Lockdown Protocol

FAQ

Q: How does the Intel Core i5-10400F compare to its nearest CPU rivals in average benchmark score?

A: The i5-10400F posts an average benchmark score of 14,185. This places it 0.2% ahead of the Intel Xeon 6756E (14,163), 0.5% ahead of the AMD EPYC 7552 (14,115), 0.3% behind the Intel Core 7 160UL (14,232), and 0.6% behind the AMD Ryzen 3 7320C (14,277). The data shows a tightly clustered group where the i5-10400F sits essentially in the middle of the pack.

Q: What is the combo's overall ranking for Lockdown Protocol among all tested combinations?

A: This CPU-GPU pairing ranks 1,275 out of 2,828 tested combos in Lockdown Protocol. That places it in the upper-middle portion of the field, indicating that while it is not a top-tier configuration, it outperforms more than half of all tested systems for this specific game.

Q: What is the GPU's relative standing compared to its nearest rivals?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 7700 has an average benchmark score of 15,852, which is 0.1% ahead of the AMD Radeon R9 370X (15,862), 1.1% ahead of the AMD Radeon Pro W5500 (15,679), 1.0% behind the AMD Radeon RX 9060 (16,014), and 1.7% behind the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti (16,129). The GPU sits at the 58th percentile among all GPUs.

Q: Which resolution and settings combination delivers the highest average FPS?

A: The highest recorded average FPS is 200, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings. At the same resolution, Medium settings yield 142 FPS, High yields 124 FPS, and Ultra yields 93 FPS. The data shows a clear progression where lower settings unlock substantially higher frame rates at 1080p.

Q: How much FPS is lost when moving from 1080p to 4K at High settings?

A: At High settings, the average FPS drops from 124 at 1920x1080 to 91 at 2560x1440, then to 59 at 3840x2160. This represents a 52.5% reduction from 1080p to 4K, indicating that the GPU becomes increasingly stressed at higher pixel counts.

Q: Does the CPU show strong multi-threaded performance in synthetic benchmarks?

A: In Cinebench R23, the i5-10400F scores 10,283 in multicore and 1,451 in singlecore. The 3DMark tests show 4,748 with 16 threads, 3,929 with 8 threads, 2,560 with 4 threads, and 1,350 with 2 threads. The PassMark multithread score is 12,115, while single-thread is 2,541, confirming that the 6-core/12-thread configuration provides balanced scaling.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data for Lockdown Protocol reveals that the optimal preset depends heavily on the target display resolution. At 1920x1080, even the Ultra preset maintains an average of 93 FPS, which is above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. The High preset at 1080p delivers 124 FPS, providing headroom for demanding scenes, while Medium pushes to 142 FPS. For competitive play at 1080p, the Low preset's 200 FPS average offers the most responsive experience, though it sacrifices visual fidelity.

Moving to 2560x1440, the High preset averages 91 FPS, which remains playable, but the Ultra preset drops to 68 FPS, approaching the lower boundary of what most users consider acceptable. The Medium preset at 1440p delivers 104 FPS with a minimum of 88 FPS, making it the most balanced choice for this resolution. At 3840x2160, the High preset averages 59 FPS, which is marginal for smooth play. The Medium preset at 4K averages 67 FPS with a minimum of 57 FPS, while the Ultra preset falls to 44 FPS, which would be noticeably stuttery.

The data suggests that the best experience per preset tier is achieved at 1080p with High settings, offering 124 FPS while retaining most visual quality. At 1440p, the Medium preset provides the best combination of performance and fidelity, with an average above 100 FPS. For 4K, the Medium preset is the highest playable option, but users seeking consistent frame rates above 60 FPS should consider the Low preset, which averages 95 FPS at 4K.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS progression from 1080p to 4K illustrates how the RX 7700 becomes the primary limiting factor at higher resolutions. At Low settings, the average FPS moves from 200 at 1080p to 147 at 1440p, then to 95 at 4K. This represents a 26.5% drop from 1080p to 1440p, and a 52.5% drop from 1080p to 4K. The scaling is not linear, with the 4K resolution exacting a disproportionately larger penalty.

At High settings, the same pattern emerges: 124 FPS at 1080p, 91 FPS at 1440p, and 59 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1440p to 4K is 35.2%, while the drop from 1080p to 1440p is 26.6%. This accelerating decline indicates that the GPU's memory bandwidth of 624.1 GB/s and 16 GB of VRAM are being pushed toward their limits at 4K, particularly with higher quality presets that increase texture and shading demands.

The FPS scaling between 1080p and 1440p suggests a more balanced workload, where both CPU and GPU contribute to performance. However, the sharp decline at 4K, especially at Ultra settings where the average drops to 44 FPS, points to the GPU as the dominant bottleneck. The CPU's 6 cores and 12 threads, with a boost clock of 4.30 GHz, appear sufficient to feed the GPU at lower resolutions, but at 4K the rendering workload overwhelms the GPU. The data indicates that users targeting 4K should expect to use Medium or Low presets to maintain acceptable frame rates.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo of the Intel Core i5-10400F and AMD Radeon RX 7700 achieves a rank of 1,275 out of 2,828 tested combinations in Lockdown Protocol. This places the configuration in the 55th percentile of all tested combos, meaning it outperforms 1,553 other combinations while trailing 1,275. The rank reflects a mid-tier positioning that aligns with the individual component percentiles: the CPU sits at the 68th percentile among all CPUs, while the GPU sits at the 58th percentile among all GPUs.

