Control

Control pairs a 10-core Intel Core i5-12600KF with a 6 GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, and the measured results in this Action Adventure title show a combination that is clearly leaning on its processor to stay competitive. The combo ranks 1427th out of 1636 tested combinations, placing it in the lower 13th percentile of all systems tested for this game. That ranking is a direct consequence of the GPU’s position in the broader hardware landscape; the GTX 1660 Ti sits at the 55th percentile among all GPUs, while the i5-12600KF commands an 84th percentile standing among all CPUs. The data suggests a system where the graphics card is the decisive bottleneck, a conclusion reinforced by the FPS measurements across resolutions and settings.

How This Combo Ranks

The 1427th rank out of 1636 combos for Control places this pairing in the bottom tier of tested systems, but the composition of that ranking is instructive. The CPU is not the problem; the i5-12600KF’s average benchmark score of 27827 places it in a dead heat with the Intel Core i9-10900K, which scores 27829, a delta of 0%. It is also statistically tied with the Core i5-12600K (27851, -0.1%) and the Core Ultra 5 125H (27872, -0.2%), while edging out the Core i7-13700H (27716, 0.4%). In synthetic multi-threaded workloads, this processor is a top-tier performer, but the GPU’s average benchmark score of 13925 tells a different story. The GTX 1660 Ti is closely matched with the AMD Radeon RX 570X (13871, 0.4%) and the NVIDIA Tesla K10 (14029, -0.7%), falling just ahead of the RTX A2000 Mobile (13821, 0.8%) and the GTX 680 (13812, 0.8%). This places the GPU at the 55th percentile, a mid-pack result that severely limits the overall combo’s ability to push high frame rates in a game like Control, which is known for its demanding physics and particle effects.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is built on the Turing architecture with a TU116 chip fabricated on a 12 nm process at TSMC. It operates with a base clock of 1500 MHz and a boost clock of 1770 MHz, while its 6 GB of GDDR6 memory runs at 1500 MHz with a 12 Gbps effective data rate across a 192-bit bus. This configuration yields a memory bandwidth of 288.0 GB/s, which is a critical figure for a game that streams high-resolution textures. The GPU’s shading units number 1536, with 96 texture mapping units and 48 render output units, producing a pixel rate of 84.96 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 169.9 GTexel/s. The FP32 performance is 5.437 TFLOPS, which is the raw compute ceiling for this card. In Control, the GPU’s role is to handle the game’s destructible environments and lighting effects, but the data shows it struggles to maintain high frame rates at higher resolutions. The card’s 55th percentile ranking among all GPUs is a moderate result, but its performance in this specific title is further constrained by the 6 GB VRAM capacity, which becomes a limiting factor as resolution increases.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data suggests that the optimal experience for this combo is found at 1080p with Medium settings, where the average frame rate is 63.4 FPS. This strikes a balance between visual fidelity and playability, as the jump to High settings at the same resolution drops the average to 55.9 FPS, a 12% reduction. Low settings at 1080p deliver 95 FPS, which is smooth but sacrifices too much visual quality for the modest gain over Medium. At 1440p, the situation becomes more difficult; Medium settings produce 51.1 FPS, which is playable but close to the edge of smoothness, while High drops to 44.1 FPS. For users with a 1440p monitor, the recommendation is to stick with Medium settings to stay above 50 FPS. At 4K, no setting is truly playable; even Low settings only reach 44.8 FPS, and the Ultra preset falls to 26.8 FPS. The data clearly indicates that 1080p Medium is the sweet spot for this hardware combination, offering a frame rate that is 18% higher than High settings at the same resolution.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the results scale predictably with settings. Low settings produce 95 FPS, which is the highest measured frame rate for this combo. Medium settings drop to 63.4 FPS, a 33% reduction from Low, while High settings yield 55.9 FPS, a further 12% drop. Ultra settings bring the average down to 53.8 FPS, which is only 4% lower than High, indicating diminishing returns at the top end. Moving to 2560x1440, the pattern continues but with lower absolute numbers. Low settings achieve 70.7 FPS, which is 26% lower than the equivalent 1080p result. Medium settings at 1440p produce 51.1 FPS, High drops to 44.1 FPS, and Ultra falls to 36.7 FPS. The gap between Medium and High at 1440p is 14%, similar to the 1080p gap, but the absolute values are all below the 60 FPS threshold except for Low. At 3840x2160, the performance collapses. Low settings manage 44.8 FPS, Medium drops to 35.7 FPS, High falls to 27.6 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 26.8 FPS. The spread between Low and Ultra at 4K is 40%, which is narrower than at lower resolutions, suggesting that the GPU is hitting a hard computational limit rather than a bandwidth or fill-rate bottleneck.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1080p to 4K reveals a steep performance curve that underscores the GPU’s limitations. At Low settings, the FPS drops from 95 at 1080p to 70.7 at 1440p, a 26% reduction, and then to 44.8 at 4K, a 53% drop from the 1440p figure. This scaling is not linear; the jump from 1440p to 4K is more punishing than the jump from 1080p to 1440p, which is expected given the pixel count increase from 3.7 million to 8.3 million. At Medium settings, the drop from 1080p (63.4 FPS) to 1440p (51.1 FPS) is 19%, and the drop to 4K (35.7 FPS) is another 30%. High settings show a similar pattern: 55.9 FPS at 1080p, 44.1 at 1440p, and 27.6 at 4K. The sharp decline at 4K, where even Low settings fail to reach 45 FPS, indicates that the GTX 1660 Ti’s 288.0 GB/s memory bandwidth and 5.437 TFLOPS of compute power are insufficient for the game’s demands at that resolution. The CPU, which is vastly overqualified with its 23444 Cinebench R23 multi-core score, is not the limiting factor here; the data shows that the GPU is the bottleneck, as the FPS scales almost entirely with resolution and settings rather than showing any CPU-related plateau. This combo is best suited for 1080p gaming, where the CPU’s headroom allows the GPU to operate near its maximum potential.