Remedy Entertainment has built quite a reputation for pushing PC graphics technology forward, and CONTROL Resonant continues that tradition. Powered by the studio's proprietary Northlight Engine, the game combines impressive environmental complexity, excellent lighting, and extensive physics-driven destruction with some of the most demanding ray tracing and path tracing effects available in a modern PC game.

However, as impressive as CONTROL Resonant can look, its Ultra graphics settings are extremely demanding, even without ray tracing enabled. Turning everything up to maximum is certainly not the most sensible approach for most PC gamers, and the game's path tracing implementation can bring even high-end graphics cards to their knees.

Thankfully, there is plenty of room for optimization. Unlike some recent AAA releases, CONTROL Resonant offers several graphics settings that meaningfully affect GPU performance without necessarily compromising visual fidelity. Its CPU performance is also particularly encouraging, although we did encounter some disappointing frame pacing issues that deserve attention.

In this guide, we will examine the game's technical presentation and PC features, analyze CPU performance under demanding gameplay conditions, and break down its individual graphics settings to establish two optimized graphics settings profiles: one without ray/path tracing and another with them enabled.

Gameplay And Technical Overview Of CONTROL Resonant

Launching on September 24, 2026, CONTROL Resonant is Remedy Entertainment's direct sequel to its acclaimed 2019 supernatural action game, Control. This time around, players take control of Dylan Faden, the brother of the original protagonist Jesse Faden, as a paranatural catastrophe spreads beyond the confines of the Oldest House and into the streets of Manhattan.

Unlike the original game's third-person shooting-focused gameplay, CONTROL Resonant places much greater emphasis on melee combat, supernatural abilities, and action-RPG progression. Dylan's shapeshifting weapon, the Aberrant, can transform into several different forms, while his growing collection of supernatural powers allows for increasingly elaborate combat encounters and environmental traversal.

For more on CONTROL Resonant, make sure to check out our review of the game at this link.

From a technical standpoint, Remedy has once again made excellent use of its proprietary Northlight Engine. The game's environments are incredibly detailed, with impressive geometric complexity, high-quality lighting, and extensive physics-driven destruction. The latter is particularly welcome, as environmental destruction was one of the original Control's most impressive technical accomplishments, while it was considerably less prominent in 2023's Alan Wake 2.

The engine's lighting implementation is another highlight. Even without hardware ray tracing enabled, CONTROL Resonant can produce some genuinely impressive scenes, particularly when its dense geometry, atmospheric lighting, reflective materials, and destructible environments are all working together.

With that said, the game's visual presentation is not perfect. Some character models look a little dated compared to the environments, and we also noticed distant geometry pop-in, even with the graphics settings maxed out.

One particularly interesting aspect of Northlight is its GPU-driven geometry rendering pipeline. In fact, rather than relying excessively on the CPU to determine which objects should be rendered and submit the corresponding drawing commands, the engine offloads much of the geometry culling and drawing workload to the GPU. This allows it to handle highly detailed environments without placing an equally enormous burden on the processor. And as we will demonstrate later in our CPU benchmark, this approach appears to pay off quite handsomely.

Another technical aspect worth talking about is the game's HDR (High Dynamic Range) implementation, which in our view is quite good. Blacks remain deep without obvious crushing, while bright highlights stand out nicely and give the game’s lighting plenty of punch on a capable HDR display. The dedicated Display Calibration menu also lets players adjust HDR Brightness and HDR UI Brightness, with reference images for shadows, midtones, and highlights making calibration refreshingly straightforward.

Shader Compilation, Traversal Stutters, And Frame Pacing

CONTROL Resonant handles shader compilation surprisingly well. Although there is no dedicated PSO compilation step, the game appears to perform a short shader burn during startup, and we encountered virtually no recognizable shader compilation stutters during gameplay. Occasional traversal and asset-streaming hitches do occur, but they are quite rare. Frame pacing is a bigger concern, though, as we recorded disproportionately low 1% and 0.1% lows in some geometry- and NPC-heavy areas. The issue becomes more noticeable with DLSS (Multi) Frame Generation, where inconsistent display times and occasional GPU underutilization on our RTX 4090 made the game feel less smooth than the reported frame rate alluded to. We suspect NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency may be to blame here, though we cannot confirm the cause. Remedy has been informed of our findings and is already working on the issue.

