Lockdown Protocol

Resolution Scaling

The measured frame rates across the three resolution tiers reveal a classic GPU-bound scaling pattern, but with an interesting twist at the top end. Moving from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 at Ultra settings drops the average from 176.0 FPS to 131.1 FPS, a reduction of roughly 25%. The subsequent step to 3840x2160 at Ultra brings the average down further to 86.3 FPS, another 34% decline from the 1440p figure. This consistent degradation with each pixel increase indicates that the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is the primary driver of performance, with the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X providing ample headroom.

However, the scaling behavior changes when examining the Low preset. At 1080p Low, the combo reaches 366.0 FPS, which drops to 283.1 FPS at 1440p and then to 180.3 FPS at 4K. The percentage drop from 1080p to 1440p is approximately 23%, while the drop from 1440p to 4K is about 36%. The larger relative decline at higher resolutions suggests that even this flagship GPU begins to feel the pressure of 4K rendering, though the absolute numbers remain exceptionally high. The fact that 4K Low still produces over 180 FPS indicates the RTX 5090's raw throughput is substantial, but the scaling curve steepens as resolution increases.

The Medium preset tells a similar story: 269.8 FPS at 1080p, 197.2 FPS at 1440p, and 127.0 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 27%, while 1440p to 4K is 36%. High settings show 239.1 FPS at 1080p, 174.6 FPS at 1440p, and 109.4 FPS at 4K, with drops of 27% and 37% respectively. Across all presets, the 1080p to 1440p transition costs roughly a quarter of the frame rate, while the 1440p to 4K transition costs about a third. This pattern strongly suggests that the limiting component shifts from the CPU at low resolutions to the GPU as resolution climbs, but the Ryzen 9 9900X's 12 cores and 24 threads keep the system from becoming CPU-bound even at 1080p.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data for Lockdown Protocol shows a clear hierarchy among the four tested presets, and the optimal choice depends heavily on the target display's refresh rate. At 1920x1080, the Ultra preset delivers 176.0 FPS, which comfortably exceeds the 144Hz refresh rate common on high-end monitors. The High preset at 239.1 FPS offers a 36% improvement over Ultra, making it the better choice for 240Hz displays. The Medium preset at 269.8 FPS and Low at 366.0 FPS push even higher, but the visual fidelity trade-off becomes significant.

For 2560x1440 users, the High preset at 174.6 FPS is arguably the sweet spot. It provides a 33% uplift over Ultra's 131.1 FPS while maintaining most visual quality. The Medium preset at 197.2 FPS is also viable for those prioritizing frame rate, but the jump from High to Medium yields only a 13% improvement, which may not justify the graphical downgrade. The Low preset at 283.1 FPS is excessive for all but the most extreme esports scenarios.

At 3840x2160, the situation inverts. The Ultra preset at 86.3 FPS is playable but leaves little margin for demanding scenes. The High preset at 109.4 FPS provides a 27% improvement and is the recommended starting point for 4K gaming. The Medium preset at 127.0 FPS offers another 16% gain, making it the best balance for high-refresh-rate 4K panels. The Low preset at 180.3 FPS is the only option that fully saturates a 144Hz 4K display, but the visual compromise is substantial. Benchmark results indicate that High at 1440p and Medium at 4K deliver the most balanced experience relative to their respective resolutions.

How This Combo Ranks

The pairing of the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 achieves a combo rank of 3 out of 1,637 tested combinations in Lockdown Protocol. This places the system in the top 0.2% of all tested configurations, a remarkable position that reflects the sheer performance ceiling of these two components working together. The rank is particularly notable given that the database contains over 1,600 other CPU-GPU pairings, many of which include equally powerful hardware.

The Ryzen 9 9900X itself sits at the 94th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 54,450. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D, which scores 54,681 (a 0.4% difference), and the Intel Core i7-14700F at 54,097 (0.7% difference). The Intel Core Ultra 5 245K and 245KF score 55,304 and 55,421 respectively, placing them 1.5% and 1.8% ahead. These margins are negligible in real-world gaming, meaning the CPU is not the bottleneck in this configuration.

