Control

Control pairs a 14-core Intel Core i5-14600KF with a 4 GB AMD Radeon RX 570, a combination that lands at rank 3549 out of 3720 tested combos for this title. The measured frame rates reveal a system that is consistently GPU-bound, with the CPU’s strong multi-threaded scores doing little to lift average FPS once the Polaris 20 GPU reaches its limits. The data paints a clear picture: this is a pairing built for 1080p Low settings, where it approaches playability, but it struggles to maintain smooth motion at higher presets or resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows show a straightforward hierarchy: Low settings always deliver the highest average frame rate at each resolution, followed by Medium, then High, then Ultra. At 1920x1080, Low produces 57 FPS average, which is the only preset across all tested resolutions that clears the 60 FPS mark. Medium at 1080p drops to 40 FPS average, High falls to 36 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 31 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium is 17 FPS, a substantial jump that suggests the RX 570’s 4 GB VRAM and 2048 shading units are overwhelmed by the additional texture and shading work.

At 2560x1440, Low yields 43 FPS average, which is still playable for slower-paced action but misses the smoothness of 1080p Low. Medium at 1440p drops to 30 FPS, High to 27 FPS, and Ultra to 24 FPS. The 3840x2160 results are uniformly poor: Low averages 29 FPS, Medium 21 FPS, High 18 FPS, and Ultra 16 FPS. No 4K preset reaches 30 FPS, meaning the GPU is simply not capable of driving this resolution in Control.

For the best experience per the measured rows, 1080p Low is the only preset that delivers an average FPS above 50, and it is the clear recommendation. The 57 FPS average at 1080p Low provides headroom above the 30 FPS floor, though not enough to guarantee consistent 60 FPS in all scenes. Medium at 1080p offers a 40 FPS average, which may be acceptable for players who prioritize visual fidelity over smoothness, but the 17 FPS loss compared to Low is significant. Ultra at 1080p at 31 FPS average is borderline unplayable for a game that benefits from responsive controls, and the data suggests avoiding that setting entirely.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 570 operates with a base clock of 1168 MHz and a boost clock of 1244 MHz, built on the Polaris 20 chip with GCN 4.0 architecture. Its 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is the likely bottleneck for higher settings. The GPU’s 2048 shading units and 32 ROPs deliver a pixel rate of 39.81 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 159.2 GTexel/s, but these figures do not translate into playable frame rates at 4K.

The measured FPS data shows a consistent pattern: as resolution increases, average FPS drops proportionally, and as settings increase, the drop becomes steeper. At 1080p Low, the GPU produces 57 FPS, but at 1080p Ultra, it falls to 31 FPS, a 26 FPS reduction. This 45.6% performance loss from Low to Ultra at the same resolution indicates that the GPU’s fill rate and memory bandwidth are insufficient for the additional render load. The 4 GB VRAM capacity is also a concern, as Control’s higher presets likely exceed this allocation, causing texture streaming stalls that the min FPS values hint at—Medium at 1080p shows a 34 FPS minimum against a 40 FPS average, a 6 FPS dip.

The GPU’s benchmark scores place it at the 74th percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 28766. Its nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 6800M, scores 28874, a delta of -0.4%, meaning the RX 570 is essentially tied with that mobile part in synthetic tests. The desktop RX 470 scores 28996, a 0.8% delta, which is within noise. This clustering suggests the RX 570 is a mid-range GPU from its era, and the measured FPS in Control aligns with that classification: capable at 1080p Low, marginal at 1080p Medium, and inadequate beyond.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14600KF provides 14 cores and 20 threads, with a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz. Its Raptor Lake architecture, built on a 10 nm process, includes 24 MB of shared L3 cache and supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory. The CPU’s multi-threaded benchmark scores are strong: Cinebench R23 multi-core reaches 32544, and Geekbench multi-core scores 17085. Single-thread performance is also solid, with Cinebench R23 single-core at 4594 and Geekbench single-core at 2445.

In Control, however, the CPU’s capabilities are not the limiting factor. The measured FPS at 1080p Low is 57 FPS, while at 4K Low it drops to 29 FPS—a 49.1% reduction that is far too large to be attributed to CPU workload scaling. Control is a GPU-intensive title, and the RX 570’s 5.095 TFLOPS of FP32 performance is the bottleneck at every resolution above 1080p Low. The CPU’s 90th percentile ranking among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 49394, confirms it is a high-end processor, but that headroom is unused in this pairing.

The CPU’s nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen 9 7900 with an average score of 49228 (0.3% delta), the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5755G at 49196 (0.4% delta), and the Intel Core Ultra 5 245 at 48995 (0.8% delta). These deltas are negligible, indicating that the i5-14600KF is competitively positioned in synthetic tests. Yet in Control, the FPS differences between settings at the same resolution are entirely driven by GPU load, not CPU scheduling or core utilization. For example, at 1440p, Low averages 43 FPS and Ultra averages 24 FPS—a 19 FPS gap that the CPU cannot bridge because the GPU is already saturated.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of Intel Core i5-14600KF and AMD Radeon RX 570 ranks 3549 out of 3720 tested combos in Control, placing it in the bottom 5% of all pairings. The rank reflects the GPU’s age and VRAM limitation more than the CPU’s capability. The i5-14600KF is a modern 14-core processor with a 90th percentile standing, but when paired with a GPU that scores in the 74th percentile and has only 4 GB of VRAM, the overall combo suffers.

