Lockdown Protocol

Lockdown Protocol presents a clear performance hierarchy for the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 combination. The measured data shows that this pairing delivers exceptional frame rates, but the optimal settings depend heavily on the target resolution and refresh rate. At 1080p, the system is overwhelmingly CPU-bound, while at 4K, the GPU becomes the primary constraint. This analysis walks through the measured FPS data to determine the best settings for each resolution and explains the role each component plays.

Settings Recommendations

The data indicates that the High preset offers the most balanced experience across all three tested resolutions. At 1920x1080, the High preset delivers 236.8 FPS, which is 91.4 FPS higher than the Ultra preset's 178.9 FPS, while maintaining a substantial 91.4 FPS advantage over the Low preset's 328.2 FPS. The Medium preset at 1080p produces 273.3 FPS, but the visual fidelity gain from High is generally worth the 36.5 FPS reduction. At 2560x1440, High produces 176 FPS, which remains above the 144Hz refresh rate threshold for most high-refresh monitors, while Ultra drops to 133.5 FPS. The gap between High and Medium at 1440p is 21 FPS (176 vs 197), and the visual improvements from High are typically more noticeable than the frame rate difference. At 3840x2160, High delivers 111.3 FPS, which is the only preset that keeps 4K gameplay comfortably above the 60 FPS floor for smooth play; Medium drops to 130.4 FPS but the difference from High is only 19.1 FPS, while Ultra falls to 83.6 FPS. For the best experience per the measured rows, High is the recommended preset at every resolution, as it provides the highest frame rate that still maintains strong visual quality without the steep performance penalty of Ultra.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is the dominant component in this pairing, featuring 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, delivering 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth. Its boost clock of 2407 MHz, combined with 21,760 shading units and 176 ROPs, produces a pixel rate of 423.6 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 1,636.8 GTexel/s. The GPU's FP32 performance is rated at 104.8 TFLOPS. The GPU's benchmark percentile of 94 versus all GPUs places it near the top of the performance hierarchy. The measured FPS data shows the GPU's scaling behavior: at 1080p Low, the system reaches 328.2 FPS, but this drops to 178.9 FPS at Ultra, a 45.5% reduction. At 4K, the same preset swing from Low (183.8 FPS) to Ultra (83.6 FPS) represents a 54.5% decrease, confirming that the RTX 5090's raw compute is the limiting factor at higher resolutions and settings. The GPU's nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D, has an average benchmark score of 84,241, which is 0.1% lower than the RTX 5090's 84,306, indicating this card is performing essentially at parity with its closest competitor. The 32 GB VRAM capacity is well above what Lockdown Protocol requires at any tested setting, so memory capacity is not a bottleneck; instead, the GPU's shading and rasterization throughput determine frame rates at high resolutions.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K clearly illustrates the shift in bottleneck from CPU to GPU. At the High preset, the system produces 236.8 FPS at 1080p, 176 FPS at 1440p, and 111.3 FPS at 4K. This represents a 25.7% drop from 1080p to 1440p, and a further 36.8% drop from 1440p to 4K. The scaling at Low settings is even more pronounced: 328.2 FPS at 1080p, 282.5 FPS at 1440p, and 183.8 FPS at 4K. The 1080p to 1440p drop at Low is only 13.9%, but the 1440p to 4K drop is 34.9%, showing that the GPU becomes increasingly saturated as resolution rises. At Ultra settings, the pattern continues: 178.9 FPS at 1080p, 133.5 FPS at 1440p, and 83.6 FPS at 4K. The 1080p to 1440p drop at Ultra is 25.4%, while the 1440p to 4K drop is 37.4%. The data indicates that at 1080p, the CPU is the limiting component, as even the Low preset cannot push beyond 328.2 FPS due to the Ryzen 7 7700X's single-threaded performance ceiling. At 4K, the GPU is clearly the constraint, as the frame rate scales almost directly with the pixel count. The 4K Low setting (183.8 FPS) is lower than the 1080p Ultra setting (178.9 FPS) by only 4.9 FPS, suggesting that the GPU is providing roughly consistent performance per pixel regardless of settings, but the absolute workload at 4K overwhelms even this flagship card.