Temporal Anti-Aliasing & Upscaling, Frame Generation, And Path Tracing

CONTROL Resonant supports NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution and AMD FSR Upscaling, but lacks both a proprietary Temporal Anti-Aliasing and Upscaling (TAAU) solution and Intel XeSS. Frame generation support similarly covers DLSS (Multi) Frame Generation and FSR Frame Generation, with XeSS Frame Generation absent. Another negative aspect regarding the game's FSR FG implementation is the fact that it cannot be used with DLSS SR, which in our opinion is especially unfortunate for owners of RTX GPUs that are older than the 40 Series.

The headline feature, however, is the game’s extensive path tracing implementation, which uses advanced ray-traced indirect lighting alongside NVIDIA RTX Mega Geometry and DLSS Ray Reconstruction, though unfortunately, the AMD-equivalent FSR Ray Regeneration is unsupported here, and we'd like to see Remedy fix this in a future update. Even the lower Ray Tracing presets retain path-traced effects, while Ultra represents the full-fat configuration and is exceptionally demanding. As a result, non-RTX hardware and older RTX GPUs in particular should approach the higher Indirect Lighting settings with caution.

Official PC System Requirements

Remedy's official requirements suggest that CONTROL Resonant should be reasonably accessible on older PC hardware, provided players are willing to lower their graphical ambitions.

According to the game's Steam store page, the minimum and recommended specifications are as follows:

Remedy subsequently published more detailed performance targets covering several different rendering configurations:

The minimum specification targets 1080p at 30 FPS using Low graphics settings, ray tracing disabled, and Quality upscaling. The recommended specification targets 1440p at 60 FPS using Medium graphics settings and Balanced upscaling, again without ray tracing.

The requirements become considerably more demanding once hardware ray tracing is introduced. For example, Remedy's 1440p/60 FPS Medium Ray Tracing target calls for an RTX 4070 Ti or Radeon RX 9070, while its 4K/60 FPS High Ray Tracing/Path Tracing target specifies an RTX 5080 with Performance upscaling. These performance targets do not assume frame generation, but they obviously take into account various temporal upscaling levels.

Fortunately, as our testing will demonstrate, players do not have to sacrifice much visual fidelity to obtain significantly better performance than the Ultra preset, even with ray/path tracing enabled.

Test Systems And Methodology

For our individual graphics settings comparisons and CPU performance testing, we used our desktop PC test system with the following relevant specifications:

All rasterized graphics settings comparisons were performed under GPU-limited conditions at a resolution of 2560 × 1440 (1440p), using NVIDIA DLAA to retain native-resolution rendering.

Ray tracing and path tracing comparisons were also performed under GPU-limited conditions, but with DLSS Super Resolution or DLSS Ray Reconstruction using Quality mode, depending on the selected rendering configuration.

For broader compatibility with non-NVIDIA RTX GPUs, our individual ray tracing comparisons use the Ultra Ray Tracing preset, but with DLSS Ray Reconstruction disabled. As a result, we could not include Ultra Transparency, since that setting requires both DLSS Ray Reconstruction and RTX Mega Geometry, which are features that are exclusive to NVIDIA RTX hardware.

All other relevant graphics settings were kept at their maximum values when comparing the visual and performance characteristics of individual options.

Post-processing effects, which include Motion Blur, Depth of Field, Lens Distortion, Film Grain, and Vignetting, were disabled throughout our comparisons, except when specifically examining the Post Processing Resolution setting.

These effects have very little influence on performance in our experience — as the two screenshots below can attest to — so enabling or disabling them is primarily a matter of personal preference rather than an important graphics optimization decision.

For the final Ultra versus optimized graphics settings comparisons, we used our laptop test system:

Performance was measured using CapFrameX, including average FPS, 1% lows, and 0.1% lows.

