Control

Control is a 2019 action-adventure title that remains a demanding showcase for modern hardware, particularly when pushed to its highest settings. The data for the Intel Core Ultra 7 265 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 combination provides a clear picture of performance across common resolutions and quality presets, showing a system capable of high refresh rates at 1440p and solid 4K performance, though the game's Ultra preset imposes a significant load on the GPU.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data shows a clear hierarchy across the four settings presets, with the choice of the optimal preset depending heavily on the target resolution and refresh rate. At 1920x1080, the RTX 5080 paired with the Core Ultra 7 265 delivers exceptionally high frame rates across all presets, making the Ultra preset the most compelling choice for users with high-refresh-rate monitors. The average of 140 FPS at Ultra remains well above the 120Hz threshold, while the High preset at 161 FPS and Medium at 181 FPS offer diminishing returns in smoothness for a noticeable drop in visual fidelity. For 1080p gaming, the Ultra preset provides the best balance of the game's full visual feature set with performance that exceeds most display capabilities.

Moving to 2560x1440, the Ultra preset still holds up admirably with an average of 106 FPS, which is suitable for 100Hz-class monitors. The High preset at 122 FPS offers a more comfortable margin for 120Hz displays, presenting a strong recommendation for users prioritizing refresh rate consistency over maximum eye candy. The Medium preset at 137 FPS is the best choice for those with 144Hz panels, as it provides a 31 FPS advantage over Ultra while still retaining a moderate level of graphical detail. At 1440p, the data suggests that High is the sweet spot for most users, as it delivers a 16 FPS improvement over Ultra with what is typically a subtle visual difference in this title.

At 3840x2160, the calculus shifts dramatically. The Ultra preset drops to an average of 72 FPS, which is playable but does not fully exploit high-refresh-rate 4K displays. The High preset at 82 FPS offers a better experience, providing a 10 FPS improvement over Ultra while maintaining most of the game's visual fidelity. However, for 4K gaming, the Medium preset emerges as the most balanced recommendation, delivering an average of 93 FPS with a recorded minimum of 79 FPS and a maximum of 107 FPS. This preset represents the only 4K configuration in the data that consistently exceeds 60 FPS with a comfortable margin, making it the best option for a smooth 4K experience on this hardware. The Low preset at 4K reaches 130 FPS, but the visual compromise is generally considered too severe for a title like Control, which relies heavily on atmospheric lighting and particle effects.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 is the dominant component in this system for Control, with the benchmark data showing that the GPU is the primary performance limiter at higher resolutions. The card's 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus provides a bandwidth of 960.0 GB/s, which proves sufficient for the game's texture-heavy environments and particle effects at all tested settings. The memory configuration is a critical factor at 4K, where the Ultra preset's high-resolution textures and complex shaders demand substantial memory throughput; the data shows a 10 FPS drop from High to Ultra at 4K, indicating the GPU is being pushed to its limits.

The RTX 5080's clock speeds are notable, with a base clock of 2295 MHz and a boost clock of 2617 MHz. These clocks, combined with the Blackwell 2.0 architecture's 10752 shading units, drive the card's raw compute performance. The FP32 throughput of 56.28 TFLOPS is the key specification that explains the card's ability to maintain high frame rates in Control, which is a title that heavily utilizes standard rasterization techniques. The 84 RT cores are present but Control's ray tracing features are not separately measured in this data, so the performance figures reflect the traditional rendering path.

The GPU's benchmark scores in other tests provide context for its gaming performance. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 8637 and the PassMark G3D score of 36565 indicate strong overall performance, while the Geekbench Vulkan score of 255450 suggests good API efficiency. The card's percentile ranking of 87 versus all GPUs places it in the upper tier, though the nearest rival comparisons show a tight grouping: the AMD Radeon 8060S is only 0.6 percent behind in average score, and the AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE is 2.2 percent ahead. This data suggests that while the RTX 5080 is a high-end card, the performance margin over close competitors is not overwhelming in synthetic benchmarks, though the gaming measurements in Control show it handles the title well.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265 plays a supporting role in Control, as the game's engine is more dependent on GPU throughput than on CPU compute. The processor's 20 cores and 20 threads, with a base clock of 2.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz, provide ample processing power for the game's physics and AI systems. The Arrow Lake architecture, built on a 3 nm process from TSMC, delivers strong single-thread performance that is crucial for game logic; the Cinebench R23 single-core score of 5960 is particularly relevant, as it indicates the CPU can keep up with the GPU at high frame rates without becoming a bottleneck.

The CPU's multi-threaded capabilities are evident in its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 42216, which places it in the top 7 percent of all CPUs (93rd percentile). This headroom means that Control's background tasks and any concurrent applications will not compromise gaming performance. The 30 MB of shared L3 cache is sufficient for the game's data access patterns, and the dual-channel DDR5 memory support with 102.4 GB/s bandwidth ensures the CPU can feed data to the GPU without causing stalls.

The nearest rival comparisons for the CPU show it performs nearly identically to other high-end processors. The AMD EPYC 4464P is a mere 0.3 percent behind in average score, while the Intel Core Ultra 7 265F is 0.3 percent ahead. This tight clustering indicates that for gaming, the choice between these CPUs would result in negligible differences in frame rates. The CPU's role in Control becomes clearer when examining the frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K; at 1080p with Low settings, the system achieves 255 FPS, which is a high enough frame rate that any CPU limitation would be exposed. The fact that the system reaches this level suggests the Core Ultra 7 265 is well-matched to the RTX 5080, providing enough throughput to avoid limiting the GPU at lower resolutions.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution to play Control with this hardware?

