Control

Control is a 2019 Action Adventure title that stresses both the CPU and GPU heavily, and the data for the Intel Core Ultra 7 165H paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Mobile shows a system that is extremely capable at high resolutions but begins to show its CPU limits at lower settings. This combination ranks in the 1024th position out of 3720 tested combos, placing it in the top third of all systems tested for this game. The benchmark results indicate a platform that can deliver smooth gameplay at 4K with High settings, yet the scaling pattern suggests that the 16-core mobile processor becomes a bottleneck when frame rates climb past 120 FPS.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a clear and predictable scaling pattern as resolution drops from 4K to 1080p. At 4K with High settings, the system averages 61 FPS, which is a solid baseline for a demanding title. Dropping to 1440p High boosts performance to 91 FPS, a 49% improvement, and at 1080p High the average reaches 120 FPS, a 97% improvement over the 4K figure. This scaling is typical for a GPU-bound scenario at higher resolutions, where the RTX 5080 Mobile's rendering workload dominates.

However, the pattern changes dramatically at Low settings. At 4K Low, the average FPS is 97, but at 1440p Low it jumps to 144 FPS, and at 1080p Low it reaches 190 FPS. The leap from 1440p to 1080p at Low settings is only 32%, which is significantly less than the 49% jump seen at High settings between the same resolutions. This indicates that at 1080p Low, the system is no longer purely GPU-bound; the CPU, with its 16 cores and 22 threads, is starting to limit the frame rate. The Core Ultra 7 165H has a boost clock of 5.00 GHz and a base clock of 3.80 GHz, which is strong for a mobile chip, but even that cannot fully feed the RTX 5080 Mobile when the render load is light.

The Medium settings row provides the only min and max FPS data in the entire set, offering insight into frame pacing. At 4K Medium, the average is 69 FPS with a min of 59 and max of 79. At 1440p Medium, the average is 102 FPS with a min of 87 and max of 117. At 1080p Medium, the average is 135 FPS with a min of 115 and max of 155. The spread between min and max FPS is roughly 20-30% at each resolution, which is normal for a game like Control that has variable scene complexity. The 1080p Medium min of 115 FPS still clears 100, so there is no stutter risk at that setting.

The most telling comparison is between Low and Ultra at the same resolution. At 1080p, Low averages 190 FPS while Ultra averages 104 FPS, a difference of 86 FPS. At 4K, Low averages 97 FPS while Ultra averages 53 FPS, a difference of 44 FPS. The absolute drop from Low to Ultra is much larger at 1080p, which further confirms that the CPU is the limiting factor at lower resolutions. When the GPU is less stressed, the processor's single-threaded performance, which is measured at 1759 in Cinebench R23 single-core, becomes the ceiling.

Settings Recommendations

For the best experience measured in this dataset, Medium settings at 1440p or 1080p offer the most balanced combination of visual quality and frame rate. At 1440p Medium, the system averages 102 FPS with a min of 87 FPS, which is well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth play and leaves headroom for dips in intense combat sequences. At 1080p Medium, the average jumps to 135 FPS, with a minimum of 115 FPS, which is excellent for high-refresh-rate displays. The min FPS at 1080p Medium is higher than the average FPS at 4K High, which shows how much headroom exists at the lower resolution.

High settings are also viable, especially at 1440p where the average is 91 FPS. This is a slight step down from Medium but still comfortably playable. At 4K High, the average of 61 FPS is right at the edge of what most players would consider smooth; it is playable but not ideal for a fast-paced action game. Ultra settings are the most demanding, with 4K Ultra averaging only 53 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS target for many gamers. At 1440p Ultra, the average of 79 FPS is acceptable, but the gap between Ultra and High at that resolution is only 12 FPS, making High the smarter choice for the visual difference.

Low settings are not recommended for this hardware, as they push frame rates into territory where the CPU bottleneck becomes apparent. At 1080p Low, the system hits 190 FPS, but the game's visuals will be significantly degraded for a frame rate that most displays cannot even show. The data suggests that Medium is the sweet spot, offering a 48% performance increase over High at 1080p (135 vs 120 FPS) while still maintaining a reasonable visual fidelity. At 4K, Medium's 69 FPS average is more playable than High's 61 FPS, and the min FPS of 59 is still above 30.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Mobile is a Blackwell 2.0 architecture GPU built on a 5 nm process at TSMC, with 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus. The memory bandwidth of 896.0 GB/s is substantial for a mobile part, and this is directly relevant to Control's performance at high resolutions. The game's use of textures and effects scales with resolution, and the 16 GB frame buffer ensures there is no VRAM limitation at 4K Ultra, where the average FPS is 53. The GPU's boost clock is 1500 MHz, and it has 7680 shading units, which is a high count for a laptop chip.

The benchmark results show that the RTX 5080 Mobile is a top-tier mobile GPU, ranking in the 81st percentile of all GPUs tested. Its 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score is 4952, and its Passmark G3D score is 27711. These numbers indicate strong raw performance that is well-suited for Control's physics-heavy gameplay. The GPU's FP32 compute of 23.04 TFLOPS allows it to handle the game's particle effects and destruction sequences without issue.

In the measured data, the GPU's role is most evident at 4K, where the frame rates scale cleanly with settings. At 4K Ultra, the GPU is clearly the bottleneck, producing 53 FPS, while at 4K Low it reaches 97 FPS. The difference of 44 FPS between these two settings is a direct result of the GPU's render load. However, at 1080p Low, the GPU is not the limiting factor, as the 190 FPS average is likely capped by the CPU's ability to feed the render pipeline. This is a common pattern for high-end mobile GPUs paired with mid-range mobile CPUs, where the GPU has more headroom than the processor at low resolutions.

