Lockdown Protocol

Lockdown Protocol, a first-person shooter released in March 2024, has been measured on a pairing of Intel's Core Ultra 9 185H and NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4070 Mobile, and the resulting dataset answers a straightforward question with welcome clarity: this laptop-class combination runs the game comfortably at 1080p and 1440p, and holds the 60 FPS line at 4K only if settings are moderated. The numbers below come from measured frame-rate data rather than estimates, which makes the scaling patterns between resolutions and presets worth examining in detail — particularly the question of where the bottleneck sits in this Meteor Lake-plus-Ada Lovelace pairing.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The full grid of measured averages covers three resolutions and four presets, and the spread is wider than many modern titles show. At 1920x1080, the combo delivers 189 FPS on Low, 134 FPS on Medium, 117 FPS on High, and 88 FPS on Ultra. Even the heaviest preset leaves a 28-frame margin above the 60 FPS playability threshold at full HD, and the Low-preset figure of 189 FPS suggests the game's engine scales settings aggressively rather than clustering all presets within a narrow band.

At 2560x1440, the averages step down to 138 FPS on Low, 98 FPS on Medium, 86 FPS on High, and 64 FPS on Ultra. The Ultra figure is the most interesting number in this tier: it clears 60 FPS, but only barely, with four frames to spare. That is close enough to the threshold that demanding scenes — and the min/max spread recorded at Medium indicates real variance exists — could push moments below 60. The Medium row is the only entry with complete min and max data at this resolution: 98 FPS average, with a minimum of 83 and a maximum of 113. That 30-frame band between worst and best moments paints a picture of a game whose frame pacing fluctuates noticeably rather than holding a flat line.

At 3840x2160, the averages fall to 89 FPS on Low, 63 FPS on Medium, 55 FPS on High, and 41 FPS on Ultra. Here the dataset includes min/max figures only for Medium: a 54 FPS minimum against a 73 FPS maximum, meaning the 63 FPS average conceals dips to just under the 60 FPS line. High at 55 FPS average sits below the threshold outright, and Ultra at 41 FPS average is squarely unplayable by the 60 FPS standard — a 22 percent shortfall against a threshold the Medium preset barely meets. The pattern across all twelve data points is consistent: each preset step costs roughly 15 to 30 FPS depending on resolution, and each resolution step costs more than any single preset change.

Best Settings per Resolution

Using the 60 FPS playability threshold, the best playable preset at each resolution is as follows. At 1920x1080, Ultra is the most demanding preset that stays at or above 60 FPS, at 88 FPS average — a clean pass with headroom to spare. At 2560x1440, Ultra again qualifies, at 64 FPS average, though the thin margin deserves a caveat: any scene more demanding than the benchmark average could dip below threshold, and a cautious player might drop to High at 86 FPS for insurance. At 3840x2160, the ceiling drops two notches: Medium is the best playable preset at 63 FPS average, with High at 55 FPS failing the threshold and Ultra at 41 FPS falling well short. The verdict data confirms this exactly, listing Low and Medium as the playable settings at 4K, with Medium designated best at 63 FPS.

There is a curiosity here worth flagging. The 4K Medium minimum of 54 FPS is technically below the 60 FPS threshold even though the average clears it. Whether that matters depends on tolerance for occasional dips; strictly interpreted against minimums, only Low at 89 FPS average is comfortably safe at 4K, since no min/max data exists for that row to contradict it.

CPU and GPU Roles

Which component limits this game on this hardware? The scaling evidence points firmly at the GPU as resolution rises, with the CPU mattering more — though never critically — at 1080p. Consider the resolution ladder at a fixed preset. On Ultra, frame rates go 88, 64, and 41 FPS across 1080p, 1440p, and 4K — a 53 percent drop from 1080p to 4K. On Low, the ladder runs 189, 138, and 89 FPS, a 53 percent drop again. When frame rate halves-plus as pixel count quadruples, the GPU is the constraint, since a CPU-limited configuration would flatten out at higher resolutions instead of degrading proportionally.

The CPU side of the story is told by the top of the ladder. At 1080p Low, the combo reaches 189 FPS — high enough that the Core Ultra 9 185H, with its 16 cores, 22 threads, and 5.10 GHz boost clock, is not capping the game at conventional frame rates. The Ultra 9 185H sits in the 85th percentile against all CPUs in the database, with an average benchmark score of 35670, and its single-thread results (1810.5 in Cinebench R23, 3697 in PassMark single-thread) indicate the per-core throughput a fast-paced FPS typically leans on. Nothing in the measured data suggests the processor is the limiter at any resolution; the RTX 4070 Mobile, at the 73rd percentile against all GPUs with an average score of 27435, is the component whose capabilities map directly onto the observed frame-rate curve.

