Lockdown Protocol

# Lockdown Protocol with AMD Ryzen 7 9700X + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080

This combination places 163rd out of 3,714 tested combos in Lockdown Protocol, a result driven by the RTX 5080's substantial raster performance and the Ryzen 7 9700X's strong single-threaded throughput. The pairing delivers frame rates that range from 76 FPS at 4K Ultra to 345 FPS at 1080p Low, indicating a system that can handle competitive play at high refresh rates but shows diminishing returns as resolution and settings escalate.

GPU Role — VRAM, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 is the dominant contributor to this combo's Lockdown Protocol performance. Its 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 960.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which proves sufficient across all tested settings, even at 3840x2160 where the game's texture and geometry demands scale most heavily. The GPU operates at a base clock of 2295 MHz and boosts to 2617 MHz, with memory running at 1875 MHz (30 Gbps effective). These clocks, combined with 10,752 shading units, 336 TMUs, and 112 ROPs, allow the card to sustain high average frame rates without apparent memory-related stutter — the minimum FPS readings captured at Medium settings (99 FPS at 4K, 153 FPS at 1440p, 208 FPS at 1080p) suggest consistent frame delivery rather than VRAM capacity or bandwidth bottlenecks.

The RTX 5080's architecture, Blackwell 2.0 on TSMC's 5 nm process, includes 84 RT cores and 336 tensor cores, though Lockdown Protocol's measured results appear to rely primarily on traditional rasterization. The GPU's FP32 throughput of 56.28 TFLOPS gives it ample compute headroom; at 1080p Low, the card reaches 345 FPS average, which is near the practical ceiling for many displays and indicates the GPU is not the limiting factor at lower resolutions. The card's pixel rate of 293.1 GPixel/s and texture rate of 879.3 GTexel/s help explain the relatively small performance gap between High and Medium settings at each resolution — the GPU has enough fill-rate capacity to absorb moderate quality increases.

In synthetic benchmarks, the RTX 5080 scores 36,565 in Passmark G3D and 21,789 in Passmark GPU Compute, placing it in the 87th percentile of all GPUs. Its average benchmark score of 56,083 sits just 0.6% above the AMD Radeon 8060S and 0.7% above the AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB, while trailing the AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE by 2.2%. These margins are tight, suggesting that within this performance tier, Lockdown Protocol's frame rates are more sensitive to driver optimization and game-specific workloads than to raw compute differences. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 8,637 reinforces that the card handles modern DX12 workloads competently, which aligns with the game's Unreal-Engine-style rendering demands.

CPU Role — cores, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700X provides the processing foundation for this combo, and its characteristics become increasingly relevant as resolution drops and frame rates climb. With 8 cores and 16 threads based on the Zen 5 (Granite Ridge) architecture, the CPU runs at a base clock of 3.80 GHz and boosts to 5.50 GHz. This boost capability is critical for Lockdown Protocol, a game that shows the CPU's single-thread performance matters most at 1080p where the GPU can produce very high frame rates. The CPU's L3 cache totals 32 MB shared, with 1 MB L2 per core and 80 KB L1 per core, providing low-latency access to frequently used game data.

The 9700X's single-threaded strength shows in synthetic tests: it scores 2,211 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 3,023 in Geekbench single-core, numbers that are essential for maintaining high average FPS in CPU-bound scenarios. Its multi-threaded results — 20,485 in Cinebench R23 multi-core, 17,906 in Geekbench multi-core, and 37,161 in Passmark multithread — indicate that even when the game utilizes more threads, the CPU keeps pace without becoming a constraint. The Passmark single-thread score of 4,654 further confirms that this chip can feed the RTX 5080 enough draw calls and game logic updates to avoid leaving GPU performance on the table.

In the broader CPU landscape, the 9700X's average benchmark score of 37,943 places it in the 86th percentile of all CPUs. Its nearest rivals are nearly identical in aggregate performance: the Intel Core i9-14901E scores 37,911 (0.1% higher), the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 scores 37,904 (0.1% higher), the Intel Core 5 211E scores 37,829 (0.3% higher), and the AMD Ryzen AI Embedded P132 scores 37,804 (0.4% higher). This clustering means that swapping to any of these CPUs would yield negligible differences in Lockdown Protocol, reinforcing that the GPU is the primary performance driver. The CPU's 65 W TDP and 4 nm process node (TSMC) suggest efficient operation, though the game's performance does not appear thermally constrained given the high sustained FPS.

Measured FPS Breakdown — resolution by resolution, settings by settings, exact numbers

At 1920x1080, the RTX 5080 paired with the 9700X delivers exceptional frame rates across all settings. Low settings produce an average of 345 FPS, Medium yields 245 FPS with a minimum of 208 FPS and maximum of 282 FPS, High reaches 214 FPS, and Ultra drops to 160 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra represents a 54% reduction in average FPS, which is significant but still leaves even the Ultra preset comfortably above 144 Hz refresh rates. The Medium preset's narrow min-max spread (208 to 282 FPS) suggests stable frame pacing, while the lack of reported minimums for the other presets makes it harder to assess variance.

Moving to 2560x1440, average frame rates remain high but show the expected cost of additional pixels. Low settings average 253 FPS, Medium averages 180 FPS with a range of 153 to 207 FPS, High averages 157 FPS, and Ultra averages 118 FPS. The drop from 1080p to 1440p at each settings tier is roughly 27-31%, which is less than the pixel count increase (78% more pixels), indicating that the GPU still has headroom and the game is not purely fill-rate limited at this resolution. The Medium preset again shows a consistent frame range, while Ultra at 118 FPS remains playable for high-refresh monitors but begins to approach the threshold where competitive players might prefer lower settings.