The ranking suggests that this pairing does not exhibit any unusual synergy or bottleneck that would push it significantly above or below what the component percentiles would predict. The CPU's relatively strong standing compared to the GPU indicates that the i5-10400F has more headroom than the RX 7700 in this game. The gap between the CPU's 68th percentile and the GPU's 58th percentile suggests that the GPU is the limiting factor in most scenarios, which is consistent with the resolution scaling data showing larger FPS drops at higher resolutions.

Among the nearest rival GPUs, the RX 7700 trails the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti by 1.7% in average benchmark score, yet the combo rank in Lockdown Protocol shows that this difference does not translate into a dramatically different gaming experience. The 1,275th rank out of 2,828 combos indicates a solidly mid-pack performer, capable of handling the game at 1080p and 1440p with high settings, but not a top-tier contender for 4K Ultra gaming.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7700 features 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering a bandwidth of 624.1 GB/s. The memory clock runs at 2438 MHz with 19.5 Gbps effective speed. The GPU's base clock is 1900 MHz, with a game clock of 2041 MHz and a boost clock of 2459 MHz. These specifications position the card with a pixel rate of 236.1 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 393.4 GTexel/s, along with 25.18 TFLOPS of FP32 performance.

In Lockdown Protocol, the GPU's role becomes more pronounced as resolution increases. At 1080p, the GPU is not fully taxed, as evidenced by the 200 FPS average at Low settings. The 16 GB VRAM capacity is ample for this game, and the bandwidth is sufficient to feed the rendering pipeline at lower resolutions. However, at 4K, the GPU's throughput limits become apparent, with the Ultra preset dropping to 44 FPS and even the High preset barely reaching 59 FPS.

The GPU's benchmark scores show a PassMark G3D score of 20,974 and a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 2,865. The DirectX 12 PassMark score of 96 suggests that the card's API performance is adequate for modern titles like Lockdown Protocol, which is an FPS game likely optimized for DirectX 12. The GPU's 96 ROPs and 160 TMUs contribute to its fillrate capabilities, but the data indicates that at 4K, the card's raw compute throughput becomes the limiting factor rather than memory capacity.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured FPS values show a wide spread across settings. Low settings produce an average of 200 FPS, Medium produces 142 FPS with a minimum of 121 and maximum of 163, High produces 124 FPS, and Ultra produces 93 FPS. The 107 FPS difference between Low and Ultra at 1080p demonstrates the significant impact of quality presets on this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the averages decrease across all settings. Low settings yield 147 FPS, Medium yields 104 FPS with a minimum of 88 and maximum of 120, High yields 91 FPS, and Ultra yields 68 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra narrows to 79 FPS at this resolution, indicating that the GPU is beginning to limit performance at higher quality settings.

At 3840x2160, the averages drop further. Low settings produce 95 FPS, Medium produces 67 FPS with a minimum of 57 and maximum of 77, High produces 59 FPS, and Ultra produces 44 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra at 4K is 51 FPS, showing that the GPU's performance ceiling compresses the range of achievable frame rates. The Medium preset at 4K is the only one with recorded minimum and maximum values, suggesting that the frame pacing at this resolution is more variable.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-10400F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Comet Lake architecture, built on Intel's 14 nm process. Its base clock is 2.90 GHz with a boost clock of 4.30 GHz, and it has a 12 MB shared L3 cache with 256 KB L2 and 64 KB L1 per core. The CPU supports DDR4 memory with dual-channel configuration and a memory bandwidth of 42.7 GB/s, operating on PCIe Gen 3 with 16 lanes.

In Lockdown Protocol, the CPU's performance is sufficient to avoid becoming the primary bottleneck at most settings and resolutions. The 3DMark scores show 4,748 with 16 threads and 4,735 with max threads, indicating that the CPU's multi-threaded capability is well-utilized. The Cinebench R23 multicore score of 10,283 and singlecore score of 1,451 suggest that both multi-threaded and single-threaded workloads are handled competently.

The CPU's percentile standing of 68 among all CPUs is higher than the GPU's 58, meaning the CPU has greater relative headroom. This is reflected in the FPS data where, at 1080p Low settings, the system achieves 200 FPS, which is likely near the CPU's maximum frame generation capability for this game. The fact that FPS continues to scale upward from 4K to 1080p indicates that the CPU is not imposing a hard cap on performance at lower resolutions. However, the PassMark single-thread score of 2,541 and the 3DMark single-thread score of 688 reveal that the CPU's single-thread performance is modest by modern standards, which could limit frame rates in CPU-bound scenarios.