Control

Control is an Action Adventure title that stresses both the CPU and GPU, and the measured results for the Intel Core i5-9400 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti show a system that is heavily reliant on graphical settings to maintain playable frame rates. The data indicates a clear hierarchy where resolution and preset selection dictate performance, with the combination ranking in the lower half of tested configurations. This analysis breaks down the measured FPS, the roles of the individual components, and how this specific pairing stacks up against the broader database of tested hardware.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a steep performance cliff as resolution increases, which is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario at higher pixel counts. At 1080p with High settings, the combo produces an average of 58 FPS, but moving to 1440p High drops that figure to 44.4 FPS, a reduction of approximately 23%. The step to 4K High further compounds the loss, landing at 30.8 FPS, which is nearly half the 1080p performance. This scaling pattern strongly suggests that the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is the limiting component at 1440p and 4K, as the workload on the graphics card increases disproportionately with pixel count.

The trend is even more pronounced when examining the Low preset. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 90 FPS, which indicates a healthy frame rate when the GPU load is minimized. At 1440p Low, the average drops to 70.8 FPS, and at 4K Low, it falls to 45.8 FPS. The delta between 1080p Low and 4K Low is a 49% reduction, highlighting that even at the lowest settings, the GTX 1660 Ti cannot sustain high frame rates at 4K. In contrast, the CPU's role appears more significant at 1080p Low, where the 90 FPS result suggests the processor is capable of feeding the GPU, but the overall system is still bounded by the graphics card's raw throughput.

The reduction from 1080p to 1440p at Medium settings shows a drop from 68.2 FPS to 48.9 FPS, a 28% decrease, while the jump from 1440p to 4K at Medium results in a 38% decrease to 30.5 FPS. This non-linear scaling indicates that the GPU's memory bandwidth and shading capacity are being saturated at higher resolutions. The data confirms that for this pairing, 1080p is the only resolution where a consistent 60 FPS experience is achievable across most presets, while 1440p demands a compromise on settings, and 4K is only marginally playable on Low.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is built on the Turing architecture with a TU116 chip, featuring 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, which provides a memory bandwidth of 288.0 GB/s. This configuration is central to the performance observed in Control, as the game’s texture-heavy environments and particle effects rely heavily on memory throughput. The GPU’s boost clock of 1770 MHz and base clock of 1500 MHz allow for reasonable rasterization performance, but the data shows that this is not sufficient for 4K gaming, where the average FPS across all presets remains below 46.

The GPU’s 1536 shading units and 48 ROPs are responsible for the pixel and texture processing, and the measured results indicate that these resources are exhausted at 1440p and above. For instance, the move from 1080p Ultra (54 FPS) to 1440p Ultra (39 FPS) represents a 28% performance loss, which aligns with the increased pixel fill rate demand. The card’s FP32 performance of 5.437 TFLOPS provides a baseline for compute, but Control’s visual effects, such as dynamic lighting and physics-based destruction, seem to scale directly with the GPU’s memory bandwidth and shading power.

The 6 GB VRAM capacity is sufficient for 1080p and 1440p Ultra settings, but the data does not show a significant memory-related stutter at 4K; instead, the average FPS drops to 28.5 at 4K Ultra, suggesting that the core GPU compute is the bottleneck rather than memory capacity. The GPU’s percentile ranking of 55 against all graphics cards places it in the mid-range, and its nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 570X, has a similar average benchmark score with a deltaPct of 0.4%. This close performance parity is reflected in the measured FPS, where the GTX 1660 Ti delivers playable 1080p results but struggles to maintain 60 FPS at higher resolutions.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i5-9400 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti combination holds a rank of 1417 out of 1636 tested combos in Control, placing it in the 13th percentile of all configurations. This low ranking indicates that the pairing is significantly outperformed by a majority of systems in the database, which is consistent with the mid-range nature of both components. The combo’s position suggests that while it can run the game, it does so with substantial compromises compared to higher-tier hardware.