At 3840x2160, the performance curve steepens. Low settings yield 163 FPS average, Medium drops to 116 FPS (min 99, max 133), High averages 101 FPS, and Ultra falls to 76 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is 87 FPS (53% reduction), and the absolute numbers indicate that 4K Ultra is the first configuration where the combo cannot maintain 100+ FPS. The Medium preset's minimum of 99 FPS is notable — it suggests that even with some quality reductions, the system hovers near the 100 FPS mark, which is still smooth for most monitors. The 4K results also show that the CPU's role diminishes as resolution increases; the GPU becomes the clear bottleneck, and the 9700X's single-thread advantages matter less.

Resolution Scaling — how FPS drops from 1080p to 4K and what it says about the limiting component

The scaling behavior across resolutions reveals a system that transitions from CPU-bound at 1080p to GPU-bound at 4K, with the crossover occurring somewhere around 1440p. From 1080p Low (345 FPS) to 1440p Low (253 FPS), the average FPS drops by 27%. From 1440p Low to 4K Low (163 FPS), the drop is 36%. In contrast, the pixel count increases by 78% going from 1080p to 1440p and by 125% going from 1440p to 4K. The fact that FPS decreases by far less than the pixel count increases indicates that neither the CPU nor GPU is fully saturated at lower resolutions — there is spare capacity that gets consumed as resolution rises.

At Ultra settings, the scaling is similar but with lower absolute values: 1080p Ultra (160 FPS) to 1440p Ultra (118 FPS) is a 26% drop, and 1440p Ultra to 4K Ultra (76 FPS) is a 36% drop. This consistency across settings suggests that Lockdown Protocol's rendering load scales predictably with resolution, and the combo's performance is not subject to unexpected bottlenecks. The 4K Ultra result of 76 FPS, which is 22% lower than 4K High (101 FPS), indicates that the Ultra preset adds significant GPU work beyond what High demands — likely heavier post-processing or shadow effects — and that the RTX 5080's compute and memory bandwidth are the limiting factors here.

Comparing the 1080p to 4K scaling at Medium settings, the FPS goes from 245 to 116, a 53% reduction. This is the steepest drop among all settings tiers, and the Medium preset's reported minimums (208 at 1080p, 153 at 1440p, 99 at 4K) show that the frame floor also scales proportionally. The data suggests that the RTX 5080's 960.0 GB/s memory bandwidth and 16 GB capacity are sufficient even at 4K Medium, but the GPU's shading and ROP throughput become the binding constraint at higher resolutions. The CPU, by contrast, shows it can drive over 340 FPS at 1080p Low, meaning that in this game the Ryzen 7 9700X is never the primary limiter once resolution exceeds 1080p.

How This Combo Ranks — use comboRankInGame vs other tested combos

This specific combination of the AMD Ryzen 7 9700X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 ranks 163rd out of 3,714 tested combos in Lockdown Protocol, placing it in the top 4.4% of all configurations. This ranking reflects the GPU's 87th percentile standing among all GPUs and the CPU's 86th percentile among all CPUs — both components are well above average, and their pairing produces a system that sits near the top of the performance distribution but not at the absolute peak. The rank of 163 implies that 162 other combos achieve higher average frame rates, likely featuring higher-tier GPUs such as the RTX 5090 or RTX 4090-class cards, or possibly CPUs with marginally better single-thread performance that matter at 1080p.

The GPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks — the AMD Radeon 8060S (0.6% lower score), AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB (0.7% lower), and AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE (2.2% higher) — suggest that the RTX 5080's position in the combo ranking is partly a function of its overall class rather than a unique advantage in Lockdown Protocol. The CPU's rivals, including the Intel Core i9-14901E and AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, are within 0.4% of the 9700X's average score, meaning that swapping to any of these would likely shift the combo rank by only a few positions. The 163rd place out of 3,714 combos indicates that the vast majority of tested configurations are slower, and this pairing delivers frame rates that would satisfy most gaming scenarios, but it is not the top-tier combination for this game.

Settings Recommendations — which preset gives the best experience per the measured rows

For competitive play at high refresh rates, 1080p Low at 345 FPS is the clear choice if the monitor supports 240 Hz or higher, as this preset maximizes frame throughput and minimizes input latency, though the visual quality is reduced. For most users with 144 Hz displays, 1080p High at 214 FPS or even 1080p Ultra at 160 FPS provides a better balance — both exceed 144 Hz, and the Ultra preset's higher quality settings make the game look noticeably better without sacrificing smoothness. The 1080p Medium preset at 245 FPS is a middle ground, but its 208 FPS minimum suggests that frame drops to below the average could be noticeable on a 240 Hz panel.

At 1440p, the recommendation depends on refresh rate priorities. The 1440p High preset at 157 FPS is the best all-around option for 144 Hz monitors, offering a substantial visual upgrade over 1080p while remaining above the refresh threshold. The 1440p Medium preset at 180 FPS is preferable for 165 Hz or 180 Hz displays, and its reported minimum of 153 FPS means it will stay above 144 Hz even during intense scenes. For 1440p Ultra at 118 FPS, this is only recommended for gamers who prioritize image quality over frame rate and have a 120 Hz display, as the 76 FPS minimum at 4K Ultra shows that the Ultra preset's costs are steep.

At 4K, 4K Medium at 116 FPS (min 99) is the most practical choice for a smooth experience, as it maintains near-100 FPS with reasonable quality. The 4K High preset at 101 FPS is also viable for 100 Hz displays, but the 4K Ultra result of 76 FPS is best avoided unless visual fidelity is the sole priority and the user can tolerate sub-80 FPS. Overall, the data indicates that the combo's sweet spot is 1440p High or Medium, where it delivers both high frame rates and strong visual quality, while 4K gaming is possible but requires accepting Medium settings to stay above 100 FPS.