Lockdown Protocol

# Lockdown Protocol Resolution Scaling Analysis: AMD Ryzen 7 9700F + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti delivers a consistently playable Lockdown Protocol experience across all tested resolutions, but the scaling pattern reveals a GPU-bound title at higher settings. From 1080p Low at 305 FPS down to 4K Ultra at 67 FPS, the frame rate drops by 238 FPS — a 78% reduction — which shows how aggressively resolution and settings compound to stress the graphics pipeline. The combo ranks 295th out of 2,828 tested configurations, placing it in the top 10.4% of all systems tested, a strong result for a mainstream enthusiast pairing.

Resolution Scaling

The data shows a clear, predictable frame rate curve as resolution increases, with the RTX 4070 Ti becoming the primary limiting factor at 4K. At 1080p Low, the combo produces 305 FPS, which drops to 224 FPS at 1440p Low (−26.6%) and further to 144 FPS at 4K Low (−52.8% from 1080p). This scaling pattern indicates that even at Low settings, the GPU's render output units and memory bandwidth are stretched thin at 4K, while the CPU still has headroom to feed frames at lower resolutions.

The gap between resolutions narrows at higher settings. At Medium, the spread is 217 FPS (1080p) → 159 FPS (1440p) → 103 FPS (4K), a 114 FPS total drop. At High, the numbers are 189 FPS, 139 FPS, and 90 FPS respectively, with a 99 FPS total drop. Ultra shows the tightest absolute scaling: 142 FPS at 1080p, 104 FPS at 1440p, and 67 FPS at 4K — a 75 FPS reduction. The percentage drops from 1080p to 4K are remarkably consistent across settings: 53% for Low, 53% for Medium, 52% for High, and 53% for Ultra. This uniformity suggests that resolution scaling is almost entirely GPU-bound, with the CPU contributing negligible variance.

A critical observation emerges when comparing 4K Low (144 FPS) to 1080p Ultra (142 FPS). These nearly identical frame rates show that the GPU is the sole bottleneck at 4K, regardless of quality preset. Conversely, 1080p Low at 305 FPS versus 1080p Ultra at 142 FPS — a 163 FPS difference — demonstrates that settings changes at 1080p produce larger absolute swings than resolution changes at the same preset. Players targeting 4K will find that dropping from Ultra to Low yields a 77 FPS improvement (67→144), which is more impactful than reducing resolution from 4K to 1440p at Ultra (67→104, a 37 FPS gain).

The 4K Medium row provides the only min/max data at that resolution: 87 FPS minimum and 118 FPS maximum, with a 103 FPS average. This 31 FPS variance band indicates frame time consistency is acceptable but not flawless at 4K Medium. The 1440p Medium row shows a tighter band (135 min, 183 max, 159 avg — a 48 FPS spread), while 1080p Medium spans 184 to 249 FPS around a 217 average (65 FPS spread). Interestingly, the absolute variance grows at lower resolutions, but the percentage variance (relative to average) is similar: ~30% for 4K Medium, ~30% for 1440p Medium, and ~30% for 1080p Medium. This consistent relative variance suggests the game's frame pacing is resolution-independent.

Settings Recommendations

The optimal preset depends on the target resolution, but the data strongly favors Medium as the balanced choice for most scenarios. At 1080p, Medium delivers 217 FPS average with a 184 FPS minimum, which is 53% higher than Ultra's 142 FPS and only 29% below Low's 305 FPS. The 184 FPS minimum at 1080p Medium ensures that even during heavy combat scenes, the frame rate stays well above 144 Hz refresh rates, making Medium the best choice for high-refresh 1080p monitors.

For 1440p, Medium again emerges as the standout: 159 FPS average with 135 FPS minimum. This is 53% faster than Ultra's 104 FPS and only 29% slower than Low's 224 FPS. The 135 FPS minimum is sufficient for most 144 Hz displays, though players with 165 Hz or higher refresh panels might prefer Low to maximize headroom. High at 1440p (139 FPS average) falls between Medium and Ultra, but its lack of min/max data makes it harder to recommend definitively.

At 4K, the recommendation shifts. Medium's 103 FPS average with an 87 FPS minimum is the only preset that maintains a playable experience above 60 FPS in all measured scenarios. High at 90 FPS and Low at 144 FPS both lack min/max data, but the averages suggest that Low is the better choice for competitive play (144 FPS approaches 144 Hz refresh), while Medium suits quality-conscious players who can tolerate occasional dips to 87 FPS. Ultra at 67 FPS is borderline — playable but with little headroom for demanding scenes.

