Control

Control is a 2019 Action Adventure title that stresses both the CPU and GPU heavily, and the measured results for the Intel Core i7-14700K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 show a clear picture of where the bottleneck lies. The data indicates a system that is consistently GPU-limited at higher resolutions, but which also reveals surprising scaling behavior at 1080p that suggests the game engine’s handling of the CPU’s resources. This analysis will break down the resolution scaling, the GPU’s role, and provide actionable settings recommendations based strictly on the measured frame rates.

Resolution Scaling

The measured average frame rates demonstrate a predictable yet steep decline as resolution increases, with the most dramatic gap occurring between 1080p and 1440p. At the High preset, the system delivers 87.7 FPS at 1920x1080, which drops to 68.8 FPS at 2560x1440—a 21.5% reduction—and then falls further to 45.4 FPS at 3840x2160, representing a 48.2% drop from the 1080p baseline. This pattern is consistent across all quality presets, indicating that the rendering load scales almost linearly with pixel count, which is typical for a game that is heavily dependent on fill rate and shading complexity.

The scaling behavior changes character when moving from 1440p to 4K. At Medium settings, the transition from 2560x1440 (72.6 FPS) to 3840x2160 (48.6 FPS) results in a 33% performance loss, which is larger than the 21.5% loss seen at High settings for the same resolution step. This suggests that at Medium settings, the GPU is being pushed harder relative to its capabilities, and the additional pixel count at 4K overwhelms the shader and memory subsystems more aggressively. Conversely, at Low settings, the drop from 105.8 FPS at 1440p to 73.2 FPS at 4K is only a 30.8% reduction, which is less severe than the Medium preset’s loss, implying that the reduced shading work at Low settings allows the GPU to maintain a more consistent throughput.

The most telling observation is the difference between the Ultra preset’s 55.9 FPS at 1440p and 37.6 FPS at 4K. This 32.7% loss is the largest relative decline among all presets for that resolution step, indicating that the Ultra preset’s additional effects (likely ray tracing or advanced post-processing) create a memory bandwidth bottleneck. The RTX 4060’s 128-bit memory bus and 272.0 GB/s bandwidth become the limiting factor at 4K Ultra, as the data shows the frame rate falling below the 40 FPS threshold that most players would consider playable. The fact that the 1080p Ultra score of 77.8 FPS is nearly double the 4K Ultra score confirms that the GPU’s compute and memory resources are saturated at higher resolutions, while at 1080p, the CPU still has headroom to push more frames.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060, built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with a 5 nm process, is the primary driver of the performance ceiling in this configuration. Its 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus provides 272.0 GB/s of bandwidth, and the benchmark results show that this bandwidth is a critical constraint at higher resolutions. The card’s boost clock of 2460 MHz and base clock of 1830 MHz are relatively high for the segment, but the measured performance suggests that the 15.11 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is not the limiting factor—the memory subsystem is. The GPU’s 48 ROPs and 96 TMUs are also modest, which aligns with the observed scaling where higher resolutions and settings that increase texture and pixel work cause disproportionate frame rate drops.

The GPU’s percentile ranking of 66th among all GPUs puts it in the mid-range tier, and its nearest rivals in the benchmark database—the AMD Radeon RX 6600M (0.6% faster), NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti (0.7% faster), Intel Arc B580 (0.7% slower), and AMD Radeon 760M (0.8% slower)—show that it sits in a tightly contested performance band. In Control, the RTX 4060’s DirectX 12 score of 76 in the Passmark suite is notably low, which is a strong indicator that the card’s real-world gaming performance in DX12 titles like Control may be limited by driver overhead or architectural inefficiencies in certain workloads. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 2302 reinforces this, showing that while the card can handle synthetic loads, the actual game engine’s demands at 4K Ultra push it beyond its comfort zone.

At 1080p, the GPU has enough headroom to deliver 141.1 FPS at Low settings, which is 81% higher than the 77.8 FPS at Ultra. This indicates that the CPU, with its 20 cores and 28 threads, is not the bottleneck at lower resolutions. The i7-14700K’s boost clock of 5.60 GHz and its 96th percentile ranking among all CPUs ensure that it can feed the GPU adequately at 1080p, but the GPU’s compute and memory limits become apparent as resolution increases. The fact that the 4K Low score of 73.2 FPS is higher than the 1440p Ultra score of 55.9 FPS is a critical insight: the GPU’s performance is far more sensitive to settings complexity than to raw resolution, meaning that users can often achieve higher frame rates by reducing quality settings rather than lowering resolution.

FAQ

Q: What is the maximum average frame rate achievable with this CPU-GPU combo in Control?

A: The highest measured average frame rate is 141.1 FPS at 1920x1080 with the Low preset. This is the only setting that exceeds 140 FPS, indicating that the GPU is fully capable of high refresh rate gaming at 1080p when visual effects are minimized.

