Control

Control is a demanding action-adventure title, and the combination of the Intel Core i7-14700KF and AMD Radeon RX 9070 produces a wide performance envelope depending on how you configure it. The data shows a system that is clearly capable of high refresh rates at 1080p but becomes increasingly bound by the GPU as resolution climbs, making it a versatile pairing for both competitive and visually intensive play.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a classic GPU-bound scaling pattern as resolution increases. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo achieves an average of 182 FPS, which drops to 115 FPS at High and 100 FPS at Ultra. This indicates that even at lower resolutions, the rendering load is significant, though the CPU is still feeding the GPU adequately.

Stepping up to 1440p, the averages fall to 137 FPS at Low, 87 FPS at High, and 75 FPS at Ultra. The transition from 1080p to 1440p represents a substantial increase in pixel count, and the frame rate drops by roughly 25% across all settings. This is a steeper decline than what would be expected if the CPU were the primary limiter, pointing to the GPU's rasterization throughput as the main constraint.

At 4K (3840x2160), the scaling becomes even more pronounced. The average at Low is 93 FPS, at High it falls to 59 FPS, and at Ultra it drops to 51 FPS. The jump from 1440p to 4K nearly halves the frame rate at High settings, confirming that the RX 9070 is working near its limits. The min FPS values at Medium settings illustrate this further: 110 FPS at 1080p, 83 FPS at 1440p, and 56 FPS at 4K. This progressive tightening of the low-end frame times is a clear indicator that the GPU is the bottleneck, not the 20-core processor.

The performance delta between Low and Ultra settings widens with resolution. At 1080p, the gap is 82 FPS (182 vs 100), while at 4K it shrinks to 42 FPS (93 vs 51). This compression suggests that at higher resolutions, the absolute cost of each additional visual effect layer becomes relatively smaller compared to the sheer pixel fill rate required. The CPU has ample headroom to handle the draw calls and physics at 4K, but the GPU's pixel and texture processing rates—measured at 322.6 GPixel/s and 564.5 GTexel/s respectively—are what ultimately cap performance.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested hardware combinations for Control, this pairing ranks 1134th out of 3720 tested combos. This places it comfortably in the top third of all systems tested, indicating a strong overall performance tier. The percentile standing is solid, reflecting that the combination of this specific CPU and GPU outperforms the majority of other pairings in this game.

The CPU itself holds a 94th percentile rank against all CPUs in the broader benchmark suite, which suggests it is not holding back the GPU in most scenarios. However, the GPU's percentile rank is lower at 69th, meaning that relative to other graphics cards, the RX 9070 is the more limiting factor in this pairing. The combo rank of 1134 is a holistic view of how these two components interact specifically in Control, and the data shows that the result is a well-balanced system that avoids severe CPU stalls.

When looking at the CPU's nearest rivals, the performance is tightly clustered. The Intel Core i7-14700KF has an average benchmark score of 70163, which is only 0.2% higher than the AMD Ryzen 7 9700F and 0.4% higher than the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX. It trails the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K by 1.0%. This indicates that in CPU-bound scenarios, there is very little separating the top contenders, and the frame rates in Control are unlikely to be swayed by swapping between these processors. The GPU's rival list shows a similar tight grouping, with the RX 9070 scoring 23877 on average, sitting between the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER and the AMD Radeon RX 6800S in raw compute benchmarks.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 is built on the RDNA 4.0 architecture using TSMC's 4nm process, packing 53,900 million transistors into a 357 mm² die. It comes equipped with 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering a bandwidth of 644.6 GB/s. This generous memory allocation is crucial for Control at 4K, where high-resolution textures and complex shaders can quickly consume VRAM.

The GPU's clock behavior is notable. It has a base clock of 1330 MHz, a game clock of 2070 MHz, and a boost clock of 2520 MHz. The memory operates at 2518 MHz, which translates to 20.1 Gbps effective. The large gap between base and boost clocks shows that the card is designed to aggressively ramp up under load, which helps maintain the average FPS figures seen in the data. The pixel rate of 322.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 564.5 GTexel/s are the physical limits that dictate how fast the card can fill the screen, and these become the hard ceiling at 4K resolution.

