Lockdown Protocol

Lockdown Protocol places a substantial load on the graphics subsystem, and the measured frame rates for the Intel Core i5-10400F paired with the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT show a clear and predictable scaling pattern as resolution increases. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combo produces an average of 200 FPS, which serves as a baseline for the absolute ceiling of this configuration. Moving to 2560x1440 at the same Low preset, the average drops to 180 FPS, a 10% reduction, while at 4K (3840x2160) on Low, the average falls further to 123 FPS, which represents a 38.5% decline from the 1080p figure. This steep drop-off at 4K indicates that the Radeon RX 9070 XT is being pushed to its limits by the raw pixel throughput, though the frame rates remain highly playable.

The scaling behavior becomes more pronounced when examining the higher quality presets. At High settings, the transition from 1080p to 1440p sees the average FPS fall from 161 to 118, a 26.7% decrease, and then to 76 at 4K, which is a 52.8% drop from the 1080p result. This pattern suggests that while the GPU is the primary bottleneck at 4K, the CPU begins to play a more significant role at lower resolutions. The data reveals that at 1080p High, the system is likely partially CPU-limited, as the 6-core, 12-thread Comet Lake processor with a 2.90 GHz base and 4.30 GHz boost clock works to feed frames to the powerful RDNA 4.0 architecture. The gap between 1080p Low (200 FPS) and 1080p High (161 FPS) is 19.5%, which is smaller than the gap between 1440p Low (180 FPS) and 1440p High (118 FPS) at 34.4%, further indicating that the CPU becomes less of a limiting factor as resolution increases and the GPU workload grows.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows provide a clear picture of which preset offers the best experience for this hardware combination. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset delivers an average of 176 FPS with a minimum of 149 and a maximum of 202, which is only 12% lower than the Low preset's 200 FPS average but provides noticeably better visual fidelity. The High preset at 1080p yields 161 FPS, which is still well above the 144 Hz refresh rate that many gamers target, making it a viable option for competitive play. However, the Ultra preset at 1080p drops to 121 FPS, which, while smooth, represents a 31.5% reduction from Medium and may not justify the visual gains in a fast-paced FPS title.

For 2560x1440, the Medium preset stands out as the sweet spot, producing an average of 135 FPS with a minimum of 115 and a maximum of 156. This represents a 25% improvement over High (118 FPS) and a 51.7% improvement over Ultra (89 FPS). The Low preset at 1440p hits 180 FPS, but the visual compromise is substantial for a game where spotting enemies at range is critical. At 4K, the situation changes dramatically. The Medium preset at 3840x2160 averages 87 FPS with a minimum of 74 and a maximum of 100, which is the only 4K preset that maintains an average above 60 FPS while offering reasonable visual quality. The High preset at 4K manages 76 FPS, which is playable, but the Ultra preset falls to 57 FPS, dipping below the 60 FPS threshold that is generally considered the minimum for smooth gameplay.

The data suggests that the optimal experience for this combo is Medium settings at 1440p, which balances frame rate consistency with visual clarity. The minimum FPS of 115 at 1440p Medium ensures that even in intense firefights, the frame rate does not drop below a playable threshold. For players prioritizing maximum competitiveness, 1080p Medium or High offers frame rates that exceed 160 FPS, providing a significant advantage in a genre where response time is paramount. At 4K, Medium is the pragmatic choice, as the 87 FPS average provides a smooth experience without the visual degradation of Low settings.

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 node. It operates with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.30 GHz, with a 12 MB shared L3 cache. In the context of Lockdown Protocol, the CPU's role is most evident in the frame rate behavior at lower resolutions and settings. The benchmark data shows that at 1080p Low, the system achieves 200 FPS, but the scaling to 1080p Medium (176 FPS) and 1080p High (161 FPS) suggests that the CPU can keep up with the GPU's output at these settings. The 3DMark benchmark scores for this processor, including a single-thread score of 688 and a 16-thread score of 4748, indicate that its per-core performance is adequate for modern FPS titles, but its overall multithreaded capability is modest by current standards.

The nearest rivals for the i5-10400F in the database, based on average benchmark scores, include the Intel Xeon 6756E (0.2% higher score), Intel Core 7 160UL (0.3% lower), AMD EPYC 7552 (0.5% higher), and AMD Ryzen 3 7320C (0.6% lower). These comparisons show that the i5-10400F sits in a narrow performance band relative to its peers, with all four rivals within a 1% margin of its average benchmark score of 14,185. The processor's percentile ranking against all CPUs is 68, placing it in the upper third of the database. For Lockdown Protocol specifically, the CPU's 6 cores and 12 threads are sufficient to avoid becoming a bottleneck at 1080p, but the data shows that the frame rate ceiling at Low settings (200 FPS) is likely constrained by the CPU's single-thread performance, as the GPU is capable of rendering far more frames at this resolution.

The CPU's memory bandwidth of 42.7 GB/s over a dual-channel DDR4 interface, combined with its PCIe Gen 3 x16 connection to the GPU, does not appear to introduce any measurable limitations in this game. The frame rates at 1080p Low (200 FPS) and 1440p Low (180 FPS) suggest that the CPU can sustain a high instruction throughput, but the drop to 123 FPS at 4K Low indicates that the GPU is the dominant bottleneck at that resolution. The benchmark results imply that for players using this combo at 1080p, the CPU is working near its effective limit, as the frame rate gains from reducing settings from High to Low are relatively modest (161 to 200 FPS, a 24.2% increase) compared to the gains seen at 1440p (118 to 180 FPS, a 52.5% increase).

