Lockdown Protocol

The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 is a lopsided combo on paper: a flagship 16-core Zen 5 processor sitting in the 95th percentile of all CPUs, driving a mid-range Ada Lovelace GPU in the 81st percentile. Lockdown Protocol, a 2024 FPS release, does not need that much CPU — but the measured data confirms the pairing still clears every practical playability bar at all three standard resolutions, with one marginal case at 4K Ultra.

Measured FPS Breakdown

All figures below are measured average frame rates from this exact configuration; minimum and maximum frame rates were not recorded in this dataset, so the averages are the full picture available.

At 1920x1080, the combo is massively over-provisioned. Low settings deliver 260.8 FPS, Medium steps down to 185.6, High lands at 159.7, and even Ultra holds 120.7. Every preset at 1080p sits at or above the 60 FPS playability threshold — Ultra alone doubles it.

At 2560x1440, the numbers compress but stay comfortable: Low returns 189.9 FPS, Medium 138.9, High 120.7, and Ultra 88.9. Again, all four presets clear 60 FPS, and Ultra clears it by a wide margin of nearly 30 frames.

At 3840x2160 the RTX 4070's 12 GB of GDDR6X across a 192-bit bus starts to feel the pressure. Low manages 120.9 FPS, Medium 89.4, High 76, and Ultra drops to 59.6 — a fraction under the 60 FPS threshold. That makes 4K Ultra the only preset/resolution combination in the entire dataset that fails the playability check, and it fails by less than half a frame per second on average.

The practical read: this is a high-refresh 1080p and 1440p build for Lockdown Protocol, and a viable 4K build if you accept High instead of Ultra.

How This Combo Ranks

Across the database, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D + RTX 4070 combination ranks 829th out of 3714 tested combos in Lockdown Protocol. That places it in roughly the top quarter of tested pairings for this game — respectable, but not elite, and the ranking reflects exactly where the bottleneck sits. The CPU side is near the top of the stack: its average benchmark score of 75779 sits at the 95th percentile versus all CPUs, with a 3DMark max-threads score of 17184, a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 42018, and a Geekbench multi-core score of 26736.

The GPU is the anchor dragging the combo down a tier. The RTX 4070's average score of 37648 puts it in the 81st percentile versus all GPUs, with a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 3854 and a PassMark G3D score of 26927. In an FPS title like Lockdown Protocol, where frame rate scales heavily with GPU capability at higher resolutions, a 95th-percentile CPU driving an 81st-percentile GPU yields a top-quartile overall result — the data is consistent on this point.

Best Settings per Resolution

Using the 60 FPS average threshold, the most demanding preset that stays playable at each resolution:

• 1920x1080 — Ultra, 120.7 FPS. No compromise needed. Ultra at 1080p delivers double the threshold, and Low settings push to 260.8 if competitive-style frame rates are the goal.
• 2560x1440 — Ultra, 88.9 FPS. Full Ultra is comfortably playable at 1440p; the margin above 60 FPS is nearly 30 frames. High settings add roughly another 32 FPS (120.7) if a high-refresh monitor is in play.
• 3840x2160 — High, 76 FPS. Ultra at 4K measured 59.6 FPS, just below the threshold, so High is the correct ceiling. Medium (89.4) or Low (120.9) remain options if headroom matters more than fidelity.

The step from 4K High to 4K Ultra costs about 16 frames on average and tips the result under the line — that single preset bump is the only meaningful sacrifice this combo makes in Lockdown Protocol.

Similar Performance Alternatives

On the CPU side, the 9950X3D's nearest rivals by average score are the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 9755 (75738, within 0.1%), the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 9755X3D (75716, within 0.1%), the AMD EPYC 8224P (75582, within 0.3%), and the Intel Core Ultra 9 285 (75488, within 0.4%). Any of these processors would deliver statistically indistinguishable CPU-side performance in Lockdown Protocol — the deltas are a fraction of a percent, well below run-to-run variance in most game benchmarks.

On the GPU side, the closest matches to the RTX 4070 are the NVIDIA Tesla P4 (within 0.1%), the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 (within 0.4%), the AMD Radeon PRO W6400 (1.3% slower on average), and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile (1.3% faster on average). Note that raw average scores cluster these cards together, but gaming behavior in a current DirectX 12 Ultimate title like Lockdown Protocol can differ from the aggregate compute figures — the RTX 4070's 46 RT cores, 184 tensor cores, and 12 GB of GDDR6X with 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth are the relevant specs here. Anyone building around a GPU in this scoring band should expect Lockdown Protocol results within a small margin of the numbers above, with the caveat that workstation-class parts like the Tesla P4 and Radeon PRO W6400 carry their own practical limitations for gaming builds.

CPU and GPU Roles

The GPU is clearly the limiter in this configuration, and the resolution scaling proves it. Going from 1080p to 1440p at Ultra drops the average from 120.7 to 88.9 — a 26% loss. Going from 1440p to 4K at Ultra drops it further to 59.6, a 33% additional loss. If the CPU were the constraint, frame rates would flatten at higher resolutions; instead they fall steeply, which is the classic signature of GPU-bound behavior.

Preset scaling tells the same story. At 1080p, Low-to-Ultra spans 260.8 down to 120.7 — a 54% reduction from pure graphics load with the CPU held constant. The 9950X3D never runs out of headroom: even at Low settings and 1080p, where CPU demand peaks at 260.8 FPS, the 16-core, 32-thread Zen 5 processor with a 1292 single-thread 3DMark score and a 3064 Geekbench single-core score keeps feeding frames.

The conclusion for buyers is straightforward. For Lockdown Protocol specifically, the 9950X3D is overkill — a CPU a few tiers down the stack would produce nearly identical frame rates, because at 1440p and 4K the RTX 4070 sets the ceiling. If this build is primarily for this game, GPU upgrades move the needle; CPU downgrades free up budget without costing frames. The CPU justifies itself only in workloads that use its multi-threaded throughput (a PassMark multithread score of 70255, Cinebench R23 multi-core of 42018), not in this title.

FAQ

Q: Can the RTX 4070 run Lockdown Protocol at 4K Ultra?

A: Not quite. The measured average is 59.6 FPS, just under the 60 FPS playability threshold. High settings at 4K average 76 FPS and are the recommended ceiling.

Q: What is the best settings choice at 1440p?

A: Ultra, averaging 88.9 FPS. All four presets are playable at 2560x1440, so there is no reason to drop below Ultra unless targeting a high-refresh rate, where High delivers 120.7 FPS.

Q: Is this combo bottlenecked?

A: Yes, by the GPU. Frame rates drop 26% from 1080p to 1440p and another 33% from 1440p to 4K at Ultra settings, while the 95th-percentile CPU maintains headroom throughout. The GPU sits in the 81st percentile versus all GPUs.

Q: How high do frame rates go at 1080p?

A: Low settings at 1920x1080 average 260.8 FPS, Medium 185.6, High 159.7, and Ultra 120.7 — suitable for high-refresh displays at any preset.

Q: How does this combo rank against other tested pairings?

A: It ranks 829th out of 3714 tested combos in Lockdown Protocol, placing it in roughly the top quarter of the database.

Q: Would a different CPU change the results?

A: Unlikely to a measurable degree. Nearest-rival CPUs such as the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 9755 and Intel Core Ultra 9 285 score within 0.4% of the 9950X3D on average, and the game is GPU-bound at every resolution tested anyway.