Lockdown Protocol

The Intel Core Ultra 5 235 paired with the AMD Radeon RX 7700 delivers a robust 1080p and 1440p experience in Lockdown Protocol, with 4K playable only at reduced settings. This combination lands at rank 1709 out of 3714 tested combos in this game, placing it in the upper half of the field. The CPU’s 89th percentile standing among all tested processors contrasts sharply with the GPU’s 58th percentile, which hints at a pairing where the processor has more headroom than the graphics card. Lockdown Protocol, an FPS title, scales predictably with resolution, and the measured data shows exactly where this combo’s limits lie.

Best Settings per Resolution

At 1920x1080, this system can push Ultra settings and still hold an average of 93 FPS. That clears the 60 FPS playability threshold by a wide margin, and it is the highest quality preset available in the measurement set. High settings run at 124 FPS average, Medium at 142 FPS, and Low at 200 FPS, but since Ultra already delivers a smooth, high-detail experience, there is no reason to step down unless you are chasing refresh rates above 93 FPS.

Moving to 2560x1440, Ultra remains achievable with an average of 68 FPS. That is just above the 60 FPS line, so you get the full visual fidelity at 1440p without dropping settings. Medium runs at 104 FPS, High at 91 FPS, and Low at 147 FPS, confirming that the GPU has enough headroom at this resolution to handle the most demanding preset while keeping frame pacing tight. The 68 FPS average at Ultra is the best playable setting, though you sacrifice minimal visual quality if you drop to High for extra margin.

At 3840x2160, Ultra falls to 44 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold and not playable by the benchmark’s standard. Medium is the best setting that stays playable, with an average of 67 FPS, which also shows a minimum of 57 FPS and a maximum of 77 FPS. Low runs at 95 FPS, and High runs at 59 FPS, which is just under the threshold and therefore not considered playable. The verdict for 4K is Medium, as it is the most demanding preset that keeps the average above 60 FPS, though the 57 FPS minimum indicates occasional dips below the line.

Similar Performance Alternatives

The CPU’s nearest rivals in aggregate benchmark performance are very tight. The AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 scores 46030, which is just 0.1 percent lower than the Core Ultra 5 235’s 46062 average. The Intel Core i9-13900HX scores 46098, a 0.1 percent difference in the opposite direction. The AMD EPYC 4364P scores 45970, which is 0.2 percent lower, and the AMD EPYC 7303 scores 45960, also 0.2 percent lower. These deltas are negligible; any of these CPUs would behave nearly identically in Lockdown Protocol, since the game’s frame pacing at the tested settings is unlikely to be sensitive to such small differences in synthetic multi-threaded tests.

The GPU’s nearest rivals show more variance. The AMD Radeon R9 370X scores 15862 on average, which is 0.1 percent higher than the RX 7700’s 15852, making it essentially a direct swap in terms of aggregate performance. The AMD Radeon RX 9060 scores 16014, which is 1 percent higher, meaning it would deliver roughly one percent more frames in GPU-bound scenarios. The AMD Radeon Pro W5500 scores 15679, which is 1.1 percent lower, and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti scores 16129, which is 1.7 percent higher. For Lockdown Protocol, these rivals would produce very similar average FPS at each resolution and preset, with the RTX 3060 Ti potentially giving a couple of extra frames and the Pro W5500 a couple fewer.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured data covers three resolutions and four quality presets, with average FPS for all combinations and min/max values only for Medium settings. At 1920x1080, Low settings produce an average of 200 FPS, which is the highest frame rate recorded for this combo. Medium averages 142 FPS, with a minimum of 121 FPS and a maximum of 163 FPS. High averages 124 FPS, and Ultra averages 93 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium is 58 FPS, indicating that Medium introduces substantial rendering work, while the drop from Medium to High is only 18 FPS, and from High to Ultra it is 31 FPS. The scaling is not linear; the jump from Low to Medium is the most costly, suggesting that Medium enables more advanced lighting or shadow effects that heavily tax the GPU.

