Control

# Control with Intel Core i7-14700K + AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT

Control, Remedy's supernatural action-adventure from 2019, demands both raw compute and substantial graphics memory. This pairing of an Intel Core i7-14700K with an AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT delivers a compelling dataset, with measured frames ranging from 58 FPS at 4K Ultra to 208 FPS at 1080p Low. The benchmark results reveal a system that is consistently playable across all tested configurations, though the gap between settings tiers tells a clear story about where the bottleneck shifts.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average frame rate recorded for this combo?

A: The highest measured average is 208 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings. This represents the ceiling of the tested configurations, with the CPU's single-thread performance and the GPU's headroom combining for a result that far exceeds display refresh rate needs.

Q: How does the combo rank among all tested system configurations?

A: This combination ranks 740th out of 3,720 tested combos in Control, placing it in the top 20% of all configurations. The percentile positioning suggests that while not the absolute fastest, this pairing delivers performance that outpaces the vast majority of systems tested in this game.

Q: What is the difference between the CPU and GPU percentile scores?

A: The CPU sits in the 94th percentile among all processors, while the GPU is in the 55th percentile among all graphics cards. This discrepancy indicates the processor has more relative headroom than the graphics card, which becomes relevant at higher resolutions where GPU load increases.

Q: What are the minimum and maximum FPS recorded at 1440p Medium?

A: At 2560x1440 with Medium settings, the measured minimum is 95 FPS and the maximum is 128 FPS, with an average of 112 FPS. The 33 FPS spread between min and max suggests some scene-dependent variance, but the floor remains well above smooth-playability thresholds.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X?

A: The Intel Core i7-14700K's average benchmark score is 69,355, which is 0.2% lower than the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X's 69,515. This places the two processors effectively at parity, with the Intel chip edging out the AMD EPYC 9115 by 0.1% but trailing the Ryzen 9 7940HX by 0.7%.

Q: What is the launch MSRP for the GPU?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT had a launch MSRP of 899 USD. This figure is provided for reference; the performance data stands independently of any market pricing considerations.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data across four settings tiers at three resolutions paints a nuanced picture for optimizing the experience. At 1920x1080, even the most demanding Ultra preset maintains an average of 114 FPS, making it entirely viable for high-refresh-rate displays. The jump from Low to Ultra costs 94 FPS on average (from 208 to 114), but the visual uplift from Low to Medium is substantial for a 60 FPS average cost (208 to 148). For most players at 1080p, Medium presents the sweet spot: 148 FPS average keeps frame times low while enabling better texture detail and effects than Low.

At 2560x1440, the pattern shifts. High settings deliver 99 FPS average, while Ultra drops to 86 FPS — a difference of only 13 FPS. The Medium tier sits at 112 FPS with a 95 FPS minimum. Given that the gap between High and Ultra is modest here, players with 144Hz monitors can reasonably select High and stay above 90 FPS in most scenes. However, the data suggests that Medium at 1440p offers the best balance of visual fidelity and performance headroom, as the 112 FPS average leaves room for demanding combat sequences without dipping below 95 FPS.

The 4K results are where settings choices become critical. Ultra at 3840x2160 yields just 58 FPS average, which is playable but not ideal for fast-paced action. High at 4K improves to 67 FPS, while Medium reaches 75 FPS with a 64 FPS minimum. Low at 4K jumps to 106 FPS, but the visual compromise is severe. The recommendation for 4K is High settings: 67 FPS average provides a comfortable margin above 60 FPS, and the visual difference from Ultra is less noticeable at this resolution than at lower ones. Players seeking maximum smoothness should consider Medium, which keeps the minimum at 64 FPS and averages 75 FPS, ensuring consistent frame pacing during the game's most particle-heavy sequences.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700K brings 20 cores and 28 threads to the table, with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz. This Raptor Lake-R architecture part, built on Intel's 10 nm process, is clearly not the limiting factor in Control at any resolution. The 125W TDP and the 33 MB of shared L3 cache provide ample headroom for the game's physics and AI systems, which scale well with multi-threaded performance. The CPU's Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 33,440.5 and single-core score of 2,160 indicate exceptional throughput, and the 94th percentile ranking versus all CPUs confirms its position among high-end desktop processors.

The nearest rival data shows the i7-14700K trading blows with the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (delta of -0.2%) and the AMD EPYC 9115 (+0.1%), which suggests that in CPU-bound scenarios, these processors are interchangeable. However, Control is not a CPU-bound game at the resolutions tested here. The evidence is in the FPS scaling: at 1080p Low, the system hits 208 FPS, but this is more likely GPU-limited than CPU-limited given the RX 7900 XT's capabilities. When resolution increases to 4K, the FPS drops dramatically across all settings, which points to the GPU taking on the primary workload. The CPU's 20 cores and 28 threads are likely underutilized in Control, as the game's engine typically uses fewer threads than a modern high-core-count processor offers.

The PassMark multi-thread score of 52,392 and single-thread score of 4,472 reinforce that this CPU has far more compute capacity than Control requires. Even the most demanding measured scenario — 4K Ultra at 58 FPS — would not stress the i7-14700K's processing capabilities. The takeaway is that the CPU provides a stable, high-performance foundation that never holds back the GPU, but its full potential remains untapped in this title.

How This Combo Ranks

With a combo rank of 740 out of 3,720 tested configurations, this pairing sits in the top 19.9% of all systems evaluated in Control. This is a strong showing, but not a top-tier one — the rank suggests that while the i7-14700K and RX 7900 XT deliver excellent frame rates, there are over 700 combos that achieve higher performance. Given the CPU's 94th percentile and the GPU's 55th percentile, the rank is likely constrained by the graphics card's relative position among GPUs rather than the processor.