The data shows that the CPU is not the constraint: at 1080p Low, the combo achieves 57 FPS, which is close to what the GPU alone can deliver based on its texture rate and pixel rate. At higher resolutions, the FPS drops are consistent with GPU-bound behavior—4K Ultra at 16 FPS is a 71.9% reduction from 1080p Low, a drop that cannot be explained by CPU limitations. The rank of 3549 suggests that most other tested combos include either a stronger GPU or a more balanced pairing, and this particular match-up leaves the CPU’s multi-core potential untapped.

The GPU’s nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks—the RX 6800M, R9 M295X, RX 470, and Quadro RTX 8000—all score within 1.2% of the RX 570, yet none of them are paired with a CPU as strong as the i5-14600KF in this test. This mismatch is the core issue: a high-end CPU with a mid-range GPU from 2017 produces frame rates that are playable only at the lowest settings and resolution.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and setting for this combo?

A: The measured data shows 1920x1080 Low produces a 57 FPS average, which is the highest frame rate of any tested configuration. No other resolution or preset combination exceeds 50 FPS.

Q: How much faster is Low compared to Ultra at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, Low averages 57 FPS while Ultra averages 31 FPS, a difference of 26 FPS. This represents a 45.6% performance gain when switching from Ultra to Low.

Q: Is this combo capable of 4K gaming in Control?

A: The data indicates no. At 3840x2160, the highest average FPS is 29 at Low settings, and Ultra drops to 16 FPS. None of the four 4K presets reach 30 FPS average.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its nearest rival in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The Intel Core i5-14600KF has an average benchmark score of 49394, which is 0.3% higher than the AMD Ryzen 9 7900’s 49228 and 0.8% higher than the Intel Core Ultra 5 245’s 48995.

Q: What is the minimum FPS recorded for Medium settings?

A: The measured data only includes min FPS values for Medium settings. At 1080p Medium, the minimum is 34 FPS; at 1440p Medium, it is 26 FPS; and at 4K Medium, it is 17 FPS.

Q: Does the GPU’s 4 GB VRAM affect performance?

A: The data shows a steep FPS drop when moving from Low to Medium settings—17 FPS at 1080p, 13 FPS at 1440p, and 8 FPS at 4K. This pattern is consistent with VRAM capacity being exceeded at Medium and above, causing the GPU to rely on slower memory transfers.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average FPS values are: Low 57, Medium 40, High 36, Ultra 31. The Medium setting has a min FPS of 34 and a max of 46, which is the only preset at this resolution with reported min and max values. At 2560x1440, Low averages 43 FPS, Medium 30 FPS with a min of 26 and max of 35, High 27 FPS, and Ultra 24 FPS. At 3840x2160, Low averages 29 FPS, Medium 21 FPS with a min of 17 and max of 24, High 18 FPS, and Ultra 16 FPS.

The data reveals a consistent pattern: each step up in settings costs roughly 6-7 FPS at 1080p, 3-4 FPS at 1440p, and 2-3 FPS at 4K. This diminishing absolute difference at higher resolutions indicates that the GPU is already near its limit, so settings changes have less impact relative to the low baseline. The min FPS values for Medium settings show that the frame rate can dip 6 FPS below the average at 1080p, 4 FPS at 1440p, and 4 FPS at 4K, suggesting occasional stutter that may be more noticeable than the average suggests.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 1440p at each setting is: Low from 57 to 43 (a 24.6% reduction), Medium from 40 to 30 (25.0% reduction), High from 36 to 27 (25.0% reduction), and Ultra from 31 to 24 (22.6% reduction). These are remarkably consistent reductions, hovering around 25%, which is expected for a GPU-bound scenario where the pixel count increases by 1.78 times but the frame rate only drops by a quarter—meaning the GPU is not purely fill-rate limited at 1440p.

The drop from 1440p to 4K is more severe: Low from 43 to 29 (32.6% reduction), Medium from 30 to 21 (30.0% reduction), High from 27 to 18 (33.3% reduction), and Ultra from 24 to 16 (33.3% reduction). The 4K resolution quadruples the pixel count versus 1080p, but the FPS drops by roughly half, indicating that the GPU’s memory bandwidth and shading units are the primary constraints. The 224.0 GB/s bandwidth is insufficient for 4K textures, and the 4 GB VRAM likely spills into system memory, causing the sub-30 FPS results.

The scaling analysis suggests the limiting component is the GPU. The CPU’s strong single-thread score of 4594 in Cinebench R23 and its 5.30 GHz boost clock do not prevent FPS from collapsing at 4K. If the CPU were the bottleneck, the FPS drop from 1080p to 4K would be minimal, as the same CPU workload would be spread across more pixels. Instead, the data shows a near-linear relationship between pixel count and FPS loss, which is the signature of a GPU with insufficient raw throughput. The RX 570’s 5.095 TFLOPS and 159.2 GTexel/s texture rate are simply not enough to maintain playable frame rates beyond 1080p Low.