Lockdown Protocol

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i7-14700K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti occupies a mid-to-low position in the Lockdown Protocol performance hierarchy, ranking 1446th out of 1637 tested combinations. This places the combo in the 12th percentile of all tested systems, meaning roughly 88% of configurations deliver higher average frame rates in this title. The ranking reflects a substantial imbalance between the two components: the i7-14700K is a top-tier desktop processor sitting in the 96th percentile among all CPUs, while the GTX 1660 Ti rests in the 55th percentile among all GPUs. That gap — a 96th-percentile CPU paired with a 55th-percentile GPU — makes the graphics card the clear performance ceiling in this build.

Looking at processor rivals, the i7-14700K's average benchmark score of 70,074 sits within a tight cluster. The Core i7-14700KF leads marginally with a 70,104 average, a delta of 0%. The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X posts a 70,420 average, putting it 0.5% ahead of the 14700K. The AMD EPYC 9115 trails by 0.3% at 69,887, while the Intel Xeon Platinum 8270 is 1.4% behind at 71,056. These deltas are negligible in real-world gaming, confirming the CPU is not the bottleneck in Lockdown Protocol. The GPU side tells a similar story of parity, with the GTX 1660 Ti's 13,925 average benchmark score closely matched by the AMD Radeon RX 570X (13,871, 0.4% behind), the NVIDIA Tesla K10 (14,029, 0.7% ahead), the NVIDIA RTX A2000 Mobile (13,821, 0.8% behind), and the GeForce GTX 680 (13,812, 0.8% behind). The 1660 Ti is a competent mid-range card, but it is not built for the demands of a modern FPS at high resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data reveals that Lockdown Protocol is heavily GPU-limited on this combo, and the optimal settings depend entirely on the target display resolution. At 1080p, the Low preset delivers 123.9 FPS, which is the only setting that breaks past the 120 FPS threshold. Medium drops to 85.7 FPS, High to 76.5 FPS, and Ultra to 60.6 FPS. For competitive play on a 1080p monitor, Low is the clear recommendation, as it more than doubles the Ultra frame rate and provides a significant responsiveness advantage. The jump from Low to Medium costs 38.2 FPS, a 31% reduction, while the step from Medium to High costs another 9.2 FPS. The High preset remains playable at 76.5 FPS, but the visual gains over Medium are modest relative to the performance loss.

At 1440p, the picture shifts. Low delivers 88.6 FPS, which is smooth for most players. Medium produces 63.2 FPS, High 56.9 FPS, and Ultra falls to 39.9 FPS. Here, Medium is the sweet spot: it keeps the frame rate above 60 FPS while offering better visual fidelity than Low. High is borderline at 56.9 FPS, and Ultra should be avoided unless the user prioritizes image quality over smoothness. At 4K, the situation becomes dire. Low manages 61.8 FPS, which is just playable, but Medium drops to 43.4 FPS and High to 34.7 FPS. Ultra at 4K is a slideshow at 26.3 FPS. For 4K, Low is the only viable preset, and even then, the experience will be inconsistent in demanding scenes. The data suggests this combo is best suited to 1080p gaming, with 1440p possible at reduced settings and 4K only for casual, non-competitive play.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K shows a textbook GPU-bound pattern. At Low settings, the frame rate falls from 123.9 FPS at 1080p to 88.6 FPS at 1440p (a 28.5% drop) and then to 61.8 FPS at 4K (a 50.1% drop from 1080p). At Medium, the progression is 85.7 to 63.2 to 43.4 FPS, with the 4K figure representing a 49.4% reduction from 1080p. High settings show 76.5 to 56.9 to 34.7 FPS, a 54.6% drop at 4K. Ultra is the steepest: 60.6 to 39.9 to 26.3 FPS, a 56.6% decline at 4K.

