Lockdown Protocol

Intel Core i7-12700K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 delivers a high-performance Lockdown Protocol experience. Across every measured resolution and preset, average frame rates stay above 83 FPS, reaching 315 FPS at 1080p Low. This configuration places 79th out of 3714 tested combos in the game, translating to roughly the top 2% of all combinations. The data reveals a system that is exceptionally capable at high refresh rates, though the balance between CPU and GPU workload shifts predictably as resolution and graphical settings increase.

Resolution Scaling

Frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K follows a consistent pattern across all presets, with one notable exception. For the High, Medium, and Ultra presets, moving from 1920×1080 to 1440p reduces average FPS by roughly 26–27%, and moving from 1080p to 4K reduces it by about 52–53%. These are nearly identical proportions, suggesting that at moderate-to-high settings, the graphics card becomes the primary limiter at 4K. The same drop almost exactly for the Low preset, however, tells a different story: scaling from 1080p Low (315 FPS) to 1440p Low (276 FPS) only cost 12.4% of performance, while scaling from 1440p Low to 4K Low (178 FPS) costs another 35.5%. The shallow drop at the bottom of the resolution ladder indicates that the CPU’s processing capacity, rather than the GPU’s raster throughput, limits frame rates at low graphical settings and moderate resolutions. The CPU’s 12 cores and 20 threads with a max boost of 5.00 GHz are sufficient to feed the RTX 5090 with draw calls when pixel work is minimal, but that advantage erodes once resolution climbs to 4K and the GPU’s compute and shader units become the bottleneck.

The steepest single-step drop is also telling: at 4K, the difference between Low (178 FPS) and Medium (127 FPS) is 51 FPS, a 28.5% reduction, while the change from Medium to High is only 12.6%. This suggests that the Low preset’s reduced shader work allows the GPU to sprint, while Medium already saturates the geometry and texture path. The High preset at 4K (111 FPS) sits close to Medium, meaning the additional pixel shading and lighting effects beyond Medium have diminishing gains when memory bandwidth is already stressed—the RTX 5090’s 32 GB GDDR7 on a 512-bit bus delivering 1.79 TB/s is not a limiting factor, but the raw shading rate (104.8 TFLOPS FP32) is.

The 4K Ultra result (83 FPS) is still smooth for many players, but the 4K Medium output (127 FPS) shows that dropping one full preset level frees up significant frame rate, suggesting that Ultra’s volatility effects and post-processing are extremely expensive at this resolution, whereas Medium retains a high framerate without forcing the user to sacrifice much visual detail relative to High.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured rows, the Medium preset provides the best balance of frame rate and visual fidelity across all tested resolutions. For every resolution, the Medium average FPS is within a few frames of the average of the High preset, but it notably tightens the lowest one-percentile frames: at 1920×1080 Medium the minimum FPS is 227 FPS, at 1440p it is 167 FPS, and at 4K it holds at 108 FPS. These are the only presets with recorded min/max values, which makes Medium the least variable and most predictable setting in the data. By comparison, High and Ultra have no min/max figures, so their frame time consistency is unobserved, but their throughput is 93% and 63% of Medium at 4K respectively.

If the player prioritizes the highest possible frame rate for competitive play, Low at 1080p yields 315 FPS, but that preset removes most graphical effects and drops the GPU utilisation, leaving the CPU as the bottleneck. This is not recommended for visually rich experiences because medium at 1080p delivers 268 FPS—still far beyond a 240 Hz display—while retaining a fuller visual configuration. For 1440p users, Medium (196 FPS) is 25% faster than High (171) and 53% faster than Ultra (128). Given the data shows that min FPS for Medium at 1440p is still sky-high at 167 FPS, it is safe to recommend Medium for high-refresh 1440p panels.

At 4K, Medium (127 FPS) is the only setting that reaches a triple-digit average; High (121) dips slightly, and Ultra (83) falls below the 90 FPS threshold commonly needed for smooth competitive play. Therefore, for a 4K monitor with a 120 Hz refresh rate, Medium is the only preset that matches the display’s full potential. Ultra should only be used if the user prefers visual splendor to frame rate, and the data shows it stands 35% behind Medium in average FPS.

How This Combo Ranks

Lockdown Protocol’s internal benchmark database lists the Intel Core i7-12700K and GeForce RTX 5090 combination at position 79 out of 3714 registered configurations. This places the pairing in the 97.9th percentile of all tested combos, meaning only approximately 2% of user setups achieve higher average frame rates in this FPS title. The individual components also score highly: the CPU ranks in the 84th percentile of all processors and the GPU in the 92nd percentile of all graphics cards, according to aggregated benchmark scores.

The CPU’s average benchmark score is 35,287, placing it within a razor-thin margin of its nearest synthetic rivals. The Intel Core i5-13600T scores 35,305 (0.1% higher), the i7-12700KF records 35,365 (0.4% lower), the i7-13700T and Core 5 213PE score 35,403 and 35,428, respectively, each only a tenth-of-a-percent off. For the GPU, its average score 79,845 is 0.3% above an NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB (79,605) and 0.3% below an AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (78,940), while an AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X trails by 1.4%. These synthetic differences are negligible, but in actual game performance, the combination of the high IPC CPU and the high raster throughput GPU reliably lands near the top of the heap.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average achievable FPS for this combo at 1080p?

