Control

# Control — Intel Core i9-14900K + AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT

This pairing of Intel's flagship 24-core Raptor Lake CPU with AMD's mid-range RDNA 2 GPU produces a fascinating split-personality result in Control, a game that scales heavily with both resolution and preset. The measured data shows a system that can deliver smooth 1080p performance at most settings, yet struggles to maintain playable frame rates at 4K Ultra, revealing a clear GPU-bound scenario where the RX 6600 XT's 8 GB frame buffer and 128-bit memory interface become the deciding factor. The combo ranks 1168 out of 1636 tested combinations, placing it in the lower-middle tier of the database, which is worth examining given the CPU's top-tier status.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is dramatic and tells a clear story about where the bottleneck lives. At Low settings, the system delivers 119.8 FPS at 1920x1080, which falls to 90.3 FPS at 2560x1440, and then plummets to 58.1 FPS at 3840x2160. That represents a 24.6% decline from 1080p to 1440p, followed by a 35.7% further decline to 4K. Total scaling from 1080p Low to 4K Low is a 51.5% reduction in frame rate.

The High preset tells an even more telling story. Starting at 75.1 FPS at 1080p, the system drops to 58.2 FPS at 1440p (a 22.5% loss) and then to 37.5 FPS at 4K (a 35.6% loss from 1440p). The pattern is consistent: each resolution step costs roughly a quarter to a third of the remaining performance. This is classic GPU-bound scaling — if the CPU were the limiting factor, the 4K-to-1080p gap would be much smaller since the CPU's workload doesn't increase with resolution.

Ultra settings amplify the problem. The 1080p Ultra result of 66 FPS drops to 47 FPS at 1440p and 35.3 FPS at 4K. The 4K Ultra frame rate is barely half of the 1080p Ultra figure, suggesting that at higher presets, the combination of increased pixel count and more demanding effects overwhelms the GPU's compute and memory bandwidth. Notably, the gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is 22.8 FPS, while at 1080p that same gap is 53.8 FPS — the GPU simply has less headroom at higher resolutions to absorb the cost of additional graphical features.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in Control?

A: Based on the measured FPS, 1920x1080 is the only resolution where all presets remain above 60 FPS, with Low hitting 119.8 FPS and Ultra at 66 FPS. At 2560x1440, only Low (90.3 FPS) and High (58.2 FPS) reach playable levels; Medium is 64.9 FPS, but Ultra falls to 47 FPS. At 3840x2160, even Low (58.1 FPS) dips below 60 FPS.

Q: How does the RX 6600 XT compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The GPU averages 27985 points across benchmark tests, sitting 0.1% above the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti (27956) and 0.4% above the AMD Radeon R9 M395X (27883). It trails the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 by 0.9% (28238) and the AMD FirePro S7150 by 1.5% (28409). These are remarkably close scores, indicating the RX 6600 XT performs in a tight competitive band.

Q: Is the CPU the bottleneck at any resolution in this game?

A: The scaling pattern suggests no. The i9-14900K's massive 24-core, 32-thread configuration with a 6.00 GHz boost clock provides far more processing headroom than Control requires. The consistent frame rate drops across resolution increases point to the GPU as the limiting component at all tested settings.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Low and Ultra at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, Low produces 119.8 FPS while Ultra produces 66 FPS, a difference of 53.8 FPS. This represents a 44.9% performance penalty for enabling the highest preset, which is substantial but still leaves Ultra playable.

Q: Can this combo handle 4K gaming in Control?

A: Only barely, and only at Low settings where it averages 58.1 FPS. Medium drops to 40.4 FPS, High to 37.5 FPS, and Ultra to 35.3 FPS. For consistent 60 FPS gameplay at 4K, the data indicates this GPU does not have sufficient headroom.

Q: How does the CPU's benchmark standing compare to its in-game performance?

A: The i9-14900K ranks in the 97th percentile of all CPUs with an average benchmark score of 79824, 0.7% ahead of the Core i9-14900KF and 0.9% ahead of the Core Ultra 7 265K. This top-tier synthetic position contrasts sharply with the combo's 1168th rank out of 1636 in Control, reinforcing that the GPU is the performance limiter.

Settings Recommendations

For players targeting 60 FPS as a baseline, the data shows that 1920x1080 Ultra is the only high-end preset that clears this threshold, achieving 66 FPS. At 2560x1440, the choice narrows to Medium (64.9 FPS) or High (58.2 FPS) — the latter technically misses 60 FPS but remains close enough for most gameplay. At 3840x2160, no preset reaches 60 FPS; Low manages 58.1 FPS, which is the only viable option for near-60 FPS play.

The most balanced experience appears to be 1080p High at 75.1 FPS, which offers a solid margin above 60 FPS while presumably retaining most visual features. At 1440p, Medium at 64.9 FPS is the sensible pick for those who want resolution headroom without sacrificing smoothness. The data suggests that dropping from High to Medium at 1440p costs 6.7 FPS, while dropping from Medium to Low gains 25.4 FPS — a much larger jump that indicates Low removes significant graphical workload.

For players with 120 Hz displays, 1080p Low at 119.8 FPS is the only setting that approaches that refresh rate. The next closest is 1080p Medium at 84.4 FPS, which still offers a smooth experience but leaves 35 FPS on the table. Given that the jump from Low to Medium at 1080p costs 35.4 FPS, there is a clear trade-off between visual fidelity and high-refresh-rate performance.

