Control

The Intel Core i7-12700KF paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 delivers a solid, highly playable Control experience across most settings, but the data reveals a clear performance ceiling at 4K that shifts the bottleneck firmly onto the graphics card. The RTX 5060, with its 8 GB of GDDR7 memory, is the deciding factor for this title, while the 12-core i7-12700KF provides ample headroom.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a predictable and steep decline as resolution increases, but the rate of that decline tells a story about system balance. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo hits 151 FPS. Moving to 1440p Low drops the frame rate to 112.1 FPS, a 25.8% reduction. Pushing further to 4K Low yields 75.6 FPS, another 32.6% drop from the 1440p figure. This scaling pattern indicates that while the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU at high frame rates in 1080p, the GPU's rendering workload becomes the primary constraint as pixel count grows.

The scaling is even more pronounced on higher presets. With Ultra settings, the frame rate falls from 84.1 FPS at 1080p to 63.2 FPS at 1440p (a 24.9% drop), and then to 40.9 FPS at 4K (a 35.3% drop from 1440p). The consistent pattern of larger percentage drops when moving from 1440p to 4K compared to 1080p to 1440p suggests that the RTX 5060's memory bandwidth and compute resources are being saturated at the highest resolution. The 4K Ultra result of 40.9 FPS is the only unplayable figure in the dataset, pointing to a hard limit for this configuration in this game.

GPU Role

The RTX 5060 is the defining component in this pairing for Control. Its 8 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 128-bit bus provides 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is the lifeline for texture-heavy scenes at high resolutions. The benchmark data shows the GPU's overall performance sits at the 73rd percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 30109. Its nearest rival in aggregate benchmarks is the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT with a score of 30097, a deltaPct of 0. This indicates the RTX 5060 is competitively positioned in the broader GPU landscape.

In Control specifically, the GPU's limits are visible in the difference between Low and Ultra settings at the same resolution. At 4K, Low settings achieve 75.6 FPS, while Ultra drops to 40.9 FPS, a 45.9% performance penalty for the highest visual quality. This gap is entirely attributable to the GPU's workload, as the CPU is not a limiting factor in this scenario. The boost clock of 2497 MHz, built on a 5 nm TSMC process, allows the card to maintain reasonable frame rates at 1440p, but the 4K Ultra result shows that the card's 19.18 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is insufficient for the most demanding settings at that resolution.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700KF provides a robust foundation for this GPU, ensuring that Control is not CPU-bound in most scenarios. With 12 cores and 20 threads, the processor has the multi-threaded capacity to handle game logic and physics, while its 5.00 GHz boost clock ensures strong single-thread performance for the main render thread. The CPU's synthetic benchmarks are impressive, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 28979 and a single-core score of 4091. Its overall average benchmark score of 35355 places it at the 89th percentile among all CPUs.

The CPU's nearest rivals in aggregate performance are all closely matched. The Intel Core i5-14400 scores 35336, a deltaPct of 0.1, while the Intel Core i9-12900HX scores 35289, a deltaPct of 0.2. This closeness means that swapping the i7-12700KF for any of these alternatives would likely produce almost identical frame rates in Control, as the CPU is not the primary bottleneck. The 125W TDP (TDP) and 25 MB of shared L3 cache are more than sufficient for this game's demands. The data shows that at 1080p Low, where the CPU is most likely to be stressed, the combo still achieves 151 FPS, indicating no significant CPU limitation even in the least GPU-intensive scenario.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the benchmark database's collection of tested CPU and GPU combinations, this pairing ranks 758 out of 1636 combos for Control. This places it in the upper-middle tier of all possible configurations. This rank is a direct reflection of the RTX 5060's position; the GPU is a mid-range part, and the i7-12700KF's strength cannot compensate for the GPU's limits at higher resolutions. The ranking suggests that while this is a competent pairing for 1080p and 1440p gaming, it is not among the top-tier configurations for this specific title, which would require a more powerful graphics card to achieve high frame rates at 4K. The 758th rank out of 1636 shows there is significant headroom above this combo, but also that it substantially outperforms many older or lower-end pairings in the database.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS data, the optimal settings for this combo depend on the target resolution and desired frame rate. For 1080p, High settings at 96.6 FPS offer an ideal balance of visual fidelity and smooth gameplay. The Ultra preset at 84.1 FPS is also viable if maximum image quality is preferred, as the frame rate remains well above the 60 FPS threshold. For 1440p, High settings at 70.7 FPS is the recommended choice, providing a solid experience without dipping below the 60 FPS target. Medium at 81.6 FPS is also a strong option for those prioritizing a higher refresh rate. For 4K, Medium settings at 53.7 FPS is the only reasonable preset for a playable experience, though it falls short of 60 FPS. High settings at 48.9 FPS is marginal, and Ultra at 40.9 FPS is not recommended. Low settings are only advisable for competitive play at high refresh rates, such as the 151 FPS available at 1080p.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers 151 FPS on Low, 106.6 FPS on Medium, 96.6 FPS on High, and 84.1 FPS on Ultra. These numbers show a steady decline of roughly 10-15 FPS per preset tier, indicating a balanced scaling curve at this resolution. The 1080p results are consistently high, making this the resolution where the combo performs best relative to its own capabilities.

At 2560x1440, the measured results are 112.1 FPS on Low, 81.6 FPS on Medium, 70.7 FPS on High, and 63.2 FPS on Ultra. The drop from Low to Medium is substantial at 30.5 FPS, while the drop from High to Ultra is a more modest 7.5 FPS. This suggests that the High preset is the last tier where the GPU can efficiently process the additional workload before hitting a steeper performance cliff.

At 3840x2160, the results fall to 75.6 FPS on Low, 53.7 FPS on Medium, 48.9 FPS on High, and 40.9 FPS on Ultra. The 4K results show a consistent 5-8 FPS decrease for each preset step, with Low being the only setting that approaches 60 FPS. The absolute frame times at this resolution are long, and the data confirms that 4K is the boundary of this configuration's capability, with only the lowest preset offering a comfortable margin above 30 FPS.