Lockdown Protocol

Lockdown Protocol is a fast-paced FPS that stresses both CPU and GPU, and the pairing of the AMD Ryzen 7 7700 with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER delivers a highly playable experience across most settings. The benchmark data shows a clear pattern: this combo is capable of high refresh rates at 1080p, but struggles to maintain 60 FPS at 4K on the highest presets. This analysis breaks down the measured performance across resolutions and settings to identify the optimal configuration and the role each component plays.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data reveals that the "High" preset offers the best balance of visual fidelity and performance for this combo. At 1920x1080, the High preset delivers an average of 111.5 FPS, which is a substantial 38% improvement over the Ultra preset's 80.8 FPS while retaining most of the graphical enhancements. The jump from High to Ultra at 1080p costs 30.7 FPS, a significant penalty that makes Ultra hard to justify unless the user prioritizes maximum image quality over smoothness. The Medium preset at 127.6 FPS is faster, but High provides a better visual experience for only a 16.1 FPS loss.

At 2560x1440, the High preset again stands out as the sweet spot, averaging 79.4 FPS. This is comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, while the Ultra preset drops to 60.8 FPS, which is marginal and likely to dip below 60 in intense firefights. The Medium preset at 95.1 FPS is viable for competitive play, but High offers a richer visual experience without a major performance hit. For users with 1440p monitors, High is the recommended choice for a consistent and visually appealing experience.

The 4K results change the calculus entirely. At 3840x2160, the High preset averages only 50.6 FPS, which is below the ideal 60 FPS target. The Low preset at 83.4 FPS is the only 4K option that provides a truly smooth experience, but it requires significant visual compromises. The Medium preset at 56.7 FPS is playable but not ideal, and Ultra at 41.4 FPS is too demanding for this GPU. The data strongly indicates that 4K gaming with this combo is best reserved for the Low preset or for users who can tolerate frame rates below 60. For the vast majority of users, sticking to 1080p or 1440p with the High preset provides the best overall experience.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER is the primary performance limiter in this pairing, particularly at higher resolutions. With 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus and a bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s, the card has sufficient memory capacity for Lockdown Protocol at 1080p and 1440p, but the 4K data suggests it becomes constrained. The GPU's boost clock of 1770 MHz and its 2560 shading units deliver solid raw performance, placing it in the 65th percentile of all GPUs. Benchmark results show it trades blows with the NVIDIA RTX A400 (0.5% slower) and the AMD Radeon RX 5700 (2.5% faster), indicating it is a mid-range performer in the current landscape.

The FPS scaling from Low to Ultra settings highlights the GPU's workload. At 1080p, the difference between Low (178.5 FPS) and Ultra (80.8 FPS) is 97.7 FPS, showing that the card's shading and texture units are heavily taxed by the higher presets. At 1440p, the same setting range produces a 67.2 FPS spread (128.0 to 60.8 FPS), and at 4K, the spread narrows to 42.0 FPS (83.4 to 41.4 FPS). This narrowing at higher resolutions is a classic sign that the GPU is becoming fully saturated, with the pixel fill rate (113.3 GPixel/s) and texture rate (283.2 GTexel/s) being pushed to their limits. The RTX 2070 SUPER is a capable card for 1080p and 1440p gaming, but it lacks the headroom for 4K Ultra in this title.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a predictable decline as resolution increases, but the rate of decline reveals important insights about the system's bottleneck. At the High preset, the average FPS drops from 111.5 at 1080p to 79.4 at 1440p, a 28.8% decrease, and then to 50.6 at 4K, a further 36.3% decrease from 1440p. This scaling pattern is consistent with a GPU-bound scenario, where the rendering workload grows exponentially with pixel count.

However, the Low preset tells a different story. At Low settings, the FPS goes from 178.5 at 1080p to 128.0 at 1440p, a 28.3% drop, and then to 83.4 at 4K, a 34.8% drop from 1440p. The fact that the percentage drops are similar across presets suggests that the RTX 2070 SUPER is the limiting factor even at Low settings. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see a much smaller FPS difference between 1080p and 4K at Low settings, as the CPU workload would remain constant while the GPU workload increases. The data shows a consistent 2x FPS penalty when moving from 1080p to 4K across all presets, which firmly establishes the GPU as the primary constraint at all tested resolutions.

How This Combo Ranks

In the overall database of tested combinations, this specific pairing of the Ryzen 7 7700 and RTX 2070 SUPER ranks 1016 out of 1637 combos for Lockdown Protocol. This places it in the lower-middle portion of the rankings, which aligns with the GPU's mid-range standing. The rank reflects that while the CPU is a high-end performer (91st percentile), the GPU's 65th percentile score drags the overall combo down relative to systems with more powerful graphics cards.

The ranking is a direct consequence of the GPU's limitations at higher resolutions. While the combo delivers excellent 1080p performance, it falls behind combos with faster GPUs at 1440p and 4K. The data suggests that to improve the combo's rank in this game, a GPU upgrade would be more impactful than a CPU upgrade. The GPU's nearest rivals, such as the RTX 4060 Mobile (which is 2.3% faster) and the GTX TITAN Z (0.9% slower), are all in a similar performance tier, confirming that this GPU is the limiting factor in the combo's overall standing.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700 provides a strong foundation for this gaming system, and its performance data shows it is more than capable of feeding the RTX 2070 SUPER in Lockdown Protocol. With 8 cores and 16 threads based on the Zen 4 architecture, the CPU has a base clock of 3.80 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz. Its benchmark scores are impressive, including a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 29302 and a single-core score of 4136. The CPU's 32 MB of shared L3 cache and DDR5 memory support with 83.2 GB/s of bandwidth ensure that data can be fed to the GPU without creating a bottleneck.

The CPU's nearest rivals in terms of average benchmark score include the AMD Ryzen 9 7940H (0.1% faster) and the Intel Core i9-13905H (0.6% slower), showing that the 7700 sits in a competitive performance bracket. In Lockdown Protocol, the CPU's role is to handle game logic, physics, and AI, and the high multi-threaded performance (3dmark max threads score of 8479) ensures that even demanding scenes are processed quickly. The fact that the FPS scaling is so heavily dependent on resolution and settings confirms that the CPU is not the limiting factor here; the GPU is. The 7700's single-thread performance (3dmark single-thread score of 1049) is more than adequate for this FPS title, and the 16 threads provide ample headroom for background tasks and streaming. In essence, the CPU is a well-matched partner that allows the GPU to reach its full potential without holding it back.