Control

Control with the Intel Core i5-9400 and AMD Radeon RX 6600 presents a clear stratification of performance across its four presets, and the data indicates that the "High" setting is the most effective compromise between visual fidelity and frame rate for this pairing. At 1920x1080, the High preset delivers 70.6 FPS, which is comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, while Low pushes to 108.1 FPS and Medium sits at 76 FPS. The Ultra preset, however, drops to 58.8 FPS at 1080p, which is a noticeable step down and suggests that the GPU’s resources are being heavily taxed by the highest quality effects. Moving to 2560x1440, High still manages a playable 51.9 FPS, whereas Ultra falls to 44.6 FPS, making High the only preset that maintains a reasonable frame rate at this resolution without requiring a significant sacrifice in visual quality.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows show a consistent pattern where High is the optimal preset for this combo across all three tested resolutions. At 1920x1080, High produces 70.6 FPS, which is only 5.4 FPS lower than Medium’s 76 FPS but delivers substantially better graphical fidelity. The jump from High to Ultra costs 11.8 FPS at 1080p, representing a 16.7% performance loss for what is typically an incremental visual gain in Control’s particle-heavy scenes. For 2560x1440, High’s 51.9 FPS is the only preset above 50 FPS, with Medium trailing at 57 FPS and Low at 82 FPS; the latter is the only option that guarantees a locked 60 FPS experience at this resolution, but it sacrifices most of the game’s atmospheric lighting and reflection quality. At 3840x2160, the results are more challenging: High averages 32.5 FPS, Medium 37.4 FPS, and Ultra 31.7 FPS, all of which are below the 30 FPS console-like threshold for playability, while Low reaches 57.7 FPS, making it the only viable 4K preset for this hardware combo. The data strongly suggests that High is the intended sweet spot, as it provides the best balance of frame rate and visual quality at 1080p and 1440p, while Low is reserved for users who prioritize frame rate over aesthetics at 4K.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6600’s memory configuration plays a decisive role in these results. With 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus and a bandwidth of 224.0 GB/s, the card has sufficient capacity for Control’s textures at 1080p and 1440p, but the 4K results indicate a bottleneck. At 3840x2160, the gap between Low and High is 25.2 FPS, which is a 77.5% improvement when dropping settings, suggesting that the GPU’s shading units—1792 in total—are overwhelmed by the higher preset’s draw calls and post-processing effects. The boost clock of 2491 MHz and game clock of 2044 MHz are the key drivers for the 1080p performance, where the card’s FP32 throughput of 8.928 TFLOPS is more than adequate for the workload. The 4K results, however, reveal that the 64 ROPs and 112 TMUs cannot sustain the fill rate required by Ultra settings, as evidenced by the 31.7 FPS average. The PCIe 4.0 x8 interface, while not a direct bottleneck in this game, limits the bandwidth available for texture streaming compared to a full x16 link, which may contribute to the steep performance drop at higher resolutions. The GPU’s 132 W TDP and dual-slot cooler are consistent with its mid-range positioning, and the data shows that it is a capable 1080p performer but struggles to maintain playable frame rates at 4K with anything above Low settings.