At 2560x1440, Low averages 147 FPS, which is exactly 147 FPS, and Medium averages 104 FPS with a minimum of 88 FPS and a maximum of 120 FPS. High averages 91 FPS, and Ultra averages 68 FPS. The difference between Low and Medium at 1440p is 43 FPS, between Medium and High is 13 FPS, and between High and Ultra is 23 FPS. The absolute frame rates are lower than at 1080p by roughly 25 to 30 percent across presets, which is consistent with the pixel count increase from 1920x1080 (about 2.1 million pixels) to 2560x1440 (about 3.7 million pixels), a 1.78x increase, yet the FPS does not drop by that factor, indicating that the GPU has enough bandwidth and shading power to handle the resolution increase better than a straight pixel scaling would suggest.

At 3840x2160, Low averages 95 FPS, Medium averages 67 FPS with a minimum of 57 FPS and a maximum of 77 FPS, High averages 67 FPS, and Ultra averages 44 FPS. The 4K resolution has about 8.3 million pixels, which is 2.25 times the pixel count of 1440p, but the FPS drop from 1440p to 4K is larger than that factor. For Medium, the drop is from 104 FPS to 67 FPS, a 36 percent reduction, while the pixel increase is 125 percent. This suggests that at 4K, the GPU’s memory bandwidth and shading output become the limiting factor, and the scaling is no longer sub-linear. The fact that High at 4K is 67 FPS and Medium is also 67 FPS is notable; the two presets produce identical averages, though the Medium has recorded min and max values, and the High does not. This could indicate that High and Medium share many rendering paths or that measurement variance is hiding a slight difference.

The minimum FPS data, available only for Medium, shows 57 FPS at 4K, 88 FPS at 1440p, and 121 FPS at 1080p. The 4K minimum is below the 60 FPS threshold, so even though the average is 67 FPS, players will experience occasional dips below 60 FPS. The 1440p minimum of 88 FPS and the 1080p minimum of 121 FPS show that those configurations have much more consistent frame pacing. The maximum values follow the same order: 77 FPS at 4K, 120 FPS at 1440p, and 163 FPS at 1080p. The range from min to max at 4K Medium is 20 FPS, at 1440p it is 32 FPS, and at 1080p it is 42 FPS, indicating that lower resolutions allow for wider swings in frame rate, likely due to less GPU bottlenecking.

The Verdict

Can this PC run Lockdown Protocol? Yes, for 1080p and 1440p, it can run every preset at or above 60 FPS. At 1920x1080, Ultra averages 93 FPS, which is 33 FPS above the threshold, and all other presets are well above 60 FPS. At 2560x1440, Ultra averages 68 FPS, which is 8 FPS above the threshold, and the other presets are all above 90 FPS, so the system is fully playable at 1440p with maximum detail. At 3840x2160, only Low and Medium are playable per the verdict data. Medium averages 67 FPS, which clears the line, but its minimum is 57 FPS, so it is playable but with occasional drops below 60 FPS. High at 4K averages 59 FPS, which is just under the threshold, so it is not listed as playable, and Ultra at 4K averages 44 FPS, which is unplayable by this metric.

The practical takeaway is that this combo is a 1080p and 1440p machine for Lockdown Protocol. At 1080p, you can turn everything to Ultra and forget about settings. At 1440p, you also run Ultra, but you are close to the edge; if you prefer a locked 60 FPS over average frames, dropping to High at 91 FPS gives you a 23 FPS buffer over the threshold. For 4K, you are limited to Medium, and even then, the minimum FPS suggests you may see stutters in demanding scenes. If you have a 120Hz or 144Hz monitor at 1080p, the Low preset at 200 FPS or Medium at 142 FPS will let you take full advantage of it, but High and Ultra will not hit 120 FPS consistently.

CPU and GPU Roles

The data shows that the GPU is the dominant bottleneck at higher resolutions and presets. At 1080p Low, the system produces 200 FPS, which is very high and suggests that the CPU is able to feed the GPU efficiently. As the resolution increases, the FPS drops steeply, which is typical of a GPU-bound scenario. For example, at Ultra settings, the FPS drops from 93 at 1080p to 68 at 1440p to 44 at 4K. That scaling is driven by the GPU’s rendering load, since the same CPU is handling the same game logic and draw call overhead at all resolutions.

