Lockdown Protocol

Lockdown Protocol places the Intel Core i5-12400F and AMD Radeon RX 570 combo in a demanding position, with measured data showing a wide performance spread across its preset and resolution matrix. The data shows a system that is consistently viable at lower settings, but one that struggles to maintain fluid frame rates as graphical load increases, particularly at higher resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark results clearly indicate that the Low preset is the only setting tier that provides a consistently playable experience across all tested resolutions for this specific hardware combination. At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves an average of 79.3 FPS, which is the highest measured frame rate in the entire dataset and represents a substantial performance headroom. Moving to 2560x1440 on Low yields 57.8 FPS, which remains comfortably within acceptable ranges for an FPS title, while even the demanding 3840x2160 resolution manages 34.2 FPS on Low.

The Medium preset offers a moderate step up in visual fidelity but exacts a significant performance toll. At 1080p, Medium drops to 57.0 FPS, a reduction of 28.1% compared to Low. This pattern intensifies at higher resolutions, with Medium producing 42.6 FPS at 1440p and only 26.6 FPS at 4K. The High preset further compounds this issue, delivering 49.6 FPS at 1080p, 37.0 FPS at 1440p, and 24.4 FPS at 4K. The Ultra preset is the most demanding, yielding just 34.8 FPS at 1080p and falling to a marginal 19.6 FPS at 4K.

Given these measurements, the recommended approach for this combo is to prioritize the Low preset for any resolution above 1080p. The data shows that Low at 1440p provides a far better balance of visual clarity and performance than Medium at 1080p, as the higher resolution compensates for reduced graphical details. For users willing to accept occasional frame drops, Medium at 1080p is the highest preset that maintains an average above 55 FPS, but the Low preset is the only configuration that delivers optimal frame pacing across the board.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 570 is the primary performance limiter in this pairing, as evidenced by the steep frame rate declines when graphical settings are increased. The GPU features 2048 shading units, 128 texture mapping units, and 32 raster operation pipelines, with a base clock of 1168 MHz and a boost clock of 1244 MHz. Memory configuration consists of 4 GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus, providing 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU's compute capability is rated at 5.095 TFLOPS for both FP32 and FP16 operations.

The measured results show that the RX 570's 4 GB VRAM and bandwidth constraints become more apparent at higher settings. The transition from Low to Ultra at any given resolution demonstrates a consistent performance degradation that aligns with the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth limitations. At 1080p, the spread between Low (79.3 FPS) and Ultra (34.8 FPS) is 44.5 FPS, indicating that the GPU struggles significantly with the increased shader complexity and texture loads of higher presets. The GPU's pixel rate of 39.81 GPixel/s and texture rate of 159.2 GTexel/s provide context for these results, as Lockdown Protocol's rendering demands at Ultra settings clearly exceed what this Polaris 20 chip can sustain.

Resolution Scaling

The performance scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a GPU-bound scenario at higher resolutions. At the Low preset, average FPS drops from 79.3 at 1080p to 57.8 at 1440p, a reduction of 27.1%, and further to 34.2 at 4K, representing a 56.9% decline from the 1080p baseline. This scaling pattern is consistent with a GPU that is increasingly overwhelmed by pixel count, as the RX 570's 224.0 GB/s bandwidth and 32 ROPs cannot keep pace with the 4K pixel workload.

The Medium preset shows a similar trajectory, with 57.0 FPS at 1080p falling to 42.6 at 1440p and 26.6 at 4K. Interestingly, the relative drop from 1440p to 4K is more severe at Medium (37.6% reduction) than at Low (40.8% reduction), suggesting that the combination of higher resolution and increased shading complexity creates a compounding load. The High preset follows this pattern, with 49.6 FPS at 1080p, 37.0 at 1440p, and 24.4 at 4K. These results indicate that the CPU is not the primary bottleneck at higher resolutions, as the consistent FPS declines track directly with the GPU's rendering load.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i5-12400F and AMD Radeon RX 570 combination ranks 1541st out of 1637 tested combos for Lockdown Protocol, placing it in the bottom 5.9% of all system configurations. This low ranking is primarily attributable to the GPU's age and limited capabilities, as the RX 570's benchmark percentile of 74 versus all GPUs masks its real-world gaming performance in modern FPS titles.

The CPU component of this combo performs much more respectably in isolation, with the i5-12400F achieving a 77th percentile ranking versus all CPUs. However, the pairing's overall rank in Lockdown Protocol demonstrates that the GPU severely bottlenecks the system's potential. The measured FPS data confirms this assessment, as even the best-case scenario of 79.3 FPS at 1080p Low is modest compared to what more capable GPUs would achieve with this processor.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400F provides a solid foundation for this combo, featuring 6 cores and 12 threads with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. The processor is built on Intel's Alder Lake architecture using a 10 nm process, with 18 MB of shared L3 cache. Synthetic benchmarks show strong multi-threaded performance, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 16518 and a single-core score of 2332, while Geekbench reports 9138 multi-core and 2221 single-core scores.

In Lockdown Protocol, the CPU's role is largely subordinated to the GPU's limitations. The data shows that at 1080p Low, where the GPU has the least work, the system achieves 79.3 FPS, which suggests the CPU can feed frames at a reasonable rate. However, the CPU is not the limiting factor at higher resolutions, as evidenced by the consistent FPS drops that track with GPU load rather than CPU capability. The processor's 3DMark scores, including 5912 for max threads and 909 for single thread, indicate adequate headroom for this game's typical thread utilization, but the RX 570 prevents the system from realizing the CPU's full potential in this title.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured averages are: Low 79.3 FPS, Medium 57.0 FPS, High 49.6 FPS, and Ultra 34.8 FPS. The 1080p results show the widest performance spread across presets, with Ultra delivering only 43.9% of the Low preset's frame rate.

At 2560x1440, the averages are: Low 57.8 FPS, Medium 42.6 FPS, High 37.0 FPS, and Ultra 27.1 FPS. The 1440p results demonstrate that the Low preset remains the only option above 50 FPS, while Ultra dips below 30 FPS.

At 3840x2160, the averages are: Low 34.2 FPS, Medium 26.6 FPS, High 24.4 FPS, and Ultra 19.6 FPS. The 4K results show that no preset achieves 35 FPS, making this resolution largely impractical for this combo in Lockdown Protocol. The data confirms that the RX 570's capabilities are exhausted at 4K, with even the lowest settings producing sub-35 FPS averages.