Lockdown Protocol

The Intel Core i5-14400F paired with the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT delivers a robust 1080p experience in Lockdown Protocol, but the data reveals a clear shift in system dynamics as resolution climbs. At 1920x1080, the combination produces an average of 280 FPS on Low settings, a figure that demonstrates the CPU's capacity to feed the GPU at lower resolutions. Moving to 2560x1440, the average drops to 206 FPS on Low, and at 3840x2160, it settles at 133 FPS. This progression—a 26% reduction from 1080p to 1440p, followed by a further 35% drop from 1440p to 4K—indicates that while the GPU begins to assert its influence at higher pixel counts, the processor remains a significant contributor to frame pacing at lower resolutions.

The scaling pattern across all settings reinforces this interpretation. For High settings, the averages are 174 FPS at 1080p, 127 FPS at 1440p, and 82 FPS at 4K. The 4K High result is nearly half of the 1080p High figure, a typical sign of GPU-bound rendering. However, the 1080p Low result of 280 FPS suggests that the i5-14400F's 10 cores and 16 threads are not the limiting factor in this scenario. The data implies that Lockdown Protocol is not heavily threaded, as the CPU's core count is sufficient to maintain high frame rates even when the GPU has less work to do per frame. The Radeon RX 7900 XT, with its 20 GB of GDDR6 memory and 800.0 GB/s bandwidth, is more than capable of handling the texture and geometry loads at 4K, yet the frame rate at 4K Ultra is a modest 62 FPS, suggesting a combination of GPU compute limits and possibly driver overhead at extreme settings.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data for Lockdown Protocol shows a predictable yet informative decline as resolution increases, with the most dramatic shifts occurring between the low and high preset tiers. At 1920x1080, the system achieves 280 FPS on Low and 174 FPS on High, a gap of 106 FPS that highlights how much headroom exists at this resolution. The 1440p results compress this spread slightly—206 FPS on Low versus 127 FPS on High—while the 4K figures show a tighter band: 133 FPS on Low and 82 FPS on High. This narrowing suggests that the GPU's pixel throughput becomes the dominant constraint at 4K, whereas at 1080p, the CPU's ability to issue draw calls and manage game logic allows for the higher frame rates observed.

The Ultra preset at 4K produces just 62 FPS, which is a 53% reduction from the 4K Low result. This is a larger proportional drop than the 54% reduction seen at 1440p (96 FPS on Ultra vs. 206 FPS on Low) or the 54% drop at 1080p (130 FPS on Ultra vs. 280 FPS on Low). The consistency of these percentages—roughly half the frame rate when moving from Low to Ultra—indicates that Lockdown Protocol's Ultra settings introduce a substantial amount of GPU work, likely through increased shadow resolution, post-processing effects, and geometric detail. The RX 7900 XT's 5376 shading units and 192 ROPs are being pushed hard at this extreme, yet the card still delivers playable frame rates, albeit not at the high-refresh territory seen at lower settings.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14400F is a 10-core, 16-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake architecture, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.70 GHz. In Lockdown Protocol, the benchmark results indicate that this CPU is well-suited for high-refresh gaming at 1080p, where it achieves 280 FPS on Low settings. The processor's Cinebench R23 multicore score of 21645 and singlecore score of 3055 suggest strong all-around performance, but the game's frame rates imply that single-threaded performance is more critical than raw core count. The 4.70 GHz boost clock likely allows the CPU to keep up with the GPU's demands at lower resolutions, where the frame rate is not limited by pixel fill.

At 1440p and 4K, the CPU's role diminishes as the GPU becomes the bottleneck. The data shows that the frame rate at 4K Low (133 FPS) is still high enough to indicate that the CPU is not causing a stutter or bottleneck, as the GPU is still able to produce over 100 FPS even at this resolution. The i5-14400F's 20 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel memory support (DDR4/DDR5) are adequate for feeding the GPU with data, and the lack of integrated graphics means all rendering is handled by the discrete card. In comparison to similar CPUs, the i5-14400F's average benchmark score of 32279 places it in the 83rd percentile of all CPUs, with nearest rivals including the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 8840U and Intel Core i9-11900, both within a fraction of a percent in average score. This competitive positioning suggests that the CPU will not be a weak link in most gaming scenarios.