CPU Performance Testing

Before examining the game's individual graphics settings, we wanted to determine how well CONTROL Resonant performs under CPU-limited conditions, using our 14700K desktop test system.

Before examining GPU-side scalability, we tested CONTROL Resonant under deliberately CPU-limited conditions. We selected an NPC-heavy combat sequence with FBC personnel fighting a large Hiss wave, maxed out the graphics settings including path tracing, and reduced the output resolution to 720p with DLSS Super Resolution/Ray Reconstruction set to Ultra Performance mode.

After running the CapFrameX benchmark, we obtained the following results:

As we can see from the above data, CPU performance was excellent. Our Intel Core i7-14700K averaged 193.9 FPS, with 133.8 FPS 1% lows and 105.3 FPS 0.1% lows. CapFrameX reported an Adaptive STDEV of just 8.9 FPS, while the handful of larger frame time excursions remained below 10 ms and were difficult to notice in actual gameplay, especially on a capable VRR (Variable-Refresh Rate) display.

Interestingly enough, CPU thread monitoring suggested that CONTROL Resonant concentrated most of its workload on roughly eight P-Core threads, with relatively little activity on the remaining P-Core threads and E-Cores, although Windows 11's scheduler may partly influence this behavior. Either way, Northlight's GPU-driven geometry pipeline appears to keep CPU overhead remarkably low, and CONTROL Resonant should have little trouble delivering high frame rates on reasonably modern CPUs.

A Deep Dive Into CONTROL Resonant's Graphics Settings

CONTROL Resonant features a rather comprehensive graphics menu, with separate presets for conventional rasterized rendering and ray tracing. It also shows previews (though not live ones) of how individual levels of most (not all) graphics settings can affect visuals. Sadly, it doesn't offer any information on hardware utilization or live performance metrics, though it at least allows changing all graphics settings without restarting the game!

The rasterized graphics presets are Handheld, Low, Medium, High, and Ultra, while the Ray Tracing presets are Off, Low, Medium, High, and Ultra.

We really like this separation because it allows players to fine-tune the quality of conventional rasterized rendering independently of the game's more demanding ray/path-traced lighting effects.

Another positive thing to report is that the game scales reasonably well across its graphics presets. Even Low can look surprisingly good, while the Handheld preset should hopefully provide a workable option for lower-power portable gaming devices.

However, there are still several individual settings that are worth examining more closely, particularly because some of them can consume considerable GPU resources without delivering equally significant visual improvements.

With all of that said, let us finally examine the graphics-and-performance profile of every relevant graphics setting.

Temporal Anti-Aliasing and Upscaling (TAAU)

As previously mentioned, CONTROL Resonant relies exclusively on NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution and AMD FSR Upscaling for its TAAU needs, and Intel XeSS Super Resolution is sadly absent.

For NVIDIA GeForce RTX owners, we recommend using DLSS Super Resolution, with Quality mode being a sensible starting point at 1440p and 4K. For other GPUs, AMD FSR Upscaling — FSR 4.1 Upscaling for RDNA3/RDNA4 GPUs and FSR 3.1 Upscaling for other GPUs — is the only officially supported alternative.

Recommendation: DLSS Super Resolution for GeForce RTX GPUs; FSR Upscaling for other supported GPUs

Rasterization Settings

Texture Resolution

Texture Resolution primarily affects texture sharpness and VRAM usage rather than raw GPU performance. At 1440p, we recommend at least 10 GB of VRAM for Medium through Ultra without RT/PT, while Low is better suited to 8 GB cards. With RT/PT enabled, those figures increase to roughly 12 GB and 10 GB, respectively. Thankfully, even Low textures still look decent.

Recommendation: Highest setting your available VRAM can comfortably handle

Texture Filtering

Texture Filtering controls texture clarity at oblique viewing angles. As the two above screenshots demonstrate, lowering it from Ultra offers little practical benefit on modern GPUs while noticeably compromising distant texture clarity.

