Lockdown Protocol

# Lockdown Protocol with Intel Core i7-12700KF + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650

The pairing of Intel's 12-core Core i7-12700KF with NVIDIA's entry-level GTX 1650 creates a striking imbalance that the measured frame rates make immediately apparent. This system ranks 3580 out of 3714 tested combos in Lockdown Protocol, placing it in the bottom 4% of all configurations — a position that reflects the GPU's 40th percentile standing among all graphics cards rather than the CPU's far stronger 85th percentile ranking. The data reveals a configuration where the processor is waiting on the graphics card at nearly every turn, yet the game remains playable at lower resolutions and settings if expectations are calibrated correctly.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data across all three resolutions points to a clear hierarchy of playability, with the Low preset serving as the only reliable choice for consistent frame rates. At 1080p Low, the system produces 76 FPS average, which is the single highest measured result in the entire dataset and represents a comfortable margin above typical 60 FPS targets. Dropping to 1440p Low yields 56 FPS — still playable but notably closer to the edge of smoothness, while 4K Low falls to 36 FPS, which dips into marginal territory for fast-paced FPS gameplay.

For users prioritizing visual quality over raw frame rate, Medium settings offer a compromise worth considering. At 1080p Medium, the system delivers 54 FPS with a minimum of 46 FPS and maximum of 62 FPS, meaning the experience stays above 45 FPS even in demanding moments. This is the highest settings tier where the average remains above 50 FPS at 1080p, making Medium the recommended choice for those who want improved visuals without sacrificing playability. At 1440p Medium, the average drops to 40 FPS (minimum 34, maximum 46), which is borderline for competitive play but acceptable for slower-paced sessions. At 4K Medium, the 26 FPS average with a 22 FPS minimum is not recommended for any serious gameplay.

High settings at 1080p produce 47 FPS average, which is playable but represents a significant 13 FPS drop from Medium — a larger penalty than the step from Low to Medium. The 1440p High figure of 35 FPS and 4K High at 22 FPS both fall below acceptable thresholds for an FPS title. Ultra settings are effectively unusable across all resolutions, with 1080p Ultra at 35 FPS, 1440p Ultra at 26 FPS, and 4K Ultra at 17 FPS — none of these provide a competitive experience.

The data strongly suggests that users should start at 1080p Medium and adjust downward only if frame pacing becomes an issue. The 46 FPS minimum at Medium indicates the system holds up reasonably well during intense scenes, and the 62 FPS maximum shows headroom exists when the load lightens. For players who demand consistently high frame rates, 1080p Low at 76 FPS is the only settings combination that delivers both smoothness and stability.

FAQ

Q: Can this system run Lockdown Protocol at 60 FPS?

A: Yes, but only at 1920x1080 with Low settings, where the measured average is 76 FPS. At Medium settings the average falls to 54 FPS, which is below 60 FPS, and at High settings it drops further to 47 FPS. No other resolution or settings combination in the measured data reaches 60 FPS.

Q: How does the GTX 1650's 4 GB VRAM affect performance?

A: The 4 GB GDDR5 memory with 128.1 GB/s bandwidth is a likely limiting factor at higher resolutions and settings. The data shows dramatic FPS drops when moving from Low to Medium to High at each resolution, with the gap widening as resolution increases. At 4K, the average FPS falls from 36 at Low to 17 at Ultra, a 53% reduction that indicates the GPU is struggling with both memory capacity and bandwidth demands.

Q: Is the Core i7-12700KF bottlenecking the GTX 1650?

A: No — the opposite is true. The CPU's multi-threaded benchmark scores (28838 in Cinebench R23, 14367 in Geekbench multi-core) place it in the 85th percentile of all CPUs, while the GPU sits in the 40th percentile. The measured frame rates align much more closely with GPU-bound behavior, where FPS scales primarily with resolution and settings rather than CPU load.

Q: What is the best resolution for this combination?

A: 1920x1080 is the clear choice, as it is the only resolution where the system achieves playable frame rates across multiple settings tiers. At 1080p, the Low preset delivers 76 FPS and Medium delivers 54 FPS, while at 1440p the best result is 56 FPS at Low and at 4K the best is 36 FPS at Low. The 1080p Medium setting offers the best balance between visual quality and performance.

Q: How does this combo rank compared to all tested configurations?