The lower GPU percentile is particularly interesting when compared to the CPU's near-elite status. The RX 7900 XT's average benchmark score of 13,745 places it in the 55th percentile, with its nearest rival being the AMD Radeon 660M at a 0.5% difference. This suggests that in the broader GPU landscape, the 7900 XT is mid-pack despite its 20 GB of GDDR6 memory and 800.0 GB/s bandwidth. In Control specifically, the combo rank of 740 demonstrates that the game's engine responds more to the GPU's raw rasterization performance than to its memory capacity, which is why the pairing doesn't crack the top 500 despite the CPU's strength.

The rank also implies that there are combinations with weaker CPUs but stronger GPUs that outperform this setup, likely because Control's optimization favors graphics throughput over CPU processing. For players evaluating this combo, the 740th position out of 3,720 means the system will handle the game with ease, but those chasing absolute maximum frame rates at 1080p might find better options with a stronger GPU paired with a mid-range CPU.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT is the dominant component in this pairing, and the measured FPS data makes its role explicit. With 20 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 320-bit bus and 800.0 GB/s of bandwidth, the card has ample resources for Control's textures and effects, even at 4K. The boost clock of 2394 MHz and game clock of 2025 MHz, built on the RDNA 3.0 architecture with a 5 nm process, deliver a FP32 throughput of 51.48 TFLOPS. The 84 ray-tracing cores and 192 ROPs provide the compute elements Control's graphics engine uses for its signature particle effects and dynamic lighting.

The GPU's 55th percentile ranking versus all GPUs is surprising given its specifications, but the nearest rival data shows a tight cluster: the RX 7900 XT is just 0.5% behind the AMD Radeon 660M and 1.5% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT. This indicates that the benchmark database's GPU scoring may weight different workloads differently than Control does. In the game itself, the RX 7900 XT demonstrates strong scaling: from 1080p Low at 208 FPS to 4K Ultra at 58 FPS, the card shows expected performance degradation as resolution increases.

The 20 GB VRAM capacity is rarely stressed in Control, as even at 4K Ultra the game's texture requirements fall well below this threshold. The GPU's role becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions — the 58 FPS at 4K Ultra suggests that the card's compute units, not memory bandwidth, are the constraint. The ROP count of 192 and pixel rate of 459.6 GPixel/s are more relevant to Control's fill-rate demands, and the measured frame rates reflect a card that is well-suited to this title but not exceptional within its own product stack.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete dataset reveals a consistent pattern: FPS scales predictably with resolution and settings. At 1920x1080, Low settings produce 208 FPS average, Medium produces 148 FPS (with a 125 FPS minimum and 170 FPS maximum), High produces 131 FPS, and Ultra produces 114 FPS. The 1080p results show diminishing returns as settings increase — the jump from Low to Medium costs 60 FPS, but the jump from High to Ultra costs only 17 FPS, indicating that the visual improvements at the top end come at a comparatively modest performance cost.

At 2560x1440, the numbers shift downward proportionally. Low settings average 157 FPS, Medium averages 112 FPS with a 95 FPS minimum and 128 FPS maximum, High averages 99 FPS, and Ultra averages 86 FPS. The 1440p results show a tighter spread between High and Ultra (13 FPS) compared to the gap between Medium and High (13 FPS as well), suggesting that the GPU's workload becomes more uniform at this resolution. The minimum FPS of 95 at Medium provides a strong guarantee of smooth gameplay, while the 86 FPS at Ultra remains acceptable for most players.

At 3840x2160, the trend continues with more pronounced drops. Low settings average 106 FPS, Medium averages 75 FPS with a 64 FPS minimum and 87 FPS maximum, High averages 67 FPS, and Ultra averages 58 FPS. The 4K results reveal a 48 FPS difference between Low and Ultra, with the Ultra preset dropping below the 60 FPS threshold that many players consider the playability floor. The Medium preset's 64 FPS minimum is the safest option for 4K, while High at 67 FPS average offers a marginal improvement in visual quality without significant frame rate risk.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K at each settings tier reveals where the bottleneck lies. At Low settings, the average FPS falls from 208 at 1080p to 157 at 1440p and 106 at 4K — a 49% reduction from 1080p to 4K. At Medium, the drop is from 148 to 112 to 75, a 49% reduction as well. High settings go from 131 to 99 to 67, a 49% reduction. Ultra goes from 114 to 86 to 58, also a 49% reduction. This consistent scaling across all settings is the signature of a GPU-bound scenario: the CPU's performance is sufficient at every resolution, and the frame rate is determined solely by the GPU's rendering capability.

The uniform percentage drop indicates that the i7-14700K is not contributing to performance degradation as resolution increases. If the CPU were a limiting factor, we would expect to see smaller absolute FPS drops at higher resolutions, as the GPU takes longer to render each frame and the CPU has more time to prepare the next one. Instead, the linear scaling from 1080p to 4K suggests that the RX 7900 XT is operating at near-full utilization across all tested settings, with the CPU providing frames faster than the GPU can consume them.

The 49% reduction from 1080p to 4K is expected for a GPU with this bandwidth and compute capability, given that 4K has roughly 4.4 times the pixel count of 1080p but the game's engine and the GPU's architecture mitigate some of that load. The fact that Low settings at 4K still hit 106 FPS while Ultra at 1080p hits 114 FPS highlights that resolution is a larger factor than settings in this pairing — the GPU's raw pixel throughput, not the shading complexity, is the primary constraint. This suggests that players with 4K displays should prioritize resolution over settings, while those with 1080p displays can max out everything and still maintain triple-digit frame rates.