The data reveals a nonlinear relationship between settings tiers. Moving from Low to Medium costs 88 FPS at 1080p (305→217), from Medium to High costs 28 FPS (217→189), and from High to Ultra costs 47 FPS (189→142). This pattern repeats at 1440p (65, 20, and 35 FPS drops respectively) and 4K (41, 13, and 23 FPS drops). The Medium-to-High transition is consistently the cheapest in frame rate terms, making High a reasonable upgrade for visual fidelity without major performance penalties. Conversely, the Low-to-Medium jump is the most expensive, suggesting that Low is best reserved for maximum competitive frame rates.

GPU Role

The RTX 4070 Ti's 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus with 504.2 GB/s bandwidth proves adequate for Lockdown Protocol at all tested settings and resolutions. The 4K Ultra result of 67 FPS, while the lowest in the dataset, does not indicate memory capacity issues — rather, it reflects the GPU's compute and rasterization limits. The card's 5 nm Ada Lovelace architecture, featuring 7,680 shading units and 60 RT cores, delivers 40.09 TFLOPS of FP32 performance, which the data shows is sufficient for 144 FPS at 4K Low.

Clock behavior plays a measurable role in the results. The GPU's base clock of 2310 MHz and boost clock of 2610 MHz represent a 13% boost headroom. The fact that 4K Low achieves 144 FPS — exactly double the 4K Ultra's 72 FPS — suggests the GPU sustains near-boost clocks under low graphical load. The memory clock of 1313 MHz (21 Gbps effective) combined with the 192-bit bus yields 504.2 GB/s, which becomes the limiting factor at 4K Ultra where texture bandwidth demand peaks.

The GPU's PassMark G3D score of 31,624 and 84th percentile ranking among all GPUs contextualize its performance. Its nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Mobile, scores 45,152 (0.8% higher), while the AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT scores 45,384 (1.3% higher). These near-parity scores from the nearest rivals suggest that the RTX 4070 Ti sits in a dense performance cluster, yet the measured game data shows it handles Lockdown Protocol's demands without reaching critical bottlenecks — the 67 FPS 4K Ultra floor remains playable.

The GPU's pixel rate of 208.8 GPixel/s and texture rate of 626.4 GTexel/s directly explain the resolution scaling. At 4K (8.3 million pixels), the pixel rate allows for roughly 25 full-screen passes per frame at 67 FPS, which is sufficient but leaves no slack. At 1080p (2.1 million pixels), the same pixel rate permits over 100 passes per frame, explaining the 142 FPS Ultra result. The 12 GB VRAM capacity, while not stressed by this game, provides future headroom for higher-resolution textures, and the 285 W TDP with a 600 W suggested PSU indicates the card operates within a reasonable power envelope for its performance class.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete dataset reveals a monotonic relationship between settings and frame rates, with no anomalies or unexpected inversions. At 1920x1080, the progression from Low (305 FPS average) to Medium (217 FPS, 184 min, 249 max) to High (189 FPS) to Ultra (142 FPS) shows each preset tier costing between 28 and 88 FPS. The 1080p Medium variance of 65 FPS (184–249) is proportionally consistent with the 1440p Medium variance of 48 FPS (135–183) and the 4K Medium variance of 31 FPS (87–118).

At 2560x1440, the results show the same pattern with reduced absolute numbers: Low at 224 FPS, Medium at 159 FPS (135 min, 183 max), High at 139 FPS, and Ultra at 104 FPS. The 1440p Medium row's 48 FPS variance band is notable — it represents the tightest relative spread among Medium presets when compared to their averages (30% for 1440p versus 30% for 1080p and 30% for 4K). This consistency suggests the Medium preset has balanced load distribution across resolutions.

The 3840x2160 results show the most constrained performance: Low at 144 FPS, Medium at 103 FPS (87 min, 118 max), High at 90 FPS, and Ultra at 67 FPS. The 4K Medium minimum of 87 FPS is critical — it means that even in the worst-case measured scenario, the frame rate stays above 85 FPS, providing a comfortable buffer above 60 FPS for VRR displays. The 4K Ultra result of 67 FPS, while technically playable, leaves only 7 FPS of headroom above 60 FPS, making it risky for scenes not captured in the average.

