Lockdown Protocol

# Lockdown Protocol with AMD Ryzen 9 9900X + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER delivers a fundamentally GPU-limited experience in Lockdown Protocol, with the 8 GB VRAM buffer and Turing-era architecture acting as the primary constraint across all tested resolutions. The combo ranks in the 42nd percentile of tested configurations (2165th of 3714), placing it firmly in the mid-pack, and the measured frame rates reveal a system that can handle 1080p esports-style play but struggles to maintain fluid motion at 4K with higher presets.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and consistent across all settings, indicating that the RTX 2070 SUPER is the limiting component in this pairing. At Low settings, the average FPS falls from 175 at 1920x1080 to 129 at 2560x1440 — a 26% reduction — and then to 83 at 3840x2160, a further 36% drop from 1440p. This scaling pattern is classic GPU-bound behavior: the Ryzen 9 9900X has ample headroom, but the graphics card simply cannot feed pixels fast enough as resolution increases.

The High preset shows a similar trajectory: 109 FPS at 1080p, 80 FPS at 1440p, and 51 FPS at 4K. The gap between 1080p and 1440p High is 29 FPS, while the gap between 1440p and 4K High is 29 FPS as well — a remarkably linear degradation that underscores the GPU's role as the bottleneck. Medium settings follow the same pattern with 125, 91, and 59 FPS respectively, while Ultra settings deliver 82, 60, and 39 FPS.

The most telling metric is the 4K Ultra result: 39 FPS average. This is below the 60 FPS threshold that most competitive FPS players consider playable, and it suggests that the RTX 2070 SUPER's 9.062 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 113.3 GPixel/s pixel rate are insufficient for Lockdown Protocol's demands at maximum fidelity. In contrast, the 1080p Low result of 175 FPS shows that the system has no trouble delivering high refresh rates when the workload is light — the CPU is clearly not a limiting factor at lower resolutions.

GPU Role

The RTX 2070 SUPER sits at the 65th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 20282. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA Quadro M4000M (20480, 1% higher), the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile (20534, 1.2% higher), the Intel Arc B570 (20556, 1.3% higher), and the Intel Arc A750 (20582, 1.5% higher). The deltaPct values here are all under 1.5%, meaning the 2070 SUPER is squarely in a cluster of comparable GPUs — it neither dominates nor is dominated by its immediate competition.

The card's 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. In Lockdown Protocol, this VRAM capacity appears to be a meaningful constraint at 4K Ultra, where the 39 FPS average suggests the card is not only compute-limited but potentially memory-limited as well. The 14 Gbps effective memory speed and 1750 MHz memory clock are adequate for 1080p and 1440p, but the 4K results show the card's age: a 12 nm Turing design with 13,600 million transistors and a 545 mm² die size that was never designed for modern 4K gaming.

The GPU's DirectX 12 Ultimate support and Vulkan 1.4 API compatibility mean it can run the game's modern rendering paths, but the 2560 shading units and 160 TMUs deliver only 283.2 GTexel/s of texture rate. The measured FPS at 4K Ultra — 39 FPS — is just 48% of the 1080p High result of 109 FPS, a massive penalty that reflects both the resolution increase and the preset's additional graphical load.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific CPU-GPU combination ranks 2165th out of 3714 tested combos in Lockdown Protocol, placing it in the 58th percentile from the bottom — or the 42nd percentile from the top. This is a mid-pack result that reflects the pairing of a top-tier 2024 CPU with a 2019 mid-range GPU. The Ryzen 9 9900X is capable of far more, as evidenced by its 92nd percentile ranking among all CPUs, but it is held back by the RTX 2070 SUPER's 65th percentile GPU ranking.

The rank of 2165 means there are 1549 combos that perform worse and 2164 that perform better. Given that the CPU is in the 92nd percentile and the GPU is in the 65th percentile, the combo's overall rank is dragged down by the graphics card. This is consistent with the resolution scaling analysis: at 1080p Low, the system delivers 175 FPS, which is excellent, but at 4K Ultra it falls to 39 FPS, which is poor. The combo's rank reflects this wide performance spread — it can be a high-refresh 1080p machine or a low-fidelity 4K machine, but not both.

Compared to the CPU's nearest rivals — the AMD EPYC 9015 (57555 avg score, -0.1% delta), AMD EPYC 7313 (57399, 0.2%), Intel Core i9-14900 (58115, -1.1%), and Intel Xeon Platinum 8260M (58323, -1.4%) — the Ryzen 9 9900X's 57498 average benchmark score is essentially tied with the EPYC parts and slightly behind the Intel parts. However, these differences are all within 1.5%, meaning the CPU choice is not the differentiator in this combo's Lockdown Protocol performance.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data provides a clear hierarchy: Low settings always deliver the highest frame rates, followed by Medium, then High, then Ultra. At 1080p, the spread between Low (175 FPS) and Ultra (82 FPS) is 93 FPS, which means the preset choice has a dramatic impact on the experience.