A: At the Low preset, the average frame rate reaches 315 FPS, the highest title in the measured rows.

Q: What is the lowest average FPS recorded for this combo?

A: The lowest average is at 4K Ultra, with 83 FPS, still well above a floor for a 60 Hz display.

Q: At 1440p, which preset gives the max FPS?

A: Low gives 276 FPS, average, while Medium comes next at 121, and Ultra at 128.

Q: Are there any recorded minimum FPS values?

A: The measured dataset only exposes min/max for the Medium preset at all three resolutions: 227/308 at 1080p, 167/226 at 1440p, and 108/146 at 4K.

Q: How does the RTX 5090 card compare to its nearest rivals in average score?

A: Its passed average benchmark score is 79,842, staying within ±1.4% of the nearest rivals (Tesla P100 16GB, Tesla P100 12GB, AMD RX 6850M XT, and AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X).

Q: Is the CPU more limiting at high frame rates?

A: Yes, evidence points to the CPU being the primary bottleneck when Low and Medium settings at 1080p produce above 260 FPS and the GPU is underutilized, while the GPU becomes the bottleneck when 4K settings and higher presets expand the workload.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 sits on top of the GeForce 50-series with the GB202 chip, an 5 nm TSMC process supporting 92,500 million transistors on a 750 mm² die. With 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus and a bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s, the GPU has no trouble moving vertices and textures for Lockdown Protocol, even at 2160p. The base clock is 2017 MHz with a boost of 2407 MHz, complemented by 21,760 shading units, 680 TMUs, 176 ROPs, 170 RT cores, and 680 tensor cores. This results in a texture fill rate of 1,636.8 GTexel/s and pixel fill of 423.6 GPixel/s, both copious for a fast.

The measured results bear out this capability: at 4K Low, the GPU pushes 178 FPS despite the resolution, and only draws 83 FPS at 4K Ultra, which shows that Ultra’s rendering pipeline (likely heavy use of RT and expensive post effects) forces the GPU to its actual limit. The GPU’s PassMark G3D score is 39,650 and its 3DMark Steel Nomad result is 18,355, both within a small delta of rivals that also have high average benchmark scores, but lockdown's raster and compute demon.

Because the GPU supplies far more bandwidth and VRAM than needed for any current generation (32GB is excessive for 4K gaming), the frame rates are rather limited by shading throughput and clock frequency, not memory capacity. The deep 250W TDP (575 W) and suggested 950 W PSU underscore that sustained boost performance is critical to hit the numbers the data shows. Overall, the RTX 5090 is the dominant partner in this pairing, with the CPU playing second fiddle only at low 1080p settings.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700K (Alder Lake-S, Intel Socket 1700) is a hybrid processor with 6 Performance-cores and 8 Efficient-cores, implemented as 12 cores and 20 threads. Its base clock stands at 3.60 GHz, with a maximum Turbo Boost of 5.00 GHz. The 25 MB shared L3 cache, 80 KB L1 core and 1.25 MB per-core L2 cache, combined with a burstt, supports both high IPC for a single-threaded gameplay logic and multi-threaded rendering tasks.

In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU scores 19,784 in the Cinebench R23 multicore and 1,850.5 in single-core, 1,260 in Geekbench single-core, and a 3DMark 16-thread score of 9,276. These results demonstrate a strong return for both single-thread responsiveness and multi-thread scaling, though the CPU is es dimensions from many more recent parts. In Lockdown Protocol, the CPU's role becomes visible when the resolution is lowered and settings are reduced: at 1080p Low, the average FPS is 315, at 1440p Low 276, and at 4K Low 178. The sharp drop from 1440p to 4K highlights that the CPU can still feed over 275 FPS for the GPU but eventually the GPU becomes his own bottleneck at 4K.

The i7-12100K also scored 35287 in average benchmarks, ranking 84th percentile among all CPUs. Its nearest synthetic rivals are within one to four tenths of a percent, indicating that in aggregate tasks like 3DMark and Geekbench, the CPU is nearly indistinguishable from those nearby chips. In actual lock, the combination with the 5090 produces top-tier framerates, but the CPU's 20 threads ensure that even when the GPU is rendering animation frames at 315 FPS, the host system processes the game's physics, AI, and gameplay updates without stalling. The CPU's integrated graphics (UHD 770) are irrelevant for this discrete setup, but its 20 PCIe Gen 4 lanes and dual-channel DDR4/DDR5 memory enough for the GPU tandem.

The verdict is clear: this CPU is the limiting factor only at the very highe FPS end, while the GPU leads in the major rest. For 4K gaming, CPU is ample; for 1080p competitive play, the CPU’s 20 threads still manage to deliver frame with plenty of headroom. The CPU’s TDP of 125 W, with boosted clocks, is a modest draw compared to the GPU, and its 12 cores are well matched to the GPU’s capabilities in Lockdown Protocol. No other integer in the chart requires the CPU to work harder than its 5GHz single-thread boost, and the Intel Core i7-12700K delivers exactly what the game demands.