Lockdown Protocol

CPU Role — cores, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The Intel Core i5-10400F is a 6-core, 12-thread Comet Lake processor with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.30 GHz. It carries 12 MB of shared L3 cache and supports DDR4 memory over a dual-channel bus with 42.7 GB/s bandwidth. The CPU's benchmark profile shows a single-thread score of 688 in 3DMark and 1453 in Cinebench R23, while multi-thread results reach 4735 in 3DMark max threads and 10297 in Cinebench R23 multicore. Its PassMark multithread score sits at 12115, with a PassMark single-thread score of 2541.

In Lockdown Protocol, the CPU's 6-core/12-thread configuration appears sufficient to feed the GPU at lower resolutions. At 1080p Low, the combo produces 196.6 FPS, which is the highest measured average across all settings and resolutions. This suggests that at 1080p, the i5-10400F can keep up with the Radeon RX 9070's output capability, as the frame rate is not collapsing under CPU overhead. The processor's 4.30 GHz boost clock helps with the game's single-threaded dependency, and the 3DMark single-thread score of 688 indicates decent per-core performance for a 10th-gen part.

However, the CPU's age shows in the scaling pattern. When moving from 1080p Low to 1080p Ultra, the average FPS drops from 196.6 to 113.2 — a 42.4% reduction. This drop is steeper than what pure GPU load would typically dictate, hinting that the CPU's thread scheduling and cache hierarchy are contributing to the ceiling at higher settings. The 3DMark 8-thread score of 3929 versus the 2-thread score of 1350 shows that the CPU gains 191% from 2 to 8 threads, but the game does not appear to utilize all 12 threads fully, given that the max-thread score (4735) is only 20.5% higher than the 8-thread score.

The CPU ranks in the 73rd percentile among all tested processors, with an average benchmark score of 14168. Its nearest rivals include the AMD EPYC 7552 (0.4% faster), AMD Ryzen 3 7320C (0.8% slower), Intel Core i5-8500 (1.1% slower), and AMD Ryzen Embedded V2546 (1.2% slower). This places the i5-10400F in a mid-range position — not a bottleneck at 4K, but likely a limiting factor at 1080p where the GPU has headroom. The data shows that at 1440p and 4K, the CPU's role diminishes as the GPU becomes the primary constraint, but at 1080p, the CPU's 12 MB L3 cache and DDR4 bandwidth are enough to sustain high frame rates without stalling.

GPU Role — VRAM, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 is built on the Navi 48 chip with RDNA 4.0 architecture, fabricated on a 4 nm process at TSMC. It packs 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering 644.6 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU's boost clock runs at 2520 MHz, with a game clock of 2070 MHz and a base clock of 1330 MHz. Its compute resources include 3584 shading units, 224 texture mapping units, 128 ROPs, and 56 ray tracing cores. The FP32 throughput is 36.13 TFLOPS, with a pixel rate of 322.6 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 564.5 GTexel/s.

The 16 GB VRAM is a significant asset for Lockdown Protocol at high resolutions and settings. At 4K Ultra, the combo averages 56.5 FPS, while at 4K High it reaches 71.4 FPS, and at 4K Medium 82.2 FPS. The fact that 4K Low hits 118.3 FPS shows that the GPU can deliver well over 100 FPS when texture and shading demands are reduced — this indicates that the VRAM capacity is not the limiting factor, but rather the shading complexity. The RX 9070's 56 RT cores suggest that ray tracing features in the game would be handled without excessive performance loss, though the measured rows do not separate RT from non-RT scenarios.

The GPU's benchmark results show a PassMark G3D score of 25381 and a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 6290. Its Vulkan and OpenCL scores are 165532 and 133741 respectively. These numbers place the RX 9070 in the 79th percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 34780. Its nearest rivals are the NVIDIA A2 (0.2% slower), NVIDIA Quadro GV100 (0.3% faster), AMD Radeon HD 7970 (0.7% faster), and AMD Radeon PRO W6400 (0.8% faster). Notably, these rivals are not gaming-focused cards, which underscores the RX 9070's positioning as a modern gaming GPU with substantial compute headroom.

