Control

Control pairs the Intel Core i9-14900K with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, and the measured results are unambiguous: this combination lands at rank 3670 out of 3720 tested combos in the database, placing it in the bottom 1.3% of all configurations. The data shows a system that is fundamentally constrained by its graphics card, where even the most favorable settings yield playable framerates only at 1080p. The GTX 1050 Ti, with its 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus, delivers 112.1 GB/s of bandwidth, and the benchmark results indicate that this GPU is the decisive bottleneck across every resolution tested.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows provide a clear hierarchy of presets, and the optimal choice depends entirely on whether the user prioritizes visual fidelity or minimum acceptable framerate. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers an average of 46 FPS, which is the highest average framerate recorded for this combo in any configuration. This is the only preset at any resolution that approaches a smooth 60 FPS target, though it still falls short. The Medium preset at 1080p produces 32 FPS on average, with a minimum of 27 FPS and a maximum of 37 FPS, indicating a playable but inconsistent experience. High at 1080p drops to 29 FPS average, while Ultra falls further to 25 FPS average.

For users who can tolerate reduced visual quality, the Low preset at 1080p is the only viable option for anything resembling fluid gameplay. The gap between Low and Medium at 1080p is 14 FPS (46 vs 32), which represents a 30% performance penalty for moving up one preset tier. This suggests that the GTX 1050 Ti is severely overtaxed by even modest increases in visual complexity. The Medium preset's minimum of 27 FPS means there will be perceptible stutter during intense action sequences, whereas Low's 46 FPS average leaves more headroom. At 2560x1440, the Low preset yields 34 FPS average, which is technically playable but marginal; every other preset at this resolution falls below 25 FPS, which is not recommended for a game like Control that features fast-paced combat and environmental destruction. At 3840x2160, all presets produce averages between 13 and 23 FPS, making 4K effectively unplayable regardless of settings. The verdict is straightforward: use Low at 1080p for the best measured experience, and consider Medium only if the user prioritizes visuals over consistency.

How This Combo Ranks

The comboRankInGame field places this configuration at 3670 out of 3720 tested combos, which is a percentile ranking of approximately 1.4% — meaning this setup outperforms only about 50 other combinations in the entire database for Control. This is an exceptionally poor result, and it aligns perfectly with the GPU's standalone percentile of 25% (meaning it beats only a quarter of all GPUs tested). The CPU, by contrast, sits at the 95th percentile among all processors, yet it cannot compensate for the graphics card's limitations. The delta between the CPU's elite standing and the combo's bottom-tier rank underscores that the pairing is wildly mismatched.

The nearest rivals for the GTX 1050 Ti illustrate the GPU's position in the broader hardware landscape. The AMD Radeon R5 M330 scores 0.6% higher, the NVIDIA Quadro K2100M scores 1% higher, and the NVIDIA Quadro K3000M scores 1.1% higher — all effectively equivalent performance. The AMD Radeon Vega 3 scores 1.8% lower. This means the GTX 1050 Ti is competing with integrated and entry-level mobile graphics solutions from years past, not with modern discrete GPUs. For the CPU, the nearest rivals are all within 1.7% of the i9-14900K's average benchmark score, confirming that the processor is in the top tier of desktop silicon. Yet the measured FPS data shows that this top-tier CPU cannot boost the combo beyond its bottom-1% ranking. The bottleneck is not the CPU; it is the GPU's raw compute capability, which is limited to 2.138 TFLOPS of FP32 performance.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti is a Pascal-architecture part built on a 14 nm process at Samsung, with a die size of 132 mm² and 3,300 million transistors. Its clock speeds are modest: a base clock of 1291 MHz and a boost clock of 1392 MHz. The memory configuration is 4 GB of GDDR5 running at 1752 MHz (7 Gbps effective), which yields 112.1 GB/s of bandwidth over a 128-bit bus. These specifications directly explain the measured FPS results. The GPU has 768 shading units, 48 texture mapping units, and 32 raster output units, with a pixel rate of 44.54 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 66.82 GTexel/s.

In Control, the data shows that the GPU's memory bandwidth and capacity are critical limiting factors. At 3840x2160 with High settings, the average FPS is 15; dropping to Low at the same resolution raises it to 23 FPS, a 53% improvement. This sensitivity to settings suggests that the GPU is overwhelmed by the shader and texture work required at 4K, regardless of preset. The 4 GB VRAM is likely insufficient for Control's high-resolution textures, as the game's environments are densely detailed with destructible geometry. The GPU's percentile of 25% versus all GPUs places it firmly in the entry-level category, and the benchmark scores confirm this: Passmark G3D score is 6340, while DirectX 12 score is just 26, indicating very poor performance under modern API workloads. The GTX 1050 Ti supports DirectX 12 (12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, so API compatibility is not the issue — raw throughput is. The measured FPS at 1080p Low (46 FPS) represents the GPU's practical ceiling for this game, and any increase in resolution or settings pushes it into unplayable territory.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured FPS table reveals a consistent pattern across all resolutions and settings. At 1920x1080, the framerates are: Low 46 FPS, Medium 32 FPS (min 27, max 37), High 29 FPS, and Ultra 25 FPS. The step from Low to Medium costs 14 FPS, from Medium to High costs 3 FPS, and from High to Ultra costs 4 FPS. This non-linear scaling — where the biggest drop occurs between Low and Medium — indicates that the GPU's shading units are the primary constraint, as even modest increases in texture quality and post-processing effects cause disproportionate performance losses.

