Control

Control running on the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile is a configuration where the GPU does the heavy lifting, and the measured data reflects exactly that. Across twelve measured runs spanning three resolutions and four preset tiers, framerates range from 54 FPS at 4K Ultra to 194 FPS at 1080p Low, with the CPU rarely appearing to be the constraint. This page walks through the numbers step by step: how the combo ranks among tested pairings, what each preset delivers, and where the bottleneck sits as resolution climbs.

FAQ

Q: Can this combo run Control at 4K with high settings?

A: Yes. The measured average at 3840x2160 High is 62 FPS, and even Ultra holds a 54 FPS average. At 4K Medium the run averaged 70 FPS with a minimum of 60 and a maximum of 81, which indicates the experience stays smooth even in the dips.

Q: What is the highest framerate recorded for this configuration?

A: 194 FPS, at 1920x1080 on the Low preset. The same resolution on Medium averaged 138 FPS with a range of 117 to 158.

Q: How does this CPU-GPU pairing rank in Control against other tested combos?

A: It ranks 866 out of 3720 tested combinations, placing it in roughly the top quarter of results for this game.

Q: How strong is the RTX 4090 Mobile in general benchmarks?

A: It sits in the 84th percentile versus all GPUs in the database, with an average benchmark score of 43667. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA RTX A6000 (average score 44075, a 0.9 percent advantage over the 4090 Mobile) and the Quadro M6000 (43301, 0.8 percent behind).

Q: Is the Core Ultra X9 388H fast enough to keep up with the GPU here?

A: The data suggests yes. It holds the 88th percentile among all CPUs, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 18911 and a single-core score of 2200.5, and its rivals cluster within half a percent of its average score of 44466. Framerates scale strongly with resolution in this game, indicating the GPU is the limiting factor rather than the processor.

Q: How much VRAM does the GPU have, and is it enough for Control?

A: The RTX 4090 Mobile carries 16 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus with 576.0 GB/s of bandwidth. Control released in 2019, and the measured results show no sign of memory pressure at any tested resolution.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows point to Medium as the sweet spot at every resolution. At 1080p, Medium averages 138 FPS with a floor of 117 — comfortably above common high-refresh thresholds while retaining most of the visual richness. At 1440p, Medium averages 104 FPS with a minimum of 89 and a maximum of 120. At 4K, Medium averages 70 FPS with a minimum of 60.

Ultra costs surprisingly little. Dropping from Medium to Ultra at 1080p takes the average from 138 to 106 FPS; at 1440p, from 104 to 80; at 4K, from 70 to 54. That is a consistent, moderate cost for the top preset, and 4K Ultra's 54 FPS average is still playable for an action adventure title. Players who want the highest possible framerate — 194 FPS at 1080p Low, 147 at 1440p Low, 99 at 4K Low — give up a lot of visual fidelity for it, and Low is hard to recommend given how little separates it from Medium.

For a 4K panel, the data supports Medium as the default, with High (62 FPS) as an option for players tolerant of lower averages. For a 1440p panel, Medium or High (93 FPS) both deliver strong experiences. For 1080p, Medium at 138 FPS is the balanced choice; Ultra at 106 is fine for players who prioritize image quality over high framerates.

GPU Role

The RTX 4090 Mobile is built on the AD103 chip, Ada Lovelace architecture, TSMC's 5 nm process, with 45,900 million transistors packed into a 379 mm² die — a density of 121.1 million transistors per square millimeter. It carries 9728 shading units, 304 texture mapping units, 112 render output units, 76 RT cores, and 304 tensor cores, with a peak FP32 throughput of 32.98 TFLOPS.

Control is a ray-tracing-heavy title by design, and the 76 RT cores matter here. The fact that Ultra remains within reach at every resolution — 106, 80, and 54 FPS from 1080p up to 4K — indicates the ray-tracing hardware is absorbing the workload rather than collapsing under it. The pixel rate of 189.8 GPixel/s and texture rate of 515.3 GTexel/s give the chip substantial headroom at 1080p, where even the Low preset's 194 FPS average appears limited by other parts of the pipeline rather than raw fill rate.

Clocks run from a 1335 MHz base to a 1695 MHz boost, with memory at 2250 MHz (18 Gbps effective). The 16 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus yields 576.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is generous for a 2019 release. In the database's aggregate scoring the GPU posts a PassMark G3D score of 27212, a Geekbench OpenCL score of 180831, and a Geekbench Vulkan score of 170774, placing it in the 84th percentile of all GPUs — consistent with what the Control numbers show: strong, but not the absolute top of the stack, and increasingly taxed as pixels quadruple.

