Control

The Intel Core i7-12700K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti is a profoundly unbalanced combination for Control, where a high-end 12-core processor is completely starved by an entry-level graphics card. The measured data shows that this combo ranks 3670 out of 3720 tested configurations, placing it in the bottom 1.3% of all tested combos. The i7-12700K is a top-tier CPU—it sits in the 84th percentile of all processors and trades blows with the Intel Core i7-13700T—but the GTX 1050 Ti sits in just the 25th percentile of all GPUs, and its performance is practically tied with the AMD Radeon Vega 3. The result is a system that can run Control, but only at the lowest settings and resolution, and even then it struggles to maintain a smooth frame rate.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data makes it clear that this combo has very little headroom. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the average FPS is 46, which is the only configuration in the entire dataset that approaches a playable frame rate. Stepping up to Medium at 1080p drops the average to 32 FPS, and while that is technically playable, the measured minimum of 27 FPS means you will feel stutters during intense action sequences. High settings at 1080p reduce the average to 29 FPS, which is below the threshold for comfortable play. Ultra settings at 1080p bottom out at 25 FPS average, which is a slideshow for a fast-paced action game.

At 2560x1440, the picture is worse. Low settings yield an average of 34 FPS, which is borderline, but Medium drops to 24 FPS and High falls to 22 FPS. Ultra at 1440p averages just 19 FPS. At 3840x2160, the numbers are effectively unplayable across the board: Low averages 23 FPS, Medium averages 17 FPS, High averages 15 FPS, and Ultra averages 13 FPS.

The only sensible recommendation is to run the game at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This is the only preset that keeps the average FPS above 40, and it provides the best experience this hardware can deliver. If you must have better visual fidelity, Medium at 1080p is the absolute maximum you should consider, but you will need to accept a 14 FPS average drop and frame times that dip below 30 FPS. There is no point in attempting 1440p or 4K with this GPU, as the data shows a 26% performance penalty just from moving from 1080p Low to 1440p Low, and a 50% penalty moving to 4K Low.

FAQ

*Q: Can this combo run Control at 60 FPS?*

A: No. The highest average FPS recorded across all resolutions and settings is 46 FPS, which occurs only at 1920x1080 with Low settings. Every other configuration falls below 34 FPS average, and most are well under 30 FPS.

Q: What is the best resolution for this CPU and GPU pairing?

A: 1920x1080 is the only viable resolution. The data shows that moving to 2560x1440 reduces the average FPS by roughly 26% at Low settings, and moving to 3840x2160 reduces it by 50%. The GTX 1050 Ti simply does not have the memory bandwidth or pixel throughput to handle higher resolutions in this title.

Q: How does the GTX 1050 Ti compare to its closest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The GTX 1050 Ti has an average benchmark score of 4193. Its nearest rival, the AMD Radeon R5 M330, scores 4170, which is 0.6% slower. The NVIDIA Quadro K2100M scores 4151 (1% slower), while the AMD Radeon Vega 3 scores 4268, which is 1.8% faster. These are all extremely close scores, indicating the GTX 1050 Ti is at the very bottom of the GPU performance hierarchy.

Q: Is the Intel Core i7-12700K a bottleneck in this configuration?

A: No. The CPU is not the limiting factor. The i7-12700K scores 19784 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 1850.5 in single-core, placing it in the 84th percentile of all CPUs. The GPU, however, sits in the 25th percentile. The data shows a classic GPU-bound scenario: FPS scales almost linearly with resolution changes (which stress the GPU), while the CPU has massive headroom to spare.

Q: What are the minimum FPS figures for Medium settings?

A: The measured minimum FPS for Medium settings is 14 at 3840x2160, 21 at 2560x1440, and 27 at 1920x1080. These minimums are significantly lower than the averages, indicating that even the recommended 1080p Medium preset will experience noticeable hitches.

Q: How does the CPU's multi-threading performance relate to this game?

A: The i7-12700K has 12 cores and 20 threads, with a boost clock of 5.00 GHz. It scores 9979 in 3DMark max threads and 34404 in Passmark multithread. Control is a demanding title, but these scores show the CPU is capable of far more than the GPU can feed it. The bottleneck is entirely on the graphics side.

How This Combo Ranks

This combination ranks 3670 out of 3720 tested combos for Control. That places it in the bottom 1.3% of all tested systems. The rank is driven almost entirely by the GTX 1050 Ti, which scores 6340 in Passmark G3D and 305 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12. These are extremely low scores for a modern game. The GPU's percentile rank of 25 means it is slower than 75% of all GPUs in the database.