Q: How does the RTX 4060 compare to its closest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 4060’s average benchmark score of 23181 places it 0.6% behind the AMD Radeon RX 6600M, 0.7% behind the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti, and 0.7% ahead of the Intel Arc B580. This shows it is in the middle of a tightly clustered group of competing GPUs.

Q: Is the Intel Core i7-14700K bottlenecking the RTX 4060 in Control?

A: The data suggests no. The CPU’s percentile rank of 96th among all CPUs and its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 44534 indicate it has massive headroom. The 1080p Low score of 141.1 FPS versus the 4K Low score of 73.2 FPS shows that the GPU is the limiting factor, as the CPU can clearly push well over 140 FPS.

Q: What is the difference in performance between High and Ultra settings at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the High preset achieves 68.8 FPS, while the Ultra preset achieves 55.9 FPS. This represents a 23.1% performance penalty for the Ultra preset, which may not justify the visual improvement for competitive play.

Q: Does the GPU’s 8 GB VRAM cause any issues at 4K resolution?

A: The measured 4K Ultra score of 37.6 FPS and 4K High score of 45.4 FPS indicate that the 8 GB VRAM and 272.0 GB/s bandwidth are insufficient for smooth 4K gameplay. The 4K Low score of 73.2 FPS shows that reducing settings to lower memory usage can restore playability, but the card is not suited for 4K Ultra.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested configurations in Control?

A: The combo ranks 935th out of 1636 total tested combinations, placing it in the lower-middle tier. This indicates that while the individual components are capable, the overall gaming performance in Control is below what many other configurations achieve.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data clearly shows that the High preset at 2560x1440 offers the best balance of visual quality and performance for this hardware. With an average of 68.8 FPS at 1440p High, the system remains above the 60 FPS threshold that most players consider smooth, while the 45.4 FPS at 4K High falls below that threshold. The 1080p High score of 87.7 FPS is also excellent, making this preset the most versatile choice for users who may switch between resolutions. The Ultra preset at 1440p (55.9 FPS) is playable but marginal, and the 20% performance drop from High to Ultra does not provide enough visual benefit for most users.

For users prioritizing high refresh rates at 1080p, the Medium preset at 100.9 FPS is the recommended choice, as it provides a 15% improvement over High (87.7 FPS) while retaining better visual fidelity than Low (141.1 FPS). The Low preset at 1080p offers the highest frame rate but sacrifices too much visual quality for a game like Control, which relies heavily on atmospheric effects and lighting. The 4K resolution is only viable with the Low preset (73.2 FPS), but even then, the visual degradation is severe, and the Medium preset at 4K (48.6 FPS) falls below the playability threshold.

The data indicates that the optimal strategy is to keep resolution at 1440p and use the High preset, as this configuration provides 68.8 FPS while avoiding the severe performance penalties seen at 4K. The 4K Ultra score of 37.6 FPS is the worst measured result, and users should avoid that combination entirely. The 1440p Medium score of 72.6 FPS is only 5.5% faster than High (68.8 FPS), suggesting that High is the better value in terms of visual quality versus the small performance difference. For users with 4K displays, the Low preset is the only playable option, but the 73.2 FPS score indicates that the GPU is still capable of delivering smooth frame rates if settings are aggressively reduced.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i7-14700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 combination ranks 935th out of 1636 tested combos in Control, placing it in the 57th percentile of all tested configurations. This rank is notably lower than what the individual component benchmarks would suggest—the CPU ranks in the 96th percentile and the GPU in the 66th percentile—which indicates that the pairing is suboptimal for this specific game. The CPU’s nearest rivals, including the Intel Core i7-14700KF (0% delta) and AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (0.5% faster), show that the processor is not the limiting factor, while the GPU’s rivals, such as the AMD Radeon RX 6600M (0.6% faster) and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti (0.7% faster), demonstrate that the graphics card is the bottleneck.

The ranking of 935th out of 1636 suggests that many other combinations of CPU and GPU achieve higher frame rates in Control, likely due to the RTX 4060’s limited memory bandwidth and 8 GB VRAM capacity. The data shows that the GPU’s performance is heavily constrained at 4K, where it delivers only 45.4 FPS at High settings, while the CPU could theoretically support much higher frame rates. This mismatch is reflected in the combo rank, which sits in the lower half of the distribution. The percentile data for the GPU (66th) and CPU (96th) further emphasizes that the system is unbalanced for this workload, with the CPU’s capabilities far exceeding what the GPU can utilize in Control’s demanding rendering engine.

The combo’s rank relative to its 1636 total combinations indicates that while it is not a low-end configuration, it is also not competitive with top-tier systems in this game. The 57th percentile position suggests that users with this hardware should expect mid-pack performance, which aligns with the measured frame rates that are playable at 1440p High but struggle at 4K. The GPU’s end-of-life production status and the CPU’s recent release date (2023-10-16) create a generational mismatch that is visible in the results, with the CPU’s modern architecture not being fully leveraged by the GPU’s older design. This ranking serves as a clear indicator that for Control, the RTX 4060 is the limiting component, and users seeking higher performance would need to upgrade the GPU rather than the CPU.