At 2560x1440, the framerates are: Low 34 FPS, Medium 24 FPS (min 21, max 28), High 22 FPS, and Ultra 19 FPS. Compared to 1080p, the Low preset drops by 12 FPS (26%), Medium drops by 8 FPS (25%), High drops by 7 FPS (24%), and Ultra drops by 6 FPS (24%). This nearly uniform percentage drop across all settings suggests that the resolution increase imposes a consistent additional load on the GPU. At 3840x2160, the framerates are: Low 23 FPS, Medium 17 FPS (min 14, max 19), High 15 FPS, and Ultra 13 FPS. The drop from 1440p to 4K is severe: Low falls by 11 FPS (32%), Medium by 7 FPS (29%), High by 7 FPS (32%), and Ultra by 6 FPS (32%). Again, the percentage drop is remarkably consistent, reinforcing that the bottleneck is the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth rather than any single setting.

Notably, the minimum and maximum FPS values are only recorded for the Medium preset at each resolution. At 1080p Medium, the minimum is 27 and maximum is 37; at 1440p Medium, the minimum is 21 and maximum is 28; at 4K Medium, the minimum is 14 and maximum is 19. The spread between min and max is roughly 30% of the average in each case, indicating significant frame time variance even at Medium settings. This variability would manifest as noticeable stutter during gameplay, particularly in scenes with many particles or dynamic lighting.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and follows a predictable pattern. At Low settings, the framerate falls from 46 FPS at 1080p to 34 FPS at 1440p (a 26% drop) and then to 23 FPS at 4K (a 32% drop from 1440p, and 50% from 1080p). At Medium settings, the progression is 32 → 24 → 17 FPS, representing a 25% drop from 1080p to 1440p and another 29% drop from 1440p to 4K. At High settings, it goes 29 → 22 → 15 FPS, with drops of 24% and 32%. At Ultra, it goes 25 → 19 → 13 FPS, with drops of 24% and 32%.

The consistency of these percentage drops — hovering around 25% for the 1080p-to-1440p step and 30% for the 1440p-to-4K step — provides a clear diagnostic signal. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect the FPS to remain relatively flat as resolution increases, because the CPU's workload is largely independent of resolution. Instead, the FPS drops by roughly a quarter to a third at each step, which is the classic signature of a GPU-bound system. The pixel count quadruples from 1080p to 4K (1920x1080 = 2.07 million pixels vs 3840x2160 = 8.29 million pixels), yet the FPS at Low only halves (46 to 23). This sub-linear scaling — a 4x pixel increase resulting in only a 2x FPS decrease — suggests that the GPU is not purely pixel-limited; it is also constrained by other factors such as memory bandwidth and shader complexity. Had the FPS dropped by a full 4x, the GPU would be purely fill-rate limited. The fact that it drops by only 50% indicates that other bottlenecks, likely in the CPU's ability to feed the GPU or in the game's engine overhead, are partially masking the GPU's true limits.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i9-14900K is a Raptor Lake-R architecture part with 24 cores and 32 threads, base clock of 3.20 GHz and boost clock of 6.00 GHz. It has a 36 MB shared L3 cache, 2 MB per-core L2 cache, and 80 KB per-core L1 cache. Its benchmark scores are elite: Cinebench R23 multi-core is 39399.5, single-core is 2262.5, and Geekbench multi-core is 21697 with single-core at 2655. The CPU's percentile of 95% versus all CPUs confirms its top-tier status. The nearest rivals are all within 1.7% of its average benchmark score of 79097, with the Intel Core i9-14900KF at -0.3%, Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus at -0.6%, AMD EPYC 7413 at -1.2%, and AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 at +1.7%.

In Control, the CPU's role is entirely secondary. The measured FPS data shows that the combination's ranking (3670 out of 3720) is almost exclusively determined by the GPU. The CPU has more than enough computational headroom to handle Control's physics, AI, and game logic — the game released in 2019 and is not particularly demanding on multi-core processors. The i9-14900K's 6.00 GHz boost clock and 32 threads are far beyond what Control requires. The evidence for this is the resolution scaling pattern discussed above: FPS drops predictably with resolution, which would not happen if the CPU were limiting. If the CPU were the bottleneck, the FPS would be roughly the same at 1080p and 4K, since the CPU's workload (draw calls, physics, AI) is resolution-independent. Instead, the FPS drops by 50% from 1080p to 4K at Low settings, proving the GPU is saturated.

The CPU's integrated UHD Graphics 770 is irrelevant here, as the system uses the discrete GTX 1050 Ti. The CPU's memory support for DDR4 and DDR5, with a dual-channel memory bus, provides ample bandwidth for the GPU to access system memory, but this does not compensate for the GPU's own 112.1 GB/s bandwidth limit. The 125 W TDP and 6.00 GHz boost clock indicate a power-hungry, high-performance part, but none of that matters when the GPU can only produce 46 FPS at 1080p Low. The data is clear: this combo is a case study in GPU-limited performance, where the i9-14900K is effectively wasted silicon in a gaming context. Any performance improvement in Control would require a GPU upgrade, not a CPU change.