Lockdown Protocol

Lockdown Protocol is a fast-paced FPS where frame pacing and responsiveness directly affect aim and movement. For the AMD Ryzen 5 5500 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER combination, the measured data reveals a clear performance hierarchy across presets and resolutions. This analysis covers the optimal settings, CPU behavior, and how this specific pairing stacks up against other tested configurations.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark results show that the High preset delivers the best balance of visual fidelity and frame rate across all three tested resolutions. At 1920x1080, High produces 191.5 FPS average, which is 50 FPS below the Low preset's 241.4 FPS but still far above the 144Hz threshold most competitive players target. The gap between High and Ultra at 1080p is 48.6 FPS (191.5 vs 142.9), meaning Ultra costs significant performance without a proportional visual return in a game where speed matters more than subtle shadow quality.

At 2560x1440, the High preset maintains 137.5 FPS average, which remains playable on high-refresh monitors. The Medium preset at this resolution hits 163.1 FPS, making it the better choice for players with 165Hz displays who want to maximize refresh rate utilization. The Ultra preset at 1440p drops to 102.5 FPS, which is still smooth but starts to sacrifice the responsiveness needed for close-quarters firefights.

For 4K (3840x2160), High is the only sensible preset. It produces 92.5 FPS average, which is above the 60 FPS baseline but below what competitive players would want. The Medium preset at 4K yields 106 FPS, which is the best option if the display supports higher refresh rates at that resolution. Low at 4K reaches 147.4 FPS, but the visual downgrade is substantial enough that most users would prefer the Medium or High presets. Ultra at 4K drops to 68.7 FPS, which is too low for a game where reaction time is critical.

The data suggests that High is the default recommendation for most users, with Medium serving as the fallback if your monitor's refresh rate exceeds what High can deliver at your chosen resolution. Low is only advisable for extreme competitive play at 1080p, where the 241.4 FPS average ensures the GPU is never a bottleneck.

FAQ

Q: Is this CPU-GPU combo capable of 144Hz gaming in Lockdown Protocol?

A: Yes, at 1080p with High settings, the combo achieves 191.5 FPS average, and at 1440p with High settings, it reaches 137.5 FPS. For a strict 144Hz target at 1440p, switching to Medium (163.1 FPS) provides comfortable headroom.

Q: What is the best preset for 4K gaming with this setup?

A: Medium is the strongest 4K option, delivering 106 FPS average. High is acceptable at 92.5 FPS, while Ultra drops to 68.7 FPS, which is below the smoothness most players require for this genre.

Q: How does the Ryzen 5 5500's single-thread performance influence the game?

A: The CPU's single-thread score in Cinebench R23 is 2319, and its 3DMark single-thread score is 836. This places it in the 79th percentile of all CPUs, meaning it provides sufficient per-core speed to feed the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER in most scenarios, though the GPU remains the primary driver of frame rates.

Q: Does the 16 GB of VRAM matter for this game?

A: The RTX 4070 Ti SUPER has 16 GB of GDDR6X memory with 672.3 GB/s bandwidth. Lockdown Protocol's measured frame rates at 4K Ultra (68.7 FPS) versus 4K High (92.5 FPS) suggest that memory capacity is not a limiting factor, as the performance drop is more attributable to compute load than VRAM exhaustion.

Q: What is the expected frame rate at 1080p with Low settings?

A: The measured average is 241.4 FPS, which represents the maximum achievable headroom with this combo. This figure is 50 FPS higher than the High preset, indicating that Low settings remove most GPU-side bottlenecks.

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

A: It ranks 244th out of 1637 tested combos, placing it in the top 15% of all pairings. This percentile position reflects strong overall performance, though it is not at the very top tier where more powerful CPUs would eliminate any potential frame pacing issues.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture, running on the AM4 socket. Its base clock is 3.60 GHz with a boost clock of 4.20 GHz, and it has 16 MB of L3 cache. The CPU's benchmark data shows solid multi-threaded capability: Cinebench R23 multicore score of 16429 and PassMark multithread score of 19330. For a game like Lockdown Protocol, which is an FPS, the per-thread performance matters more than raw core count.

The single-thread scores are particularly relevant. The 3DMark single-thread score is 836, and Cinebench R23 single-core is 2319. These figures place the CPU in the 79th percentile of all processors, indicating it can handle game logic and physics without becoming the primary constraint. However, the measured FPS data shows that the GPU is the limiting factor at most settings and resolutions. At 1080p Low, the 241.4 FPS average suggests the CPU can still push frames beyond what many displays can show, but at 4K Ultra (68.7 FPS), the GPU is clearly the bottleneck.

