Control

The Intel Core i7-12700KF paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 delivers a solid, above-median experience in Control, placing this combination at rank 742 out of 1,636 tested combos. This puts the pairing in the top half of all configurations, indicating a balanced setup capable of handling the game's demands across most settings, though the data reveals clear performance ceilings at higher resolutions and quality presets. The combination's overall position is supported by both components performing near their respective peer groups, with the CPU ranking in the 89th percentile of all processors and the GPU in the 72nd percentile of all graphics cards.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo's rank of 742 out of 1,636 tested configurations places it comfortably in the upper-middle tier of all hardware pairings evaluated for Control. This position is not surprising given the individual component standings: the i7-12700KF has an average benchmark score of 35,355, which sits within a tight pack of rivals including the Intel Core i5-14400 (35,336, a delta of +0.1%), the Intel Core i7-13800H (35,416, a delta of -0.2%), and the Intel Core i9-12900HX (35,289, a delta of +0.2%). The CPU's performance is essentially neck-and-neck with these alternatives, with deltas all under 0.3%, meaning the processor is not a differentiating factor in this ranking.

On the GPU side, the RTX 3070's average benchmark score of 28,238 places it near competitors like the AMD FirePro S7150 (28,409, a delta of -0.6%) and the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT (27,985, a delta of +0.9%). These marginal differences indicate that the graphics card's raw compute capability is also well within the expected range for its class. The combination's rank is therefore a product of both components performing at their expected levels, rather than any single part dramatically exceeding or underperforming its peers. The data shows that this pairing sits in the 54th percentile of tested combos for this game specifically, suggesting that while it is not a top-tier enthusiast setup, it is far from a low-end configuration, offering a reliable foundation for playing Control at playable frame rates in most scenarios.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 is the primary driver of frame rates in Control, particularly as resolution and settings increase. The GPU features 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s, which is sufficient for the game's texture and geometry loads at 1080p and 1440p, but becomes a limiting factor at 4K. The card's memory clock runs at 1750 MHz with an effective data rate of 14 Gbps, while the core operates at a base clock of 1500 MHz and a boost clock of 1725 MHz. This clock configuration allows the card to deliver a pixel rate of 165.6 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 317.4 GTexel/s, figures that directly influence how quickly the game's scenes are rendered.

The GPU's 5,888 shading units and 96 ROPs are well-suited for Control's visual effects, and its 46 RT cores provide hardware support for ray tracing, though the measured data in this pack does not include ray tracing-specific results. The card's FP32 performance of 20.31 TFLOPS gives it ample compute headroom for the game's physics and particle effects. However, the 8 GB VRAM capacity is a notable constraint; at 4K Ultra settings, the average FPS drops to 42.6, which suggests that memory capacity and bandwidth are becoming bottlenecks as the resolution demands more data. At 1080p Low, the card achieves 156.8 FPS, indicating that the GPU has significant headroom when not constrained by resolution, but the scaling shows diminishing returns as settings are raised.

FAQ

*Q: What is the overall ranking of this CPU and GPU combination in Control?*

A: The combination ranks 742 out of 1,636 tested combos, placing it in the upper-middle tier of all configurations tested for this game.

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

A: The i7-12700KF scores 35,355 on average, which is within 0.3% of the Intel Core i5-14400 (35,336), Intel Core i7-13800H (35,416), and Intel Core i9-12900HX (35,289), showing near-identical performance.

*Q: What is the best measured frame rate for this combo in Control?*

A: The highest average FPS recorded is 156.8 at 1920x1080 with Low settings, demonstrating the ceiling of this configuration's performance.

*Q: What is the lowest measured frame rate for this combo in Control?*

A: The lowest average FPS recorded is 42.6 at 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, indicating the most demanding scenario tested.

Q: How does the GPU's benchmark score compare to the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT?

A: The RTX 3070 scores 28,238, which is 0.9% higher than the RX 6600 XT's score of 27,985, showing a slight edge in raw performance.

Q: Does the GPU have dedicated ray tracing hardware?

