Lockdown Protocol

The data places the Intel Core i3-12100F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 at rank 42 out of 1,637 tested combos in Lockdown Protocol, placing it in the top 2.6% of all configurations. This is a remarkably high position for a processor that sits at the 72nd percentile among all CPUs, suggesting the GPU is doing the heavy lifting. The combination of a four-core, eight-thread Alder Lake chip with the flagship Blackwell GPU produces a system that is clearly capable of elite frame rates, though the CPU’s limitations become apparent at lower resolutions where the graphics card is less constrained.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo’s rank of 42 out of 1,637 tested configurations signals that this pairing is far more competitive than the CPU’s standalone benchmarks would suggest. The Core i3-12100F achieves an average benchmark score of 13,516, which places it nearly identical to the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3975WX (13,534, a delta of -0.1%) and just ahead of the Intel Core i7-1250U (13,462, a delta of 0.4%). In synthetic tests, this processor is essentially a peer of workstation-class silicon from a few generations ago, but in Lockdown Protocol, the RTX 5090’s sheer throughput compensates for the CPU’s modest multi-threaded capacity.

The GPU, in contrast, is a dominant force. Its average benchmark score of 84,306 places it at the 94th percentile of all graphics cards, with its nearest rival being the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D (84,241, a delta of 0.1%). This means the RTX 5090 is operating at the very top of the GPU hierarchy, and even a budget-oriented CPU like the i3-12100F can ride that wave to a top-50 finish. The data indicates that this combo is GPU-bound in most scenarios, which is why the rank remains high despite the processor’s relative weakness in synthetic multi-threaded tests like Cinebench R23 (11,912 multi-core) or Geekbench (7,413 multi-core).

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS rows, the optimal balance of visual quality and performance is achieved at High settings across all tested resolutions. At 1080p, High settings deliver 229.4 FPS, which is only 43.4 FPS behind the Low preset’s 272.8 FPS but offers a substantial visual upgrade. The Medium preset at 1080p yields 240.1 FPS, which is only 10.7 FPS ahead of High, making High the smarter choice for that resolution.

At 1440p, the argument for High strengthens further. The High preset produces 175.5 FPS, while Medium hits 200.3 FPS — a difference of 24.8 FPS. However, the Low preset at 1440p reaches 240.6 FPS, which is 65.1 FPS higher than High, indicating that the CPU is becoming a bottleneck at lower settings. For most users, the 175.5 FPS at High is well above the refresh rate of typical 1440p monitors, so the visual fidelity is worth the FPS cost.

At 4K, High settings deliver 112.2 FPS, which is comfortably playable on high-refresh displays. The Ultra preset drops to 86.2 FPS, a 26.0 FPS reduction from High that is unlikely to justify the extra graphical load. The data suggests that High is the sweet spot: it offers a significant improvement over Medium (126.7 FPS) without the steep penalty of Ultra.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a system that is primarily GPU-limited at high resolutions but becomes CPU-limited at lower ones. At High settings, the frame rate drops from 229.4 FPS at 1080p to 175.5 FPS at 1440p — a 53.9 FPS decrease — and then to 112.2 FPS at 4K, another 63.3 FPS decrease. This progressive decline indicates that the RTX 5090 is being fully utilized as resolution increases, with the GPU’s 32 GB of GDDR7 memory and 1.79 TB/s bandwidth proving sufficient to feed the frame buffer at 4K.

However, the Low preset tells a different story. At 1080p, Low settings produce 272.8 FPS, but at 1440p, the frame rate only drops to 240.6 FPS — a mere 32.2 FPS reduction. This smaller gap suggests that at 1080p with Low settings, the CPU is the limiting factor, preventing the GPU from reaching even higher frame rates. The i3-12100F’s boost clock of 4.30 GHz and 12 MB of L3 cache are sufficient for moderate loads, but at 1080p Low, the processor’s four cores can become saturated, capping performance.

The scaling pattern is consistent with a system where the RTX 5090’s 104.8 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is the dominant resource at 4K, but the CPU’s 3dMark single-thread score of 893 becomes a constraint at lower resolutions. The data shows that moving from 1440p to 4K at Low settings incurs a 57.0 FPS drop (from 240.6 to 183.6), which is closer to the High preset’s scaling, indicating that the GPU takes over as the bottleneck once the resolution increases.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1080p, the measured FPS values span a wide range depending on settings. The Low preset achieves 272.8 FPS, the highest figure recorded across all configurations. Medium settings produce 240.1 FPS, which is 32.7 FPS lower than Low. High settings reach 229.4 FPS, a further 10.7 FPS reduction. Ultra settings drop to 178.8 FPS, which is 50.6 FPS below High and 94.0 FPS below Low. This spread of 94.0 FPS between Low and Ultra at 1080p demonstrates that the RTX 5090 has ample headroom at this resolution, but the CPU’s performance ceiling is visible in the diminishing returns between Medium and High.

At 1440p, the same settings hierarchy produces a tighter range. Low settings yield 240.6 FPS, which is actually 11.4 FPS higher than the Low preset at 1080p’s 272.8 FPS? No, that is incorrect — the data shows 240.6 FPS at 1440p Low, which is 32.2 FPS lower than 1080p Low. Medium settings hit 200.3 FPS, High achieves 175.5 FPS, and Ultra drops to 128.7 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra at 1440p is 111.9 FPS, which is wider than at 1080p, suggesting that the GPU is starting to feel the resolution increase while the CPU remains capable of driving lower settings.

At 4K, the frame rates compress further. Low settings produce 183.6 FPS, Medium hits 126.7 FPS, High reaches 112.2 FPS, and Ultra falls to 86.2 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is 97.4 FPS, which is similar to the 1080p spread. Notably, the 4K Low figure of 183.6 FPS is higher than the 1080p Ultra figure of 178.8 FPS, indicating that the RTX 5090’s massive memory bandwidth and compute throughput can handle 4K at low settings better than the CPU can handle 1080p at ultra settings.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is the undisputed performance driver in this combo. Its 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus provides 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth, which is essential for maintaining high frame rates at 4K where texture data demands are immense. The GPU’s boost clock of 2,407 MHz and base clock of 2,017 MHz are high for a 575 W TDP part, and the 21,760 shading units deliver 104.8 TFLOPS of FP32 compute.

In Lockdown Protocol, the GPU’s role is evident in the scaling behavior. At 4K Ultra, the combo achieves 86.2 FPS, which is only 12.0 FPS lower than the 1440p Ultra figure of 128.7 FPS? No, that is a 42.5 FPS difference. The data shows that the RTX 5090’s 176 ROPs and 680 TMUs are not the limiting factor; instead, the GPU’s raw compute is sufficient to maintain playable frame rates at the highest settings and resolution.

The RTX 5090’s percentile ranking of 94 vs all GPUs, with its nearest rival being the RTX 5090 D (0.1% delta), confirms that this is a top-tier part. The GPU’s 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 14,411 and Geekbench OpenCL score of 380,114 are indicative of its dominance. In this combo, the RTX 5090 is never the bottleneck until 4K Ultra, where the CPU’s four cores can still keep pace with the GPU’s output. The data suggests that the i3-12100F, despite its rank in the 72nd percentile of CPUs, is sufficient to feed the RTX 5090 in Lockdown Protocol, as evidenced by the combo’s top-50 finish among 1,637 configurations.