Control

Control is a demanding action-adventure title that can be surprisingly scalable, and the data for the Intel Core i5-13400F and AMD Radeon RX 7600 combination shows a wide performance envelope across its four presets. The measured results indicate that the sweet spot for a high-refresh experience is the Medium preset, which provides a significant boost over High settings while maintaining a comfortable frame rate at 1440p. At 4K, the Medium preset remains the most balanced choice, delivering an average of 105 FPS, whereas the Ultra preset drops to 67 FPS. While the Low preset offers the highest frame rates, the jump from Low to Medium is relatively small compared to the visual quality gains typically associated with that step, making Medium the recommended starting point for most users.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data reveals a clear hierarchy in performance scaling across the four available settings. At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves an average of 341 FPS, which drops to 291 FPS on Medium, 247 FPS on High, and 185 FPS on Ultra. This progression highlights that the Ultra preset, while visually intensive, imposes a substantial performance cost that is not justified for most display configurations. The Medium preset, however, delivers a robust 291 FPS at 1080p, which is more than sufficient for even the fastest 240Hz monitors, and it does so with a 50 FPS advantage over High settings.

For 2560x1440, the Medium preset’s 190 FPS average is the standout choice, positioning this combo as a high-refresh 1440p machine. The High preset at 162 FPS is still excellent for 144Hz displays, but the Medium preset’s margin over High (28 FPS) is more substantial than the margin between Medium and Low (34 FPS), suggesting that Medium offers the best balance of visual fidelity and headroom. At 4K, the Medium preset’s 105 FPS is the only configuration that clears the 100 FPS threshold, while the High preset’s 89 FPS is playable but less consistent for fast-paced action. The Ultra preset at 67 FPS is best reserved for players prioritizing maximum visual quality over frame rate, as it falls below the 72 FPS threshold often cited for smooth gameplay.

The data suggests that the Medium preset is the optimal choice across all resolutions for this hardware combination. It offers a 24.2% performance uplift over High at 1440p and a 17.9% uplift at 4K, while the drop from Medium to Low is only 18.7% at 1080p. This indicates that the Medium preset is not merely a compromise but a well-balanced configuration that leverages the CPU’s strong multi-threaded performance and the GPU’s capable 8GB VRAM buffer without hitting the memory bandwidth ceiling that Ultra settings appear to trigger.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i5-13400F and AMD Radeon RX 7600 combination ranks second out of 3,720 tested combos in Control, placing it in the top 0.05% of all configurations evaluated for this game. This is an exceptional result that reflects the synergistic pairing of a strong mid-range CPU with a capable mid-range GPU, both of which are well-suited to Control’s engine. The combo’s rank is particularly impressive given that the CPU sits in the 77th percentile among all processors and the GPU in the 57th percentile among all graphics cards, indicating that the overall system performance exceeds what the individual component percentiles might suggest.

The nearest rivals to the CPU in general benchmarks include the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS and the Intel Core 5 120, with score deltas of 0% and -0.3% respectively, while the GPU’s closest competitors are the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 OEM and the AMD Radeon 680M, with deltas of -0.2% and -0.7%. These figures show that the i5-13400F is effectively tied with the Ryzen 9 6900HS in raw compute, while the RX 7600 edges out the RTX 3050 OEM by a small margin. In a game like Control, which is known for its physics-heavy environments and particle effects, the CPU’s 10-core, 16-thread configuration provides ample headroom, and the GPU’s RDNA 3 architecture handles the DirectX 12 workload efficiently.

The combo’s second-place ranking reflects the balance of this pairing. It outperforms configurations with more powerful GPUs that may be bottlenecked by weaker CPUs, and it also surpasses setups with stronger CPUs paired with less capable GPUs. The data indicates that this is a near-ideal match for Control, as neither component consistently becomes the limiting factor across the tested resolutions, allowing the system to maintain high frame rates even at 4K.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7600 plays a critical role in this combo’s performance, particularly at higher resolutions where the GPU’s 8GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus becomes a determining factor. The memory bandwidth of 288.0 GB/s is sufficient for the Medium preset at 4K, as evidenced by the 105 FPS average, but the Ultra preset’s 67 FPS suggests that the GPU is hitting a memory capacity or bandwidth wall when texture quality and other memory-intensive effects are maxed out. The GPU’s boost clock of 2655 MHz and game clock of 2250 MHz are key contributors to its rasterization performance, enabling high pixel and texture fill rates that are necessary for Control’s detailed environments.

The RX 7600’s 32 ray tracing cores are present in the hardware, but the measured data does not include ray tracing-specific results, so the analysis focuses on traditional rasterization. The GPU’s 2048 shading units and 64 ROPs provide a solid foundation for the game’s visual effects, and the 21.75 TFLOPS of FP32 compute power is more than adequate for Control’s shader complexity. The GPU’s 57th percentile ranking among all graphics cards indicates it is a mid-pack performer, but in this specific title, the data shows it punches above its weight class, particularly when paired with the i5-13400F’s strong multi-threaded capabilities.

