Control

Control with the Intel Core Ultra 5 235 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 presents a clear performance hierarchy across its four quality presets, with the data indicating that the Medium preset at 1440p offers the most balanced experience. This combination achieves a 75 FPS average at 2560x1440 with Medium settings, maintaining a minimum of 64 FPS and a maximum of 86 FPS, which represents a significant jump from the 58 FPS average at Ultra. At 1080p, the Medium preset delivers a 99 FPS average with a minimum of 84 FPS, making it the highest-quality setting that stays comfortably above 60 FPS at both mainstream resolutions. The Low preset provides the highest frame rates—140 FPS at 1080p, 106 FPS at 1440p, and 71 FPS at 4K—but sacrifices visual fidelity, while the Ultra preset drops to 77 FPS at 1080p, 58 FPS at 1440p, and 39 FPS at 4K, which undermines the smoothness expected from this hardware tier.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark results for this pairing show that Medium settings are the optimal choice for most users, as they provide the best trade-off between visual quality and frame rate consistency across all tested resolutions. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset produces an average of 99 FPS with a minimum of 84 FPS, which is a 22 FPS improvement over High settings and a 22 FPS deficit compared to Low, but the visual uplift from Low to Medium is substantial enough to justify the performance cost. The story is similar at 2560x1440, where Medium yields 75 FPS average with a 64 FPS minimum, keeping gameplay fluid even during demanding scenes, whereas High drops to 67 FPS and Ultra falls to 58 FPS, both of which risk noticeable stutter on standard 60Hz displays.

For 4K gaming, the data suggests that Medium is the highest playable preset, delivering 51 FPS average with a 43 FPS minimum and a 58 FPS maximum at 3840x2160. This is marginally above the 45 FPS average of High settings and significantly better than the 39 FPS average of Ultra, but it still falls short of a locked 60 FPS experience. Users prioritizing frame rate over resolution should consider dropping to Low at 4K, which achieves 71 FPS average, or stepping down to 1440p with Medium for a more consistent experience. The High preset at 1080p (88 FPS) and 1440p (67 FPS) serves as a middle ground for those who want better textures without the performance penalty of Ultra, but the measured minimums for High are not provided, making Medium the safer recommendation for guaranteed smoothness.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 is the primary driver of frame rate in Control, and its 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus with 272.0 GB/s bandwidth proves sufficient for the game’s demands at the tested settings. The GPU’s Ada Lovelace architecture, built on a 5 nm process at TSMC with 18,900 million transistors, operates with a base clock of 1830 MHz and a boost clock of 2460 MHz, delivering 15.11 TFLOPS of FP32 performance. This compute capacity translates directly into the measured frame rates, with the GPU handling the rendering load across all resolution tiers, as evidenced by the consistent scaling from 1080p to 4K.

The RTX 4060’s 3072 shading units, 96 texture mapping units, and 48 raster output pipelines work together to produce the observed performance, with a texture rate of 236.2 GTexel/s and a pixel rate of 118.1 GPixel/s. The GPU’s 24 RT cores and 96 tensor cores support Control’s advanced rendering features, though the benchmark data does not isolate ray tracing or DLSS performance—the measured FPS values represent standard rasterization. The GPU’s 61st percentile ranking among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 17639, places it in the mid-range tier, and its nearest rivals—the AMD Radeon HD 7790 (deltaPct -0.2%) and AMD Radeon 780M (deltaPct 0.3%)—show that the RTX 4060 sits in a competitive but not dominant position in the broader GPU landscape.

At 4K, the GPU becomes the clear limiting factor, as the frame rate drops to 45 FPS average on High and 39 FPS on Ultra, indicating that the 8 GB VRAM and 128-bit memory interface struggle with the higher resolution’s increased texture and geometry demands. The 272.0 GB/s bandwidth is adequate for 1080p and 1440p but shows strain at 4K, where the Medium preset’s 51 FPS average and 43 FPS minimum suggest that the GPU is operating near its memory bandwidth ceiling. This is a classic VRAM and bandwidth bottleneck scenario, where the GPU’s raw compute (15.11 TFLOPS) is sufficient, but the memory subsystem cannot feed the rendering pipeline fast enough at 3840x2160.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 235 provides ample processing headroom for Control, ensuring that the GPU is not starved of data across all resolution and settings combinations. This 14-core, 14-thread processor from the Core Ultra Series 2, based on the Arrow Lake-S architecture, operates with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz, with a 65 W TDP. The CPU’s 24 MB of shared L3 cache and per-core L2 cache of 3 MB, combined with 192 KB of L1 cache per core, deliver the low-latency access needed for game logic and physics calculations. The processor’s 89th percentile ranking among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 46062, underscores its strong single-thread and multi-thread capabilities, as evidenced by Cinebench R23 scores of 2085 single-core and 14769 multi-core.

In Control, the CPU’s role is to maintain a steady frame delivery pipeline, and the data shows that it succeeds admirably. The fact that frame rates scale predictably with resolution—140 FPS at 1080p Low down to 39 FPS at 4K Ultra—indicates that the CPU is not the bottleneck in any configuration, as a CPU-limited scenario would show flat frame rates across resolutions. The Ultra 5 235’s nearest rivals, including the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 (deltaPct 0.1%) and Intel Core i9-13900HX (deltaPct -0.1%), demonstrate that this processor performs on par with high-end mobile and desktop parts, providing more than enough compute for a game like Control that does not heavily multi-thread. The CPU’s 14 threads are more than sufficient for the game’s engine, and the 5.00 GHz boost clock ensures that single-threaded performance, which is critical for game simulation, remains high.

