Lockdown Protocol

Lockdown Protocol, a 2024 FPS title, presents a demanding workload that stresses both the CPU and GPU. The pairing of the AMD Ryzen 5 2600 with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER creates a significant imbalance, with the older processor limiting the potential of the modern graphics card. This analysis examines the measured performance across resolutions and settings to characterize this combination's behavior.

Settings Recommendations

The measured frame rate data shows a clear hierarchy across the four available settings presets. At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves an average of 175.5 FPS, which is the highest recorded for this combo. The Medium preset delivers 156.3 FPS, High drops to 146.5 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 131.9 FPS. The progression is consistent: each step up in quality costs a measurable amount of performance, but the overall experience remains fluid even at the highest settings.

At 2560x1440, the pattern shifts slightly. The Low preset averages 159.3 FPS, Medium hits 141.3 FPS, High reaches 131.5 FPS, and Ultra produces 116 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra has widened compared to 1080p, indicating that the GPU is taking on more work as resolution increases. The Ultra preset at 1440p still maintains an average above 114 FPS, which is generally sufficient for a competitive FPS.

The most demanding scenario is 3840x2160, where the Ultra preset drops to 71.4 FPS. The High preset fares better at 97.2 FPS, while Medium achieves 111.5 FPS and Low reaches 134.9 FPS. For the best balance of visual fidelity and responsiveness at 4K, the High preset is the recommended choice, as it stays above the 94 FPS threshold while providing a substantial quality improvement over Low. At 1440p, the Ultra preset is acceptable given the 116 FPS average, but players seeking maximum smoothness should consider High. For 1080p, any preset works, though High offers a strong middle ground between the 146.5 FPS average and improved visuals.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER is the dominant component in this pairing, featuring 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 736.3 GB/s. Its boost clock is rated at 2550 MHz, and it is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with 10240 shading units. These specifications are more than adequate for Lockdown Protocol, as the GPU's Passmark G3D score of 34245 places it in the 88th percentile among all GPUs, with its nearest rival being the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT, which scores 53489 with a 0.2 percent delta.

The measured FPS data suggests that the GPU is rarely the bottleneck at lower resolutions. At 1080p, the difference between Low and Ultra is only 43.6 FPS (175.5 vs 131.9), which is a relatively modest 24.8 percent drop. This indicates that the CPU is limiting performance, as the RTX 4080 SUPER has ample headroom to render more frames but is being held back by the Ryzen 5 2600's processing throughput. The GPU's 52.22 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 816.0 GTexel/s texture rate are underutilized in this scenario.

As resolution increases to 1440p and 4K, the GPU's workload grows, and the performance gap between presets widens. At 4K, the spread from Low to Ultra is 63.5 FPS, a 47.0 percent reduction. This shows the RTX 4080 SUPER is becoming the limiting factor at high resolutions, but even then, the CPU still plays a role in the Ultra preset's 71.4 FPS result, which is below what the GPU alone could deliver.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1080p to 4K reveals how the system's performance scales with pixel count. At the High preset, the average FPS drops from 146.5 at 1920x1080 to 131.5 at 2560x1440, a reduction of 15 FPS. Moving from 1440p to 4K, the High preset falls further to 97.2 FPS, a drop of 34.3 FPS. This 49.3 FPS total decline from 1080p to 4K represents a 33.7 percent loss in performance, which is less than would be expected if the GPU alone were fully responsible.

The Low preset shows a different scaling pattern. At 1080p, it averages 175.5 FPS, which drops to 159.3 FPS at 1440p and then to 134.9 FPS at 4K. The total reduction from 1080p to 4K is 40.6 FPS, or 23.1 percent. This smaller percentage decrease indicates that at Low settings, the CPU is more heavily involved, and the resolution increase has less impact on the GPU-bound portion of the frame time.