In Lockdown Protocol, the GPU's role is most evident in the scaling from Medium to Ultra at each resolution. At 1440p, the gap between Medium (129.5 FPS) and Ultra (82.7 FPS) is 36.1%, while at 4K the gap between Medium (82.2 FPS) and Ultra (56.5 FPS) is 31.3%. This consistent 30-36% penalty for Ultra settings suggests that the game's Ultra preset imposes heavy shading and texture loads that the RX 9070's 3584 shaders must process. The memory bandwidth of 644.6 GB/s is adequate to feed those shaders, as evidenced by the fact that 4K Low (118.3 FPS) does not show memory starvation.

Resolution Scaling — how FPS drops from 1080p to 4K and what it says about the limiting component

The measured data shows a clear resolution scaling pattern. At High settings, the average FPS drops from 151.1 at 1080p to 110.8 at 1440p (a 26.7% reduction) and then to 71.4 at 4K (a 35.6% reduction from 1440p). At Low settings, the progression is 196.6 → 179.9 → 118.3, which represents a 8.5% drop from 1080p to 1440p and a 34.2% drop from 1440p to 4K. At Medium settings, the numbers are 177.2 → 129.5 → 82.2, with drops of 26.9% and 36.5% respectively. At Ultra, the pattern is 113.2 → 82.7 → 56.5, with drops of 26.9% and 31.7%.

The key insight is that the 1080p to 1440p transition at Low settings produces only an 8.5% FPS loss, while the same resolution step at High, Medium, and Ultra settings produces roughly 27% losses. This asymmetry reveals that at Low settings with 1080p, the CPU is the primary limiter — the i5-10400F cannot push frames beyond 196.6 FPS, so the GPU has spare capacity that masks the resolution increase. At higher settings, the GPU becomes the bottleneck, and the resolution scaling follows the expected pixel-count relationship.

The 1440p to 4K step shows a consistent 31-37% FPS drop across all settings, which indicates that the GPU is fully saturated at 1440p and the transition to 4K adds the pixel load that the RX 9070 cannot fully compensate for. This is typical of a GPU-bound scenario at those resolutions. The fact that 4K Low (118.3 FPS) is still above 1440p Ultra (82.7 FPS) is telling: the game's settings have a larger impact on performance than resolution alone, at least within this range.

The data suggests that for this combo, the CPU limits at 1080p Low/Medium, the GPU limits at 1440p and above across all settings, and the crossover point lies between 1080p Medium (177.2 FPS) and 1080p High (151.1 FPS). At 1440p, the GPU is clearly the limiting component, as evidenced by the tight 26-37% scaling that aligns with pixel count increases rather than CPU overhead.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this CPU-GPU combo in Lockdown Protocol?

A: The data shows that 1440p provides the best balance of frame rate and visual fidelity. At 1440p High, the combo averages 110.8 FPS, which is comfortably above 60 FPS, while 4K High drops to 71.4 FPS. The 1080p results are higher (151.1 FPS at High) but the CPU becomes the limiting factor at Low settings, capping at 196.6 FPS.

Q: How does the CPU's single-thread performance affect this game?

A: The i5-10400F's 3DMark single-thread score of 688 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1453 indicate moderate per-core strength. In Lockdown Protocol, this is sufficient to drive 196.6 FPS at 1080p Low, but the 8.5% FPS drop from 1080p Low to 1440p Low suggests the CPU is nearing its limit at that frame rate.

Q: Is 16 GB of VRAM necessary for this game?

A: The RX 9070's 16 GB GDDR6 memory with 644.6 GB/s bandwidth is more than adequate for Lockdown Protocol. At 4K Ultra, the combo still averages 56.5 FPS, indicating that VRAM capacity is not a bottleneck — the shading load is the limiting factor at that setting.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Low and Ultra at 1080p?

A: At 1080p, the average FPS goes from 196.6 at Low to 113.2 at Ultra, a difference of 83.4 FPS or 42.4%. This is the largest relative drop among all resolutions, indicating that the CPU is less of a factor at Ultra and the GPU's shading units are fully engaged.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested combinations?