How This Combo Ranks

In the global database of tested combinations for Control, this pairing of the Intel Core i5-9400 and AMD Radeon RX 6600 ranks 1345 out of 1636 total combos, placing it in the 82.2nd percentile of all tested systems. This is a relatively low ranking, indicating that the CPU is a limiting factor in this game. The i5-9400’s six cores and six threads, with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and boost of 4.10 GHz, are sufficient for the game’s logic, but the 9 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel DDR4 memory support at 42.7 GB/s bandwidth may be constraining the GPU’s ability to feed data efficiently. The CPU’s average benchmark score of 2305 places it nearly level with the Intel Core i3-10305, which scores 2300 (a delta of 0.2%), and the Intel Core i3-1125G4 at 2299 (0.2% delta), while it trails the Intel Core i7-8809G by 0.6% (2319). This tight clustering suggests that the i5-9400 is not a performance outlier but rather a middle-of-the-pack processor, and in Control, this translates to a combo ranking that is below the median. The GPU, by contrast, ranks in the 69th percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 25235, placing it near the AMD Radeon 890M (25246, 0% delta) and the AMD Radeon RX 580 2048SP (25287, -0.2% delta). The data indicates that the GPU is not the primary bottleneck; rather, the CPU’s modest single-thread performance (Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1125) likely holds back the RX 6600 in CPU-bound scenes, explaining why the combo’s overall rank is much lower than the GPU’s individual percentile.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured results show a clear hierarchy: Low averages 108.1 FPS, Medium 76 FPS, High 70.6 FPS, and Ultra 58.8 FPS. The delta between Low and Medium is 32.1 FPS, which is a 42.2% improvement, indicating that the Low preset removes significant GPU load. The step from Medium to High is only 5.4 FPS, suggesting that High adds moderate visual enhancements without a proportional cost. The Ultra preset’s 58.8 FPS is 11.8 FPS below High, which is a 16.7% drop, making Ultra the least efficient setting at this resolution. Moving to 2560x1440, Low leads with 82 FPS, followed by Medium at 57 FPS, High at 51.9 FPS, and Ultra at 44.6 FPS. The gap between Medium and High narrows to 5.1 FPS, while the drop from High to Ultra is 7.3 FPS, reinforcing the trend that Ultra is disproportionately expensive. At 3840x2160, the results are as follows: Low averages 57.7 FPS, Medium 37.4 FPS, High 32.5 FPS, and Ultra 31.7 FPS. The difference between Low and Medium is 20.3 FPS, which is a 54.3% reduction, while High and Ultra are nearly identical, with only a 0.8 FPS difference. This suggests that at 4K, the GPU is so heavily saturated that the visual differences between High and Ultra do not translate into measurable performance variance, and only Low provides a playable experience. The data reveals that the RX 6600 is capable of exceeding 100 FPS only at 1080p Low, and users targeting 60 FPS must use Medium or High at 1080p, Low at 1440p, or Low at 4K.

FAQ

Q: What is the best preset for this combo at 1920x1080?

A: The High preset delivers 70.6 FPS, which is the most balanced option. Ultra drops to 58.8 FPS, and Medium offers 76 FPS, but High provides a better visual experience than Medium with only a 5.4 FPS penalty.

Q: Can this system achieve 60 FPS at 2560x1440?

A: Only the Low preset exceeds 60 FPS at 82 FPS. Medium averages 57 FPS, which is close but below 60, while High and Ultra sit at 51.9 FPS and 44.6 FPS respectively.

Q: How does the Ultra preset compare to High at 3840x2160?

A: The difference is minimal: Ultra averages 31.7 FPS versus High’s 32.5 FPS, a delta of only 0.8 FPS. Neither is playable, and Low at 57.7 FPS is the only viable 4K option.

Q: Why is the combo rank lower than the GPU’s individual percentile?

A: The combo ranks 1345 out of 1636 in Control, while the GPU sits in the 69th percentile overall. The CPU’s average benchmark score of 2305 is nearly identical to the Intel Core i3-10305 (2300), indicating that the i5-9400’s processing power is a limiting factor in this game.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Low and Medium at 1440p?

A: Low averages 82 FPS, while Medium drops to 57 FPS, a reduction of 25 FPS. This 43.9% decrease shows that the Medium preset adds substantial graphical workload on the RX 6600.

Q: Is the RX 6600’s 8 GB memory sufficient for Control?

A: The 8 GB GDDR6 memory with 224.0 GB/s bandwidth is adequate for 1080p and 1440p, but the 4K results show a steep drop at higher settings, indicating that memory capacity or bandwidth may contribute to the bottleneck when combined with the CPU’s limitations.