Comparing settings tiers across resolutions reveals diminishing returns from Low to Ultra. At 1080p, Ultra is 46.6% of Low's frame rate (142/305). At 1440p, Ultra is 46.4% of Low (104/224). At 4K, Ultra is 46.5% of Low (67/144). This consistent ~46.5% ratio across all resolutions indicates that the settings scaling is resolution-independent — the GPU's relative efficiency at each preset does not change with pixel count. This is a strong indicator of a well-optimized rendering pipeline in Lockdown Protocol.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F + RTX 4070 Ti combination ranks 295th out of 2,828 tested combos in Lockdown Protocol, placing it in the 89.6th percentile of all systems tested. This top-10% ranking reflects the hardware's capability to run the game at high frame rates across all tested configurations. The rank is particularly impressive given that the GPU's percentileVsAllGpus is 84th and the CPU's is 94th — the combo outperforms what either component's individual ranking might suggest.

The rank of 295 out of 2,828 means that 2,533 tested combos produced lower measured frame rates in Lockdown Protocol. This places the system firmly in enthusiast territory, appropriate for a CPU that sits in the 94th percentile of all CPUs and a GPU in the 84th percentile. The delta between the combo's game-specific rank and the component percentiles suggests that Lockdown Protocol is well-optimized for this hardware pairing, extracting more performance than the average benchmark would predict.

Contextualizing the rank: the CPU's nearest rivals show that the Ryzen 7 9700F's average benchmark score of 69,996 is within 0.9% of the Intel Core i7-14700K (69,355) and within 0.2% of the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX (69,875). The GPU's nearest rivals show similar clustering, with the RTX 4070 Ti's average score of 44,795 within 1.7% of the Intel Arc A730M (45,592). Despite this tight competition in synthetic benchmarks, the combo's 295th rank in Lockdown Protocol demonstrates that real-world game performance can diverge significantly from aggregate benchmark scores.

The top-10% ranking places this combo well ahead of typical mid-range systems, but the data does not indicate whether the rank is CPU-limited or GPU-limited at specific resolutions. Given that the 4K Ultra result of 67 FPS is the weakest measured output, the combo's overall rank likely benefits most from its strong 1080p and 1440p performance, where the CPU and GPU both contribute effectively.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F's 8 cores and 16 threads, based on the Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge codename) on a 4 nm TSMC process, provide substantial processing headroom for Lockdown Protocol. The CPU's PassMark multithread score of 36,470 and single-thread score of 4,691 place it in the 94th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 69,996. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core i7-14700KF, scores 70,163 (−0.2%), while the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X scores 69,515 (+0.7%) — all within 1% of each other, indicating a highly competitive performance tier.

The CPU's boost clock of 5.50 GHz with a base clock of 3.80 GHz provides a 45% clock headroom, which is critical for maintaining high frame rates at 1080p where the GPU is less likely to be the bottleneck. The 1080p Low result of 305 FPS likely approaches the CPU's frame generation limit, as the single-thread score of 4,691 suggests strong per-core performance that can drive high FPS in lightly threaded game loops. The 32 MB shared L3 cache and 80 KB L1 per core reduce memory latency, helping maintain consistent frame pacing.

The 65 W TDP of the 9700F is notably efficient for an 8-core processor, and its DDR5 dual-channel memory support with 89.6 GB/s bandwidth provides ample data throughput for game assets. The CPU's PassMark physics score of 2,122 indicates capable game physics processing, while the floating-point math score of 77,955 and integer math score of 120,788 demonstrate balanced compute capabilities. The data encryption score of 21,488 and compression score of 421,988 are less relevant for gaming but show the CPU's overall versatility.

The CPU's role becomes evident when comparing resolution scaling. At 4K, where the GPU is the clear bottleneck, frame rates drop by 53% from Low to Ultra. At 1080p, the same settings drop costs 53%, but the absolute frame rates are much higher. If the CPU were the limiting factor at 1080p, we would expect the Low-to-Ultra gap to narrow at lower resolutions — but the consistent 53% drop across all resolutions indicates the CPU provides headroom even at 1080p Low's 305 FPS. The CPU's 94th percentile ranking and its tight competition with the Core i7-14700KF (within 0.2%) suggest that the 9700F is not leaving performance on the table in this game.