Lockdown Protocol

Lockdown Protocol, an FPS released in 2024, places significant demands on both processor and graphics hardware. In this analysis, the combination of the AMD Ryzen 7 5700X and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is evaluated through measured frame rates across three resolutions and four quality presets. The data reveals a system that is overwhelmingly GPU-bound at higher resolutions, while the CPU's capabilities become more apparent at 1080p. The benchmark results indicate a pairing that delivers exceptionally high performance across the board, though the scaling patterns highlight where each component's headroom begins and ends.

Resolution Scaling

The measured frame rates show a clear and predictable pattern of performance degradation as resolution increases, but the magnitude of that drop is telling. At the High preset, the transition from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 results in a decrease from 220.7 FPS to 172.7 FPS, a reduction of approximately 21.8%. Moving further to 3840x2160 yields 111.7 FPS, which is a 49.4% drop from the 1080p figure. This scaling indicates that the RTX 5090 is the primary limiting factor at 4K, as the workload on the GPU's shading units, texture units, and ROPs increases dramatically with pixel count.

The Low preset demonstrates even steeper scaling, with 264 FPS at 1080p falling to 240.9 FPS at 1440p and then to 178.7 FPS at 4K. The 32.3% decline from 1080p to 4K at Low settings suggests that even with reduced graphical complexity, the sheer pixel throughput required at 3840x2160 begins to saturate the GPU's capabilities. Conversely, the Ultra preset shows the most significant absolute drop, going from 180 FPS at 1080p to 129.6 FPS at 1440p and finally to 85.4 FPS at 4K, a 52.6% reduction. This steeper curve at Ultra indicates that the combination of high resolution and maximum visual effects creates a compounded load that heavily taxes the graphics card.

The data shows that the CPU is not the bottleneck in most scenarios. The Ryzen 7 5700X, with its 8 cores and 16 threads based on Zen 3 architecture, provides sufficient processing power to feed the RTX 5090 at 1080p, as evidenced by the 264 FPS result on Low. However, the fact that the gap between resolutions narrows as settings increase suggests that the CPU's role diminishes at higher graphical loads, where the GPU's pixel and texture processing dominates the frame time budget. The benchmark results indicate that this combo is well-balanced for 1440p and 4K gaming, with the GPU being the clear performance ceiling at these resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

Examining the measured rows, the Medium preset offers the most compelling balance between visual fidelity and raw performance. At 2560x1440, Medium delivers 198.7 FPS, which is 13.1% higher than High's 172.7 FPS and 34.8% higher than Ultra's 129.6 FPS. This margin is substantial enough to justify the visual downgrade for competitive play, especially in a fast-paced FPS where higher frame rates translate directly to smoother aim and reduced input latency. The data suggests that Medium provides nearly 200 FPS at the popular 1440p resolution, a figure that exceeds the refresh rate of most high-end monitors.

At 1920x1080, the Medium preset achieves 234.5 FPS, which is within 11.2% of the Low preset's 264 FPS. Given that Low settings typically strip away ambient occlusion, shadows, and texture detail, the performance gain from dropping from Medium to Low is relatively modest at this resolution. The High preset at 1080p delivers 220.7 FPS, which is still above the 200 FPS threshold, making it a viable option for players who prioritize image quality. However, the Ultra preset at 1080p yields 180 FPS, which, while still high, represents a 23.2% reduction from Medium.

For 4K gaming, the data strongly favors the High preset. The 111.7 FPS at High is 30.8% higher than Ultra's 85.4 FPS, and it remains above the 100 FPS mark that many consider the minimum for a smooth experience on high-refresh-rate 4K displays. The Medium preset at 4K achieves 127.8 FPS, but the visual compromise at this resolution may not be worth the additional 14.4% performance gain over High. The Low preset at 4K produces 178.7 FPS, but this configuration is likely to introduce noticeable visual artifacts and reduced draw distances, which can be detrimental in a tactical FPS where spotting enemies at range is crucial. The benchmark results indicate that High at 4K and Medium at 1440p are the optimal choices for this hardware combination.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture and fabricated on a 5 nm process, is the dominant component in this pairing. Its 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus provides a bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s, which is more than sufficient for Lockdown Protocol's texture and geometry data at any resolution. The memory clock operates at 1750 MHz with 28 Gbps effective transfer, and the GPU's base clock of 2017 MHz boosts to 2407 MHz under load. These specifications manifest in the measured results, where the GPU's 104.8 TFLOPS of FP32 compute power drives the high frame rates observed.