To put this in perspective, the CPU alone is a strong performer. The i7-12700K's average benchmark score is 35287, which is nearly identical to the Intel Core i5-13600T (35305, 0.1% faster) and the Intel Core i7-12700KF (35365, 0.2% faster). The CPU is not the problem. The GPU's average benchmark score of 4193 is the anchor dragging this combo down. The combination rank reflects the reality that pairing a top-16% CPU with a bottom-25% GPU yields a system that is only suitable for the lightest gaming loads. In Control, this means the game is playable only at the absolute lowest settings and resolution.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data covers three resolutions (1920x1080, 2560x1440, 3840x2160) and four settings presets (Low, Medium, High, Ultra). Here is the full breakdown:

At 1920x1080, the best result is Low settings with an average of 46 FPS. Medium settings average 32 FPS, with a minimum of 27 FPS and a maximum of 37 FPS. High settings average 29 FPS. Ultra settings average 25 FPS. This is the only resolution where any preset achieves an average above 34 FPS.

At 2560x1440, Low settings average 34 FPS. Medium settings average 24 FPS, with a minimum of 21 FPS and a maximum of 28 FPS. High settings average 22 FPS. Ultra settings average 19 FPS. The jump from 1080p to 1440p costs roughly 7-12 FPS across all settings.

At 3840x2160, Low settings average 23 FPS. Medium settings average 17 FPS, with a minimum of 14 FPS and a maximum of 19 FPS. High settings average 15 FPS. Ultra settings average 13 FPS. The 4K results are uniformly unplayable, with the average FPS dropping below the minimum FPS seen at 1080p Medium.

The data shows a consistent pattern: each step up in settings costs approximately 4-6 FPS, and each step up in resolution costs approximately 10-15 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra settings at the same resolution is roughly 21 FPS at 1080p, 15 FPS at 1440p, and 10 FPS at 4K. This suggests that at higher resolutions, the GPU is so overwhelmed that the settings preset has less relative impact.

Resolution Scaling

The resolution scaling data clearly identifies the GTX 1050 Ti as the limiting component. Moving from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 at Low settings reduces the average FPS from 46 to 34, a 26% drop. Moving from 2560x1440 to 3840x2160 at Low settings reduces the average FPS from 34 to 23, a 32% drop. The total drop from 1080p Low to 4K Low is 50% (46 to 23 FPS).

This scaling behavior is characteristic of a GPU that is running out of pixel throughput and memory bandwidth. The GTX 1050 Ti has a 128-bit memory bus and 112.1 GB/s of bandwidth, which is simply insufficient for 4K rendering. The GPU's pixel rate of 44.54 GPixel/s and texture rate of 66.82 GTexel/s are also far too low for high-resolution work.

The CPU's role in this scaling is negligible. The i7-12700K has 20 PCIe Gen 4 lanes and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz, so it is not starving the GPU of data. The FPS drops are entirely consistent with the GPU's fill rate and bandwidth limits. In fact, the data suggests that even at 1080p Low, the GPU is working at its maximum capacity, as the average FPS of 46 is close to what one would expect from a card with 2.138 TFLOPS of FP32 performance.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700K is a 12-core, 20-thread processor based on the Alder Lake architecture. It has a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz, with a 25 MB shared L3 cache. The CPU also supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory, though the memory type is not specified in the measured data. The CPU's synthetic benchmarks are strong: it scores 19784 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 1850.5 in single-core, 12229 in Cinebench R20 multi-core, and 15790 in Geekbench multi-core.

In Control, this CPU is massively overprovisioned. The game is not CPU-bound at any resolution or setting tested. The evidence is that FPS scales directly with resolution changes, which is a GPU workload. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect the FPS to remain relatively flat across resolutions. Instead, we see a 50% drop from 1080p Low to 4K Low, which is a classic GPU-bound signature.

The CPU's 12 cores and 20 threads are irrelevant for this game at these settings because the GPU cannot render frames fast enough to utilize even a fraction of the CPU's throughput. The i7-12700K's 3DMark 16-thread score of 9276 and max-thread score of 9979 indicate it can handle far more demanding workloads than this. The only way this CPU would matter in Control is if you were to pair it with a significantly faster GPU, at which point the 5.00 GHz boost clock would help maintain high frame rates. As configured, the CPU is essentially idle, waiting for the GTX 1050 Ti to catch up. The takeaway is that this pairing is a waste of the CPU's potential, which is reflected in the combo's 3670th place ranking out of 3720.