How This Combo Ranks

Against the 3720 CPU-GPU combinations tested in Control, this pairing ranks 866th — a placement in roughly the top quarter of the field. That position is coherent with the component-level percentiles: the GPU sits in the 84th percentile of all GPUs, the CPU in the 88th percentile of all CPUs. Both parts are well above the median of their respective categories without being halo products.

The rank also matches the measured profile. A combo that can average 104 FPS at 1440p Medium but drops to 54 FPS at 4K Ultra is a strong-but-not-elite performer, and rank 866 of 3720 reflects exactly that tier. Combinations ranked above it would need to hold higher averages at the top presets and resolutions, which typically requires a faster GPU rather than a faster CPU in this title.

CPU Role

The Core Ultra X9 388H is a Panther Lake mobile part on Intel's 3 nm process, released as part of Core Ultra Series 3. It offers 16 cores and 16 threads, a 2.10 GHz base clock, a 5.10 GHz boost clock, and a 25 W TDP in an Intel BGA 2540 socket. Cache consists of 192 KB of L1 per core, 3 MB of L2 per core, and a shared 18 MB L3. Memory support is dual-channel LPDDR5X delivering 153.6 GB/s of bandwidth, with PCIe Gen 5 across 4 lanes from the CPU.

Control is an action adventure game that leans more on GPU throughput than on sustained multi-core CPU work, and the measured data bears this out: framerates fall steeply as resolution rises, the classic signature of a GPU-bound workload. The CPU's credentials are nonetheless solid. Its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 18911 and single-core score of 2200.5 put it in the 88th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 44466. Its nearest rivals — the AMD Ryzen 5 7500X3D at 44573 (0.2 percent ahead), the Intel Core i9-13950HX at 44342 (0.3 percent behind), the AMD Ryzen AI Max 385 at 44309 (0.4 percent behind), and the Intel Core i5-13600 at 44240 (0.5 percent behind) — cluster within half a percent, meaning any of these processors would deliver essentially the same Control experience alongside this GPU.

Other data points reinforce the single-thread strength that matters for game logic: a PassMark single-thread score of 4280, a PassMark physics score of 3226, and Cinebench R20 single-core at 1849 against a multi-core of 13101. At 1080p, where CPU limits would surface first, the 194 FPS Low and 138 FPS Medium averages indicate the processor is not capping the experience.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the four presets measured 194 FPS (Low), 138 FPS (Medium, with a minimum of 117 and maximum of 158), 122 FPS (High), and 106 FPS (Ultra). The spread from Low to Ultra is 88 FPS — the widest absolute spread of any resolution, showing how much render load the presets shed or add at lower pixel counts.

At 2560x1440, Low averages 147 FPS, Medium 104 FPS (minimum 89, maximum 120), High 93 FPS, and Ultra 80 FPS. The Low-to-Ultra spread narrows to 67 FPS as the GPU's fixed overheads take a larger share of the frame time.

At 3840x2160, Low delivers 99 FPS, Medium 70 FPS (minimum 60, maximum 81), High 62 FPS, and Ultra 54 FPS. The spread compresses further to 45 FPS. The Medium runs are the only rows with recorded minimum and maximum values, and they are instructive: at 4K the framerate never fell below 60, meaning the worst moments still held a console-style smooth floor even at the game's most demanding points in that preset.

Reading across presets instead of resolutions: Ultra goes 106, 80, 54 — a 49 percent drop from 1080p to 4K. High goes 122, 93, 62. Medium goes 138, 104, 70. Low goes 194, 147, 99 — a 49 percent drop as well. Every preset loses close to half its framerate when moving from 1080p to 4K, which is the fingerprint of a GPU-bound configuration.

Resolution Scaling

The step from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 costs roughly a quarter to a third of the framerate depending on preset: Medium falls from 138 to 104, High from 122 to 93, Ultra from 106 to 80, Low from 194 to 147. The step from 1440p to 3840x2160 is more punishing: Medium drops from 104 to 70, High from 93 to 62, Ultra from 80 to 54, Low from 147 to 99.

The pattern is consistent: pixel count roughly doubles from 1080p to 1440p and doubles again to 4K, and the framerate falls in near-proportion. When a framerate scales down in step with resolution, the GPU is the limiting component — the CPU would otherwise impose a ceiling that the resolution change could not push past. There is no sign of such a ceiling here. Even at 1080p Low, the 194 FPS average reflects the GPU's render throughput rather than a processor cap.

The practical takeaway: the RTX 4090 Mobile has headroom at 1080p and 1440p, and 4K is where it works hardest. The 4K Medium row — 70 FPS average, 60 minimum, 81 maximum — is arguably the most representative single result in the dataset: it is the point where the game looks close to its best while the hardware still holds a smooth floor. Players chasing higher framerates should stay at or below 1440p; players wanting maximum fidelity can accept 4K Ultra at 54 FPS knowing the average stays above 50 throughout.