Lockdown Protocol

The Intel Core i7-14700KF paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER delivers a high-refresh-rate experience in Lockdown Protocol, with the data indicating that the processor’s 20 cores and 28 threads are more than sufficient to feed the GPU at most settings. The measured frame rates show that the sweet spot for this combination is the Medium preset, which provides an exceptional balance of visual fidelity and performance across all tested resolutions. At 1080p, Medium yields 216.6 FPS, which is a substantial 50% improvement over the 143 FPS seen at Ultra, while retaining a much higher image quality ceiling than the Low preset’s 305.4 FPS. At 1440p, Medium delivers 163 FPS, which remains comfortably above the 144 Hz refresh rate threshold preferred by competitive players, and at 4K, it achieves 105.9 FPS, making it the only preset outside of Low that stays playable at that resolution. The Ultra preset, while visually demanding, drops performance to 71.1 FPS at 4K, which is below the threshold for smooth competitive play, and even at 1080p it only reaches 143 FPS, indicating that the settings overhead significantly taxes the GPU.

FAQ

*Q: What is the best settings preset for the Intel Core i7-14700KF and RTX 4070 Ti SUPER in Lockdown Protocol?*

A: The Medium preset offers the best overall experience. It delivers 216.6 FPS at 1080p, 163 FPS at 1440p, and 105.9 FPS at 4K, which represents a strong balance between visual quality and frame rate, avoiding the significant performance penalties of the Ultra preset.

Q: How much faster is the Low preset compared to High at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the Low preset achieves 224.7 FPS, which is 62.7% faster than the High preset’s 138.1 FPS. This shows a massive performance headroom when visual effects are minimized.

Q: Does the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER bottleneck the CPU at 1080p?

A: The data suggests the GPU is the primary limiter even at 1080p, as the frame rate drops from 305.4 FPS on Low to 143 FPS on Ultra. The 20-core i7-14700KF is not the bottleneck, as the performance variance is driven by the GPU’s workload under different settings.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between the Ultra and Medium presets at 4K?

A: At 3840x2160, the Ultra preset averages 71.1 FPS, while Medium averages 105.9 FPS. This is a 48.9% performance increase for the Medium preset, which is a significant margin for a single settings tier reduction.

Q: How does the combo rank in the game’s benchmark database?

A: This specific combination of the i7-14700KF and RTX 4070 Ti SUPER is ranked 158 out of 1637 tested combos for Lockdown Protocol, placing it in the top 10% of all hardware configurations measured.

Q: Is the High preset viable for 4K gaming with this setup?

A: Yes, the High preset is viable at 4K, producing an average of 90.2 FPS. While not as fluid as Medium, it still provides a very playable experience and is significantly smoother than the Ultra preset’s 71.1 FPS.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER is the definitive performance driver in these benchmark results, with its 16 GB of GDDR6X memory and 672.3 GB/s of bandwidth proving essential for handling the texture and geometry loads of Lockdown Protocol. The GPU’s 44.10 TFLOPS of FP32 compute power and 66 RT cores are directly responsible for the frame rate scaling observed across the different presets. The data shows a clear pattern: as the settings increase from Low to Ultra, the average FPS drops consistently at every resolution, which indicates that the GPU’s rendering pipeline is the limiting factor. For instance, at 1080p, the Low preset hits 305.4 FPS, but the Ultra preset falls to 143 FPS, a reduction that can only be attributed to the increased shader and rasterization workload on the AD103 chip. The GPU’s boost clock of 2610 MHz allows it to maintain high throughput, but the Ultra preset’s demands outpace the GPU’s capabilities, particularly at higher resolutions where the memory bus width of 256 bit is also stressed.

The 16 GB frame buffer is a crucial asset, as the game’s High and Ultra settings at 4K require substantial memory allocation. The fact that the 4070 Ti SUPER sustains 90.2 FPS at 4K High and 71.1 FPS at 4K Ultra without dropping to unplayable levels suggests that the VRAM capacity is sufficient for these scenarios; the bottleneck is the GPU’s compute throughput rather than memory exhaustion. The GPU’s 86th percentile ranking among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 48704, places it in a high-performance tier, and its nearest rival, the NVIDIA CMP 50HX, scores only 0.7% higher, confirming that the 4070 Ti SUPER is at the top of its class for this game. The data indicates that the GPU’s architectural efficiency is the primary reason why Medium settings can provide a 105.9 FPS experience at 4K, a result that would be unattainable with a less powerful graphics card.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER demonstrates its raw capability, producing a Low preset result of 305.4 FPS, which is the highest frame rate recorded in the entire dataset. The Medium preset follows with 216.6 FPS, High drops to 193.5 FPS, and Ultra yields 143 FPS. The progression shows a 53.1% performance cost from Low to Ultra, indicating that the Ultra preset’s effects are particularly heavy on the GPU. For 1080p gaming with this CPU, the High preset’s 193.5 FPS is still far beyond the refresh rate of most monitors, making it a safe choice for players who prioritize visual quality over extreme frame rates.

Moving to 2560x1440, the resolution scaling takes a predictable toll. The Low preset achieves 224.7 FPS, which is a 26.4% drop from 1080p, while Medium reaches 163 FPS, a 24.7% reduction. The High preset delivers 138.1 FPS, and Ultra falls to 105.5 FPS. The 1440p results show that the GPU is still able to maintain high refresh rates on Medium and below, but the gap between presets widens slightly, suggesting that the increased pixel count amplifies the GPU’s workload. The Ultra preset at 105.5 FPS is still playable but begins to approach the lower bound of competitive smoothness.

At 3840x2160, the GPU’s limits are clearly exposed. The Low preset produces 144.8 FPS, which is still a very playable number and only a 36.4% drop from the 1080p Low result. Medium follows with 105.9 FPS, High with 90.2 FPS, and Ultra with 71.1 FPS. The 4K data shows a stark contrast: the gap between Low and Ultra is 50.9%, and the Ultra preset’s 71.1 FPS is the only result below the 90 FPS threshold in the entire dataset. This confirms that 4K Ultra is a demanding scenario for this hardware, but 4K Medium remains an excellent option for a smooth experience.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1080p to 4K reveals how the system’s performance scales with pixel count, and the data indicates a consistent GPU-bound behavior. For the Low preset, the frame rate drops from 305.4 FPS at 1080p to 144.8 FPS at 4K, a reduction of 52.6%. This is a classic scaling pattern, where the GPU’s fill rate and memory bandwidth become the limiting factors. The Medium preset shows a similar trend, falling from 216.6 FPS to 105.9 FPS, a 51.1% decrease. The High preset drops from 193.5 FPS to 90.2 FPS, a 53.4% reduction, and the Ultra preset falls from 143 FPS to 71.1 FPS, a 50.3% decline. The consistency of these drops, all hovering around the 50% mark, strongly suggests that the GPU is the sole bottleneck across all settings.

This scaling behavior has significant implications for the CPU’s role. The Intel Core i7-14700KF, with its 28 threads and a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 44557, is clearly capable of handling the game’s simulation and physics logic at high frame rates. The fact that the frame rate scales almost exactly with the resolution increase indicates that the CPU is not being saturated; if it were, the 4K results would show a smaller percentage drop, as the GPU would be waiting on the CPU. The data shows that even at 1080p Low, where the CPU is most likely to be a factor, the system still achieves 305.4 FPS, which confirms the CPU’s single-thread performance (a Geekbench single-core score of 2972). Therefore, the resolution scaling analysis confirms that the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER is the performance limiter in this configuration, and the i7-14700KF provides ample headroom for future GPU upgrades or more demanding game modes.