The preset scaling tells the same story from the other direction. Dropping from Ultra to Low at 4K more than doubles the frame rate, from 41 to 89 FPS — a 117 percent gain from settings alone. Visual settings burden the GPU almost exclusively, so a settings-driven doubling of throughput at fixed resolution is further evidence that the rendering load, not the compute load, is what this combo negotiates.

Similar Performance Alternatives

For anyone shopping near this hardware, the rival data sketches the equivalence class. On the CPU side, the Core Ultra 9 185H's nearest neighbors are remarkably tight: the AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 350 scores within 0.1 percent, the Intel Core 7 250H within 0.2 percent, the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845 within 0.4 percent, and the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X within 0.7 percent. All four sit essentially level on aggregate benchmark score, meaning any of them paired with comparable graphics would be expected to produce similar Lockdown Protocol results — and given the GPU-bound character of the data, the CPU choice in this range likely matters even less than the scores imply.

On the GPU side, the RTX 4070 Mobile's rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT at an identical average score (0 percent delta), the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 at 0.5 percent behind in delta terms, the NVIDIA RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell, and the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 20. The RX 6700 XT equivalence is the most actionable: a desktop built around that card should reproduce these frame rates closely, assuming the CPU is in the Ultra 9 185H's equivalence band. The RTX 4070 Mobile itself brings 4608 shading units, 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus with 256 GB/s of bandwidth, and 15.62 TFLOPS of FP32 throughput — the raw ingredients behind the measured curve.

How This Combo Ranks

Out of 3714 tested hardware combinations for Lockdown Protocol, this pairing ranks 2043rd. That places it below the median — roughly the 55th percentile from the bottom, or equivalently in the bottom half of the ranked field. For a mobile CPU paired with a mobile GPU, that positioning is unsurprising: laptop configurations compete in rankings against desktop rigs with far greater thermal and power headroom. The RTX 4070 Mobile operates at a 115 W TDP and the Ultra 9 185H at 45 W, and the ranking reflects those constraints. The more meaningful read is that a bottom-half-ranked combo still delivers every preset at 1080p and 1440p above 60 FPS, which says something encouraging about how well Lockdown Protocol scales down — or, alternatively, how modest its demands are relative to the GPU horsepower high-end combos bring to it.

The Verdict

Yes, this PC can run Lockdown Protocol, with resolution-dependent qualifications. At 1920x1080, every preset clears 60 FPS, up to Ultra at 88 FPS average. At 2560x1440, every preset again clears the threshold, though Ultra at 64 FPS is a marginal pass and High at 86 FPS is the safer ceiling. At 3840x2160, only Low (89 FPS) and Medium (63 FPS) are playable, with the Medium minimum of 54 FPS hinting at occasional sub-60 dips; High at 55 FPS and Ultra at 41 FPS fall short. The practical prescription: play at 1080p or 1440p with settings near maximum, or accept Medium at 4K. For a genre where fast, consistent frame delivery matters, the 1440p High-to-Ultra window of 64 to 86 FPS represents the sweet spot this hardware earns.

FAQ

Q: Can the Core Ultra 9 185H + RTX 4070 Mobile run Lockdown Protocol at 4K?

A: Partially. Low (89 FPS) and Medium (63 FPS) average above 60 FPS, but High (55 FPS) and Ultra (41 FPS) do not. The recorded Medium minimum of 54 FPS also dips just below the threshold.

Q: What is the best playable preset at 1440p?

A: Ultra, at 64 FPS average — but the margin over 60 is only four frames, so High at 86 FPS is the more robust choice.

Q: How does frame rate scale from 1080p to 4K?

A: Sharply. On Ultra the averages fall from 88 to 64 to 41 FPS across the three resolutions, a pattern consistent with the GPU being the limiting component at higher resolutions.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU more important for this game on this hardware?

A: The GPU. Frame rates drop by roughly half from 1080p to 4K at every preset, while even 1080p Low reaches 189 FPS — indicating the Core Ultra 9 185H is not the bottleneck.

Q: How does this combo rank among tested configurations for this game?

A: Rank 2043 out of 3714 combinations, placing it in the lower half of the field — expected for a mobile CPU and mobile GPU competing largely against desktop hardware.

Q: What similar GPUs would deliver comparable performance?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT matches the RTX 4070 Mobile's average benchmark score exactly (0 percent delta), with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 and RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell also within about one percent.