Settings Recommendations

Given the measured FPS data, the Medium preset offers the most balanced experience for this combination. At 1920x1080, Medium produces an average of 199 FPS with a minimum of 169 FPS and a maximum of 229 FPS, which is a substantial improvement over High (174 FPS) while remaining visually superior to Low. The 1440p Medium result of 146 FPS (min 124, max 168) is also excellent for high-refresh monitors, providing a smooth experience without the need to drop to Low. At 4K, Medium delivers 94 FPS (min 80, max 108), which is playable for a FPS title, though users with 120 Hz or higher displays may prefer Low for the 133 FPS average.

The Ultra preset is the most demanding, with 130 FPS at 1080p, 96 FPS at 1440p, and 62 FPS at 4K. The 4K Ultra figure is below the 60 FPS threshold for many gamers, so the Medium preset is recommended for 4K users who want a stable frame rate without compromising too much on visual fidelity. The High preset is a middle ground, offering 174/127/82 FPS across the three resolutions, but the data shows that Medium provides a better frame-time consistency (based on the min/max range at Medium) while only sacrificing a modest amount of visual quality. For competitive play, the Low preset's 280 FPS at 1080p is ideal for high-refresh panels, but for most users, Medium is the sweet spot.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested combinations, this pairing of the Intel Core i5-14400F and AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT achieves a combo rank of 685 out of 3714 tested combinations. This places it in the top 18.4% of all combos, indicating above-average performance for Lockdown Protocol. The rank is a holistic measure that considers all resolution and settings combinations, and the data suggests that while the GPU is a high-end part—with a 55th percentile ranking among all GPUs based on its average benchmark score of 13745—the CPU's 83rd percentile ranking helps push the overall combo into the upper quintile.

The GPU's nearest rivals, such as the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT (which scores 1.5% higher on average) and the AMD Radeon 660M (0.5% lower), show that the RX 7900 XT is in a competitive tier, but the combo rank of 685 indicates that there are many other CPU-GPU pairings that achieve higher frame rates in this specific game. This is likely due to the game's sensitivity to CPU performance at lower resolutions, where the i5-14400F's 10 cores are sufficient but not exceptional. The combo rank also reflects the fact that at 4K Ultra, the 62 FPS result pulls down the overall average, even though the system excels at 1080p and 1440p.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT, built on the RDNA 3.0 architecture with the Navi 31 chip, is a formidable graphics card that plays a decisive role in Lockdown Protocol's higher-resolution performance. Its 20 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 320-bit bus provides 800.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is more than enough for the game's texture-heavy scenes at 4K. The GPU's boost clock of 2394 MHz and game clock of 2025 MHz allow it to sustain high frame rates, as evidenced by the 133 FPS average at 4K Low. The card's 84 ray tracing cores are present, but Lockdown Protocol likely does not heavily utilize RT, as the frame rates at High and Ultra are still respectable without ray tracing enabled.

The GPU's role becomes more apparent when examining the scaling from Medium to Ultra. At 4K, the frame rate drops from 94 FPS on Medium to 62 FPS on Ultra, a 34% reduction that is almost entirely attributable to the GPU's compute and memory subsystems. The RX 7900 XT's 51.48 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 459.6 GPixel/s pixel rate are being taxed by the Ultra preset's additional effects. In the GPU benchmark suite, the card scores 29009 in Passmark G3D and 5623 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, placing it in the 55th percentile of all GPUs. This indicates that while the card is capable, it is not at the very top of the performance hierarchy, which explains the 4K Ultra result of 62 FPS—a playable but not high-refresh outcome.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete FPS data for this combination is as follows. At 1920x1080, the system produces 280 FPS on Low, 199 FPS on Medium (min 169, max 229), 174 FPS on High, and 130 FPS on Ultra. At 2560x1440, the averages are 206 FPS on Low, 146 FPS on Medium (min 124, max 168), 127 FPS on High, and 96 FPS on Ultra. At 3840x2160, the results are 133 FPS on Low, 94 FPS on Medium (min 80, max 108), 82 FPS on High, and 62 FPS on Ultra. These numbers show a consistent pattern where Medium settings provide a 15-20% performance uplift over High, while Low settings offer a further 40-50% increase over Medium.

The minimum FPS data is only available for the Medium preset, with values of 169 FPS at 1080p, 124 FPS at 1440p, and 80 FPS at 4K. These minimums are all above the 60 FPS threshold, indicating that the system maintains smooth frame delivery even during intense gameplay sequences. The maximum FPS values at Medium (229, 168, and 108 respectively) show that there is headroom for occasional spikes, but the average figures are more representative of typical performance. The data confirms that this combination is best suited for 1080p and 1440p gaming at Medium to High settings, with 4K requiring a compromise to Low or Medium for competitive frame rates.