The CPU’s memory support for DDR5 with dual-channel configuration and 102.4 GB/s bandwidth further reduces potential bottlenecks, allowing the RTX 4060 to access game assets without waiting on system memory. The processor’s PCIe Gen 5 with 20 lanes provides ample bandwidth for the GPU, though the RTX 4060 uses PCIe 4.0 x8, which is more than sufficient for this game’s data transfer needs. Overall, the CPU is a silent partner in this combination, never limiting the GPU’s output and ensuring that the measured FPS values reflect the graphics card’s true capabilities.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the Intel Core Ultra 5 235 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 ranks 1515th out of 2888 tested combos in Control, placing it in the 47.5th percentile of all system configurations evaluated for this game. This ranking is notably lower than what the individual component percentiles might suggest—the CPU ranks in the 89th percentile and the GPU in the 61st percentile—indicating that the pairing is not optimized for Control’s specific workload. The mid-pack ranking suggests that while each component is competent on its own, their combination does not synergize exceptionally well for this title, likely due to the GPU being the limiting factor at higher resolutions and settings.

The rank of 1515 out of 2888 combos means that approximately 1373 tested configurations perform better than this one, which is a significant number given that this is a modern CPU paired with a current-generation GPU. However, this ranking is heavily influenced by the fact that Control is a demanding title at 4K, where the RTX 4060’s 8 GB VRAM and 128-bit memory interface limit performance. At 1080p and 1440p, the combo performs admirably, as evidenced by the 99 FPS and 75 FPS averages on Medium settings, but the 4K results drag down the overall ranking relative to combos with more powerful GPUs. The data indicates that this pairing is best suited for 1080p or 1440p gaming, where it delivers smooth frame rates, rather than 4K, where it falls short of the 60 FPS target on most presets.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a clear pattern of performance degradation as resolution increases, with the RTX 4060 and Ultra 5 235 combination showing a significant drop from 1080p to 4K across all settings. At Medium settings, the average frame rate falls from 99 FPS at 1920x1080 to 75 FPS at 2560x1440 (a 24.2% decrease) and then to 51 FPS at 3840x2160 (a 32% decrease from 1440p). This scaling behavior is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario, where the CPU maintains consistent performance while the graphics card struggles with the increasing pixel count. The High settings show a similar trend, with averages of 88 FPS at 1080p, 67 FPS at 1440p, and 45 FPS at 4K, representing a 48.9% drop from 1080p to 4K.

The Low settings exhibit the most extreme scaling, with 140 FPS at 1080p, 106 FPS at 1440p, and 71 FPS at 4K, which indicates that even at the lowest visual quality, the GPU cannot maintain high frame rates at 4K. This is a strong indicator that the RTX 4060 is the limiting component, as the CPU’s performance (evidenced by its high benchmark scores) would not cause such dramatic resolution-dependent drops. The Ultra settings show the steepest decline, from 77 FPS at 1080p to 58 FPS at 1440p and 39 FPS at 4K, with the 4K result falling below the 40 FPS threshold that many consider the minimum for playable action games. The data suggests that the GPU’s 272.0 GB/s memory bandwidth and 8 GB VRAM capacity are the primary constraints at higher resolutions, as the rendering workload increases quadratically with pixel count, outpacing the memory subsystem’s ability to feed the GPU’s 3072 shading units.

FAQ

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

A: The data shows that 1920x1080 with Medium settings delivers a 99 FPS average with an 84 FPS minimum, making it the most reliable configuration. At 2560x1440, Medium still achieves 75 FPS average, which is playable, but 4K drops to 51 FPS average on Medium, indicating that 1080p or 1440p are the preferred resolutions.

Q: How does the RTX 4060 compare to its nearest rivals in terms of performance?

A: The RTX 4060 has an average benchmark score of 17639, placing it just behind the AMD Radeon HD 7790 (17666, deltaPct -0.2%) and ahead of the AMD Radeon 780M (17588, deltaPct 0.3%). This shows the GPU is competitive with mid-range parts from previous generations.

Q: Is the Intel Core Ultra 5 235 strong enough for this game?

A: Yes, the CPU’s 89th percentile ranking and Cinebench R23 scores of 2085 single-core and 14769 multi-core indicate it provides ample processing power. The frame rate scaling across resolutions confirms the CPU is not a bottleneck in Control.

Q: Why does performance drop so significantly at 4K?

A: The RTX 4060’s 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus with 272.0 GB/s bandwidth becomes the limiting factor at 3840x2160. The GPU’s raw compute (15.11 TFLOPS) is adequate, but the memory subsystem cannot keep up with the increased pixel load, causing frame rates to fall below 60 FPS on all presets.

Q: What is the combo’s ranking among all tested systems?

A: This combination ranks 1515th out of 2888 tested combos in Control, placing it just below the median. This reflects the GPU’s mid-range performance (61st percentile) rather than the CPU’s strong showing (89th percentile).

Q: Which settings preset provides the highest frame rate without dropping below 60 FPS?

A: At 1080p, the Medium preset (99 FPS average, 84 FPS minimum) is the highest quality option that stays above 60 FPS. At 1440p, Medium also maintains a 64 FPS minimum, while High drops to 67 FPS average with no minimum data provided.