Control

Control pairs the Intel Core i5-14600KF with the AMD Radeon RX 6600, a combination that produces playable but not exceptional results in this 2019 action-adventure title. The GPU, built on the RDNA 2.0 architecture with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, provides 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth, while the CPU offers 14 cores and 20 threads with a boost clock of 5.30 GHz. Benchmark data shows this combo ranks 1322nd out of 1636 tested combinations, placing it in the lower quarter of the database. The measured frame rates reveal a system that handles 1080p comfortably but struggles to maintain smooth performance at 4K, with the gap between Low and Ultra settings widening significantly at higher resolutions.

FAQ

Q: What is the best 1080p performance this combo achieves in Control?

A: At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the average FPS is 108.8, which drops to 65.4 at High settings and 59.7 at Ultra settings. The Medium preset yields 75.6 FPS.

Q: How does the combo perform at 1440p compared to 1080p?

A: At 2560x1440, the average FPS ranges from 82.0 at Low settings to 46.5 at Ultra settings. The High preset produces 50.9 FPS, while Medium delivers 56.7 FPS.

Q: Is 4K gaming viable with this hardware?

A: At 3840x2160, only the Low preset achieves an average above 50 FPS at 57.9. Medium produces 41.6 FPS, High drops to 36.3, and Ultra falls to 31.6, making 4K playable only at the lowest settings.

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

A: The Intel Core i5-14600KF has an average benchmark score of 49367, placing it 0.4% above the Intel Core i5-14600K and 0.6% above the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, while being 0.5% below the AMD EPYC 4345P.

Q: What is the GPU's standing among all tested graphics cards?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 6600 sits in the 69th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 25235. It is statistically tied with the AMD Radeon 890M at a 0% delta, and 0.5% behind the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti.

Q: How does the combo rank relative to other CPU-GPU pairings in Control specifically?

A: The combo ranks 1322nd out of 1636 tested combinations, meaning roughly 80% of tested systems deliver higher average frame rates in this game.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6600's 8 GB of GDDR6 memory and 224.0 GB/s bandwidth form the primary constraint in this pairing. With a base clock of 1626 MHz and a boost clock of 2491 MHz, the GPU's compute capability is modest, offering 8.928 TFLOPS of FP32 performance. In Control, the VRAM capacity proves sufficient at all tested settings, but the memory bus width of 128 bits limits overall throughput, which becomes evident as resolution increases.

The GPU's pixel rate of 159.4 GPixel/s and texture rate of 279.0 GTexel/s directly influence how the game renders its environments. At 1080p, the RX 6600 delivers a 65.4 FPS average at High settings, representing a 9.5% improvement over the Ultra preset's 59.7 FPS. The gap between Low and High at 1080p is substantial, with the Low preset hitting 108.8 FPS—66.3% higher than High. This scaling pattern indicates that the GPU is the limiting factor even at 1080p, as reducing graphical load produces outsized gains.

The 4K results reinforce the GPU's limitations. At 3840x2160, the Ultra preset averages just 31.6 FPS, while High improves only marginally to 36.3 FPS. The Low preset at 4K achieves 57.9 FPS, which is still below the 1080p Ultra result. The RX 6600's 132 W TDP and PCIe 4.0 x8 interface suggest a card designed for 1080p gaming, and the data confirms this: performance degrades sharply beyond 1440p.

How This Combo Ranks

With a rank of 1322 out of 1636 total combinations, this system sits in the bottom 20% of tested configurations for Control. This percentile position reflects the RX 6600's mid-range standing—the GPU ranks in the 69th percentile overall, but Control's demanding rendering at higher resolutions pulls the combo down. The CPU, however, is not the bottleneck; the i5-14600KF ranks in the 93rd percentile of all CPUs, suggesting the pairing is unbalanced for this title.

The combo's rank relative to its 1636 peers means that 314 tested systems perform worse. This places it in the company of other mid-range GPU pairings, but the RX 6600's nearest rivals in average benchmark score—the AMD Radeon 890M, RX 580 2048SP, and RX 6700M—all fall within 0.2% of its aggregate score. In practice, this means the combo's rank is driven primarily by GPU performance, as the CPU's 93rd percentile standing cannot compensate for the GPU's 69th percentile capability.