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested hardware combinations for Lockdown Protocol, the Intel Core i5-10400F paired with the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT holds a combo rank of 1074 out of 3714 total combinations. This places the setup in the top 28.9% of all tested configurations, indicating that it delivers above-average performance for this title. The rank reflects the combination's ability to produce high frame rates across all tested resolutions and settings, with the GPU's 16 GB of GDDR6 memory and 256-bit memory bus providing ample bandwidth for high-resolution textures. The Radeon RX 9070 XT's 4096 shading units, 256 texture mapping units, and 128 render output units contribute to its strong rasterization performance, which is the primary workload in Lockdown Protocol.

The combo's rank of 1074 suggests that while it is not among the top-tier configurations, it outperforms the majority of systems in the database. The GPU's percentile ranking against all GPUs is 55, which is lower than its raw performance would suggest, indicating that the database contains many higher-end graphics cards. However, the combination with the i5-10400F, which has a 68th percentile CPU ranking, results in a balanced system that avoids severe bottlenecks in either direction. The 1074th rank out of 3714 combinations means that there are 2640 combos that perform worse, which positions this setup as a solid mid-to-high tier option for Lockdown Protocol.

The combo rank is particularly notable given that the GPU's nearest rivals in the database, based on average benchmark scores, include the AMD Radeon HD 7770M (0.1% higher score), NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 (0.2% higher), NVIDIA P106-090 (0.5% higher), and AMD Radeon Pro 555 (1% higher). These comparisons are based on synthetic benchmarks and do not reflect actual gaming performance, but they do indicate that the RX 9070 XT's average benchmark score of 13,543 places it in a specific performance tier within the database. The measured FPS in Lockdown Protocol, however, demonstrates that this GPU is far more capable than its synthetic benchmark rivals suggest, as it delivers 200 FPS at 1080p Low and 76 FPS at 4K High.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT is built on the RDNA 4.0 architecture using a 4 nm process at TSMC, featuring the Navi 48 chip with 53,900 million transistors on a 357 mm² die. Its clock speeds include a 1660 MHz base, a 2400 MHz game clock, and a 2970 MHz boost clock, with memory running at 2518 MHz (20.1 Gbps effective). The GPU's 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 644.6 GB/s of bandwidth, which is substantial for 4K gaming. The 64 ray tracing cores and 128 ROPs contribute to its ability to handle modern rendering techniques, though Lockdown Protocol's measured performance suggests that traditional rasterization is the primary workload.

The GPU's role in this combo becomes increasingly dominant as resolution increases. At 1080p, the frame rates range from 121 FPS at Ultra to 200 FPS at Low, with the CPU providing sufficient headroom to keep the GPU fed. At 1440p, the GPU's workload increases, and the frame rates drop to a range of 89 FPS at Ultra to 180 FPS at Low. At 4K, the GPU is clearly the limiting factor, with the Ultra preset falling to 57 FPS and the Low preset reaching 123 FPS. The scaling from 1440p High (118 FPS) to 4K High (76 FPS) represents a 35.6% performance drop, which is consistent with the pixel count increase of 2.25x, indicating that the GPU is scaling as expected with resolution.

The GPU's memory capacity of 16 GB is more than sufficient for Lockdown Protocol at 4K, as the measured frame rates do not indicate any texture streaming or memory bandwidth limitations. The 644.6 GB/s of memory bandwidth ensures that the GPU can access textures and geometry data without stalling, even at the highest resolutions. The GPU's FP32 performance of 48.66 TFLOPS provides ample compute power for the game's physics and particle effects. The measured FPS at 4K Medium (87 FPS) with a minimum of 74 FPS indicates that the GPU maintains consistent frame delivery, which is critical for a competitive FPS title where frame time spikes can negatively impact gameplay.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured FPS data for this combo across all resolutions and settings provides a detailed view of its performance characteristics. At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves an average of 200 FPS, the Medium preset averages 176 FPS with a minimum of 149 and a maximum of 202, the High preset averages 161 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 121 FPS. The 1080p results show a clear progression where each step up in quality costs roughly 15-20% of performance, with the largest single drop occurring between High (161 FPS) and Ultra (121 FPS), a 24.8% reduction.

At 2560x1440, the Low preset averages 180 FPS, the Medium preset averages 135 FPS with a minimum of 115 and a maximum of 156, the High preset averages 118 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 89 FPS. The 1440p results show a more significant performance gap between Low and Medium (25% drop) compared to the 1080p results, indicating that the GPU is starting to feel the load of higher resolution rendering. The minimum FPS of 115 at Medium settings is notable, as it shows that the system maintains a playable frame rate even during demanding scenes.

At 3840x2160, the Low preset averages 123 FPS, the Medium preset averages 87 FPS with a minimum of 74 and a maximum of 100, the High preset averages 76 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 57 FPS. The 4K results demonstrate the GPU's capability to handle high-resolution gaming, with the Medium preset providing a comfortable 87 FPS average that stays above 60 FPS even at its minimum. The Ultra preset at 4K, at 57 FPS, falls just below the 60 FPS threshold, making it less desirable for competitive play. The data overall shows a well-balanced system that excels at 1080p and 1440p, while remaining capable at 4K with appropriate settings adjustments.