Lockdown Protocol

# Lockdown Protocol with Intel Core i3-12100F + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti

The Intel Core i3-12100F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti delivers a highly capable 1080p and 1440p experience in Lockdown Protocol, with the measured frame rates showing a clear pattern where the GPU becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions and settings. At 1080p Low, the combo reaches 225.6 FPS, indicating substantial headroom, while the 4K Ultra result of 50.3 FPS suggests the system is pushed to its limits under maximum load. This combination sits at rank 661 out of 1637 tested combos in this game, placing it in the upper-middle tier of configurations, with the data indicating a balanced pairing that leans on the GPU's strengths at lower resolutions and the CPU's capabilities at higher ones.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and reveals where the bottleneck shifts across the resolution spectrum. At Low settings, the average frame rate falls from 225.6 FPS at 1920x1080 to 164 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of 61.6 FPS, and then to 104.8 FPS at 3840x2160, representing a cumulative drop of 120.8 FPS from 1080p to 4K. This scaling pattern indicates that at Low settings, the system is initially CPU-limited at 1080p—the 225.6 FPS figure suggests the Intel Core i3-12100F with its 4 cores and 8 threads is nearing its throughput ceiling—but as resolution increases, the GPU load grows and the RTX 3070 Ti's 8 GB of GDDR6X memory and 608.3 GB/s bandwidth begin to dominate performance.

For High settings, the progression goes from 138.4 FPS at 1080p to 101.8 FPS at 1440p to 66.2 FPS at 4K. The percentage drop from 1080p to 1440p is 26.4%, while the drop from 1440p to 4K is 35.0%, showing that the scaling becomes more pronounced at higher resolutions. This is consistent with a GPU-bound scenario at 4K High, where the RTX 3070 Ti's 6144 shading units and 96 ROPs are working near capacity. At Ultra settings, the curve is even steeper: 107.1 FPS at 1080p, 75 FPS at 1440p, and 50.3 FPS at 4K. The 4K Ultra result is only 47% of the 1080p Ultra figure, which strongly suggests that the GPU's pixel throughput of 169.9 GPixel/s is the limiting factor at the highest settings.

The Medium settings data reinforces this interpretation. From 161 FPS at 1080p to 119.5 FPS at 1440p to 77.6 FPS at 4K, the resolution scaling is relatively linear, with each step up in resolution costing roughly 25-35% performance. The fact that even at 4K Medium the system maintains 77.6 FPS indicates that the combo is not severely imbalanced; rather, the GPU is capable of handling moderate settings at high resolutions, while the CPU provides sufficient single-thread performance to avoid becoming a hard bottleneck. However, the 1080p Low result of 225.6 FPS versus the 4K Ultra result of 50.3 FPS—a 4.5x difference—shows that resolution and settings together can swing performance dramatically, with the limiting component shifting from the CPU at 1080p Low to the GPU at 4K Ultra.

How This Combo Ranks

At rank 661 out of 1637 tested combinations, the Intel Core i3-12100F with the RTX 3070 Ti places in the 60th percentile of all combos tested in Lockdown Protocol. This ranking is notable given the CPU's modest core count—4 cores with 8 threads—and the GPU's position as a high-end Ampere part. The data suggests that the combo outperforms many configurations with more powerful CPUs or GPUs but with less balanced pairings, as the benchmark reflects real-world gaming performance rather than raw component scores. The CPU's percentileVsAllCpus of 72 and the GPU's percentileVsAllGpus of 74 are nearly aligned, which explains why this pairing ranks as well as it does; neither component severely drags down the other in this game.

Looking at the CPU's nearest rivals, the Intel Core i3-12100F has an average benchmark score of 13516, which is within 0.1% of the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3975WX (13534) and 0.4% ahead of the Intel Core i7-1250U (13462). These scores are from synthetic benchmarks, but they indicate that the i3-12100F provides competitive compute throughput for its class. For the GPU, the RTX 3070 Ti's average benchmark score of 30849 places it 0.3% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 590 GME (30755) and 0.8% behind the AMD Radeon RX 6700 (31112). These tight margins are notable because the RX 6700 and RX 590 GME are very different cards, yet the RTX 3070 Ti slots between them in average score.

The combo's rank of 661 out of 1637 means that roughly 40% of tested combos perform better in Lockdown Protocol, which is a reasonable outcome for a mid-range CPU paired with a high-end GPU. The data indicates that many combos with higher-end CPUs (e.g., 8-core or 12-core parts) achieve better frame rates in this game, particularly at lower resolutions where CPU throughput matters more. However, at 4K Ultra, the combo still delivers 50.3 FPS, which is within playable range for an FPS title, suggesting that the rank is heavily influenced by 1080p and 1440p results where the CPU's 4 cores can be a limiting factor in highly threaded scenarios.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is built on the Ampere architecture with the GA104 chip, manufactured on Samsung's 8 nm process with 17,400 million transistors. Its 8 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus provides 608.3 GB/s of bandwidth, which is directly relevant to the 4K results in Lockdown Protocol. At 3840x2160 Ultra, the average FPS of 50.3 suggests that the memory bandwidth and the GPU's pixel rate of 169.9 GPixel/s are being taxed heavily. The card's boost clock of 1770 MHz and base clock of 1575 MHz, combined with 6144 shading units, deliver 21.75 TFLOPS of FP32 performance, and the benchmark results show this is sufficient for 60+ FPS at 4K Medium (77.6 FPS) but falls short at 4K Ultra.