A: The combo ranks 589th out of 1637 tested combinations in Lockdown Protocol, placing it in the 64th percentile of all combos. This is a mid-to-upper range position, consistent with the CPU's 73rd percentile and GPU's 79th percentile individual rankings.

Q: Does the game favor the CPU or GPU at 4K?

A: At 4K, the GPU is the clear limiting component. The FPS drops from 118.3 at Low to 56.5 at Ultra, a 52.2% reduction, while the resolution scaling from 1440p to 4K shows consistent 31-37% drops across all settings, confirming GPU-bound behavior.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i5-10400F + AMD Radeon RX 9070 combination ranks 589th out of 1637 tested combos in Lockdown Protocol, placing it in the 64th percentile of all combinations. This ranking reflects a balanced pairing where neither component is severely mismatched. The CPU's 73rd percentile ranking (among all CPUs) and the GPU's 79th percentile ranking (among all GPUs) are closely aligned, which explains why the combo does not suffer from a pronounced bottleneck in either direction.

The nearest CPU rivals — the AMD EPYC 7552, AMD Ryzen 3 7320C, Intel Core i5-8500, and AMD Ryzen Embedded V2546 — all fall within 1.2% of the i5-10400F's average benchmark score. This tight clustering means that swapping the CPU for any of these would produce nearly identical results in Lockdown Protocol, assuming the GPU remains the same. Conversely, the GPU's nearest rivals (NVIDIA A2, Quadro GV100, Radeon HD 7970, Radeon PRO W6400) are all within 0.8% of the RX 9070's average score, but these are not gaming-focused cards, so their real-world gaming performance would differ significantly from the RX 9070's measured results.

The combo's rank of 589 suggests that there are 1048 combinations that perform better, which is a substantial number. However, many of those likely pair higher-end CPUs with the same or better GPUs. The data shows that this combo can deliver 151.1 FPS at 1080p High and 110.8 FPS at 1440p High, which are strong results for a mainstream 10th-gen CPU paired with a current-gen GPU. The ranking reflects that while the combo is capable, there is headroom for improvement by upgrading the CPU, as the GPU is clearly the stronger component based on percentile rankings.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS rows, the Medium preset offers the best balance of visual quality and frame rate for this combo. At 1080p Medium, the average is 177.2 FPS, which is 11.7% higher than High (151.1 FPS) and 56.4% higher than Ultra (113.2 FPS). At 1440p Medium, the average drops to 129.5 FPS, still comfortably above 120 FPS, while High delivers 110.8 FPS and Ultra falls to 82.7 FPS. At 4K, Medium produces 82.2 FPS, which is above the 60 FPS threshold, while High drops to 71.4 FPS and Ultra to 56.5 FPS.

For 1080p users, Low settings provide the highest frame rate at 196.6 FPS, but the jump from Low to Medium costs only 9.9% performance (from 196.6 to 177.2 FPS) while likely offering noticeably better visuals. The jump from Medium to High costs 14.7% (from 177.2 to 151.1 FPS), and the jump from High to Ultra costs 25.1% (from 151.1 to 113.2 FPS). This diminishing returns pattern suggests that Medium is the sweet spot for 1080p.

For 1440p users, Medium (129.5 FPS) is the recommended preset, as it maintains high refresh rate capability while High (110.8 FPS) is still viable for 100+ FPS monitors. Ultra at 1440p (82.7 FPS) is acceptable for 60 Hz displays but sacrifices significant frame rate for marginal visual gains. For 4K users, Medium (82.2 FPS) is the strongest choice, as it stays above 60 FPS without the steep penalty of High (71.4 FPS, a 13.1% drop) or Ultra (56.5 FPS, a 31.3% drop from Medium).

The data indicates that the Low preset at 4K (118.3 FPS) is a viable option for competitive play, but it does not provide the same visual enrichment as Medium, which costs 30.5% performance (from 118.3 to 82.2 FPS). Overall, Medium is the only preset that delivers over 60 FPS at all three resolutions, making it the most consistent recommendation across the board.