at 4K, the GPU is so saturated that preset choices have diminishing returns on frame rate, while at 1080p, the CPU has more room to push higher FPS when the GPU load is lighter.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data points to Medium settings as the optimal balance for this combo across most resolutions. At 1080p, Medium delivers 82.2 FPS, which is 8.1 FPS higher than High and 17 FPS higher than Ultra, while still offering a visual upgrade over Low. The jump from Low to Medium costs 34.5 FPS at 1080p (116.7 to 82.2), but the visual fidelity gain is typically worth that trade-off in a game like Control with its physics-heavy environments.

At 1440p, Medium produces 66.1 FPS, which is comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, while High drops to 54 FPS and Ultra to 52.1 FPS. The data shows that Medium is the only preset at 1440p that maintains a fluid experience, as the GPU's 10.60 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is stretched thin at higher presets. For 4K, even Medium falls to 44.7 FPS, and only Low (60.9 FPS) achieves playable frame rates, suggesting that 4K gaming on this combo requires significant settings compromises.

The Ultra preset is difficult to recommend for any resolution, as it only exceeds 60 FPS at 1080p (65.2 FPS) and drops to 35.9 FPS at 4K. Given that High at 1440p (54 FPS) is close to Ultra at 1080p (65.2 FPS) in visual quality but with a lower frame rate, users targeting higher resolutions should prefer High at 1440p over Ultra at 1080p if resolution matters more than preset fidelity. The data clearly indicates that Medium is the sweet spot for this hardware pairing.

How This Combo Ranks

With a rank of 1144 out of 1636 tested combos, this i5-12400 + RX 6600 XT configuration lands in the 30th percentile of all systems measured for Control. This places it behind a significant majority of tested setups, which is expected given the GPU's mid-range positioning. The RX 6600 XT holds a 71st percentile rank against all GPUs and an average benchmark score of 27985, which is nearly identical to the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti (27956, deltaPct 0.1%) and slightly below the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 (28238, deltaPct -0.9%).

The CPU side is more competitive, with the i5-12400 achieving a 77th percentile rank against all CPUs and an average benchmark score of 19850. This puts it marginally ahead of the Intel Core i7-9700 (19831, deltaPct 0.1%) and slightly behind the Intel Core i7-8700 (19894, deltaPct -0.2%). The data suggests that the CPU is not the primary constraint in this combo's ranking; rather, the GPU's performance ceiling limits the overall position. The combination's rank of 1144 indicates that many other tested systems use higher-end GPUs, even if their CPUs are slower, which reinforces the GPU-centric nature of Control's performance demands.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1080p, the measured frame rates span a wide range depending on preset. Low settings yield 116.7 FPS, Medium drops to 82.2 FPS, High to 74.1 FPS, and Ultra to 65.2 FPS. The delta between Low and Ultra is 51.5 FPS, showing that the i5-12400 can push high frame rates when the GPU is not the bottleneck. The gap between Medium and High is only 8.1 FPS, suggesting that the GPU handles these presets similarly at this resolution.

Moving to 1440p, the numbers compress: Low runs at 91.1 FPS, Medium at 66.1, High at 54, and Ultra at 52.1. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is most pronounced at Low settings (25.6 FPS loss), while at Ultra the loss is 13.1 FPS. This indicates that the GPU's pixel throughput, rated at 165.7 GPixel/s, becomes a limiting factor as pixel count rises. At 4K, the results show Low at 60.9 FPS, Medium at 44.7, High at 37.1, and Ultra at 35.9. The 4K Low result is notable for exceeding 60 FPS, but every other preset falls below that threshold, with Ultra struggling to maintain 36 FPS.

The data reveals a consistent pattern: the frame rate penalty for each step up in preset is not linear. At 1080p, the jump from Low to Medium costs 34.5 FPS, but from Medium to High only 8.1 FPS. At 4K, the same Low-to-Medium jump costs 16.2 FPS, while Medium-to-High costs 7.6 FPS. This nonlinearity points to specific rendering features in Control that are toggled at certain preset levels, with the GPU's 2048 shading units and 64 ROPs struggling more with certain effects.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT, built on the RDNA 2.0 architecture with a 7 nm process from TSMC, is the primary driver of the measured frame rates. Its 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus provides 256.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is adequate for 1080p and 1440p but becomes a constraint at 4K, particularly at Ultra where the data shows only 35.9 FPS. The GPU's boost clock of 2589 MHz and game clock of 2359 MHz are high for the segment, but the 10.60 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is insufficient for 4K Ultra in a demanding title like Control.

The GPU's benchmark scores reinforce its mid-range positioning. Its PassMark G3D score of 16461 and average benchmark score of 27985 place it just 0.1% ahead of the GTX 980 Ti, which is a much older architecture. The deltaPct values against rivals show a tight cluster: 0.4% ahead of the Radeon R9 M395X, 0.9% behind the RTX 3070, and 1.5% behind the FirePro S7150. This suggests the RX 6600 XT performs within a narrow band of comparable GPUs, and the measured FPS in Control aligns with this positioning.

The GPU's 32 ray accelerators and DirectX 12 Ultimate support (12_2) are relevant to Control's rendering, though the measured data does not isolate ray tracing performance. The 160 W TDP and dual-slot design indicate a power-efficient card, but the 450 W suggested PSU shows it still requires a decent power supply. The 8 GB VRAM capacity is the most likely bottleneck at 4K Ultra, as the frame rate drops to 35.9 FPS, which is 25 FPS below the 4K Low result, indicating that memory bandwidth and capacity are heavily taxed by higher presets. The GPU's PCIe 4.0 x8 interface is sufficient for this workload, as the CPU's Gen 5, 16 lanes provide ample bandwidth for data transfer.