Lockdown Protocol

Lockdown Protocol, a 2024 FPS title, presents an unusual pairing when equipped with an AMD Ryzen 5 2600 and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090. The data reveals a system where the CPU’s age creates a tangible bottleneck at lower resolutions, yet the GPU’s raw power still dominates at higher settings. The benchmark results show that the optimal experience is not found at the top-end settings, but rather in a balanced configuration that mitigates the processor’s limitations.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data clearly indicates that the "Ultra" preset is counterproductive for this specific combination. At 1080p Ultra, the system delivers 134 FPS, which is actually slower than both the High preset (146.7 FPS) and the Medium preset (156.1 FPS). This inverse relationship suggests that the Ryzen 5 2600 struggles to feed the RTX 4090 enough data at this resolution, making the extra graphical load of Ultra a liability rather than an enhancement. The CPU, with its 6 cores and 12 threads, becomes the limiting factor, and the additional GPU work in Ultra only serves to expose this weakness.

The "High" preset at 1440p emerges as the most balanced choice for a high-refresh-rate experience. It achieves 134.5 FPS, which is only a 4.3% drop from the 1080p High result of 146.7 FPS. This indicates that the system is still largely CPU-bound at 1440p, and the GPU has ample headroom to handle the increased resolution without a significant performance penalty. The High preset provides a clear visual upgrade over Medium (140 FPS at 1440p) while maintaining a frame rate that is very close to the lower-resolution performance.

For players prioritizing maximum smoothness, the "Low" preset at 1080p offers the highest average FPS in the entire dataset at 173.2. However, this comes at a significant cost to visual fidelity. The data suggests that the sweet spot for this pairing is the High preset at 1440p, which offers a 20.9% improvement in FPS over the 4K High setting (134.5 vs. 106.2) while still delivering a modern visual experience. The Ultra preset should be avoided entirely, as it produces the lowest frame rates at every resolution, including a drop to 79.9 FPS at 4K.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is the dominant component in this configuration, with a massive 24 GB of GDDR6X memory and a 384-bit memory bus providing a bandwidth of 1.01 TB/s. Its Ada Lovelace architecture, built on a 5 nm process, features 16,384 shading units and a boost clock of 2520 MHz. The GPU’s performance percentile of 91 versus all other GPUs underscores its position as one of the most powerful consumer cards available, and its Passmark G3D score of 38194 reflects this raw capability.

In Lockdown Protocol, the GPU’s role is to render the game's environments and effects, and the data shows that it is more than capable of handling the title. At 4K with High settings, the RTX 4090 still manages to produce 106.2 FPS, a signal of its immense compute power. However, the benchmark results also show that the GPU is not the primary bottleneck in most scenarios. The frame rate differences between 1080p High (146.7 FPS) and 1440p High (134.5 FPS) are relatively small, suggesting that the processor is preventing the RTX 4090 from reaching its full potential. The GPU’s role is to provide a massive performance ceiling, but the CPU is holding it back from achieving it at lower resolutions.

FAQ

Q: What is the best settings preset for this CPU and GPU combination in Lockdown Protocol?

A: The "High" preset at 2560x1440 offers the best balance of visual quality and performance, delivering 134.5 FPS. The "Ultra" preset is not recommended, as it yields lower frame rates than "High" at all resolutions, including a 79.9 FPS result at 4K.

Q: Is the system more CPU-bound or GPU-bound in this game?

A: The data indicates a significant CPU bottleneck, particularly at lower resolutions. The frame rate difference between 1080p High (146.7 FPS) and 4K High (106.2 FPS) is 27.6%, which is less than might be expected from a purely GPU-limited system, showing the CPU is holding back the RTX 4090.

Q: How much performance is lost when moving from 1080p to 4K at High settings?

A: At High settings, the average FPS drops from 146.7 at 1920x1080 to 106.2 at 3840x2160. This represents a 27.6% reduction in frame rate when the resolution is quadrupled, suggesting a growing but not absolute reliance on the GPU.

Q: Does the "Ultra" preset provide any benefit at 1440p?

A: No. At 2560x1440, the Ultra preset achieves 122.6 FPS, which is lower than the High preset's 134.5 FPS. This suggests that the CPU cannot process the increased draw calls and physics load of Ultra settings fast enough to keep the GPU fully utilized.

Q: Can this system achieve a stable 144 FPS experience in Lockdown Protocol?

A: Yes, but only at lower graphical settings. The Low preset at 1440p achieves 158.4 FPS, and the Low preset at 1080p achieves 173.2 FPS. The High preset at 1440p falls short of 144 FPS, indicating that a high refresh rate monitor requires a compromise on visual fidelity.