For competitive play, the 1080p Low setting at 175 FPS is the clear choice — it provides the highest frame rate and will maximize input responsiveness in a fast-paced FPS. The 1440p Low setting at 129 FPS is also viable for players who prefer higher resolution, but the 46 FPS penalty versus 1080p Low is substantial.

For single-player or visual quality, the 1440p High setting at 80 FPS represents the best balance of fidelity and smoothness. The 4K High setting at 51 FPS is borderline — it is playable but not ideal, and the 4K Ultra setting at 39 FPS should be avoided for any serious gaming session. The Medium preset at 4K (59 FPS) is a better choice if 4K is mandatory, as it stays above 50 FPS and the 50 FPS minimum (measured at 4K Medium) suggests reasonable frame time consistency.

The 1080p Medium setting (125 FPS) is a strong middle ground, delivering 93% of the Low setting's frame rate while presumably offering better visuals. The 1080p High setting at 109 FPS is also acceptable, though the 16 FPS drop from Medium may not justify the visual upgrade for competitive players.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the results across presets are: Low at 175 FPS, Medium at 125 FPS (with a 106 FPS minimum and 143 FPS maximum), High at 109 FPS, and Ultra at 82 FPS. The Medium preset's minimum of 106 FPS shows that even in the most demanding moments, the system stays above the 100 FPS threshold, which is excellent for smooth gameplay.

At 2560x1440, the results are: Low at 129 FPS, Medium at 91 FPS with a 78 FPS minimum and 105 FPS maximum, High at 80 FPS, and Ultra at 60 FPS. The 1440p Medium minimum of 78 FPS is notable — it means the system can dip below 80 FPS in heavy scenes, which may cause noticeable stutter on a 144 Hz monitor. The 1440p Ultra result of exactly 60 FPS is right at the V-Sync threshold, suggesting the card is working at its limit to maintain that frame rate.

At 3840x2160, the results are: Low at 83 FPS, Medium at 59 FPS with a 50 FPS minimum and 68 FPS maximum, High at 51 FPS, and Ultra at 39 FPS. The 4K Low result of 83 FPS is the only 4K setting that approaches smooth playability, and even it is 92 FPS below the 1080p Low result. The 4K Medium minimum of 50 FPS is the lowest minimum recorded in the entire dataset, indicating that the card can struggle significantly in demanding 4K scenes.

The maximum FPS values are only recorded for Medium settings: 143 FPS at 1080p, 105 FPS at 1440p, and 68 FPS at 4K. These maxima suggest that the card can burst to higher frame rates in less demanding moments, but the averages show sustained performance is much lower, particularly at 4K.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X is a 12-core, 24-thread processor based on the Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge codename), built on a 4 nm TSMC process with 16,630 million transistors across two 70.6 mm² dies. It boosts to 5.60 GHz from a 4.40 GHz base clock, with 64 MB of L3 cache and 1 MB of L2 cache per core. Its benchmark results are exceptional: a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 32172, a Geekbench single-core score of 3010, and a PassMark single-thread score of 4672.

In Lockdown Protocol, the CPU's role is clearly secondary to the GPU. The fact that 1080p Low delivers 175 FPS while 4K Low delivers 83 FPS — a 92 FPS difference — demonstrates that the CPU is not the bottleneck at any resolution. The 12-core, 24-thread configuration provides far more processing power than a modern FPS requires, and the 5.60 GHz boost clock ensures excellent single-thread performance for game logic and physics.

The CPU's 92nd percentile ranking among all CPUs (with an average benchmark score of 57498) places it just below the AMD EPYC 9015 (57555, -0.1% delta) and just above the AMD EPYC 7313 (57399, 0.2% delta). The Intel Core i9-14900 (58115, -1.1% delta) and Intel Xeon Platinum 8260M (58323, -1.4% delta) are slightly ahead, but all deltas are within 1.5%, meaning the 9900X is not meaningfully slower than any of these rivals.

The 3DMark results reinforce the CPU's strength: a single-thread score of 1286, a 4-thread score of 4886, an 8-thread score of 9114, a 16-thread score of 12552, and a max-thread score of 13929. These numbers show excellent scaling across thread counts, with the 16-thread score being 90% of the max-thread score — a sign that the CPU can handle heavily threaded workloads without significant degradation.

Given that the CPU is paired with a GPU that ranks at the 65th percentile, the measured FPS in Lockdown Protocol is almost entirely determined by the GPU. The Ryzen 9 9900X has the headroom to support a much faster graphics card, and players who upgrade their GPU would see immediate frame rate gains without needing to change the CPU. For this specific combo, the CPU is a capable foundation that is being held back by its graphics card partner — the data shows a system that is GPU-bound in every resolution and preset combination tested.