The 12 threads allow for background tasks and streaming overhead without impacting frame times. The CPU's memory bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s with dual-channel DDR4 is adequate for feeding the GPU, though it is not as fast as newer platforms. The PCIe Gen 3 interface could theoretically limit data transfer to the GPU, but the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER's 16 GB frame buffer and the game's data footprint mean this is not a practical concern in the measured results.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER combination ranks 244th out of 1637 tested combos in Lockdown Protocol. This places it in the 85th percentile of all pairings, which is a strong result given the CPU's mid-range positioning. The GPU's 86th percentile ranking among all GPUs (based on average benchmark score of 48704) is the primary driver of this favorable position.

Comparing the CPU to its nearest rivals, the Ryzen 5 5500 scores nearly identically to the Intel Core i5-12500 (deltaPct of -0.1) and AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 4655GE (-0.1), while slightly edging out the AMD EPYC 7J13 (+0.1). This indicates that the processor is not a weak link in the combo; rather, it delivers performance comparable to more expensive options. The GPU, meanwhile, sits close to the NVIDIA CMP 50HX (-0.7 deltaPct) and Intel Arc A550M (-2.1 deltaPct), with the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER outperforming the RTX A2000 by 1.6% and RTX A1000 Mobile by 2%.

The rank of 244 suggests that there are 243 combos that achieve higher frame rates, likely involving more powerful CPUs like higher-core-count Ryzen 7000 or Intel 13th/14th gen parts paired with flagship GPUs. However, the gap to the top is not enormous, as the measured FPS at 1080p High (191.5) is competitive for most gaming scenarios.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals how the workload shifts between CPU and GPU. At 1080p High, the combo produces 191.5 FPS. Moving to 1440p High drops this to 137.5 FPS, a 28.2% reduction. At 4K High, the frame rate falls to 92.5 FPS, a further 32.7% drop from 1440p. This pattern indicates that the GPU is the dominant limiting factor, as the performance penalty scales with pixel count.

At Low settings, the scaling is even more pronounced: 1080p Low yields 241.4 FPS, 1440p Low drops to 215.1 FPS (10.9% reduction), and 4K Low falls to 147.4 FPS (31.5% reduction from 1440p). The smaller drop from 1080p to 1440p at Low settings (26.3 FPS) compared to High (54 FPS) suggests that at 1080p Low, the CPU begins to approach its limit, preventing the GPU from stretching its legs fully.

The Ultra preset shows the steepest declines: 1080p Ultra is 142.9 FPS, 1440p Ultra is 102.5 FPS (28.3% drop), and 4K Ultra is 68.7 FPS (33.0% drop from 1440p). This consistent ~30% reduction per resolution step at higher settings confirms that the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER's compute throughput, rather than the CPU or memory bandwidth, dictates performance at these quality levels.

Measured FPS Breakdown

1920x1080 (1080p):

• Low: 241.4 FPS average
• Medium: 211.2 FPS average
• High: 191.5 FPS average
• Ultra: 142.9 FPS average

The spread from Low to Ultra is 98.5 FPS, demonstrating that visual quality settings have a massive impact at this resolution. The jump from High to Ultra costs 48.6 FPS, which is the largest single-step penalty in the preset ladder.

2560x1440 (1440p):

• Low: 215.1 FPS average
• Medium: 163.1 FPS average
• High: 137.5 FPS average
• Ultra: 102.5 FPS average

At 1440p, the Low preset remains above 200 FPS, but Medium through High show increasingly steep diminishing returns. The gap between Medium and High is 25.6 FPS, while High to Ultra is 35 FPS.

3840x2160 (4K):

• Low: 147.4 FPS average
• Medium: 106 FPS average
• High: 92.5 FPS average
• Ultra: 68.7 FPS average

At 4K, even the Low preset cannot reach 150 FPS, and Ultra drops below 70 FPS. The difference between Medium and High at 4K is 13.5 FPS, which is the smallest relative gap across all resolutions, indicating that the GPU is so heavily loaded that preset changes have less relative impact.

Across all resolutions, the Low preset consistently delivers the highest frame rates, but the Medium preset offers the best performance-per-visual-cost tradeoff for most users, especially at 1440p and 4K where the differences between Medium and High are more pronounced. The measured data shows no minimum or maximum FPS values, so the averages represent the sustained performance level for each configuration.