A: The combo ranks 3580 out of 3714 tested combos, placing it in the bottom 3.6% of all systems tested for Lockdown Protocol. This low ranking is consistent with the GPU's 40th percentile standing and the fact that this is an entry-level graphics card paired with a high-end processor.

Q: What frame rates can be expected at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the system averages 56 FPS at Low settings, 40 FPS at Medium (with a 34 FPS minimum), 35 FPS at High, and 26 FPS at Ultra. Only the Low preset approaches playable territory, while Medium and above fall below what most FPS players would consider acceptable.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 is the dominant factor in this system's Lockdown Protocol performance, and the data makes this clear through the steep FPS penalties that accompany any increase in graphical load. The GPU's 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus provides 128.1 GB/s of bandwidth — figures that were modest at the card's 2019 release and are now severely tested by a 2024 FPS title. The TU117 chip operates at a 1485 MHz base clock and 1665 MHz boost clock, delivering 2.984 TFLOPS of FP32 performance, which places it in the 40th percentile of all GPUs.

Looking at the measured results, the GPU's limitations appear most acutely at 4K resolution, where even Low settings only produce 36 FPS. The progression from 4K Low (36 FPS) to 4K Medium (26 FPS) to 4K High (22 FPS) to 4K Ultra (17 FPS) shows a consistent 20-30% performance loss per settings tier, suggesting the GPU is hitting fundamental throughput ceilings rather than a single bottleneck. The 4 GB VRAM capacity likely becomes a constraint at 4K Ultra, where texture and geometry data may exceed available memory, causing additional stalls that the 22 FPS minimum at Medium hints at.

At 1080p, the GPU shows more headroom, but the pattern remains consistent. The jump from Low (76 FPS) to Medium (54 FPS) represents a 29% reduction, while High (47 FPS) and Ultra (35 FPS) continue the downward trend. The GPU's 896 shading units and 56 texture mapping units are simply not sufficient for higher settings in a modern FPS, and the 32 ROPs limit fill-rate-heavy scenarios. The card's passmark G3D score of 7880 and DirectX 12 score of 35 in synthetic benchmarks corroborate the game data — this is a GPU that can handle 1080p gaming at reduced settings but struggles beyond that.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo rank of 3580 out of 3714 tested combos places this system in the bottom 3.6% of all configurations tested for Lockdown Protocol. This position is striking when considering the CPU's capabilities — the Core i7-12700KF ranks in the 85th percentile of all CPUs with an average benchmark score of 35365, placing it just 0.1% behind the Intel Core i7-13700T and 0.2% ahead of the Intel Core i5-13600T in synthetic benchmarks. The GPU, however, anchors the system down with its 40th percentile ranking and average benchmark score of 7472, which sits 0.3% ahead of the AMD Radeon HD 8850M and 0.4% ahead of the Intel UHD Graphics 750.

The delta between the CPU's and GPU's percentile standings — 85th versus 40th — explains why this combo ranks so poorly. In a game like Lockdown Protocol that appears to be GPU-bound based on the FPS scaling patterns, the processor's strength cannot compensate for the graphics card's weakness. The system's position near the bottom of the rankings reflects the fundamental mismatch: a high-end 12-core processor paired with an entry-level GPU that was end-of-life as of its production status.

Comparisons with the nearest GPU rivals reinforce this assessment. The GTX 1650's average benchmark score of 7472 is only 1% below the Intel Arc A310's 7550 and 0.6% above the AMD Radeon R7 350's 7425 — all of these cards cluster in the same performance tier, and none of them are likely to deliver dramatically different results in Lockdown Protocol. The combo's rank of 3580 suggests that many of the 134 combos ranked below it feature even weaker GPUs or CPUs that are equally mismatched.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS data across 1080p, 1440p, and 4K reveals a classic GPU-bound scaling pattern that confirms the GTX 1650 as the limiting component. Moving from 1080p to 1440p at Low settings reduces the average FPS from 76 to 56, a 26% decrease, while moving from 1440p to 4K drops it further to 36 FPS, another 36% reduction. This accelerating decline with resolution is characteristic of a GPU that is running out of pixel throughput and memory bandwidth as the pixel count increases.

At Medium settings, the scaling is similar but slightly more pronounced: 1080p yields 54 FPS, 1440p drops to 40 FPS (26% decrease), and 4K falls to 26 FPS (35% decrease). The High settings tier shows 47 FPS at 1080p, 35 FPS at 1440p (26% decrease), and 22 FPS at 4K (37% decrease). Ultra settings follow the same pattern with 35 FPS at 1080p, 26 FPS at 1440p (26% decrease), and 17 FPS at 4K (35% decrease).