Recommendation: Ultra

Level Of Detail (LOD)

LOD determines how long objects retain their full geometric detail as they move farther from the camera. Since dropping below High failed to provide enough additional performance to justify the more aggressive reduction in distant detail, we recommend High here.

Recommendation: High

Global Illumination

Global Illumination controls the quality of the game’s rasterized indirect lighting. Going below High provided little to no extra performance; therefore, we recommend keeping GI at High.

Recommendation: High

Volumetric Lighting

Volumetric Lighting affects atmospheric light scattering, including god rays and light shafts. Medium preserves the overall look quite well while offering a worthwhile performance improvement over the higher settings.

Recommendation: Medium

Volumetric Spotlight

This setting controls volumetric effects generated by individual spotlight sources. High provides the best balance, with Ultra costing additional performance for relatively small visual gains.

Recommendation: High

Fog

Fog controls the quality of atmospheric fog rendering, with High using more sophisticated multiple light scattering. Medium still looks convincing while performing noticeably better, although High is worth considering if you have some GPU headroom.

Recommendation: Medium; High if you have performance to spare

Shadow Map Resolution

Shadow Map Resolution has a surprisingly large impact on conventional shadow quality. Lower settings can look noticeably low-resolution and noisy, making Ultra worth retaining unless GPU performance is severely constrained.

Recommendation: Ultra

Shadow Map Filtering

Shadow Map Filtering determines the softness and quality of conventional shadow edges. High retains very good shadow quality, while Medium does not provide enough extra performance to make the downgrade worthwhile.

Recommendation: High

Shadow Map Detail

Shadow Map Detail controls how aggressively smaller objects are excluded from shadow maps. High offers the best compromise, as dropping lower provides little meaningful performance improvement.

Recommendation: High

Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO)

SSAO adds localized indirect shadowing around corners, crevices, and intersecting geometry. Disabling it noticeably flattens the image and reduces object grounding, making the visual loss difficult to justify.

Recommendation: On

Screen Space Reflections (SSR)

SSR handles reflections using geometry currently visible on screen. Medium retains convincing reflection quality while recovering a useful amount of GPU performance compared to the higher settings.

Recommendation: Medium

Signed Distance Field (SDF) Reflections

SDF Reflections complement SSR by adding reflections from geometry outside the current screen. They improve reflection coverage, but the performance hit is substantial enough that we do not consider them worthwhile for an optimized configuration.

Recommendation: Off; enable if you have GPU performance to spare

Ray Tracing And Path Tracing Settings

Direct Lighting

Direct Lighting controls the quality of ray-traced direct illumination, shadows, and related lighting interactions. High retains most of the visual benefits of Ultra while reducing its GPU cost.

Recommendation: High

Direct Lighting Denoising

This setting controls the denoiser used for ray-traced direct lighting. Medium offers the best compromise on GPUs without DLSS Ray Reconstruction, while RTX owners should use Ray Reconstruction instead.

Recommendation: Medium on non-RTX GPUs; DLSS Ray Reconstruction on supported RTX GPUs

Indirect Lighting

Indirect Lighting is by far the heaviest graphics setting (especially when set to Ultra) in CONTROL Resonant, controlling its ReSTIR-based path-traced diffuse global illumination and specular reflections. High preserves most of the intended presentation while being considerably more practical than Ultra.

Recommendation: High

Indirect Lighting Denoising

This controls denoising for the game’s path-traced indirect lighting. As with Direct Lighting, Medium is the sensible option without Ray Reconstruction, while compatible RTX GPUs are better served by DLSS RR.

Recommendation: Medium on non-RTX GPUs; DLSS Ray Reconstruction on supported RTX GPUs

Transparency

Transparency controls ray-traced lighting and reflections on transparent surfaces such as glass. High is the sensible choice for most GPUs, while Ultra provides the highest quality but requires both DLSS Ray Reconstruction and RTX Mega Geometry.

Recommendation: High; Ultra on compatible RTX GPUs

Debris

Debris determines whether mesh particles are included in ray-traced shadows and reflections. Considering how heavily CONTROL Resonant relies on destruction and flying debris and the fact that enabling it didn't incur a noticeable performance penalty, we recommend keeping it enabled.

