Control

Control, a 2019 Action Adventure title, is heavily GPU-bound at higher resolutions with this configuration, but the data reveals a surprisingly flat scaling curve from 1440p to 4K that points to a specific performance ceiling. The combination of the Intel Core Ultra X7 368H and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile delivers playable frame rates across all tested settings, yet the gap between Low and Ultra presets narrows dramatically as resolution increases, indicating where the system's true bottleneck lies.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows that resolution scaling is not linear, and the performance cost of moving from 1080p to 4K is significant but manageable. At High settings, the average frame rate drops from 112 FPS at 1920x1080 to 84 FPS at 2560x1440, a 25% reduction, and then further to 57 FPS at 3840x2160, a 32% drop from the 1440p figure. This pattern suggests that while the GPU is the primary limiter at 4K, the transition from 1080p to 1440p is not as punishing as expected, likely because the CPU can still feed the GPU adequately at the lower resolution.

The Low preset tells a similar story but with a steeper initial decline. At 1920x1080, the system achieves 177 FPS, which drops to 134 FPS at 2560x1440 (a 24% decrease) and then to 90 FPS at 3840x2160 (a 33% decrease from 1440p). The fact that Low preset at 4K (90 FPS) is still higher than Ultra preset at 1440p (73 FPS) indicates that the GPU has substantial headroom when texture and shading demands are reduced, reinforcing that the RTX 4080 Mobile is the dominant factor in these results.

The Medium preset provides the only complete data with min and max FPS, offering insight into frame time consistency. At 1920x1080 Medium, the average is 126 FPS with a range of 107 to 144 FPS. At 2560x1440 Medium, the average drops to 95 FPS with a range of 81 to 109 FPS. At 3840x2160 Medium, the average is 64 FPS with a range of 55 to 74 FPS. The consistent spread of roughly 20 FPS between min and max across all resolutions suggests that the frame pacing remains stable even as the GPU load increases, which is a positive sign for gameplay smoothness.

The scaling from Medium to Ultra at 4K is particularly revealing. The average FPS goes from 64 at Medium to 57 at High to 50 at Ultra, a cumulative drop of 22% from Medium to Ultra. This narrowing gap at higher resolutions—where the difference between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 80 FPS (177 vs 97) but only 40 FPS at 4K (90 vs 50)—indicates that the GPU is becoming saturated, and the additional work required for Ultra settings yields diminishing returns in terms of visual fidelity versus frame rate.

Settings Recommendations

The optimal settings for this configuration depend heavily on the target resolution, but the data strongly favors Medium as the balanced choice for 4K gaming. At 3840x2160, Medium delivers 64 FPS average with a minimum of 55 FPS, which is above the playable threshold for most action games. The step up to High only costs 7 FPS (57 average), but the step down to Low gains 26 FPS (90 average), suggesting that players who prioritize frame rate over visual quality should consider Low at 4K.

For 2560x1440, High settings at 84 FPS provide an excellent experience, with Medium at 95 FPS being the safer choice for those who want more headroom. The jump from Medium to High at 1440p costs 11 FPS, which is a reasonable trade-off for the visual improvements. Ultra at 73 FPS is still playable but approaches the lower boundary where frame drops might become noticeable during intense combat sequences.

At 1920x1080, the system has enough performance to run Ultra at 97 FPS, which is the recommended preset for this resolution. The data shows that even the most demanding settings remain above 90 FPS, and the 80 FPS gap between Low and Ultra means there is no need to compromise on visual quality. For competitive play, the Low preset at 177 FPS offers a significant advantage, but for the single-player experience of Control, Ultra provides the best balance of immersion and performance.

The Medium preset's min FPS data is the only complete dataset, and it reveals that the system never drops below 55 FPS at 4K, 81 FPS at 1440p, or 107 FPS at 1080p. This consistency indicates that the combination is well-matched for sustained gameplay, and the absence of any min FPS values below 50 for any preset suggests that the system avoids the most jarring frame drops.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile is the clear performance driver in this configuration, and its specifications explain the measured results. With 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus providing 432.0 GB/s of bandwidth, the GPU has ample resources for Control's textures and effects at 4K. The 7424 shading units, 232 texture mapping units, and 80 raster output pipelines are well-suited for the game's particle-heavy combat sequences.

The GPU's clock speeds are relatively modest for a high-end mobile part, with a base clock of 1290 MHz and a boost clock of 1665 MHz. This conservative clocking strategy likely contributes to the consistent frame times observed in the Medium preset data, as the GPU does not appear to be thermally throttling. The 35,800 million transistors on a 294 mm² die at 5 nm process node from TSMC represent a dense design that achieves 24.72 TFLOPS of FP32 performance, which is sufficient for the game's demands.

The VRAM capacity of 12 GB is not a limiting factor in any of the tested configurations, as the game's maximum memory usage at Ultra settings does not appear to exceed this amount based on the playable frame rates. The 432.0 GB/s bandwidth is also adequate, as evidenced by the relatively small performance gap between Low and Medium presets at 1440p (39 FPS difference) compared to the gap between Medium and Ultra (22 FPS difference). This suggests that the GPU's compute capacity, not memory bandwidth, is the primary constraint at higher settings.

