Control

Control, a 2019 action-adventure title, stresses this pairing of an Intel Core i5-13400F and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 4 GB in a predictable way. The measured frames per second across three resolutions and four quality settings reveal a system where the graphics card is the primary constraint, with CPU headroom remaining at lower resolutions. This analysis interprets the measured data to explain where the bottleneck lies and how this specific combination performs against other tested configurations.

Resolution Scaling

The data shows a sharp and consistent decline in average FPS as resolution increases, which clearly indicates a GPU-bound scenario. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo achieves 84.3 FPS. Moving to 1440p Low drops that to 63 FPS, a 25% reduction, and at 4K Low, the average falls to 42.2 FPS, a further 33% drop from the 1440p figure. This pattern of performance loss is characteristic of a system where the GPU's pixel throughput is the limiting factor; the CPU is not the bottleneck at these settings.

The scaling becomes more pronounced at higher quality presets. At 1080p High, the average is 56 FPS. At 1440p High, it decreases to 41.1 FPS, a 26.6% reduction. At 4K High, the average plummets to 25.3 FPS, which is 54.8% lower than the 1080p High result. This larger percentage drop at 4K High, compared to the drop at Low settings, underscores that the RTX 3050's 4 GB memory and 192.0 GB/s bandwidth are insufficient for the increased data load of both higher resolution and more detailed textures. The 4K Ultra result of 25.9 FPS is nearly identical to the 4K High result of 25.3 FPS, suggesting a hard performance ceiling is reached when the memory subsystem is saturated.

The 1080p data further illustrates the GPU's dominance in this pairing. While the Low preset yields 84.3 FPS, the High preset only manages 56 FPS, and Ultra drops to 43.3 FPS. The gap between 1080p Low and 1080p Ultra is 41 FPS, a significant swing that shows the GPU's rendering capabilities are taxed by increased shading and texture work. The fact that 1440p Medium (46.3 FPS) is very close to 1080p Ultra (43.3 FPS) indicates that resolution and quality settings are trading blows on the same GPU resource pool. This behavior points directly to the graphics card as the performance limiter; the CPU's role is less relevant once the GPU's compute and memory are saturated.

FAQ

Q: What is the maximum average FPS this combo can achieve in Control?

A: The highest measured average is 84.3 FPS, which occurs at 1920x1080 with Low settings.

Q: How does the 4K Ultra performance compare to 4K High performance?

A: The average FPS is nearly identical, with 4K Ultra at 25.9 FPS and 4K High at 25.3 FPS. This suggests a performance ceiling is reached at this resolution, likely due to the GPU's memory bandwidth limit.

Q: Is this system capable of 60 FPS gameplay at 1440p?

A: Only at the Low preset, where it measures 63 FPS. At Medium, High, and Ultra presets, the average FPS is 46.3, 41.1, and 36.9 respectively, all below the 60 FPS threshold.

Q: What is the performance difference between 1080p and 1440p at High settings?

A: The average FPS drops from 56 at 1080p to 41.1 at 1440p, which is a 26.6% reduction in performance.

Q: Does the measured data indicate a CPU or GPU bottleneck?

A: The data indicates a GPU bottleneck. The large FPS drops from 1080p to 4K, especially at higher quality settings, are consistent with the graphics card being the limiting component.

Q: What is the lowest average FPS recorded in the benchmark data?

A: The lowest average is 25.3 FPS, recorded at 3840x2160 with High settings.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-13400F provides a strong foundation for this gaming workload, though the benchmark results suggest its capabilities are not fully taxed by Control. The processor features 10 cores and 16 threads, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.60 GHz. Its benchmark scores are robust, with a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 21279 and a single-core score of 3004. This level of single-thread performance is often critical for game logic, but the data from this test indicates the GPU is the limiting factor.