The Ultra preset exhibits the steepest scaling curve. From 131.9 FPS at 1080p, it falls to 116 FPS at 1440p and then to 71.4 FPS at 4K. The 60.5 FPS total drop is a 45.9 percent reduction, which is the largest relative decline of any preset. This suggests that Ultra settings at 4K push the RTX 4080 SUPER into a more GPU-limited state, though the absolute frame rate still suffers from the CPU's inability to feed data quickly enough.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured results are as follows: Low averages 175.5 FPS, Medium averages 156.3 FPS, High averages 146.5 FPS, and Ultra averages 131.9 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra is 43.6 FPS, which is the smallest absolute gap across all resolutions. This indicates that at 1080p, the CPU is the primary constraint, and reducing graphics quality does not yield proportionally large gains.

For 2560x1440, the data shows Low at 159.3 FPS, Medium at 141.3 FPS, High at 131.5 FPS, and Ultra at 116 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 43.3 FPS, nearly identical to 1080p. However, the overall performance levels are lower, with each preset losing between 15 and 17 FPS compared to their 1080p counterparts. This consistent reduction suggests that the GPU is beginning to take on more work, but the CPU is still limiting the upper bound.

At 3840x2160, the frame rates fall more dramatically: Low achieves 134.9 FPS, Medium hits 111.5 FPS, High reaches 97.2 FPS, and Ultra drops to 71.4 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is now 63.5 FPS, showing that the GPU is more stressed at this resolution. The High preset's 97.2 FPS is notable because it is the first time a non-Low preset falls below 100 FPS, while the Ultra preset's 71.4 FPS is the only measured result below 90 FPS.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 2600 is a 6-core, 12-thread processor from the Zen+ architecture, with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 3.90 GHz. Its Cinebench R23 multicore score is 11186, and its single-core score is 1579. These scores place the CPU in the 77th percentile among all CPUs, meaning it performs better than most processors but is far from top-tier. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core i5-11600KF, has an average score of 19740, which is 0.6 percent higher.

In Lockdown Protocol, the CPU's influence is most apparent at 1080p with Low settings, where the 175.5 FPS average is likely near the processor's maximum frame generation capability. The Ryzen 5 2600's 12 threads are fully utilized in this scenario, but its older Zen cores lack the single-thread performance needed to push higher frame rates. The Passmark single-thread score of 2239 confirms this limitation, as modern CPUs often score higher in this metric.

As settings and resolution increase, the CPU's role diminishes relative to the GPU. However, the fact that the 4K Ultra preset only reaches 71.4 FPS, rather than higher, indicates that the processor still introduces frame pacing stalls. The 16 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel DDR4 memory support with 46.9 GB/s bandwidth are adequate for the game, but they do not compensate for the core architecture's age.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the Ryzen 5 2600 and RTX 4080 SUPER ranks 467th out of 1637 tested combos in Lockdown Protocol. This places it in the upper 28.5 percent of all configurations, which is respectable but not outstanding given the GPU's high-end status. The ranking reflects the bottleneck created by the CPU, as the RTX 4080 SUPER is capable of much higher performance when paired with a more modern processor.

The GPU's own benchmark scores suggest it could achieve far better results. Its Passmark G3D score of 34245 is 0.2 percent higher than the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT and 2.1 percent higher than the AMD Radeon RX 7700S. Yet in this game, the combo's rank is dragged down by the CPU's 77th percentile standing. The Ryzen 5 2600's average benchmark score of 19616 is 0.4 percent lower than the Intel Core i5-1345U and 0.6 percent lower than the Intel Core i5-11600KF, indicating it is a mid-pack performer.

The data shows that this combo is best suited for 1080p and 1440p gaming, where the CPU can keep up with the GPU's output. At 4K, the system still delivers playable frame rates on High settings, but the Ultra preset's 71.4 FPS average falls short of the smoothness expected from a top-tier GPU. The rank of 467 out of 1637 suggests that while this pairing works, it leaves significant performance on the table.