Lockdown Protocol

The AMD Ryzen 5 8400F paired with the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX delivers a robust 1080p and 1440p experience in Lockdown Protocol, with the data indicating a clear shift in system bottleneck as resolution climbs. At 1080p, the combination produces frame rates from 139.8 FPS on Ultra to 288 FPS on Low, suggesting substantial headroom in the CPU’s single-thread performance. The 8400F’s 3DMark single-thread score of 951 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2943 support this, as the game’s engine appears capable of feeding the GPU at lower resolutions. However, the scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a steep drop-off, with the Ultra preset falling from 139.8 FPS to 67.7 FPS, a reduction of approximately 51.6%. This pattern is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario at higher resolutions, where the RX 7900 XTX’s raw throughput becomes the limiting factor.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a consistent and predictable decline as resolution increases, which is typical for a fast-paced FPS title. At 1080p with Low settings, the system achieves a staggering 288 FPS, which drops to 221.1 FPS at 1440p and further to 142.1 FPS at 4K. This progression indicates that even at the lowest settings, the GPU is still heavily utilized at 4K, as the frame rate does not scale linearly with the pixel count. The gap between 1080p and 1440p is 66.9 FPS (a 23.2% reduction), while the gap between 1440p and 4K is 79 FPS (a 35.7% reduction). This non-linear scaling suggests that the RX 7900 XTX, with its 24 GB of GDDR6 memory and 960.0 GB/s bandwidth, is being pushed toward its limits at 4K, especially when the render load increases with higher settings.

The High preset tells a similar story. At 1080p, the average FPS is 190, which drops to 139.4 at 1440p (a 26.6% reduction) and then to 89.3 at 4K (a 35.9% reduction from 1440p). The relative consistency of these percentage drops across presets indicates that the game’s scaling is primarily resolution-driven, not settings-driven. The CPU, with its 6 cores and 12 threads, appears to have ample headroom at these frame rates, as evidenced by the 3DMark 16-thread score of 6091 and the PassMark multi-thread score of 24530. The data suggests that Lockdown Protocol is not heavily multi-threaded, as the difference between the 8-thread score (5275) and the max-thread score (6165) in 3DMark is modest, allowing the 8400F to maintain high minimum frame rates even when the GPU is saturated.

Interestingly, the Ultra preset at 4K yields 67.7 FPS, which is still playable but represents a significant compromise from the 105.9 FPS at 1440p. The drop from High to Ultra at 4K is 21.6 FPS (a 24.2% reduction), while the same settings change at 1080p results in a 50.2 FPS reduction (a 26.4% drop). This implies that the Ultra preset adds a near-constant workload, likely from increased shadow quality and post-processing effects, which taxes the GPU’s 61.39 TFLOPS FP32 compute capability. The RX 7900 XTX’s pixel rate of 479.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 959.2 GTexel/s are substantial, yet the data shows that 4K Ultra is the first configuration where the combination dips below the 70 FPS threshold, indicating a hard limit for high-refresh-rate 4K gaming in this title.

FAQ

Q: What is the average frame rate at 1440p with High settings?

A: The measured average FPS is 139.4, placing this configuration well above the 60 FPS standard for smooth gameplay and suitable for high-refresh-rate monitors.

Q: How does the RX 7900 XTX compare to its nearest rival in terms of average benchmark score?

A: The RX 7900 XTX has an average benchmark score of 44019, which is 0.8% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile (43667) and 1.6% higher than the NVIDIA Quadro M6000 (43313). It trails the AMD Radeon Pro 580 by 0.4% (44195).

Q: Is the Ryzen 5 8400F a bottleneck at 1080p?

A: Based on the 1080p Low preset achieving 288 FPS, the CPU does not appear to be a limiting factor. The 8400F’s percentile ranking of 82 among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 25064, places it in a strong position for high-FPS gaming.

Q: What is the worst-performing settings/resolution combination in the measured data?

A: The 4K Ultra preset yields the lowest average FPS at 67.7. This is still technically playable, but it represents a 76.5% drop from the maximum measured frame rate of 288 FPS at 1080p Low.

Q: How much faster is the 8400F compared to the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X?

A: The two processors have nearly identical average benchmark scores, with the 8400F scoring 25064 and the Ryzen 7 2700X scoring 25057, resulting in a deltaPct of 0. This indicates virtually no performance difference in synthetic benchmarks.

Q: Does the game benefit from the RX 7900 XTX’s large 24 GB memory buffer?

