Lockdown Protocol

The Intel Core i5-14600KF paired with the AMD Radeon RX 9070 delivers a compelling 1080p and 1440p experience in Lockdown Protocol, but the data reveals a sharp performance cliff at 4K Ultra settings. The measured FPS curve shows a classic GPU-bound scaling pattern, with the most significant frame rate collapses occurring as resolution and graphical fidelity increase in tandem.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 exposes a dramatic shift in system balance. At 1080p Low settings, the combo produces 243.8 FPS, but this drops to 118.5 FPS at 4K Low — a reduction of over half the frame rate. This scaling pattern indicates that the Radeon RX 9070 becomes the primary limiting factor at higher resolutions, while the CPU has ample headroom at lower settings. The gap between 1080p and 1440p at Low settings is 62.2 FPS (243.8 to 181.6), while the gap from 1440p to 4K at Low is 63.1 FPS (181.6 to 118.5), showing a nearly linear degradation with pixel count at the lowest fidelity tier.

At High settings, the scaling is steeper. The 1080p result of 150.5 FPS falls to 109.9 FPS at 1440p, then to 73.5 FPS at 4K. The percentage drop from 1080p to 4K at High is approximately 51%, which is less severe than at Ultra settings. The Ultra preset tells a different story: 113.7 FPS at 1080p, 85.2 FPS at 1440p, and a mere 51.4 FPS at 4K. The 4K Ultra result represents a 54.8% reduction from the 1080p Ultra figure, and the 4K Ultra number is the only measured result below the 60 FPS threshold, suggesting that this resolution and settings combination pushes the GPU beyond its comfort zone.

The Medium settings tier shows intermediate behavior, with 174.7 FPS at 1080p, 127.6 FPS at 1440p, and 82.3 FPS at 4K. The consistent gap between Medium and High results across all resolutions — roughly 24 FPS at 1080p, 17.7 FPS at 1440p, and 8.8 FPS at 4K — indicates that the GPU has less spare capacity to absorb settings increases as resolution climbs.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 9070, built on the RDNA 4.0 architecture with a 4 nm process from TSMC, carries 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, yielding 644.6 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU's boost clock of 2520 MHz and game clock of 2070 MHz provide the computational throughput, with 3584 shading units and 56 ray accelerators handling the rendering workload. The 128 ROPs deliver a pixel rate of 322.6 GPixel/s, which becomes increasingly strained as resolution increases.

The memory subsystem is particularly relevant for Lockdown Protocol's 4K Ultra demands. The 16 GB frame buffer is not the bottleneck — the data shows the GPU's compute capabilities are the limiting factor. The FP32 throughput of 36.13 TFLOPS and texture rate of 564.5 GTexel/s are substantial, yet the 4K Ultra result of 51.4 FPS suggests that the card's raw shading power is insufficient for maxed-out settings at this resolution. Interestingly, the GPU's percentileVsAllGpus ranking of 79 places it in the upper quintile of all GPUs, and its average benchmark score of 34780 is nearly identical to the NVIDIA A2 (34866, delta -0.2%) and Quadro GV100 (34677, delta 0.3%).

The VRAM capacity proves adequate even at 4K Ultra, as the performance degradation from 4K Medium (82.3 FPS) to 4K Ultra (51.4 FPS) follows a pattern consistent with compute saturation rather than memory exhaustion. The 16 GB GDDR6 configuration with 20.1 Gbps effective memory speed provides enough bandwidth to feed the 3584 shading units, but the architecture's 36.13 TFLOPS ceiling becomes evident at higher settings.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14600KF, with its 14 cores and 20 threads, presents a strong foundation for gaming workloads. The Raptor Lake Refresh architecture, fabricated on Intel's 10 nm process, runs at a base clock of 3.50 GHz and boosts to 5.30 GHz. The 24 MB of shared L3 cache and 2 MB per-core L2 cache provide ample data locality for game logic and physics calculations.

Benchmark results for the CPU show consistent strength across both synthetic and real-world tests. The Cinebench R23 multicore score of 32889 and single-core score of 4643 demonstrate the processor's capability to handle both heavily threaded and latency-sensitive tasks. The Geekbench scores of 15636 multicore and 2778 single-core align with the PassMark multithread result of 38697, painting a picture of a balanced performer that rarely bottlenecks modern titles.

