Control PC Performance Review & Optimisation Guide

Control PC Performance Review & Optimisation Guide

Introduction

Control is a game that isn’t trying to be like everything else on the market. Don’t expect a needlessly large open world or an overly linear shooter, that’s not what Remedy Entertainment is about. Control is a hard game to define, because there is nothing else that’s quite like it, and that’s a good thing. 

On PC, Control is one of those rare games that attempt to push the world of gaming graphics forward. Remedy has fully embraced the capabilities of today’s raytracing graphics hardware to enable visuals that are impossible on most gaming PCs. With this game, Remedy plans to show the world what raytracing could do, and in a way, it offers a Crysis-like graphics experience.    

Perhaps the best genre descriptor for Control is Metroidvania, as Control will see player explore and revisit areas on a regular basis. Unlike most modern games, not everything is mapped out for you, giving players the ability to get lost in the world. Yes, a map is available, but more often than not, players will be navigating the world using signs and other in-world directions. 

In this analysis, we will be looking at how Control performs on PC and how gamers can get the best performance out of their PC hardware. This piece will focus on Control’s standard (non-raytracing) graphics options. We have already looked at the game’s raytracing performance in our Control RTX/Raytracing Analysis.

Expect to see performance data from a wide range of graphics cards, a look at how each graphics option can impact performance and a glance at how DirectX 12 impacts this game’s CPU and GPU performance. 


Contents

PC System Requirements and Graphics Options
Graphical Settings Comparisons – Low, Medium, High and Raytracing 1, 2
DirectX 11 VS DirectX 12
Performance Scaling on Nvidia’s GTX 1060 and AMD’s RX 580
PC Optimisation Tips – All Settings Tested (DX11)
CPU Performance Scaling
1080p Performance
1440p Performance
4K Performance
Conclusion

GPU drivers

When testing Control#s PC version, we opted to use the newest drivers from both the Radeon and Geforce camps. These drivers are AMD’s Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 19.8.2 driver as well as Nvidia’s Geforce 436.02 driver.

Testing Methodology

OC3D is a website that is dedicated to PC hardware, so you better believe that we test every game on a wide range of hardware configurations. This commitment to variety means that we will be using both Intel and AMD based testbeds as well as a range of GPU offerings from both Nvidia and Radeon. 

Our primary test system uses Intel’s X99 platform, containing an Intel Core i7 6850K at a fixed clock speed of 4GHz. This testbed will use 32GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR4 memory and will be powered and cooled by an HX1200i PSU and an H110i AIO liquid cooler respectively, with everything sitting inside a Corsair 460X chassis. In this system, we are using an ASUS Strix X99 motherboard.

The system below will be used to conduct the majority of our game testing. This system will be used in this review unless otherwise stated.

 


Game Test Rig

Intel i7 6850K @4.0 GHz
ASUS X99 Strix
Corsair Vengeance LP 4x8GB DDR4 3200MHz
Corsair HX1200i
Corsair H110i GT
Windows 10 x64 “May 2019 Update

 

GPU Selection

No gaming test suite would be complete without a large selection of GPUs. At OC3D out current test suite covers Nvidia’s RTX 20-series and GTX 10-series alongside AMD’s RX Vega and RX 500 series graphics cards.

Starting with Metro Exodus, we began testing new PC games with Nvidia’s latest RTX series of graphics cards. In our testing, we currently use the mid-range RTX 2060 and uber high-end RTX 2080 Ti entering our graphics card lineup. In time we hope to have a Radeon RX 5700 graphics card for RTX 2060 VS RX 5700 comparisons. 


Geforce RTX 20-Series

– Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition
– Nvidia RTX 2060 Founders Edition

nVidia RTX 2080 and RTX 2080Ti ReviewnVidia RTX 2060 Review

Geforce GTX 10-series

– Nvidia GTX 1080 Founders Edition
– Nvidia GTX 1070 Founders Edition
– ASUS GTX 1060 Strix Gaming OC

 

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AMD RX Vega Series


– AMD RX Vega 56

AMD RX 500 Series

– AMD RX 580 Strix OC

Keyboard & Mouse

To control this setup, we will be using Corsair Strafe RGB keyboard with Cherry MX Silent keys alongside a Corsair M65 RGB mouse, matching the general theme of this RGB illuminated system.  

Cherry MX Silent Keys are ideal for gaming, coming with similar characteristics as Cherry MX Red keys, but with quieter operation. This comparative silence will help keep players immersed in their games, without the distracting clicks that are present in other Cherry key switches.  

 

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