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 ranks 9th out of 1,637 tested combos in Lockdown Protocol. This top-1% placement (rank 9 of 1,637) is consistent with the individual component performance: the CPU's average benchmark score of 34,313 places it in the 89th percentile against all CPUs, while the GPU's average score of 84,306 places it in the 94th percentile against all GPUs. The combo rank of 9 suggests that only eight other CPU-GPU pairings produce higher frame rates in this game. The CPU's nearest rival, the Intel Core Ultra 7 165H, has an average score of 34,584, which is 0.8% higher than the Ryzen 7 7700X's 34,313, but this does not translate into a higher combo rank because the GPU pairing and game-specific optimization matter more. The GPU's nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D, has a score of 84,241, which is 0.1% lower than the RTX 5090's 84,306, confirming that this is essentially the fastest GPU available for this game. The fact that this combo ranks 9th overall, despite being near the top of both component benchmarks, indicates that other high-end pairings (likely with faster CPUs) achieve slightly higher frame rates in Lockdown Protocol, particularly at lower resolutions where the CPU bottleneck is more pronounced.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700X provides 8 cores and 16 threads based on the Zen 4 architecture, with a base clock of 4.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.40 GHz. Its 32 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel DDR5 memory support (83.2 GB/s bandwidth) are well-suited for gaming workloads. The CPU's benchmark results show strong multi-threaded performance: a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 30,325 and a single-core score of 4,281. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 8,859 versus the 2-thread score of 2,112 indicates that scaling is good but not perfect, with 16-thread performance being 4.2 times the 2-thread score. In Lockdown Protocol, the CPU's role is most evident at 1080p, where the frame rates across settings cluster closely: Low (328.2 FPS), Medium (273.3 FPS), High (236.8 FPS), and Ultra (178.9 FPS). The spread from Low to Ultra is 149.3 FPS, which is much smaller than the spread at 4K (183.8 to 83.6, a difference of 100.2 FPS) when normalized per pixel. The fact that 1080p Low cannot exceed 328.2 FPS suggests the CPU's single-threaded performance is the limiting factor, as even the RTX 5090 has headroom at this resolution. The CPU's single-thread benchmark scores (Cinebench R23 single-core of 4,281 and PassMark single-thread of 4,190) are moderate for a modern processor, and this likely caps the maximum frame rate at low resolutions. The nearest CPU rival, the Intel Core i5-13500, has an average score of 34,175, which is 0.4% lower than the Ryzen 7 7700X's 34,313, indicating that the 7700X is slightly faster on average but the difference is negligible in gaming.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average FPS values are: Low 328.2, Medium 273.3, High 236.8, and Ultra 178.9. The step from Low to Medium is a 54.9 FPS reduction, from Medium to High is a 36.5 FPS reduction, and from High to Ultra is a 57.9 FPS reduction. This shows that the cost of each settings tier is not uniform, with Ultra being the most expensive jump. At 2560x1440, the values are: Low 282.5, Medium 197, High 176, and Ultra 133.5. The Low to Medium drop is 85.5 FPS, which is the largest single-tier drop in the entire dataset, indicating that Medium settings at 1440p impose a significant load increase. The Medium to High drop is 21 FPS, and High to Ultra is 42.5 FPS. At 3840x2160, the values are: Low 183.8, Medium 130.4, High 111.3, and Ultra 83.6. The Low to Medium drop is 53.4 FPS, Medium to High is 19.1 FPS, and High to Ultra is 27.7 FPS. Across all resolutions, the Ultra preset consistently delivers the lowest frame rates, with 4K Ultra being the only configuration that drops below 90 FPS. The data shows that the High preset offers the most consistent performance relative to resolution: at 1080p it delivers 236.8 FPS (72.1% of Low), at 1440p it delivers 176 FPS (62.3% of Low), and at 4K it delivers 111.3 FPS (60.6% of Low). This consistency suggests that High settings scale predictably with resolution, making it the most reliable choice for players who want a stable experience without the performance cliff of Ultra.