Control

Control is a demanding Action Adventure title that stresses both the CPU and GPU, and the measured data for the Intel Core i5-13400F + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 combo shows a system that shifts from being entirely GPU-bound at high resolutions to a more balanced state at 1080p. The benchmark results reveal a clear hierarchy of performance scaling across three resolutions and four quality presets, indicating that this pairing is well-suited for high-refresh-rate 1440p gaming while still delivering respectable 4K performance. The observed frame rates suggest that the RTX 5070’s Blackwell architecture and the i5-13400F’s Raptor Lake design work together effectively, though the data also highlights specific scenarios where the CPU becomes a limiting factor.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a steep performance curve as resolution drops from 4K to 1080p, with the most dramatic gains occurring when moving from 3840x2160 to 2560x1440. At Ultra settings, the average frame rate jumps from 58.1 FPS at 4K to 89.6 FPS at 1440p, a 54% improvement, and then climbs further to 117.1 FPS at 1080p. This pattern strongly indicates that at 4K Ultra, the RTX 5070 is the primary bottleneck, as the GPU’s rendering workload dominates the frame time. The gap between 1440p and 1080p at Ultra is 27.5 FPS, which is smaller than the 31.5 FPS gap between 4K and 1440p, suggesting that the GPU begins to have more headroom as pixel count drops, but the CPU’s capabilities start to play a larger role.

The scaling behavior is even more pronounced at Low settings, where the 4K average of 103.8 FPS rises to 157.3 FPS at 1440p and then to 210.8 FPS at 1080p. This nearly 107 FPS difference between 4K and 1080p at Low settings demonstrates that when the GPU load is reduced, the system can push far higher frame rates, but the incremental gains from 1440p to 1080p (53.5 FPS) versus 4K to 1440p (53.5 FPS) are identical, indicating a linear scaling pattern that points to the CPU becoming a more significant factor at lower resolutions. In contrast, High and Medium settings show similar trends, with the 1080p results (130.8 FPS and 146.9 FPS, respectively) being roughly 28-33% higher than their 1440p counterparts, which suggests a consistent GPU-bound scenario where the RTX 5070’s compute throughput is the deciding factor until the resolution drops low enough for the CPU to catch up.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-13400F is a 10-core, 16-thread processor with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.60 GHz, built on Intel’s Raptor Lake architecture using a 10 nm process. Its benchmark scores show strong multi-threaded capabilities, with a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 21279 and a Geekbench multicore score of 10971, while single-thread performance is respectable at 3004 in Cinebench R23 and 3634 in Passmark single-thread tests. In Control, the CPU’s role is most evident in the 1080p Low setting results, where the average FPS of 210.8 represents the highest measured value across all configurations, suggesting that the processor can feed frames to the RTX 5070 efficiently when the GPU is not saturated.

However, the data reveals that at higher settings and resolutions, the CPU is rarely the bottleneck. The 4K Ultra result of 58.1 FPS and the 1440p Ultra result of 89.6 FPS both show that the GPU’s rendering load is the dominant factor. The CPU’s 20 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel memory support (DDR4/DDR5) likely contribute to consistent frame pacing, but the measured FPS values do not show any significant CPU-induced stalls even at 1080p High, where the average of 130.8 FPS still trails the Low setting by a wide margin. This indicates that while the i5-13400F is capable of driving high frame rates, its performance headroom is only fully utilized in scenarios where the GPU has spare capacity, such as at 1080p Low.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows provide a clear basis for recommending a specific settings preset based on the player’s target resolution and frame rate preference. At 4K, the data shows that High settings deliver an average of 68.3 FPS, which is the most balanced option for a smooth experience, as Medium (76 FPS) offers only a marginal 7.7 FPS improvement over High, while Ultra drops to 58.1 FPS, which may be too low for fast-paced action sequences. The Low preset at 4K achieves 103.8 FPS, but this comes at a significant visual quality cost that is unlikely to be worth the frame rate gain on a high-resolution display.

For 1440p, High settings produce 101.8 FPS, which is well above the 60 FPS threshold and provides a strong visual-to-performance ratio. The Medium preset at 114.5 FPS offers a 12.5% improvement over High, but the visual difference between these two presets is typically less noticeable than the frame rate gap suggests. At 1080p, the data shows that Ultra settings at 117.1 FPS are entirely playable, making it the recommended choice for users with high-refresh-rate monitors, as the jump from High (130.8 FPS) to Ultra represents a modest 13.7 FPS loss for substantially better visual fidelity. The Low preset at 210.8 FPS is only relevant for competitive play or extreme refresh rate displays, as the visual degradation is severe.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i5-13400F + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 combination holds a combo rank of 295 out of 1636 tested combos in Control, placing it in the 82nd percentile among all CPU configurations and the 83rd percentile among all GPUs. This ranking indicates that the pairing is well above average for this game, though not at the absolute top tier. The CPU’s nearest rivals include the Intel Core i7-13620H (0.1% faster), AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D (0.5% slower), AMD EPYC 9474F (0.5% faster), and AMD Ryzen AI 5 PRO 340 (0.5% faster), showing that the i5-13400F is competitively positioned within its performance class. The GPU’s nearest rivals are the AMD Radeon Pro 5300 (0.2% faster), NVIDIA Tesla M40 (0.5% slower), NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (0.6% slower), and AMD Radeon Pro 580X (0.7% slower), which places the RTX 5070 in a strong position relative to previous-generation high-end cards.

The combo’s rank of 295 suggests that it outperforms the vast majority of tested systems in Control, but the measured FPS data shows that it is not a top-100 combo. This is likely due to the CPU’s mid-range positioning, as the GPU is capable of higher frame rates at lower resolutions, but the i5-13400F’s 10-core design, while strong for its class, cannot match the top-end processors that would be paired with the RTX 5070 in higher-ranked combos. The data indicates that this combo is best suited for 1440p gaming, where it achieves over 100 FPS at High settings, and can handle 4K at playable frame rates with the right settings adjustments.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a GB205 chip manufactured on a 5 nm process at TSMC, featuring 31,100 million transistors and a die size of 263 mm². Its core configuration includes 6144 shading units, 192 TMUs, and 80 ROPs, with 48 RT cores and 192 tensor cores, delivering 30.87 TFLOPS of FP32 performance. The GPU operates at a base clock of 2325 MHz and a boost clock of 2512 MHz, paired with 12 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 192-bit bus, providing 672.0 GB/s of bandwidth. These specifications position the RTX 5070 as a high-performance card, and its Passmark G3D score of 29137 and 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 5077 confirm its strong compute capabilities.

In Control, the GPU’s role is decisive across most tested configurations. The 4K Ultra result of 58.1 FPS is the lowest measured value, demonstrating that the RTX 5070’s memory bandwidth and shading throughput are fully utilized at this resolution and settings combination. The GPU’s 12 GB VRAM is sufficient for Control’s demands, as the data does not show any performance anomalies that would indicate memory capacity issues. The scaling from Ultra to Low at 4K (58.1 to 103.8 FPS) shows a 78.7% improvement, which is larger than the corresponding scaling at 1440p (89.6 to 157.3 FPS, a 75.5% gain) and 1080p (117.1 to 210.8 FPS, an 80% gain), indicating that the GPU’s performance headroom is more constrained at higher resolutions. The RTX 5070’s 250 W TDP and dual-slot design suggest it is a power-efficient card for its performance class, though the data does not include power consumption measurements to confirm this in-game.