Control Resonant PC Performance Review

Control Resonant is out on September 24, and this time Remedy is going much harder on the PC tech. Path tracing is a big part of that, but NVIDIA is also using the game to show off DLSS 4.5, including its new Ray Reconstruction model and up to 6x Multi Frame Generation.

I tested Control Resonant at both 4K and 1440p, switching ray tracing on and off, playing around with the presets, and testing Ray Reconstruction to see how much of a difference it actually makes. And yes, this is one of those games where the RTX 5070 needs DLSS to really stretch its legs.

Control Resonant PC Requirements and Testing Rig

The PC requirements are fairly forgiving at the bottom, with a GTX 1070 enough to get the game running at 1080p. Things escalate quickly once ray tracing comes into the picture, though, and Remedy's Path Tracing Enthusiast tier recommends an RTX 5080 for 4K/60fps.

For testing, I paired the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 with the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K on the MSI Z890 Gaming Plus Wi-Fi motherboard. The system also has 48GB of Kingston Fury Renegade DDR5 memory running at 6000MT/s, while storage is handled by a 2TB WD Black SN850X. All of this ran on the Acer Nitro XV275K P5 4K Mini LED gaming monitor.

As for the game and the settings page, there's one slightly confusing thing about the graphics menu. You won't find a setting explicitly called "Path Tracing" in Control Resonant. Instead, everything sits under the Ray Tracing preset, with separate controls for Direct Lighting, Indirect Lighting, Transparency, and other RT effects.

If you push the Ray Tracing preset to Ultra, you'll be getting the full path-traced treatment. Direct and indirect lighting are turned all the way up, reflections carry more information, and shadows react more naturally to the lighting around them. It's also where the RTX 5070 has its work cut out for it.

Control Resonant PC Performance

I started at 4K with Ultra graphics, DLSS set to Quality, Frame Generation off, and ray tracing completely disabled. The RTX 5070 averaged 44fps, with a 31fps 1% low. GPU usage was already sitting at 99%, while the temperature hovered around 82 degrees Celsius.

Then I turned the RT preset all the way up to Ultra, which also pushed Direct and Indirect Lighting to Ultra, enabled Ray Reconstruction, and left Frame Generation off. The average dropped to around 29fps, with a 21fps 1% low.

That's roughly a 34% hit to the average frame rate from turning on the full path-traced setup. What makes that number even harder to ignore is that DLSS Quality is already rendering the game internally at 1440p and reconstructing it back to 4K.

29fps isn't great for a game like Control Resonant. There's a lot of movement during combat, and the difference was pretty obvious once I started running around and fighting enemies. I could play it this way, but I certainly wouldn't want to spend the entire game doing so. I would very likely get a headache.

So I switched on 3x Frame Generation and left everything else exactly where it was. That pushed the average up to 66fps, while the 1% low climbed to 39fps. It was immediately much easier to play. Of course, 66fps with Frame Generation isn't the same as the GPU actually rendering the game at 66fps. The base frame rate is still sitting around 29fps, and I could feel some of that difference in responsiveness, but only if I went looking for it.

Dropping to 1440p gave the RTX 5070 a lot more breathing room. With Ultra graphics, RT Ultra, DLSS Quality, Ray Reconstruction, and 3x Frame Generation, I averaged 112fps, with a much healthier 79fps 1% low.

GPU usage was still hovering around 98%, so the 5070 wasn't exactly taking it easy. But the game felt far more comfortable here, and I stopped thinking about the frame rate quite as much.

Path Tracing and Ray Reconstruction: Can You Actually Tell?

The reflections were the easiest difference for me to spot. Cars, windows, puddles, and wet roads simply have more going on with the ray tracing preset pushed to Ultra. Reflections carry more of the surrounding environment, while shadows look more naturally placed around objects. Indoors, the differences in indirect lighting become easier to see as well.

I spent quite a bit of time switching between Medium and Ultra, though, and I'm not convinced I'd keep Ultra enabled all the time.

Medium still looks really good. You do lose some information in reflections, lighting, and shadows, but a lot of it wasn't something I was looking for while actually playing. Ultra made more sense when I stopped moving and deliberately compared scenes. Once I was back in combat, I wasn't exactly checking whether every building was perfectly represented in a car window.

Ray Reconstruction was a little more interesting. I started noticing this strange jitter or patterned breakup around parts of Dylan whenever I moved quickly or suddenly swung the camera around. Reflective areas made it easier to spot, and once I noticed it for the first time, it became pretty difficult to ignore.

Initially, I wondered whether Ray Reconstruction itself was causing it, so I switched RR off and went through the same area again. It actually got worse.

There was more visible breakup around Dylan during movement, and the image didn't look as stable. Turning Ray Reconstruction back on reduced it quite noticeably, although it didn't completely get rid of the problem. I could still catch some of that patterning whenever I made sudden movements.

After switching it on and off several times, I stopped thinking about it and just left RR enabled. It doesn't completely clean everything up, but I preferred the image with it turned on.

Verdict

At ₹3,599 on Steam in India, Control Resonant feels fairly well priced for what is a full-sized action RPG, especially when you consider how much is going on technically here. The Digital Deluxe Edition costs ₹4,199, but for most people, I think the Standard Edition makes more sense.

On the RTX 5070, though, I wouldn't chase 4K just because the option is there. 1440p with DLSS Quality, Ray Reconstruction, and 3x Frame Generation was the point where I stopped thinking about performance and just played. RT Ultra looks better, but Medium is probably where I'd leave it for a full playthrough.

Control Resonant itself is easy to like. The combat has enough weight to it, Dylan moves quickly enough to keep fights from feeling slow, and Remedy still knows how to make an environment feel strange without constantly shouting about it. The technical side is impressive, but after a few hours, that wasn't what I was thinking about anymore. I just wanted to see what was waiting in the next area.