The GPU's 21760 shading units, 680 TMUs, and 176 ROPs are the key architectural components that determine rasterization performance. The pixel rate of 423.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 1,636.8 GTexel/s directly correlate with the frame rates seen across different settings. At Ultra settings, the increased texture filtering and pixel shading demands reduce the average FPS by 23.4% compared to High at 1440p (129.6 vs 172.7), illustrating how the TMUs and shading units become saturated with higher-quality assets and effects. The RTX 5090's 170 RT cores and 680 tensor cores are present but are not explicitly exercised in these standard rasterization benchmarks.

The VRAM capacity of 32 GB is a significant asset, as Lockdown Protocol at Ultra settings with high-resolution textures can consume substantial memory. The data shows that even at 4K Ultra, the GPU does not appear to be memory-limited, as the frame rate drops are consistent with compute and bandwidth limitations rather than VRAM swapping. The 575 W TDP and 950 W suggested PSU rating indicate that this is a power-hungry card, but the performance delivery in this game justifies the power envelope. The GPU's 94th percentile ranking among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 84306, places it near the top of the performance hierarchy, and its nearest rivals—the RTX 5090 D and RTX 5050 Mobile—show negligible deltas of 0.1% and 0.2%, respectively.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete dataset provides a detailed picture of performance across all tested configurations. At 1920x1080, the frame rates span from 180 FPS at Ultra to 264 FPS at Low. The Medium preset delivers 234.5 FPS, and High produces 220.7 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 84 FPS, representing a 46.7% performance difference, which highlights the significant cost of enabling all visual effects at this resolution. The progression from Low to Medium to High to Ultra shows incremental drops of 29.5, 13.8, and 40.7 FPS respectively, indicating that the jump from High to Ultra is the most expensive in terms of frame rate.

At 2560x1440, the results show 240.9 FPS at Low, 198.7 FPS at Medium, 172.7 FPS at High, and 129.6 FPS at Ultra. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p at each preset is consistent, with reductions of 8.8% at Low, 15.3% at Medium, 21.8% at High, and 28.0% at Ultra. The larger percentage drop at higher settings confirms that the additional pixel count exacerbates the GPU load more when graphical complexity is already high. The 1440p Ultra figure of 129.6 FPS is notable, as it is only 16.0% higher than the 4K High result of 111.7 FPS, suggesting that Ultra at 1440p is nearly as demanding as High at 4K.

At 3840x2160, the frame rates are 178.7 FPS at Low, 127.8 FPS at Medium, 111.7 FPS at High, and 85.4 FPS at Ultra. The 4K Ultra result is the lowest in the entire dataset, falling below the 90 FPS threshold that is often cited as the minimum for a responsive gaming experience at high refresh rates. The scaling from 1440p to 4K shows reductions of 25.8% at Low, 35.7% at Medium, 35.3% at High, and 34.1% at Ultra. This consistent 25-36% drop across all presets indicates that the 4K pixel workload is a uniform challenge for the GPU, regardless of the visual complexity setting.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the database of tested combinations for Lockdown Protocol, this pairing of the AMD Ryzen 7 5700X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 achieves a combo rank of 56 out of 1637 tested configurations. This places the combo in the top 3.4% of all tested systems, a strong result that underscores the high-performance nature of both components. The CPU's percentile ranking of 83 among all processors, with an average benchmark score of 26214, shows that the Ryzen 7 5700X is a solid mid-range performer, while the GPU's 94th percentile ranking puts it in the elite tier of graphics cards.

The CPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks include the Intel Core i9-11900KF with a delta of 0.1%, the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X with a delta of -0.2%, and the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U with a delta of -0.2%. These negligible differences in average benchmark scores indicate that the Ryzen 7 5700X performs on par with these alternatives in general compute tasks. However, the measured FPS in Lockdown Protocol shows that this CPU is more than adequate to avoid bottlenecking the RTX 5090, as evidenced by the 264 FPS result at 1080p Low, which is likely near the game's engine limit.

The GPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks are the RTX 5090 D (delta 0.1%), RTX 5050 Mobile (delta 0.2%), and AMD Radeon PRO W6600 (delta 1.3%). These close scores in general benchmarks translate to similarly close gaming performance, but the RTX 5090's massive VRAM pool and bandwidth give it an edge in memory-intensive scenarios like 4K Ultra textures. The combo rank of 56 reflects the synergy between the CPU's 8-core, 16-thread configuration with its 32 MB of L3 cache and the GPU's massive compute resources. This pairing is clearly optimized for high-refresh-rate 1080p and 1440p gaming, with 4K performance remaining strong at High settings, making it a versatile choice for a wide range of display configurations.