The 93rd percentile ranking among all CPUs suggests the 14600KF sits comfortably in the high-performance tier. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core i5-14600K, scores nearly identically (49166 vs 49367 average, a 0.4% delta), while the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X trails by 0.6%. This CPU's headroom is evident in the 1080p Low result of 243.8 FPS, which approaches the practical limits of most high-refresh displays and indicates the processor is not holding back the GPU at lower resolutions.

However, the CPU's role diminishes at 4K Ultra, where the 51.4 FPS result is clearly GPU-bound. The data suggests that even a significantly weaker processor would likely produce similar 4K Ultra results, as the RX 9070's compute limits dominate. At 1080p High, the 150.5 FPS figure shows the CPU can maintain high frame pacing, but the 113.7 FPS at 1080p Ultra hints that ray tracing or other GPU-intensive effects are starting to create a more balanced workload.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers exceptional performance across all settings. Low settings produce 243.8 FPS, Medium reaches 174.7 FPS, High achieves 150.5 FPS, and Ultra settles at 113.7 FPS. The scaling from Low to Ultra represents a 53.4% reduction in frame rate, but even the lowest 1080p result remains highly playable for competitive FPS gameplay.

The 2560x1440 results show a noticeable step down. Low settings yield 181.6 FPS, Medium drops to 127.6 FPS, High manages 109.9 FPS, and Ultra falls to 85.2 FPS. The 1440p Ultra figure represents a 25% reduction from the 1080p Ultra result, and all 1440p settings remain above the 60 FPS threshold, making this resolution the sweet spot for high-refresh monitors with this hardware combination.

At 3840x2160, the performance landscape changes dramatically. Low settings still produce a respectable 118.5 FPS, Medium maintains 82.3 FPS, and High achieves 73.5 FPS. However, Ultra settings collapse to 51.4 FPS, which falls below the 60 FPS standard for smooth gameplay. The 4K Ultra result is the only measured data point where the combo fails to maintain playable frame rates, and the 31.9 FPS gap between 4K High and 4K Ultra indicates that the Ultra preset carries a disproportionately heavy GPU load.

The progression from Low to Ultra at each resolution shows an interesting pattern. At 1080p, the average FPS drop per settings tier is approximately 43.4 FPS. At 1440p, it narrows to 32.1 FPS. At 4K, it tightens further to 22.4 FPS. This compression suggests that as resolution increases, the GPU becomes the sole bottleneck, and settings changes have diminishing returns on frame rate.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i5-14600KF and AMD Radeon RX 9070 combination ranks 536th out of 1637 tested combos in Lockdown Protocol, placing it in the 67.3rd percentile of all tested configurations. This mid-upper tier ranking reflects the GPU's 79th percentile performance against all GPUs, while the CPU's 93rd percentile ranking is somewhat mitigated by the fact that the GPU becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions.

The combo's ranking is notable given that the GPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks — the NVIDIA A2, Quadro GV100, Radeon HD 7970, and Radeon PRO W6400 — all score within 1% of the RX 9070 in average benchmark scores. Yet in actual Lockdown Protocol gameplay, the RX 9070's architecture clearly favors this title's rendering requirements, as evidenced by the strong 1080p and 1440p results.

The CPU's ranking context is equally important. The 14600KF's performance sits between the EPYC 4345P (0.5% higher average score) and the Ryzen 9 5950X (0.6% lower), with the 14600K just 0.4% behind. This tight clustering means the choice of CPU within this performance tier has minimal impact on Lockdown Protocol frame rates, as the GPU dominates the performance equation at all but the lowest settings and resolutions.

The 536th rank out of 1637 combos suggests that while this pairing is not at the absolute top of the leaderboard, it delivers strong, playable performance for the vast majority of gaming scenarios. The data indicates that users seeking higher rankings would benefit more from a GPU upgrade than a CPU change, given the observed GPU-bound behavior at 1440p and 4K. The combo's performance profile makes it well-suited for high-refresh 1080p and 1440p gaming, with 4K Ultra being the only configuration where the hardware's limitations become apparent.