Recommendation: Enabled

DLSS Ray Reconstruction

DLSS Ray Reconstruction replaces the game’s conventional RT denoisers with NVIDIA’s machine learning-based denoising technique. It generally provides higher-quality denoising without a major performance penalty and is therefore preferable on compatible RTX GPUs.

Recommendation: Enabled alongside DLSS Super Resolution on supported RTX GPUs

Post Processing Settings

Post Processing Resolution

The only post-processing setting worth tweaking to gain extra tangible performance is Post Processing Resolution. The latter determines whether effects are rendered at the internal render resolution or full display resolution. Render Resolution provides the better performance-to-visuals trade-off and is our preferred option. The setting becomes unavailable when DLSS Ray Reconstruction is enabled.

Recommendation: Render Resolution

The remaining Motion Blur, Depth of Field, Lens Distortion, Film Grain, and Vignetting options barely affected performance during our testing, so we would leave them entirely to personal preference rather than include them in the optimized settings profiles.

Optimized Graphics Settings For CONTROL Resonant

Based on our testing, we created two optimized graphics settings profiles: one without ray tracing/path tracing for the best overall performance, and another that retains CONTROL Resonant's advanced RT/PT lighting while cutting back some of its heaviest settings.

Optimized Graphics Settings Without Ray Tracing/Path Tracing

This profile keeps most of the Ultra preset's visual quality while cutting several settings with poor visuals-to-performance scaling. SDF Reflections are the main casualty, while Shadow Map Resolution and SSAO stay maxed/enabled because lowering them hurts image quality too much.

Max Graphics Settings Vs Optimized Settings — Without RT/PT

We tested this configuration at 1080p with DLAA on our i7-12700H/RTX 4060 laptop test system.

We obtained the following results at the end of the above video:

Our optimized settings almost doubled average performance, from 33 FPS to 63 FPS, while the 1% and 0.1% lows improved massively as well. Part of this huge uplift is likely due to the RTX 4060 Laptop GPU's 8 GB VRAM being overcommitted at maximum settings.

Important note: We accidentally swapped the Ultra preset and Optimized settings labels in our non-RT comparison video. The benchmark numbers above are correct.

Optimized Graphics Settings With Ray Tracing/Path Tracing

High Direct and Indirect Lighting retain most of the path-traced presentation without paying the full cost of Ultra. RTX owners should use DLSS Ray Reconstruction, while non-RTX hardware should stick to Medium denoising and High Transparency.

Max Graphics Settings Vs Optimized Settings — With RT/PT

For the RT/PT comparison, we used 1080p with DLSS Super Resolution set to Quality mode. DLSS Ray Reconstruction was disabled, and Transparency was set to High instead of Ultra because it requires both DLSS RR and RTX Mega Geometry, which are not available on all modern GPUs.

The results obtained at the end of the above video were the following:

The optimized RT/PT profile increased average performance from 26 FPS to 46 FPS, a 77% uplift, while also substantially improving percentile lows. Again, the RTX 4060 Laptop GPU's 8 GB VRAM likely exaggerates the gap somewhat, but the results show just how expensive the full Ultra RT/PT configuration can be.

Final Words

CONTROL Resonant is another technically ambitious showcase for Remedy's Northlight Engine. CPU performance is excellent, shader compilation stutters are practically nonexistent, and the game scales well enough to make its demanding visuals manageable without simply dropping everything to Low.

The main weakness is frame pacing, particularly with DLSS (Multi) Frame Generation enabled, where we encountered inconsistent display times and occasional GPU underutilization. Remedy is already looking into the issue, so hopefully this will improve around or shortly after launch.

On the GPU side, Ultra — for both rasterized and ray/path traced settings — is simply too expensive for what it delivers. Our optimized settings improved average performance by 91% without RT/PT and 77% with RT/PT on our laptop test system, while retaining most of the game's visual quality. Path tracing remains prohibitively expensive as expected, but CONTROL Resonant gives PC users enough scalability to strike a much better balance between image quality and performance.

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