The GPU's FP32 performance of 36.13 TFLOPS is substantial, but Control's engine relies heavily on traditional rasterization rather than pure compute throughput. The 56 ray tracing cores and support for DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) are present, but the measured FPS data does not include ray tracing scenarios, so the impact is not quantified here. The 128 ROPs are the key units for final pixel output, and their count directly influences how the card scales from 1080p to 4K. In this game, the data shows that the RX 9070's performance at 4K Ultra (51 FPS) is just above the 50 FPS threshold, suggesting that the 16 GB VRAM is sufficient but the compute units are fully saturated.

FAQ

Q: What is the average frame rate at 1440p with High settings?

A: The Intel Core i7-14700KF and AMD Radeon RX 9070 combo delivers an average of 87 FPS at 2560x1440 with High settings.

Q: Does the combo achieve 60 FPS at 4K with Ultra settings?

A: No. The measured average FPS at 3840x2160 with Ultra settings is 51 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS target. To hit 60 FPS at 4K, you would need to drop to Low settings, which yields 93 FPS.

Q: How does the CPU rank compared to other processors?

A: The Intel Core i7-14700KF ranks in the 94th percentile of all CPUs tested in the database, with an average benchmark score of 70163.

Q: What is the minimum FPS recorded at 1080p with Medium settings?

A: The minimum FPS at 1920x1080 with Medium settings is 110 FPS, with an average of 129 FPS and a maximum of 148 FPS.

Q: Is the GPU or CPU the limiting factor at 4K?

A: The data indicates the GPU is the primary limiter at 4K. The frame rate drops significantly from 93 FPS at Low to 51 FPS at Ultra, while the CPU's high core count and benchmark scores suggest it has ample headroom.

Q: What is the combo's rank relative to all tested systems in Control?

A: This specific CPU and GPU pairing ranks 1134th out of 3720 tested combinations in Control.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The following data represents the exact measured average frame rates, with min and max values where available, for this hardware combination in Control.

1920x1080 (1080p)

• Low: 182 FPS average
• Medium: 129 FPS average, 110 FPS min, 148 FPS max
• High: 115 FPS average
• Ultra: 100 FPS average

2560x1440 (1440p)

• Low: 137 FPS average
• Medium: 98 FPS average, 83 FPS min, 112 FPS max
• High: 87 FPS average
• Ultra: 75 FPS average

3840x2160 (4K)

• Low: 93 FPS average
• Medium: 66 FPS average, 56 FPS min, 76 FPS max
• High: 59 FPS average
• Ultra: 51 FPS average

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700KF is a 20-core, 28-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake architecture, fabricated on Intel's 10nm process. It features a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz, with a 33 MB shared L3 cache. This configuration provides substantial headroom for gaming workloads, and its benchmark scores reflect that: it achieves 44167 points in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 6235 points in single-core, along with 21462 points in Geekbench multi-core.

In Control, the CPU's role is to handle the game's physics, AI, and draw call submission. The game is not known for being extremely CPU-intensive, and the data supports this. The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K is clearly dominated by GPU load, as the frame rate drops uniformly across all settings when resolution increases. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see a plateau in FPS at lower resolutions, where the GPU could render frames faster than the CPU can feed it. However, the 1080p Low setting achieves 182 FPS, which is well within the range where a powerful CPU is necessary, and the 14700KF's 28 threads provide more than enough processing power.

The CPU's single-thread performance is also critical for gaming. A score of 4480 in Passmark's single-thread test and 628 in Cinebench R15 single-core indicates strong per-core performance, which is essential for maintaining high frame rates in scenarios where the game engine is not perfectly multi-threaded. The 5.60 GHz boost clock ensures that single-threaded tasks are processed as quickly as possible. The processor's 94th percentile rank among all CPUs confirms that it is a top-tier part, and in this combo, it allows the RX 9070 to perform at its full potential without being starved for data. The nearest rivals all have average scores within 1% of the 14700KF, meaning that any of these CPUs would produce nearly identical frame rates in Control.