The GPU's texture rate of 339.8 GTexel/s and its 192 TMUs are crucial for Lockdown Protocol's texture-heavy environments. The drop from 77.6 FPS at 4K Medium to 50.3 FPS at 4K Ultra—a 35.2% reduction—indicates that Ultra settings likely increase texture detail and shading complexity beyond what the card can handle at 4K. In contrast, the 4K Low result of 104.8 FPS shows that the GPU has ample headroom when settings are reduced, and the 1080p Low result of 225.6 FPS demonstrates that the card is not the bottleneck in that scenario. The GPU's average benchmark score of 30849 and its percentileVsAllGpus of 74 confirm that it is a solid performer, though its nearest rivals (RX 6700 at 31112, Quadro M5000 at 31142) are within 1% in average score, indicating that the RTX 3070 Ti is not an outlier in either direction.

The 8 GB VRAM capacity is a notable factor for 4K gaming. The fact that 4K High yields 66.2 FPS while 4K Ultra drops to 50.3 FPS suggests that Ultra settings may be approaching the VRAM limit, though the data does not explicitly show memory usage. The GPU's support for DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) and Vulkan 1.4 means it can fully utilize modern rendering APIs, and the measured FPS at 1440p (101.8 FPS High, 75 FPS Ultra) indicates that this combo is well-suited for high-refresh-rate 1440p monitors in this game.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a complete picture across four resolutions and four settings levels. At 1920x1080, the average FPS ranges from 107.1 (Ultra) to 225.6 (Low), with Medium at 161 and High at 138.4. The spread of 118.5 FPS between Low and Ultra at 1080p shows that settings have a massive impact at this resolution, likely because the CPU is able to feed the GPU quickly at lower settings, but Ultra adds enough GPU load to bring frame rates down to around 107 FPS. The 1440p results are tighter: 75 FPS (Ultra), 101.8 FPS (High), 119.5 FPS (Medium), and 164 FPS (Low). The gap between Low and Ultra shrinks to 89 FPS, indicating that the GPU is becoming more of a factor at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the numbers compress further: 50.3 FPS (Ultra), 66.2 FPS (High), 77.6 FPS (Medium), and 104.8 FPS (Low). The difference between Low and Ultra is 54.5 FPS, which is less than half the 1080p spread. This compression is a classic sign of GPU saturation—at 4K, the RTX 3070 Ti is the primary limiter, and even dropping from Ultra to Low only recovers about 54 FPS. The 4K Low result of 104.8 FPS is still well above the 60 FPS threshold, so players can achieve smooth performance at 4K if they prioritize frame rate over visual fidelity. The 1440p Ultra result of 75 FPS and the 1080p Ultra result of 107.1 FPS show that the combo can handle maximum settings at lower resolutions without dropping below playable levels.

The data also reveals that the step from Medium to High at each resolution costs roughly 15-20% performance, while the step from High to Ultra costs an additional 20-25%. For example, at 1440p, Medium yields 119.5 FPS, High yields 101.8 FPS (a 14.8% drop), and Ultra yields 75 FPS (a 26.3% drop from High). This pattern suggests that Ultra settings introduce disproportionately heavy effects, possibly including ray tracing or advanced shadows, which the GPU's 48 RT cores and 192 tensor cores must process.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i3-12100F is a 4-core, 8-thread processor based on Alder Lake-S architecture, built on Intel's 10 nm process with a die size of 163 mm². Its base clock of 3.30 GHz and boost clock of 4.30 GHz provide strong single-thread performance, as evidenced by its 3dmark_single_thread score of 893 and cinebench_r23_singlecore score of 1681. In Lockdown Protocol, an FPS title that typically relies on single-thread performance for game logic and physics, this CPU is sufficient for most scenarios, but the 1080p Low result of 225.6 FPS suggests that the 4-core design does impose a ceiling. The CPU's 12 MB of shared L3 cache and 1.25 MB per-core L2 cache help reduce memory latency, which is beneficial for gaming workloads.

The CPU's multithreaded scores—cinebench_r23_multicore of 11912 and passmark_multithread of 14015—indicate that it can handle moderate thread counts, but the 4-core limitation is apparent when compared to the nearest rivals. The AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3975WX has an average score of 13534 (0.1% above the i3-12100F), which is surprising given that the Threadripper has far more cores, but the synthetic average scores suggest that the i3-12100F's high single-thread performance compensates for its low core count in these benchmarks. In Lockdown Protocol, the CPU's 4 cores and 8 threads are likely sufficient for 1080p gaming, but the data shows that the combo's rank of 661 out of 1637 is partly due to combos with higher-core-count CPUs achieving better frame rates at lower resolutions.

The CPU's 3dmark_4_threads score of 2859 and 3dmark_8_threads score of 4026 show that scaling from 4 to 8 threads yields a 40.8% improvement, but the 3dmark_max_threads score of 4023 is nearly identical to the 8-thread score, confirming that the CPU has no additional headroom beyond 8 threads. For Lockdown Protocol, which may use more than 8 threads in certain scenes, this could explain why the combo does not rank higher. At 1080p Low, the 225.6 FPS figure is likely close to the CPU's maximum frame generation capability in this game, as the GPU could potentially push higher if the CPU were not limited. The CPU's percentileVsAllCpus of 72 and its average benchmark score of 13516 place it in the upper-middle range, and its 58 W TDP means it runs efficiently without thermal throttling in most systems. The boost clock of 4.30 GHz is key for maintaining high frame rates in single-threaded game logic, and the data shows that this CPU is a capable partner for the RTX 3070 Ti in Lockdown Protocol, though not an ideal match for maximizing the GPU's potential at 1080p.