The GPU's 60 RT cores and 240 Tensor cores are not directly measured in this dataset, but they are part of the hardware that enables Control's visual effects. The game does not heavily use ray tracing in these benchmark runs, so the rasterization performance is what matters most. The 96 ROPs provide a pixel rate of 144.0 GPixel/s, which is adequate for 4K output but not overkill.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 3840x2160, the system delivers an average of 61 FPS on High, 97 FPS on Low, 69 FPS on Medium, and 53 FPS on Ultra. The Medium setting has a min of 59 FPS and a max of 79 FPS, showing a tight frame pacing window. The jump from Ultra to High at 4K is 8 FPS (53 to 61), while the jump from High to Medium is also 8 FPS (61 to 69), but the jump from Medium to Low is 28 FPS (69 to 97). This non-linear scaling suggests that the GPU has a performance cliff between Medium and Low at 4K, likely due to the reduction in shader complexity.

At 2560x1440, the average FPS is 91 on High, 144 on Low, 102 on Medium, and 79 on Ultra. The Medium setting shows a min of 87 FPS and a max of 117 FPS. The transition from Ultra to High at 1440p is 12 FPS (79 to 91), from High to Medium is 11 FPS (91 to 102), and from Medium to Low is 42 FPS (102 to 144). The large jump to Low again indicates that the GPU is being less utilized at that setting, and the CPU is starting to become relevant.

At 1920x1080, the average FPS is 120 on High, 190 on Low, 135 on Medium, and 104 on Ultra. The Medium setting has a min of 115 FPS and a max of 155 FPS. Here, the scaling from Ultra to High is 16 FPS (104 to 120), from High to Medium is 15 FPS (120 to 135), and from Medium to Low is 55 FPS (135 to 190). The 55 FPS jump between Medium and Low is the largest in the entire dataset, which is a clear sign that the CPU is the primary limiter at 1080p Low. The 190 FPS average is well beyond what most 1080p displays can show, so there is no practical benefit to using Low settings.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the Intel Core Ultra 7 165H and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Mobile ranks 1024th out of 3720 tested combos for Control. This places it in the top 27.5% of all systems tested, which is a strong showing for a mobile platform. The CPU itself is in the 84th percentile of all CPUs tested, with an average benchmark score of 34083, while the GPU is in the 81st percentile of all GPUs, with an average score of 38349. Both components are well above average, but the combo rank is slightly lower than either component's individual percentile, which suggests that the pairing is not perfectly balanced for this game.

The CPU's nearest rivals include the Intel Core Ultra 5 338H with an average score of 33989 (0.3% higher), the AMD EPYC 4244P with 34220 (0.4% lower), the AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 with 34222 (0.4% lower), and the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X with 34260 (0.5% lower). The Core Ultra 7 165H is essentially tied with these processors, showing that its performance is consistent with other mid-range options. The GPU's nearest rivals are more interesting: the NVIDIA GeForce MX570 with an average score of 38299 (0.1% higher), the RTX 4080 Mobile with 38135 (0.6% higher), and the MX570 A with 38691 (0.9% lower). The RTX 5080 Mobile is nearly identical in score to the RTX 4080 Mobile, which is surprising given the generational difference, but the benchmark data shows they are within 0.6% of each other.

For Control specifically, the combo's 1024th rank out of 3720 means there are many systems that perform better, but also many that perform worse. The measured FPS data shows that this combo can handle the game at 4K High with 61 FPS, which is a playable experience. The rank is likely dragged down by the CPU's performance at low resolutions, where the frame rate is not as high as it could be with a more powerful processor.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 165H is a 16-core, 22-thread processor based on the Meteor Lake architecture, built on Intel's 7 nm process. It has a base clock of 3.80 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz, with 24 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU's TDP is 28 W, which is low for a 16-core part, but it is designed for mobile use. In Cinebench R23, it scores 14551 in multi-core and 1759 in single-core, which places it in the 84th percentile of all CPUs. Its Passmark multi-thread score is 25933, and its single-thread score is 3509.

In Control, the CPU's role is most evident at 1080p Low settings, where the average FPS reaches 190. This is likely approaching the maximum frame rate that the CPU can generate for this game's physics and AI calculations. The 5.00 GHz boost clock helps with single-threaded performance, which is critical for Control's game logic, but the 16 cores are underutilized in this title, as the game is not heavily multi-threaded. The data shows that at 4K, the CPU is not a limiting factor, as the GPU is clearly the bottleneck at 53 FPS on Ultra. However, at 1080p, the CPU becomes the constraint, as the GPU has enough headroom to render more frames than the CPU can process.

The CPU's nearest rivals in terms of average benchmark score are all within 0.5% of each other, which means that swapping the Core Ultra 7 165H for any of these processors would likely result in negligible performance differences in Control. The AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, which is a desktop part, has a slightly higher average score of 34260, but the difference is only 0.5%. This indicates that the Core Ultra 7 165H is well-positioned for a mobile gaming laptop, delivering desktop-like performance in a 28 W envelope.

The CPU's L3 cache of 24 MB is shared across all cores, which helps with data locality in games. However, the L2 cache is only 2 MB per core, which is modest by modern standards. The 22 threads allow for efficient background task handling, but Control does not appear to benefit significantly from the extra threads, as the frame rate scaling from 1080p Medium to Low (135 to 190 FPS) is not linear with the thread count. The CPU's single-thread performance, as measured by the 1759 Cinebench R23 score, is the more relevant metric for this game, and it is sufficient to keep the RTX 5080 Mobile well-fed at most settings.