The RTX 4080 Mobile's benchmark scores place it in the 81st percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 38135. Its nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070, is only 1.3% slower, while the RTX 5080 Mobile is 0.6% faster. This narrow performance band explains why the GPU struggles to maintain 60 FPS at 4K Ultra, as it is positioned in the upper-midrange of mobile graphics solutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers exceptional performance across all presets. The Low preset achieves 177 FPS average, making it ideal for high-refresh-rate displays. Medium increases visual quality while maintaining 126 FPS average, with a minimum of 107 FPS and maximum of 144 FPS. High settings reduce the average to 112 FPS, while Ultra drops further to 97 FPS. The data shows a consistent degradation of approximately 14 FPS per preset step, with the exception of the jump from Low to Medium, which costs 51 FPS due to the significant increase in shading and texture work.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance landscape shifts. Low preset yields 134 FPS, which is still highly playable. Medium delivers 95 FPS with a min-to-max range of 81 to 109 FPS, providing a smooth experience. High settings average 84 FPS, while Ultra drops to 73 FPS. The relative cost of each preset step increases at this resolution, with the difference between Low and Medium being 39 FPS, and the difference between High and Ultra being 11 FPS mirroring the 1080p pattern.

At 3840x2160, the system begins to show its limits. Low preset averages 90 FPS, which is surprisingly strong for 4K. Medium averages 64 FPS with a minimum of 55 FPS, making it the lowest playable preset for consistent frame rates. High drops to 57 FPS, and Ultra falls to 50 FPS average. The performance gap between Low and Medium at 4K is 26 FPS, which is proportionally smaller than at lower resolutions, indicating that the GPU is becoming the limiting factor regardless of settings.

The data reveals a clear pattern: the FPS difference between Low and Ultra is 80 FPS at 1080p, 61 FPS at 1440p, and 40 FPS at 4K. This diminishing return on settings adjustments at higher resolutions is a classic sign of GPU saturation, where the pixel throughput becomes the bottleneck rather than the complexity of the scene.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the Intel Core Ultra X7 368H and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile ranks 1234 out of 3720 tested combos for Control, placing it in the top third of all configurations. This ranking is impressive given that the GPU only sits in the 81st percentile of all GPUs, suggesting that the CPU's performance is helping to boost the overall gaming experience beyond what the GPU alone would suggest.

The CPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks include the Intel Core 7 253PE, which is 0.1% slower, and the Intel Core 5 223PE, which is 0.2% slower. The AMD Ryzen 9 7940H is 0.2% faster, and the Intel Xeon 6507P is 0.2% faster. These extremely close margins (all within 0.2%) indicate that the CPU is performing exactly as expected for its class, and the ranking in Control is likely driven more by the GPU's capabilities than any CPU advantage.

The GPU's nearest rivals show a similar clustering, with the NVIDIA GeForce MX570 being 0.4% slowerhare and the RTX 5080 Mobile being 0.6% faster. The desktop RTX 4070 is 1.3% slower, which is notable because it suggests that the mobile 4080 is effectively matching or exceeding a desktop-class GPU from the previous generation. This performance level explains why the combo ranks as high as it does in a game like Control, which is known for its demanding physics and particle effects.

The ranking data shows that this combo is neither a standout performer nor a disappointment, but rather a solid mid-to-upper tier configuration that delivers consistent frame rates across all tested scenarios. The 1234 rank out of 3720 combos means that roughly 67% of other configurations tested faster, but the fact that this is a mobile platform with a 110 W GPU TDP makes the result more impressive than the raw rank suggests.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra X7 368H plays a supporting role in this configuration, and its specifications are more than adequate for Control's requirements. With 16 cores and 16 threads, the CPU has sufficient parallelism to handle the game's background tasks, though the absence of hyperthreading means that the core count is the sole determinant of multi-threaded performance. The base clock of 2.00 GHz and boost clock of 5.00 GHz provide a wide frequency range, allowing the CPU to ramp up quickly during intense gameplay sequences.

The CPU's cache hierarchy is substantial, with 192 KB of L1 cache per core, 2.5 MB of L2 cache per core, and 18 MB of shared L3 cache. This large cache capacity helps reduce memory latency, which is critical for maintaining consistent frame times in action games. The dual-channel LPDDR5X memory support with 153.6 GB/s of bandwidth is also sufficient to feed the GPU without creating a bottleneck.

In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU achieves a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 28221 and a single-core score of 3984. These scores place the CPU in the 87th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 40518. The PassMark multi-thread score of 32956 and single-thread score of 4005 further confirm that the CPU is well above average for gaming workloads.

The CPU's role in Control is primarily to feed the GPU with draw calls and physics calculations. Given that the game's performance scales linearly with resolution—the FPS at 4K is roughly half of the FPS at 1080p for each preset—the CPU is not the limiting factor at any resolution. The fact that the FPS at 1080p Low (177) is nearly four times the FPS at 4K Ultra (50) indicates that the GPU is doing the vast majority of the work, and the CPU has ample headroom to handle the game's logic without causing frame drops.

The 16-core design with a 25 W TDP is efficient for a mobile platform, and the 3 nm process node from Intel's Panther Lake architecture allows for high clock speeds without excessive power consumption. The PCIe Gen 5 interface with 4 lanes for the CPU provides sufficient bandwidth for the GPU, though the GPU's PCIe 4.0 x16 interface is more than enough for the game's data transfer requirements.