The measured data confirms this imbalance: at 4K Ultra, the system produces only 31.6 FPS, which is below the threshold for smooth gameplay. Even at 1440p High, the 50.9 FPS average is playable but not ideal. The rank of 1322 reflects a system that can handle 1080p gaming across all settings but requires significant compromises at higher resolutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data covers 12 distinct configurations, spanning three resolutions and four quality presets. At 1920x1080, the Low preset produces the highest average at 108.8 FPS, followed by Medium at 75.6, High at 65.4, and Ultra at 59.7. This represents a 45.1% drop from Low to Ultra, indicating that the GPU scales predictably with graphical load at this resolution.

Moving to 2560x1440, the Low preset averages 82.0 FPS, a 24.6% reduction from 1080p Low. Medium yields 56.7 FPS, High produces 50.9, and Ultra drops to 46.5. The relative gap between Low and Ultra at 1440p is 43.3%, slightly narrower than at 1080p, suggesting the GPU is becoming more constrained by resolution than by settings.

At 3840x2160, the performance collapse is evident. Low averages 57.9 FPS, Medium 41.6, High 36.3, and Ultra 31.6. The difference between Low and Ultra at 4K is 45.4%, but the absolute numbers are all below the 60 FPS target except for Low. The progression from 1080p to 4K at High settings—65.4 to 50.9 to 36.3—shows a steady decline of roughly 22% per resolution step, confirming the GPU's bandwidth and compute limits.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1080p to 1440p to 4K reveals a consistent pattern of performance degradation. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 108.8 at 1080p to 82.0 at 1440p, a 24.6% reduction, and then to 57.9 at 4K, a further 29.4% drop. At High settings, the progression is 65.4 to 50.9 to 36.3, representing 22.2% and 28.7% reductions respectively. The Ultra preset follows a similar trend: 59.7 to 46.5 to 31.6, with drops of 22.1% and 32.0%.

These scaling percentages indicate that the GPU becomes increasingly the limiting component as resolution rises. The 4K-to-1440p drops are consistently larger than the 1440p-to-1080p drops across all settings, suggesting that the RX 6600's 224.0 GB/s bandwidth cannot sustain the pixel throughput required at 4K. The CPU's role diminishes at higher resolutions, as the 14-core i5-14600KF with a 5.30 GHz boost clock is capable of feeding frames faster than the GPU can render them.

The data shows that 1080p is the sweet spot for this combo. At 1080p Ultra, the system still averages 59.7 FPS, which is close to the 60 FPS target. At 1440p, only the Low preset exceeds 60 FPS. At 4K, no preset reaches 60 FPS, and only Low is above 50 FPS. This scaling behavior is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario where the CPU's 32889 Cinebench R23 multi-core score and 4643 single-core score are more than sufficient for Control's demands.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14600KF brings 14 cores and 20 threads, with a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz. Its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 32889 and single-core score of 4643 place it in the 93rd percentile of all CPUs. The architecture, Raptor Lake-R on a 10 nm process, provides 24 MB of shared L3 cache and supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory, though the measured FPS data does not specify which memory type was used.

In Control, the CPU's role is secondary to the GPU, as evidenced by the frame rate scaling across resolutions. The 1080p Low preset achieves 108.8 FPS, which is well below the CPU's theoretical frame generation limit given its high single-core performance. The fact that reducing resolution from 1080p to 4K produces consistent frame rate drops—rather than the CPU holding performance flat—confirms that the RX 6600 is the bottleneck.

The CPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks are the Intel Core i5-14600K at 0.4% higher average score, the AMD EPYC 4345P at 0.5% higher, and the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X at 0.6% higher. These small deltas indicate that the i5-14600KF is well-matched to its peers, but none of these CPUs would meaningfully change the Control results given the GPU constraint. The 125 W TDP and unlocked multiplier suggest headroom for overclocking, but the measured data reflects stock performance, which already exceeds the GPU's capabilities in this game.