However, the CPU’s role becomes more apparent at lower resolutions and presets. At 1080p Low, the system hits 200 FPS, which is likely close to a CPU limit for this combination, because the GPU has less work to do and the frame rate is capped by how quickly the CPU can submit frames. The difference between 1080p Low at 200 FPS and 1440p Low at 147 FPS is significant, but the difference between 1440p Low and 4K Low is only 52 FPS, which is less than the pixel count increase would suggest. This indicates that at Low settings, the GPU still has headroom, and the CPU’s ability to process the game’s logic becomes a larger factor at higher frame rates.

Comparing presets, the scaling from Low to Ultra at 1080p is from 200 FPS down to 93 FPS, a 107 FPS drop. At 1440p, the drop is from 147 FPS to 68 FPS, a 79 FPS drop. At 4K, the drop is from 95 FPS to 44 FPS, a 51 FPS drop. The absolute drop is smaller at higher resolutions because the GPU is already more loaded, so the additional costs of Ultra settings have a smaller relative impact. The CPU has a 14-core, 14-thread configuration with a 5.00 GHz boost clock, and the benchmark data shows that it ranks in the 89th percentile, but for this game, the GPU is the primary factor in determining playability at 4K and Ultra presets.

The fact that Medium at 1080p has a minimum of 121 FPS and maximum of 163 FPS, while High and Ultra have no recorded min and max, suggests that the game’s frame time variance is higher at Medium. This is likely due to the CPU and GPU load balancing. At Medium, the GPU is less stressed than at Ultra, so the CPU can occasionally become the limiting factor, leading to frame time spikes. At Ultra, the GPU is consistently busy, so the frame output is smoother. The same pattern appears at 1440p, where Medium’s min is 88 FPS and max is 120 FPS, showing a 32 FPS variance, while at 1080p the variance is 42 FPS. At 4K Medium, the variance is 20 FPS. This indicates that at lower resolutions, the CPU is contending with the GPU for frame control, and the game’s rendering engine may have inconsistent frame dispatch.

How This Combo Ranks

This particular CPU and GPU combination is ranked 1709 out of 3714 tested combos for Lockdown Protocol. That places it in the 46th percentile, which is almost exactly the middle of all tested systems. Given that the CPU is in the 89th percentile and the GPU is in the 58th percentile, the combo’s rank is dragged down by the GPU’s more modest standing. The fact that the GPU sits at the 58th percentile and has rivals like the RTX 3060 Ti, which is 1.7 percent faster, means that many other systems with stronger GPUs would rank higher.

The rank of 1709 suggests that about half of the tested combinations perform better in this game. However, the top half includes many systems with much more powerful GPUs, such as the RTX 4060 Ti or higher. The RX 7700’s 16 GB of memory is a plus, but the game’s performance at 4K is not memory-bound, as shown by the 59 FPS at High and 44 FPS at Ultra. The combo’s rank is not a verdict of failure; it simply indicates that there are many combos with faster GPUs. In the context of the game’s requirements, this combo still achieves 60 FPS at 1080p and 1440p Ultra, which is a positive result for a mid-range GPU.

The delta between this combo’s rank and the individual component percentiles shows a system that is CPU-heavy. For players who are upgrading from a older system, the Core Ultra 5 235 provides strong single-thread performance, which is evidenced by the 5.00 GHz boost and the 89th percentile ranking. But in Lockdown Protocol, the GPU handles the pixel load, and the RX 7700’s 58th percentile means it is not a top-tier GPU. The combo’s rank of 1709 is thus a realistic reflection of the graphics card’s limits at 4K and Ultra settings, while the CPU ensures that the frame rate is not artificially limited at lower resolutions. If you were to pair this CPU with a faster GPU, the rank would improve substantially, but as configured, it is a balanced mid-range setup that excels at 1080p and 1440p.