The consistency of these percentage drops across all settings tiers — roughly 26% for the 1080p to 1440p transition and 35% for the 1440p to 4K transition — indicates that the GPU's performance ceiling is being hit uniformly regardless of the graphical workload. If the CPU were the limiting factor, we would expect to see smaller FPS differences between resolutions, as the processor's workload would remain relatively constant while the GPU's workload scales with pixel count. The data instead shows the GPU's fill rate and bandwidth constraints dominating the experience.

The 1080p to 4K total reduction at Low settings is from 76 FPS to 36 FPS, a 53% loss. At Ultra settings, the reduction is from 35 FPS to 17 FPS, also a 51% loss. This proportional scaling suggests that the game's rendering pipeline is consistently GPU-bound across all settings, with the CPU providing enough headroom to avoid becoming a secondary bottleneck even at lower resolutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers its best performance across all settings tiers. Low settings produce an average of 76 FPS, which is the highest measured value in the entire dataset. Medium settings yield 54 FPS with a minimum of 46 FPS and maximum of 62 FPS, providing a stable experience that stays above the 45 FPS threshold even in demanding scenes. High settings average 47 FPS, while Ultra settings drop to 35 FPS. The step from Low to Medium costs 22 FPS (29% reduction), while the step from Medium to High costs 7 FPS (13% reduction), and High to Ultra costs 12 FPS (26% reduction). This non-linear pattern suggests that Medium settings offer the best performance-per-visual-quality tradeoff.

At 2560x1440, performance drops noticeably but remains usable at lower settings. Low settings average 56 FPS, which is 20 FPS below the 1080p figure but still above 50 FPS. Medium settings average 40 FPS with a minimum of 34 FPS and maximum of 46 FPS, placing the experience in borderline territory for an FPS title. High settings average 35 FPS, and Ultra settings fall to 26 FPS. The 1440p data shows a similar pattern to 1080p, with Low to Medium costing 16 FPS (29% reduction) and Medium to High costing 5 FPS (13% reduction), but the absolute numbers are all lower.

At 3840x2160, the system struggles across all settings. Low settings average 36 FPS, which is playable only in the most forgiving scenarios. Medium settings average 26 FPS with a minimum of 22 FPS and maximum of 29 FPS, indicating consistent sub-30 FPS performance. High settings average 22 FPS, and Ultra settings drop to 17 FPS. The 4K data reveals that even the lowest settings cannot achieve a smooth experience, with the 36 FPS at Low representing a 53% reduction from the 1080p Low figure.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700KF brings substantial processing power to this configuration, and while the GPU limits overall frame rates, the CPU's capabilities ensure that it never becomes a bottleneck in the measured scenarios. The processor features 12 cores and 20 threads across its Alder Lake architecture, with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and boost clock of 5.00 GHz. Its 25 MB of shared L3 cache, backed by 1.25 MB L2 per core and 80 KB L1 per core, provides ample caching for game data. The CPU's benchmark results are consistently strong: Cinebench R23 multi-core scores 28838, single-core scores 4071, and Geekbench multi-core reaches 14367 with a 2255 single-core score.

These figures place the CPU in the 85th percentile of all processors, with an average benchmark score of 35365 that sits nearly identical to its nearest rivals — the Intel Core i7-13700T (35403, 0.1% ahead) and Intel Core 5 213PE (35428, 0.2% ahead). The CPU's PassMark multi-thread score of 34092 and physics score of 1780 indicate strong multi-threaded performance that can handle the game's physics and AI workloads without strain.

In the context of Lockdown Protocol, the CPU's role appears to be supportive rather than performance-defining. The FPS scaling patterns across resolutions and settings — showing consistent GPU-bound behavior — suggest that the game is not CPU-limited in this configuration. The 12-core, 20-thread processor provides significant headroom for background tasks, game logic, and any CPU-intensive operations, even at 1080p Low where the GPU is producing 76 FPS and potentially leaving the CPU with spare capacity. The CPU's single-thread performance, as evidenced by the 4071 Cinebench R23 single-core score and 3984 PassMark single-thread score, ensures that the game's main thread can run efficiently without becoming a limiting factor.