When compared to the individual component benchmarks, the GPU’s percentile of 55 is notably higher than the combo’s overall rank, implying that the CPU is dragging down the system’s standing in this specific title. The CPU’s percentile of 50 against all processors, combined with its 6 cores and 6 threads, shows a modest processing capability that may limit the GPU in certain scenarios, particularly at lower resolutions where the CPU has more influence. The combo rank of 1417 indicates that users with this setup are likely experiencing lower frame rates than the majority of the database, and the measured FPS data supports this, as even at 1080p High, the system only achieves 58 FPS.

The combination’s ranking is also reflected in the deltaPct values of the nearest rivals. The CPU’s closest competitor, the Intel Core i3-10305, has a deltaPct of 0.2%, meaning the i5-9400 performs essentially identically in synthetic benchmarks. Similarly, the GPU’s nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 570X, shows a 0.4% deltaPct, indicating that swapping either component for a direct competitor would yield minimal performance changes. This suggests that the combo’s low rank is not due to a specific bottleneck but rather the overall performance class of the hardware, which is simply not designed for high-refresh or high-resolution gaming in Control.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a complete picture of the system’s capabilities across three resolutions and four settings presets. At 1920x1080, the system delivers 90 FPS on Low, 68.2 FPS on Medium, 58 FPS on High, and 54 FPS on Ultra. These figures show that 1080p is the sweet spot for this combo, with Medium and High settings providing a smooth experience above 55 FPS, while Low allows for near-90 FPS gameplay, which is beneficial for competitive play or reducing input lag.

At 2560x1440, the performance drops significantly: Low yields 70.8 FPS, Medium produces 48.9 FPS, High falls to 44.4 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 39 FPS. The 1440p results indicate that only the Low preset is capable of maintaining a frame rate above 60 FPS, while High and Ultra require users to accept a sub-45 FPS experience, which may be tolerable for slower-paced sections of the game but is far from ideal for action sequences. The delta between Low and Ultra at 1440p is 31.8 FPS, showing a wide performance range that gives users flexibility but also highlights the GPU’s limitations.

At 3840x2160, the system struggles to maintain playability: Low achieves 45.8 FPS, Medium drops to 30.5 FPS, High reaches 30.8 FPS, and Ultra falls to 28.5 FPS. The 4K data shows that the GTX 1660 Ti is not viable for this resolution, as even the Low preset cannot reach 60 FPS, and the difference between Medium and High is negligible (30.5 vs 30.8 FPS), suggesting that the GPU is completely saturated. The jump from 1080p Low to 4K Low is a 49% reduction in FPS, underscoring the GPU’s inability to handle the pixel count increase, and the Ultra preset at 4K produces a nearly unplayable 28.5 FPS average.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 features 6 cores and 6 threads, with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.10 GHz, based on the Coffee Lake architecture. The CPU’s L3 cache is 9 MB shared, and its memory bandwidth is rated at 42.7 GB/s via dual-channel DDR4 support. In Control, the CPU’s role is less critical than the GPU at higher resolutions, but the data indicates that it still influences performance at 1080p and Low settings.

The CPU’s benchmark scores, such as a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 7969 and a single-core score of 1125, place it in the 50th percentile of all processors, which is a mid-range result. In the measured FPS, the 1080p Low result of 90 FPS suggests that the CPU can handle the game’s physics and AI calculations without bottlenecking the GTX 1660 Ti, as the GPU is likely not fully utilized at this low preset. However, the 1080p High result of 58 FPS is close to the 1440p High result of 44.4 FPS, indicating that the GPU is the primary limiter once graphical quality increases.

The CPU’s nearest rivals, including the Intel Core i3-10305, show a deltaPct of 0.2%, meaning the i5-9400 offers nearly identical synthetic performance. This close parity suggests that the CPU is not a distinguishing factor in this combo’s ranking; instead, the low rank is driven by the GPU’s mid-range capabilities. The CPU’s 6 threads may also limit performance in games that utilize more than 6 threads, but Control’s measured results do not show a clear CPU bottleneck, as the FPS scales consistently with resolution changes, which is a hallmark of GPU-bound performance. Overall, the CPU provides adequate support for the GPU at 1080p but does not boost the combo’s standing in the database.