A: Yes, the RTX 3070 includes 46 RT cores, which are designed to accelerate ray tracing workloads, although no ray tracing-specific FPS measurements are included in this data.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a clear picture of performance across three resolutions and four quality settings. At 1920x1080, the combo achieves 156.8 FPS on Low, 115.6 FPS on Medium, 101.9 FPS on High, and 86.6 FPS on Ultra. These numbers show a smooth progression of performance degradation as settings are increased, with the gap between Low and Ultra being 70.2 FPS, or a 45% drop. This indicates that at 1080p, the GPU is the primary bottleneck, as the CPU has enough headroom to feed the graphics card efficiently across all settings.

Moving to 2560x1440, the average FPS figures are 121.7 on Low, 89 on Medium, 78.3 on High, and 64 on Ultra. The drop from Low to Ultra here is 57.7 FPS, representing a 47% decrease. Compared to 1080p, the Low setting sees a reduction of 35.1 FPS, while the Ultra setting sees a reduction of 22.6 FPS. This scaling suggests that the GPU is still the limiting component, but the CPU's role becomes slightly more pronounced as resolution increases, though the data does not show a dramatic shift. At 3840x2160, the performance drops significantly: 79.3 FPS on Low, 55.6 FPS on Medium, 49.8 FPS on High, and 42.6 FPS on Ultra. The gap between Low and Ultra narrows to 36.7 FPS, or a 46% drop, indicating that the GPU is heavily constrained at 4K, with the 8 GB VRAM likely causing the card to struggle with the higher memory demands.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals important insights about the limiting component in this configuration. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 156.8 at 1080p to 121.7 at 1440p (a 22% reduction) and then to 79.3 at 4K (a 49% reduction from 1440p). This steep drop at 4K indicates that the GPU's memory bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s and 8 GB capacity are insufficient to maintain performance at that resolution, even on the lowest settings. At High settings, the FPS goes from 101.9 at 1080p to 78.3 at 1440p (a 23% drop) and then to 49.8 at 4K (a 36% drop from 1440p), showing a similar pattern but with a slightly smaller relative decline at 4K.

The data consistently shows that the transition from 1440p to 4K causes a more significant FPS loss than the transition from 1080p to 1440p, regardless of settings. For example, on Ultra settings, the drop from 1080p to 1440p is 22.6 FPS (26%), while the drop from 1440p to 4K is 21.4 FPS (33%). This pattern strongly suggests that the GPU is the limiting factor, as the CPU's performance is unlikely to degrade with resolution. The i7-12700KF's 12 cores and 20 threads, with a boost clock of 5.00 GHz, provide ample processing power even at 4K, so the frame rate drops are attributable to the RTX 3070's inability to keep up with the increased pixel count and memory demands. The 4K Low result of 79.3 FPS versus the 1080p Low of 156.8 FPS highlights the GPU's struggle, as the CPU is not the bottleneck in either case.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700KF serves as a robust foundation for this gaming configuration, though its impact on Control's frame rates is secondary to the GPU. The processor features 12 cores and 20 threads, with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz, built on Intel's Alder Lake architecture using a 10 nm process. Its 25 MB of shared L3 cache and support for both DDR4 and DDR5 memory allow for flexible system configurations, though the memory type is not specified in the FPS measurements. The CPU's synthetic benchmark scores are strong, with a Cinebench R23 multicore result of 28,979 and a single-core result of 4,091, indicating high sequential and multi-threaded performance.

In the context of Control, the CPU's role is to handle game logic, physics, and draw calls, while the GPU renders the frames. The measured FPS data shows that at 1080p Low, the combo achieves 156.8 FPS, which is likely near the CPU's limit for that scenario, but at higher resolutions, the GPU becomes the bottleneck. The CPU's 89th percentile ranking among all processors, with an average benchmark score of 35,355, places it just 0.1% ahead of the Intel Core i5-14400 and 0.2% behind the Intel Core i7-13800H, confirming that it is not a performance outlier. The processor's power envelope is rated at 125 W TDP, and its 20 PCIe Gen 4 lanes provide sufficient bandwidth for the RTX 3070's PCIe 4.0 x16 interface. Overall, the i7-12700KF provides enough processing power to avoid bottlenecking the RTX 3070 in Control, as evidenced by the consistent FPS scaling with resolution changes, but it does not boost the combo's ranking beyond what the GPU can deliver.