Lockdown Protocol

# Lockdown Protocol with AMD Ryzen 5 2600 + AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT

This combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 2600 and AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT produces a wide spread of frame rates across Lockdown Protocol's four quality presets and three resolutions. The measured data reveals a system that scales predictably with resolution but shows notable performance cliffs at the highest settings. Across all tested configurations, the combo ranks 1632 out of 3714 tested combinations, placing it in the 44th percentile overall. The 12 GB of VRAM and the CPU's six cores with twelve threads form the backbone of this pairing, and the benchmarks show where each component becomes the limiting factor.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K at each settings level tells a clear story about which component dominates. At Low settings, average FPS falls from 176 at 1920x1080 to 158 at 2560x1440, then to 104 at 3840x2160. That is a 41% reduction from 1080p to 4K, which is substantial but still leaves the system comfortably above 100 FPS at the highest resolution. The scaling pattern shifts at Medium settings: 155 FPS at 1080p drops to 114 at 1440p and then to 74 at 4K — a 52% total decline. High settings follow a similar trajectory with 136 FPS at 1080p, 100 at 1440p, and 64 at 4K, representing a 53% drop overall. Ultra settings show the steepest curve, starting at 102 FPS at 1080p, falling to 75 at 1440p, and bottoming out at 48 at 4K — a 53% reduction.

The consistent 52-53% drop from 1080p to 4K across Medium, High, and Ultra suggests the GPU is the primary scaling driver at those presets, since pixel count quadruples while FPS roughly halves. The Low preset's smaller 41% decline hints that at the lowest quality settings, the CPU begins to assert itself as a limiting factor at 1080p, where 176 FPS approaches what the Ryzen 5 2600 can sustain in this title. The gap between 1440p and 4K at Low settings is 54 FPS, while the same resolution gap at Ultra is only 27 FPS — this compression at higher settings further confirms that the GPU workload dominates once visual fidelity increases. The data indicates that 4K Ultra is the only configuration that falls below 60 FPS, making that the breaking point for this pairing.

GPU Role

The Radeon RX 7700 XT brings 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, delivering 432.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU's boost clock reaches 2544 MHz, with a game clock of 2171 MHz and a base clock of 1435 MHz. These specifications position the card at the 67th percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 22549. Its nearest rivals in aggregate benchmarks include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Mobile at 22435 (0.5% lower), the RTX 4060 Mobile at 22729 (0.8% higher), the RTX 2080 at 22895 (1.5% higher), and the AMD Radeon RX 5700 at 22170 (1.7% lower). The RX 7700 XT's 35.17 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 549.5 GTexel/s texture rate suggest ample compute headroom for Lockdown Protocol's rendering demands.

The VRAM capacity appears sufficient across all tested settings, as no configuration shows signs of memory-related stuttering in the measured FPS data. The 12 GB frame buffer handles 4K Ultra without collapsing to unusable levels, though the 48 FPS average indicates the GPU's raw compute, not memory capacity, is the binding constraint. The pixel rate of 244.2 GPixel/s and 96 ROPs help explain why 4K performance degrades more steeply — filling 8.3 million pixels per frame at 4K taxes the rasterization pipeline heavily. The GPU's memory clock of 2250 MHz with 18 Gbps effective speed provides the bandwidth needed to feed the shading units at high resolutions, yet the 432.0 GB/s figure falls short of what would be required to maintain 60+ FPS at 4K Ultra. At 1080p and 1440p, the GPU has significant headroom, as evidenced by the 176 FPS Low and 155 FPS Medium results at 1080p.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows reveal that Medium settings offer the best balance of frame rate stability and visual quality for most users. At 1080p Medium, the system delivers 155 FPS average with a minimum of 131 FPS and maximum of 178 FPS — the tightest min-max spread in the entire dataset, indicating consistent frame pacing. At 1440p Medium, the average sits at 114 FPS with a 97-131 range, still comfortably above 90 FPS for high-refresh displays. Even at 4K Medium, the 74 FPS average with a 63-85 range keeps gameplay fluid, though the 63 FPS minimum approaches the 60 FPS threshold.

High settings produce respectable numbers but with a larger performance penalty relative to Medium: 136 FPS at 1080p (a 12% drop from Medium), 100 at 1440p (12% drop), and 64 at 4K (14% drop). The High preset's missing min/max data in the measured rows makes it harder to assess frame stability. Ultra settings should be avoided at 4K, where the 48 FPS average falls below the playability threshold. At 1080p Ultra, the 102 FPS average is workable, but the 33% reduction from Medium's 155 FPS is steep for the incremental visual gains. For users with 144Hz displays at 1080p, Medium settings are the clear choice. For 1440p 144Hz monitors, Low settings at 158 FPS are the only way to fully saturate the refresh rate, though Medium at 114 FPS remains viable for 120Hz panels.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full settings sweep shows: Low averages 176 FPS, Medium averages 155 FPS with a 131-178 range, High averages 136 FPS, and Ultra averages 102 FPS. The 74 FPS gap between Low and Ultra at 1080p represents a 42% performance range across presets. The Medium preset's min FPS of 131 is notably higher than the High preset's average of 136, meaning Medium delivers more consistent performance than High despite the lower average. At 2560x1440, Low drops to 158 FPS, Medium to 114 FPS with a 97-131 range, High to 100 FPS, and Ultra to 75 FPS. The 83 FPS spread between Low and Ultra at 1440p shows the settings overhead grows with resolution. At 3840x2160, Low manages 104 FPS, Medium 74 FPS with a 63-85 range, High 64 FPS, and Ultra 48 FPS. The 4K results show a clear tiering: Low and Medium stay above 70 FPS, while High and Ultra fall below 65 FPS, with Ultra being the only preset that cannot maintain 60 FPS.

