RTX 5090 Hits 48 FPS in Control Resonant at Native 4K as Upscaling Becomes Essential

Q: If even NVIDIA's mighty RTX 5090 cannot run Control Resonant at native 4K, is the era of native resolution gaming officially dead?

No. What Control Resonant shows is not the death of native resolution gaming, but the end of native 4K max-settings ray-traced gaming as the default expectation for cutting-edge AAA titles. The evidence is stark. TechPowerUp found an RTX 5090 averaging just 48 FPS at native 4K with medium ray tracing and no upscaling, while the RTX 5080 fell below 30 FPS. That makes clear that brute-force 4K is no longer enough when a game is built around heavy global illumination, path tracing, volumetrics and dense physics. Remedy’s Northlight engine is pushing image quality in ways that are designed around reconstruction technologies like DLSS and FSR. But that does not mean native rendering is obsolete everywhere. At lower resolutions, or with more balanced settings, the game scales much better. Reports show an RTX 4070 Ti Super reaching 111 FPS at 1440p with DLSS Quality and RT Medium, and around 70 FPS even at 1440p Ultra with path tracing. An RTX 5070 Ti can stay in the 60–70 FPS range at 1440p with RT High or Ultra and DLSS Quality. Consoles also rely heavily on upscaling rather than native output, especially base PS5 and Xbox models. The practical shift is this: native rendering is becoming a premium niche for lighter games, esports titles, or reduced settings. In visually aggressive AAA games, reconstructed 4K is now the standard target. Native resolution is not dead, but native 4K at ultra RT settings is no longer the benchmark that defines real-world playability.

3 articles · Updated · TweakTown · Sep 18

TechPowerUp testing put NVIDIA’s RTX 5090 at 48 FPS in Control Resonant at native 4K with medium ray tracing and no upscaling, leaving the flagship short of 60 FPS.
Control Resonant’s built-in path tracing and global illumination across all ray-tracing presets drive that load, making DLSS or FSR effectively necessary for 4K play at higher settings.
The performance gap extends down the stack: the RTX 5080 fell below 30 FPS in the same test, while 1080p Ultra ray tracing still needs at least an RTX 4070 to approach 60 FPS without upscaling.
The results underscore a broader shift in AAA PC games, where software aids like upscaling and frame generation are increasingly baseline requirements rather than optional boosts.