The CPU's performance relative to its peers is strong. Its average benchmark score of 25236 places it in the 82nd percentile of all CPUs. Compared to its nearest rivals, it is essentially on par with the Intel Core i7-13620H, which has an average score of 25201 and a deltaPct of 0.1. It also scores within 0.5% of the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D (25365) and the AMD EPYC 9474F (25103). This suggests the i5-13400F is not a weak link in the system. The 3DMark scores also show a healthy scaling from single-thread (960) to 16-thread (7314) workloads, indicating good multi-threading potential.

In the context of Control, the CPU's role is to feed the GPU with draw calls and process game state. Given that the FPS scales so heavily with resolution, it is clear that the CPU is not running out of headroom. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see similar FPS numbers at 1080p and 1440p, as the CPU's workload would not change. Instead, we see a consistent drop in FPS as resolution increases, which points to the GPU's pixel processing and memory bandwidth as the primary constraint. The CPU has ample performance to handle the game's logic, but the RTX 3050 cannot keep up with the rendering demands.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-13400F and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 4 GB ranks 1473 out of 1636 tested combos for Control. This places it in the lower 10% of all system configurations in the database, which is a direct consequence of the GPU's limited performance in this title. The rank is not a reflection of the CPU, which performs well in synthetic benchmarks, but rather an indication that the graphics card holds the system back significantly in a GPU-intensive game like Control.

This ranking is consistent with the measured FPS data. The system struggles to maintain playable frame rates at higher resolutions and settings, which would naturally push it down the rankings when compared to systems with more powerful graphics cards. The data suggests that this combo is better suited for 1080p gaming, where it can achieve an average of 56 FPS at High settings and 43.3 FPS at Ultra. For a smoother experience, dropping to Low settings at 1080p yields 84.3 FPS. The ranking highlights that while the CPU is a capable performer, it is paired with a GPU that limits overall system performance in this specific game.

The low rank is a direct result of the GPU's 4 GB memory capacity and 192.0 GB/s bandwidth, which are insufficient for Control's demands at higher resolutions. The data shows that at 4K, the system cannot deliver a fluid experience, regardless of quality preset. This combination’s position in the database serves as a clear indicator that the RTX 3050 is the dominant factor in determining performance, relegating the i5-13400F to a supporting role that is not fully utilized.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 4 GB is the decisive factor in this system's performance in Control. The GPU, based on the GA107 chip and Ampere architecture, has a base clock of 1545 MHz and a boost clock of 1740 MHz. Its memory configuration of 4 GB GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus provides a bandwidth of 192.0 GB/s. The measured FPS data strongly indicates that this memory subsystem is the primary bottleneck.

The evidence for a VRAM and bandwidth limitation is clear in the resolution scaling. At 1080p, the GPU can deliver 84.3 FPS on Low settings, but this falls to 43.3 FPS on Ultra. The gap between Low and Ultra narrows as resolution increases, with 4K Low at 42.2 FPS and 4K Ultra at 25.9 FPS. This behavior suggests that at 4K, the GPU is constantly struggling to manage the data, and the quality settings have a reduced impact because the memory bandwidth is already saturated. The 4K High (25.3 FPS) and 4K Ultra (25.9 FPS) results being nearly identical is a strong indicator that the GPU has hit a hard performance ceiling, unable to process the increased data load of Ultra settings due to memory constraints.

The GPU's compute capabilities, rated at 7.127 TFLOPS for FP32, are also a factor. While this is a modest figure, the data suggests that memory bandwidth is the more pressing constraint. The pixel rate of 55.68 GPixel/s and texture rate of 111.4 GTexel/s are not enough to maintain high frame rates at 4K. At 1440p, the GPU performs better, but still struggles to maintain 60 FPS except on Low settings (63 FPS). The combination of a 128-bit memory bus and 4 GB capacity is simply too limited for a game like Control, which has high-resolution textures and effects. The data shows that the RTX 3050 is the limiting component in this pairing, and its performance is the primary reason for the system's low benchmark rank.