Q: How does the RTX 4090's performance in this game compare to its overall benchmark standing?

A: The GPU has a percentile rank of 91 against all other GPUs, indicating it is in the top tier of performance. In Lockdown Protocol, it still produces over 79.9 FPS at 4K Ultra, showing it is a powerful component, but the CPU prevents it from being the sole determinant of final frame rates.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a clear picture of how this combination scales across resolutions and settings. At 1920x1080, the frame rates are consistently high, but they show a strange pattern where lower settings do not always equate to higher performance. The Low preset delivers 173.2 FPS, which is the peak for this resolution. Medium follows at 156.1 FPS, and High at 146.7 FPS. The Ultra preset is the outlier, dropping to 134 FPS, which is lower than the High preset. This suggests a CPU bottleneck that is exacerbated by the higher CPU overhead of Ultra settings.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates remain strong but begin to show more differentiation. Low settings produce 158.4 FPS, Medium produces 140 FPS, and High produces 134.5 FPS. The Ultra preset again delivers the lowest result at 122.6 FPS. The performance gap between Low and Ultra at this resolution is 22.6%, which is a more significant spread than at 1080p, indicating that the GPU is starting to take on more of the workload.

At 3840x2160, the GPU's limitations become more apparent. High settings yield 106.2 FPS, Medium yields 120.3 FPS, and Low yields 138.1 FPS. The Ultra preset produces 79.9 FPS, which is the lowest figure recorded for this configuration. The difference between Low and Ultra at 4K is a substantial 42.2%, confirming that at this resolution, the RTX 4090 is finally being fully exercised, and its performance scales more predictably with settings changes.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 2600 and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 ranks 396th out of 1637 tested combos in Lockdown Protocol. This places it in the top 24.2% of all configurations, which is a strong result but not exceptional given the power of the GPU. The ranking suggests that while the RTX 4090 is capable of producing high frame rates, the Ryzen 5 2600 is holding the system back from achieving a top-tier position.

The CPU's benchmark scores, such as its Cinebench R23 multicore score of 11186 and single-core score of 1579, place it at the 77th percentile against all CPUs. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i5-11600KF and the Intel Core i7-10700F, with a performance delta of only -0.6% and +0.7% respectively. This indicates that the Ryzen 5 2600 is a mid-range processor, and its pairing with the top-tier RTX 4090 creates a significant imbalance. The combo's rank of 396 is a direct result of this mismatch; a more modern processor would likely push this same GPU much higher in the rankings.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 2600 is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen+ architecture, with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 3.90 GHz. It has a 16 MB shared L3 cache and supports DDR4 memory. Despite being released in 2018, it remains an "Active" production part, but its performance is clearly dated. Its Passmark single-thread score of 2239 and multithread score of 13160 show that it is not a high-end processor by modern standards.

In Lockdown Protocol, the CPU's role is to handle game logic, physics, and draw calls. The benchmark data reveals that the Ryzen 5 2600 is the primary bottleneck at 1080p and 1440p. The evidence is the small performance delta between these resolutions. At 1080p High, the system produces 146.7 FPS, and at 1440p High, it produces 134.5 FPS, a drop of only 8.3%. This is far less than the 56% increase in pixel count, which would typically cause a much larger FPS drop if the GPU were the sole limiting factor. The CPU is simply unable to prepare frames fast enough to keep the RTX 4090 fully occupied, resulting in a plateau in performance.

Resolution Scaling

The resolution scaling behavior of this system is a clear indicator of its limiting component. When moving from 1080p High to 1440p High, the average FPS drops from 146.7 to 134.5, a decrease of 8.3%. When moving from 1440p High to 4K High, the FPS drops from 134.5 to 106.2, a more significant decrease of 21.0%. The total drop from 1080p to 4K is 27.6%.

This pattern is classic evidence of a CPU bottleneck at lower resolutions. The initial move to 1440p causes a minimal FPS loss because the CPU is still the limiting factor, and the GPU has enough headroom to handle the increased resolution without affecting the overall frame time. The larger drop to 4K occurs because the GPU finally becomes the bottleneck, and its workload scales more directly with resolution. If the system were purely GPU-bound, we would expect a much larger drop from 1080p to 1440p, closer to the 56% increase in pixels. Instead, the data shows that the Ryzen 5 2600 is capping performance until the resolution becomes so high that the RTX 4090's rendering workload takes over as the primary constraint.