The Medium preset is the only settings level with complete min/max data across all three resolutions, providing the most reliable picture of frame time consistency. At 1080p Medium, the 47 FPS delta between min and max suggests moderate variance. At 1440p Medium, the 34 FPS delta indicates tighter frame pacing. At 4K Medium, the 22 FPS delta shows the narrowest relative spread, which is counterintuitive given the higher resolution — this likely reflects the GPU being fully utilized and producing more uniform frame times under sustained load. The progression from 176 FPS at 1080p Low to 48 FPS at 4K Ultra spans 128 FPS, a 73% reduction across the entire test matrix.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination ranks 1632 out of 3714 tested combos in Lockdown Protocol, placing it at roughly the 44th percentile of all pairings evaluated. This mid-pack position reflects the asymmetry between the CPU and GPU — the RX 7700 XT is a strong performer in its own right, sitting at the 67th percentile among GPUs, while the Ryzen 5 2600 lags with a 75th percentile ranking among CPUs but with a significantly older architecture. The GPU's aggregate benchmark score of 22549 is within 1.7% of the AMD Radeon RX 5700 and within 0.8% of the RTX 4060 Mobile, indicating the graphics card is competitive with mid-range offerings from both manufacturers. The CPU's average benchmark score of 21484 places it within 0.7% of the Intel Xeon D-1746TER and 1.2% of the AMD EPYC 9454, though these are server-class chips with different workload characteristics.

The rank disparity between the components and the overall combo suggests that Lockdown Protocol is sensitive to CPU performance at lower resolutions. At 1080p Low, the 176 FPS result is likely CPU-limited, as the GPU could push higher frame rates in lighter scenes. The combo's 44th percentile ranking indicates that many pairings with weaker GPUs but stronger CPUs achieve better results in this game, particularly at 1080p. At 4K, the ranking would likely improve since the GPU becomes the dominant factor and the CPU's limitations are masked by the heavier rendering load. The data shows that this combo is best suited for 1440p gaming, where the CPU can keep up with the GPU's output and the GPU has enough headroom to maintain high frame rates across most settings.

CPU Role

The Ryzen 5 2600 provides six cores and twelve threads with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 3.90 GHz. Built on the 12 nm Zen+ architecture, this 2018 processor has a 65 W TDP and supports DDR4 memory with dual-channel bandwidth of 46.9 GB/s. Its 16 MB of shared L3 cache and 512 KB L2 per core are modest by modern standards, which becomes relevant in CPU-bound scenarios at 1080p. The CPU's benchmark results show a passmark single-thread score of 2239 and a multithread score of 13160, with integer math at 44518 and floating-point math at 22942. The single-thread performance is the weakest link for gaming — at 1080p Low, the 176 FPS average likely approaches the ceiling of what this CPU can feed to the GPU.

The CPU's nearest rivals in aggregate benchmarks are the Intel Core Ultra 5 228V (0.2% higher average score), Intel Core i9-11900H (0.5% higher), and Intel Xeon D-1746TER (0.7% lower). These comparisons show the Ryzen 5 2600 remains competitive in overall throughput despite its age, but gaming performance depends heavily on single-thread speed, where the 2239 passmark score trails newer designs. In Lockdown Protocol, the CPU's 12 threads help maintain frame rates at Medium and High settings, where the additional draw calls and physics calculations benefit from parallel processing. At 4K Ultra, the CPU's role diminishes — the 48 FPS result is clearly GPU-bound, as the CPU has spare capacity to render frames that the GPU cannot produce quickly enough. The 1080p results tell the opposite story: the gap between Low (176 FPS) and Medium (155 FPS) is only 21 FPS, suggesting that as settings increase, the GPU workload grows but the CPU can still keep pace. The data indicates that users with this combo should prioritize GPU settings over resolution scaling, as the CPU can support 1440p Medium (114 FPS) and even 4K Medium (74 FPS) without becoming the bottleneck.

FAQ

Q: Can this combo run Lockdown Protocol at 4K 60 FPS?

A: Only at Medium settings, where it averages 74 FPS with a minimum of 63 FPS. At High settings, the average drops to 64 FPS, and at Ultra it falls to 48 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold.

Q: What is the best resolution for this pairing?

A: 1440p offers the best balance — Low settings hit 158 FPS, Medium averages 114 FPS with a 97-131 range, and even Ultra maintains 75 FPS. All presets at 1440p stay above 75 FPS, unlike 4K where Ultra fails to reach 60 FPS.

Q: How does the RX 7700 XT compare to its nearest GPU rivals?

A: The RX 7700 XT's average benchmark score of 22549 is 0.5% higher than the RTX 5060 Mobile, 0.8% lower than the RTX 4060 Mobile, 1.5% lower than the RTX 2080, and 1.7% higher than the RX 5700.

Q: Is the Ryzen 5 2600 holding back the RX 7700 XT?

A: At 1080p Low, the 176 FPS result suggests CPU limitation, as the GPU could likely push higher frame rates. However, at 1440p and 4K, the GPU becomes the limiting factor — the CPU supports up to 158 FPS at 1440p Low and 104 FPS at 4K Low without bottlenecking.

Q: What settings preset provides the most stable frame rates?

A: Medium settings show the most consistent performance across all resolutions, with measured min/max ranges of 131-178 at 1080p, 97-131 at 1440p, and 63-85 at 4K. The High and Ultra presets lack min/max data, making Medium the only preset with verified frame pacing.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested configurations?

A: It ranks 1632 out of 3714 combinations tested in Lockdown Protocol, placing it at approximately the 44th percentile. This mid-pack position reflects the CPU's age, as the GPU alone sits at the 67th percentile among all GPUs.