The 8GB VRAM capacity is a notable consideration for 4K gaming. At Ultra settings, the frame rate drops to 67 FPS, which is 36.2% lower than the Medium preset’s 105 FPS. This significant drop suggests that the Ultra preset likely exceeds the 8GB VRAM buffer or saturates the 128-bit memory bus, causing the GPU to resort to slower memory management. The Low and Medium presets at 4K, with averages of 123 and 105 FPS respectively, demonstrate that the GPU can handle the resolution when memory demands are kept in check, making the Medium preset the recommended ceiling for 4K play.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the frame rates are exceptionally high across all settings. The Low preset delivers an average of 341 FPS, which is a 17.2% increase over the Medium preset’s 291 FPS. The High preset averages 247 FPS, representing a 15.1% drop from Medium, while the Ultra preset averages 185 FPS, a further 25.1% reduction. The Medium preset’s minimum frame rate of 247 FPS matches the High preset’s average, indicating that even in the most demanding scenes, the Medium preset maintains frame times that are competitive with the High preset’s typical performance.

At 2560x1440, the performance scales predictably. The Low preset hits 224 FPS, the Medium preset 190 FPS, the High preset 162 FPS, and the Ultra preset 121 FPS. The Medium preset’s minimum of 162 FPS is identical to the High preset’s average, showing that the Medium preset provides a more consistent experience than High. The gap between Medium and High is 28 FPS, while the gap between High and Ultra is 41 FPS, highlighting that Ultra has a disproportionately high performance cost at this resolution. For 1440p gamers with 144Hz monitors, the Medium preset offers 46 FPS of headroom above the refresh rate, ensuring smooth gameplay even during intense combat sequences.

At 3840x2160, the performance gap between settings widens. The Low preset averages 123 FPS, the Medium preset 105 FPS, the High preset 89 FPS, and the Ultra preset 67 FPS. The Medium preset’s minimum of 89 FPS is equal to the High preset’s average, again demonstrating the Medium preset’s superior consistency. The 4K results show a clear inflection point: the Low to Medium transition costs 18 FPS, while the Medium to High transition costs 16 FPS, and the High to Ultra transition costs 22 FPS. The Ultra preset’s 67 FPS average is 36.2% lower than the Medium preset, making it the least efficient setting for 4K on this hardware.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals important insights about the system’s bottleneck characteristics. At Medium settings, the average FPS drops from 291 at 1080p to 190 at 1440p (a 34.7% reduction) and then to 105 at 4K (a further 44.7% reduction). This scaling pattern is typical of a GPU-bound scenario, where the load on the graphics card increases exponentially with pixel count. The RX 7600’s performance at 4K Medium, while still playable, is significantly lower than at 1440p, indicating that the GPU is the primary limiting factor at higher resolutions.

At Low settings, the scaling is slightly different: 341 FPS at 1080p drops to 224 FPS at 1440p (a 34.3% reduction) and then to 123 FPS at 4K (a 45.1% reduction). This similar percentage drop suggests that even at Low settings, the GPU remains the bottleneck at 4K, as the CPU’s 10 cores and 16 threads are more than capable of feeding the GPU at these frame rates. However, the fact that the 1080p Low setting hits 341 FPS indicates that the CPU can sustain extremely high frame rates, and the system is not CPU-limited at any tested resolution.

The Ultra preset shows the steepest scaling curve: 185 FPS at 1080p, 121 FPS at 1440p (a 34.6% reduction), and 67 FPS at 4K (a 44.6% reduction). The consistent ~35% drop from 1080p to 1440p across all settings suggests that the scaling is resolution-driven rather than setting-driven, confirming that the GPU is the limiting component. The 4K Ultra result of 67 FPS is the only data point that falls below 60 FPS, and its performance deficit relative to 1080p (63.8% reduction) is slightly larger than the Medium preset’s 63.9% reduction, indicating that Ultra settings add additional GPU stress that compounds with the resolution increase. The data clearly shows that this combo is best suited for 1080p and 1440p gaming, with 4K being viable only on Medium settings or lower.

FAQ

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

A: The data shows that 2560x1440 on Medium settings provides an average of 190 FPS with a minimum of 162 FPS, making it the ideal balance of visual quality and performance. At 1080p, the Medium preset hits 291 FPS, which is excessive for most displays, while 4K on Medium is playable at 105 FPS but offers less headroom for demanding scenes.

Q: How does the Ultra preset compare to Medium at 1440p?

A: The Ultra preset averages 121 FPS at 1440p, which is 36.3% lower than the Medium preset’s 190 FPS. The frame rate drop from High to Ultra is 41 FPS, while the drop from Medium to High is only 28 FPS, indicating that Ultra has a disproportionately high performance cost relative to its incremental visual uplift.

Q: Is the 8GB VRAM on the RX 7600 sufficient for 4K gaming?

A: The benchmark results indicate that 4K is viable on Medium settings with an average of 105 FPS, but the Ultra preset drops to 67 FPS. This significant performance reduction suggests that the 8GB VRAM buffer is likely exceeded at Ultra 4K, making Medium the recommended ceiling for 4K play with this GPU.

Q: How does this combo rank against other tested systems?

A: This combination of the Intel Core i5-13400F and AMD Radeon RX 7600 ranks second out of 3,720 tested combos in Control, placing it in the top 0.05% of all configurations. This is an exceptional result given that the CPU is in the 77th percentile and the GPU is in the 57th percentile among their respective categories.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Low and Medium settings at 1080p?

A: The Low preset averages 341 FPS, while the Medium preset averages 291 FPS, a difference of 50 FPS or 14.7%. This relatively small gap suggests that the Medium preset offers substantially better visual quality without a major performance penalty, making it the preferable choice.

Q: Does the CPU bottleneck the GPU at any resolution?

A: The data indicates that the system is consistently GPU-bound. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 341 FPS, which demonstrates the CPU’s ability to sustain very high frame rates. The consistent ~35% frame rate drop from 1080p to 1440p across all settings confirms that resolution scaling is the primary factor, not CPU limitations.