A: The data does not show memory capacity as a limiting factor at any resolution, as the game’s frame rates are consistent with GPU compute limits rather than memory exhaustion. The 960.0 GB/s bandwidth is likely sufficient for the 4K textures used in the Ultra preset.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS rows, the optimal balance of visual fidelity and performance is achieved with the High preset at 1440p, yielding 139.4 FPS. This setting provides a 31.6% improvement over Ultra (105.9 FPS) while maintaining a significant visual boost over Medium (159.9 FPS). For users with 4K displays, the High preset at 89.3 FPS is the recommended choice, as it stays above the 60 FPS threshold and offers a 31.9% improvement over Ultra (67.7 FPS). The Medium preset at 4K (102 FPS) is a viable alternative for those prioritizing frame rate over detail, but the jump from Medium to High (12.7 FPS difference) is smaller than the jump from High to Ultra (21.6 FPS difference), suggesting diminishing returns on the highest settings.

At 1080p, the Ultra preset is viable for high-refresh-rate monitors, with 139.8 FPS, but the High preset at 190 FPS provides a better experience for 144Hz displays. The Low preset at 288 FPS is only recommended for competitive play where maximum frame rates are essential, as the visual compromise is substantial. The data indicates that the game’s settings scale is not linear; the gap between Low and Medium at 1080p is 71.3 FPS, while the gap between Medium and High is 26.7 FPS, and between High and Ultra is 50.2 FPS. This suggests that Medium is a sweet spot for budget-conscious users, but the High preset offers the best quality-per-frame-rate ratio across all resolutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full range of settings shows the system’s capability: Low averages 288 FPS, Medium 216.7 FPS, High 190 FPS, and Ultra 139.8 FPS. The spread of 148.2 FPS between Low and Ultra demonstrates that Lockdown Protocol is highly sensitive to graphical settings at this resolution. At 2560x1440, the frame rates compress slightly: Low averages 221.1 FPS, Medium 159.9 FPS, High 139.4 FPS, and Ultra 105.9 FPS. The reduction from 1080p to 1440p is most pronounced on the Low preset (66.9 FPS drop), while the Ultra preset only loses 33.9 FPS, indicating that the GPU is already partially saturated at 1440p Ultra.

Moving to 3840x2160, the hierarchy remains consistent but the absolute numbers drop significantly. Low averages 142.1 FPS, Medium 102 FPS, High 89.3 FPS, and Ultra 67.7 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is 74.4 FPS, which is a smaller absolute spread than at 1080p but represents a larger percentage reduction (52.4% vs. 51.4%). The data shows that the RX 7900 XTX can handle 4K High comfortably, but the Ultra preset pushes the GPU to its limits, with the frame rate falling below the 70 FPS mark. Across all resolutions, the Medium preset consistently offers a frame rate that is approximately 1.5 times that of Ultra, making it a strong choice for users who want a significant performance boost without a major visual downgrade.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX plays a decisive role in determining the frame rates at higher resolutions, as evidenced by the scaling data. With a boost clock of 2498 MHz and a game clock of 2365 MHz, the GPU’s RDNA 3.0 architecture delivers a measured FP32 performance of 61.39 TFLOPS, which is sufficient for high-refresh-rate 1440p gaming in this title. The 24 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 384-bit bus provides a bandwidth of 960.0 GB/s, which is likely a contributing factor to the stable frame rates at 4K, as texture streaming and buffer management benefit from the high throughput. The GPU’s 96 ray tracing cores are present, but the measured FPS data does not show a significant ray tracing workload, as the game’s performance scales primarily with resolution and rasterization settings.

The GPU’s average benchmark score of 44019 places it in the 85th percentile of all GPUs, with its nearest rival being the AMD Radeon Pro 580 (44195, deltaPct -0.4%). This indicates that the RX 7900 XTX is a top-tier performer, and the measured FPS in Lockdown Protocol aligns with this positioning. The memory clock of 2500 MHz (20 Gbps effective) ensures that the GPU is not memory-bandwidth constrained at 4K, as the frame rate drops from High to Ultra (21.6 FPS) are consistent with compute-bound behavior rather than memory exhaustion. The GPU’s pixel rate of 479.6 GPixel/s suggests that fill-rate is not a bottleneck at the tested settings, as even the 4K Ultra resolution (8.3 million pixels) would require only a fraction of this throughput to achieve the measured 67.7 FPS. The data confirms that the RX 7900 XTX is the primary driver of performance at 1440p and 4K, while the Ryzen 5 8400F’s 12 threads are sufficient to keep up with the GPU’s output at 1080p.