These scaling patterns indicate that the GTX 1660 Ti is the limiting component at every resolution and setting. The i7-14700K, with its 20 cores and 28 threads, is nowhere near saturation in this title; the processor's Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 44,534 and single-core score of 6,287 are far beyond what Lockdown Protocol requires. The consistent, steep FPS drops as resolution increases are the signature of a GPU that is running out of pixel-pushing capability. The 1660 Ti's 6 GB of GDDR6 memory and 192-bit bus, delivering 288.0 GB/s of bandwidth, are simply insufficient for the pixel throughput demanded at 4K. Even at 1440p, the scaling from 1080p shows a 28-34% reduction across settings, confirming that the GPU is already near its limits at the lower resolution.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers a wide spread of results. Low settings produce 123.9 FPS average, which is the highest measured score for this configuration. Medium yields 85.7 FPS, High 76.5 FPS, and Ultra 60.6 FPS. The delta between Low and Ultra is 63.3 FPS, a 51% performance range. This resolution is the only one where the combo achieves a truly competitive frame rate, and only at the Low preset. The 123.9 FPS figure at Low suggests the CPU can push well beyond 120 FPS in this title when the GPU is not the constraint, but the GPU's limits become apparent quickly as settings rise.

At 2560x1440, the numbers compress. Low leads at 88.6 FPS, followed by Medium at 63.2 FPS, High at 56.9 FPS, and Ultra at 39.9 FPS. The drop from Low to Medium is 25.4 FPS, the largest single-step decline at this resolution. High is only 6.3 FPS behind Medium, indicating diminishing returns on the GPU's compute resources. Ultra falls below the 40 FPS threshold, which most players would consider unplayable for a fast-paced FPS. The 1440p data shows that the GTX 1660 Ti's 5.437 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 169.9 GTexel/s texture rate are insufficient for high-fidelity rendering at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the results are uniformly low. Low settings average 61.8 FPS, which is just above the 60 FPS playability line. Medium drops to 43.4 FPS, High to 34.7 FPS, and Ultra to 26.3 FPS. The 4K Low figure is notable: it is the only 4K preset that stays above 60 FPS, and it does so by a razor-thin margin. The difference between Low and Ultra at 4K is 35.5 FPS, a 57% range. This resolution is clearly beyond the intended use case for this GPU, and the data suggests that even the Low preset will struggle in busy scenes with multiple enemies or particle effects.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is a Turing-architecture GPU built on TSMC's 12 nm process, with a die size of 284 mm² and 6,600 million transistors. Its 6 GB of GDDR6 memory operates at 12 Gbps effective across a 192-bit bus, yielding 288.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU's base clock is 1500 MHz with a boost clock of 1770 MHz. These specifications place the card in the 55th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 13,925. In Lockdown Protocol, the GPU's role is decisive: it is the primary determinant of frame rates across all measured settings and resolutions.

The 1660 Ti's memory configuration is a particular weakness for this game. 6 GB of VRAM is adequate for 1080p at most settings, but at 1440p and 4K, texture-heavy scenes likely exceed this capacity, forcing the GPU to swap data through the relatively narrow 192-bit bus. The 288.0 GB/s bandwidth is a bottleneck at higher resolutions, which explains the steep scaling curves observed. The GPU's pixel rate of 84.96 GPixel/s and texture rate of 169.9 GTexel/s are mid-range figures that struggle with the fill-rate demands of 4K rendering. The card's FP32 performance of 5.437 TFLOPS, while respectable for its class, is insufficient for the computational load of modern FPS titles at high settings.

The GTX 1660 Ti's DirectX 12 (12_1) and Vulkan 1.4 support are modern enough for Lockdown Protocol, but the absence of dedicated ray tracing cores — a feature found in the successor GeForce 20 series — means the card cannot leverage any ray-traced effects that the game might offer. The 12 nm process node, while not state-of-the-art, keeps power draw reasonable at 120 W TDP, with a suggested PSU of 300 W. The card's dual-slot design and 229 mm length make it a straightforward fit in most cases. For this combo, the GTX 1660 Ti is the limiting factor, and the benchmark data confirms that upgrading the GPU would yield far greater performance gains than any CPU change.