Measured FPS Breakdown

1920x1080: Low produces the highest result at 119.8 FPS. Medium follows at 84.4 FPS, a 29.6% reduction. High reaches 75.1 FPS, an 11.0% further drop. Ultra delivers 66 FPS, a 12.1% additional loss from High. The cumulative penalty from Low to Ultra is 53.8 FPS.

2560x1440: Low maintains 90.3 FPS, which is still comfortably above 60. Medium drops to 64.9 FPS, a 28.1% reduction. High falls to 58.2 FPS, a 10.3% decline from Medium. Ultra bottoms out at 47 FPS, a 19.2% drop from High. The total loss from Low to Ultra is 43.3 FPS.

3840x2160: Low achieves 58.1 FPS, the only preset above 50 FPS. Medium drops to 40.4 FPS, a 30.5% reduction. High reaches 37.5 FPS, a 7.2% decline. Ultra is 35.3 FPS, a 5.9% further drop. The scaling from Low to Ultra costs 22.8 FPS, and notably the gap between Medium, High, and Ultra narrows considerably at this resolution, suggesting the GPU is saturated.

Comparing across resolutions, the 1080p Low to 1440p Low drop is 29.5 FPS, while the 1440p Low to 4K Low drop is 32.2 FPS. This nearly linear scaling with pixel count indicates consistent GPU-bound behavior with no sudden CPU-related cliff.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT is built on the RDNA 2.0 architecture with a Navi 23 chip manufactured on a 7 nm process. It operates with a base clock of 1968 MHz and a boost clock of 2589 MHz, with a game clock of 2359 MHz that represents the typical sustained frequency. The 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus delivers 256.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is a plausible constraint for a game like Control that features detailed textures and particle effects.

The GPU's benchmark profile shows a PassMark G3D score of 16461 and a PassMark G2D score of 912, with a Geekbench Vulkan score of 89263 and OpenCL score of 82736. Its 71st percentile ranking among all GPUs places it solidly in the mid-range tier. The 2048 shading units, 128 TMUs, and 64 ROPs provide the raw throughput, while 32 ray tracing cores support DirectX 12 Ultimate features, though Control's implementation may not fully utilize these.

The 10.60 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is modest by modern standards, and the 165.7 GPixel/s pixel rate and 331.4 GTexel/s texture rate suggest the GPU can handle 1080p and 1440p workloads but will struggle with the 8.3 million pixels at 4K. The memory bandwidth of 256.0 GB/s is particularly relevant — at 4K Ultra, the game likely exceeds the 8 GB frame buffer, forcing data to spill and causing the steep frame rate drops observed between Medium and High settings.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i9-14900K is a 24-core, 32-thread processor based on Raptor Lake architecture with a 10 nm process. It features a base clock of 3.20 GHz and a boost clock of 6.00 GHz, with 80 KB of L1 cache per core, 2 MB of L2 per core, and 36 MB of shared L3 cache. This configuration is vastly overprovisioned for Control, a 2019 release that likely scales well with single-thread performance but doesn't need 32 threads.

The CPU's benchmark results are exceptional: a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 49872 and single-core score of 7040, a Geekbench multicore score of 20370 and single-core of 3064, and a PassMark multithread score of 58674 with a single-thread score of 4697. The 97th percentile ranking and average benchmark score of 79824 place it 0.3% below the AMD EPYC 7413 (80041) and 0.7% above the Core i9-14900KF (79245).

In the context of this game, the CPU's role is to feed the GPU with draw calls and physics calculations. The 6.00 GHz boost clock provides exceptional single-thread responsiveness, which is likely why the measured FPS scales so consistently with resolution changes — the CPU never becomes the bottleneck. Even at 1080p Low with 119.8 FPS, the frame pacing appears smooth, and there is no evidence in the data of a CPU-side frame rate ceiling that would cap performance below the GPU's capability.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the i9-14900K and RX 6600 XT ranks 1168th out of 1636 tested combos in Control, placing it in the 71st percentile of all combinations — ironically the same percentile as the GPU's standalone ranking. This alignment suggests that the combo's performance is almost entirely determined by the GPU, with the CPU contributing little to differentiate it from other pairings.

This ranking is notably low for a system built around Intel's flagship consumer processor. The CPU alone sits in the 97th percentile of all CPUs, yet the combo rank drops to the 71st percentile, a 26-percentage-point decline. This gap highlights a fundamental imbalance: the RX 6600 XT's 71st GPU percentile and its average benchmark score of 27985 place it in a tightly contested mid-range band, and in a demanding game like Control, that mid-range positioning becomes the ceiling.

The nearest GPU rivals — the GTX 980 Ti at 0.1% higher score, the R9 M395X at 0.4% higher, the RTX 3070 at 0.9% lower, and the FirePro S7150 at 1.5% lower — all cluster within a 1.9% score range. This means that swapping the RX 6600 XT for any of these cards would likely produce nearly identical in-game results, and the combo's ranking is more a function of the GPU tier than the specific model. The data implies that for Control specifically, this pairing is GPU-bound to a degree that makes the CPU's 24 cores and 6.00 GHz boost clock largely irrelevant to the final frame rates.