A: The data shows that 2560x1440 with High settings provides the best overall balance, delivering 122 FPS average. This resolution offers a significant visual improvement over 1080p while maintaining frame rates that exceed most monitor refresh rates.

Q: How much performance is lost when moving from Low to Ultra settings?

A: At 1080p, the Ultra preset averages 140 FPS versus 255 FPS on Low, representing a 45 percent reduction in frame rate. At 1440p, the drop is from 193 FPS to 106 FPS, and at 4K, it falls from 130 FPS to 72 FPS.

Q: Is the RTX 5080's 16 GB of VRAM sufficient for Control?

A: Yes, the 16 GB GDDR7 memory is more than adequate for Control. The game's largest memory demands occur at 4K Ultra, where the card still maintains a playable 72 FPS average, indicating no memory bandwidth or capacity bottleneck.

Q: Does the CPU bottleneck the GPU at any settings?

A: The data indicates the CPU is not a limiting factor. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 255 FPS, which is a very high frame rate that would expose CPU limitations if they existed. The Core Ultra 7 265's strong single-core performance keeps pace with the GPU.

Q: How does the RTX 5080 compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 5080's average benchmark score is 56083, placing it 0.6 percent ahead of the AMD Radeon 8060S, 0.7 percent ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB, and 2.2 percent behind the AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE.

Q: What is the minimum frame rate to expect at 4K Medium settings?

A: The measured data shows a minimum of 79 FPS at 3840x2160 with Medium settings, with an average of 93 FPS. This means the system should maintain a smooth experience without dropping below 60 FPS in most scenarios.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals the GPU-bound nature of Control on this hardware. At High settings, the average frame rate drops from 161 FPS at 1080p to 122 FPS at 1440p, a 24 percent reduction, and then to 82 FPS at 4K, a further 33 percent reduction. This scaling pattern is typical of a GPU-limited scenario, where the resolution increase directly impacts the pixel throughput required of the RTX 5080. The consistent scaling across settings presets confirms this: Low settings show 255 to 193 to 130 FPS, and Ultra shows 140 to 106 to 72 FPS, with each 4K result being roughly half of the 1080p result.

The performance drop from 1440p to 4K is particularly steep, with an average reduction of about 33 percent across all settings. This is expected, as 4K contains 2.25 times more pixels than 1440p, and the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth become the limiting factors. The RTX 5080's 293.1 GPixel/s pixel rate and 960.0 GB/s memory bandwidth are the specifications that determine this scaling, and the data shows they are sufficient for playable 4K performance on Medium settings but not for the full Ultra experience.

The fact that the system achieves 255 FPS at 1080p Low indicates that even at this high frame rate, the CPU does not become a bottleneck. If the CPU were limiting performance, we would expect to see a plateau in frame rates at lower resolutions where the GPU has more headroom. Instead, the frame rates continue to climb as resolution decreases, confirming that the RTX 5080 is the primary performance driver in this configuration. This also implies that users with higher refresh rate monitors could potentially unlock even more performance by reducing settings further, though the visual impact would be substantial.

Measured FPS Breakdown

1920x1080:

• Low: Average 255 FPS. This is the maximum performance configuration, ideal for competitive play or extremely high refresh rate displays.
• Medium: Average 181 FPS, with a minimum of 154 FPS and a maximum of 209 FPS. This preset provides a 74 FPS improvement over Ultra while still maintaining decent visual quality.
• High: Average 161 FPS. A balanced preset that offers good visuals with a 21 FPS advantage over Ultra.
• Ultra: Average 140 FPS. The full visual experience remains highly playable at 1080p, with no minimum frame rate recorded.

2560x1440:

• Low: Average 193 FPS. Still extremely high, showing the GPU has ample headroom at this resolution.
• Medium: Average 137 FPS, with a minimum of 117 FPS and a maximum of 158 FPS. This is the first preset where the minimum frame rate drops below 120 FPS.
• High: Average 122 FPS. The recommended preset for 1440p, providing smooth performance for 120Hz displays.
• Ultra: Average 106 FPS. Playable, but the lowest preset that comfortably exceeds 100 FPS.

3840x2160:

• Low: Average 130 FPS. The only 4K preset that maintains triple-digit frame rates, though visual quality is significantly reduced.
• Medium: Average 93 FPS, with a minimum of 79 FPS and a maximum of 107 FPS. The best 4K experience, balancing visual quality with smooth performance.
• High: Average 82 FPS. A solid 4K option for users with 60Hz displays or those who prefer higher visual fidelity.
• Ultra: Average 72 FPS. The most demanding configuration, playable but with the lowest performance margin of all tested settings.

The data shows that the RTX 5080 and Core Ultra 7 265 combination is well-suited for Control across the board, with the primary consideration being the trade-off between visual fidelity and frame rate. The 4K Medium preset offers the most balanced 4K experience, while 1440p High provides the best overall gaming experience for most users. The 1080p Ultra setting is the choice for those who want the absolute best visuals without sacrificing high refresh rate performance.