The RTX 5090 similarly ranks at the 94th percentile among GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 84,306. Its nearest rivals are the RTX 5090 D at 84,241 (0.1% difference), the RTX 5050 Mobile at 84,171 (0.2%), the AMD Radeon PRO W6600 at 83,209 (1.3%), and the NVIDIA CMP 40HX at 85,637 (1.6% behind). The tight clustering of these scores suggests that the RTX 5090's performance is well-established, and its position in the combo ranking is driven by the CPU's ability to feed it sufficient data.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average frame rates span from 176.0 FPS at Ultra to 366.0 FPS at Low. The Medium preset achieves 269.8 FPS, and High reaches 239.1 FPS. The progression from Low to Medium to High to Ultra shows a consistent decline, with each step up in quality costing roughly 15-20% of the previous frame rate. The gap between Low and Ultra is 190 FPS, a 108% difference that illustrates the substantial impact of settings on this game's performance.

At 2560x1440, the averages are 283.1 FPS (Low), 197.2 FPS (Medium), 174.6 FPS (High), and 131.1 FPS (Ultra). The spread between Low and Ultra narrows to 152 FPS, a 116% difference. Compared to 1080p, each preset loses between 23% and 27% of its frame rate, with the Low preset suffering the smallest relative loss.

At 3840x2160, the averages drop to 180.3 FPS (Low), 127.0 FPS (Medium), 109.4 FPS (High), and 86.3 FPS (Ultra). The Low-to-Ultra spread is now 94 FPS, a 109% difference. The 4K resolution exacts a heavy toll: the Ultra preset at 4K runs at less than half the speed of the Low preset at 1080p. Even so, the minimum measured average of 86.3 FPS at 4K Ultra remains fully playable, and the Low preset at 4K still delivers over 180 FPS, which is faster than many systems achieve at 1080p.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 features 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, yielding a memory bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s. This prodigious memory subsystem is critical for Lockdown Protocol at 4K, where the game's textures and geometry demand substantial bandwidth. The GPU's base clock of 2017 MHz and boost clock of 2407 MHz, combined with 21,760 shading units, produce a pixel rate of 423.6 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 1,636.8 GTexel/s. These figures translate directly into the high frame rates observed across all resolutions.

The RTX 5090's FP32 throughput of 104.8 TFLOPS is particularly relevant for a fast-paced FPS title like Lockdown Protocol, where shader complexity and post-processing effects can scale with resolution. The data shows that the GPU becomes the limiting factor at 4K, especially at Ultra settings where the 86.3 FPS average is nearly 50% lower than the 1080p Ultra figure. The 32 GB VRAM capacity is far beyond what Lockdown Protocol likely needs, meaning memory capacity is not a constraint; instead, the rendering pipeline's raw compute is what determines performance.

The GPU's percentile ranking of 94 places it among the top 6% of all GPUs in the database. Its nearest rival, the RTX 5090 D, scores within 0.1%, confirming that the RTX 5090 is at the absolute peak of consumer graphics performance. The 170 ray tracing cores and 680 tensor cores provide additional headroom for future titles, but for Lockdown Protocol, the standard rasterization performance is what drives the measured results.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X brings 12 cores and 24 threads to the pairing, built on the Zen 5 architecture using a 4 nm process. Its base clock of 4.40 GHz and boost clock of 5.60 GHz, combined with 64 MB of shared L3 cache, make it a formidable partner for the RTX 5090. The CPU's single-thread performance is strong, as evidenced by a Geekbench single-core score of 3,341 and a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 6,555. These numbers indicate that the CPU can keep up with the GPU's frame generation at high refresh rates.

In Lockdown Protocol, the CPU's role becomes more apparent at lower resolutions. The fact that 1080p Low achieves 366.0 FPS suggests the Ryzen 9 9900X is capable of feeding the GPU with enough draw calls to sustain extremely high frame rates. The CPU's multi-threaded performance, shown by a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 46,438 and a Passmark multithread score of 54,643, ensures that background tasks and game logic do not introduce stutters. The 89.6 GB/s memory bandwidth from dual-channel DDR5 support provides sufficient data throughput for the 12-core processor.

The CPU's 94th percentile ranking and average benchmark score of 54,450 place it in elite company. Its nearest rival, the Ryzen 9 9900X3D, is only 0.4% faster on average, while the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K is 1.5% faster. These differences are within the margin of error for gaming benchmarks, meaning the Ryzen 9 9900X is effectively at parity with the best CPUs available. The combination of 12 cores, high boost clocks, and large cache ensures that the CPU never becomes the bottleneck in this system, even at 1080p where frame rates exceed 360 FPS.