Lockdown Protocol

Lockdown Protocol, a 2024 FPS title, shows a wide performance envelope across the tested settings and resolutions. The measured data for the Intel Core Ultra 5 135H paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 reveals a system that is capable of delivering high refresh rates at lower resolutions but requires careful settings management to maintain fluidity at 4K. The benchmark results indicate a configuration where the GPU becomes the dominant factor as resolution increases, while the CPU’s capabilities are more visible at the lower end of the resolution scale.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows suggest that the "High" preset offers the most balanced experience for this specific combination. At 1920x1080, High delivers an average of 148 FPS, which is a substantial drop from the 239 FPS seen at Low, but it provides a significant visual upgrade. The trade-off is clear: Low settings push the frame rate to its absolute maximum, but the graphical fidelity is sacrificed. Medium at 1080p yields 170 FPS, sitting between the two, yet High still offers a smoother experience than Ultra, which drops to 111 FPS. For competitive play at 1080p, Low is the only preset that approaches the 240Hz refresh rate territory, but for most users, High presents the best compromise between visual quality and performance.

At 2560x1440, the High preset maintains a very playable 109 FPS average. This is a comfortable margin above the 60 FPS baseline and only slightly below the 124 FPS achieved on Medium. The Ultra preset, at 81 FPS, is still viable for slower-paced gameplay but begins to show the strain on the GPU. The data indicates that High is the sweet spot at this resolution, offering a near-100 FPS experience without the need to drop to lower quality settings. Low at 1440p hits 175 FPS, which is excellent for high-refresh-rate monitors, but again, the visual compromise is considerable.

The situation changes dramatically at 3840x2160. Here, the High preset produces an average of 70 FPS, which is right at the edge of what many consider the minimum for a smooth experience. Medium is slightly better at 80 FPS, making it the better choice for 4K gaming. The Low preset, at 113 FPS, is the only way to achieve a truly high refresh rate at this resolution, but it requires turning down almost every graphical feature. Ultra, at just 53 FPS, falls below the 60 FPS threshold and should be avoided for any action-heavy segments. The recommendation for 4K is to use Medium, as it provides the highest average FPS while still benefiting from some enhanced graphical effects over the Low preset.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 is a high-end, end-of-life GPU based on the Ada Lovelace architecture and the AD103 chip, fabricated on a 5 nm process at TSMC. It carries 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 716.8 GB/s. The GPU’s base clock is 2205 MHz, which boosts up to 2505 MHz. This substantial memory pool and bandwidth are critical for handling the demands of Lockdown Protocol, especially at higher resolutions where texture data and geometry requirements increase. The benchmark data shows the GPU is the primary driver of performance differences between the 1080p and 4K results.

The RTX 4080’s raw compute power is substantial, with 9728 shading units and 76 RT cores, but the game's engine appears to be heavily reliant on the GPU. The measured FPS scaling from Low to Ultra settings shows a consistent pattern where each step up in quality reduces the frame rate. At 1080p, the gap between Low (239 FPS) and Ultra (111 FPS) is 128 FPS. This gap widens in absolute terms at 1440p (175 to 81 FPS, a 94 FPS difference) but narrows at 4K (113 to 53 FPS, a 60 FPS difference). This suggests that at 4K, the GPU is so saturated that the settings have a smaller relative impact on the final frame rate, while at lower resolutions, the GPU has more headroom to be taxed by additional effects.

The GPU's memory bandwidth of 716.8 GB/s is likely a key factor in maintaining playable frame rates at 4K, where the game's asset streaming demands are highest. The 16 GB VRAM capacity ensures that there is no capacity bottleneck, even with High and Ultra settings, which is a necessary condition for the 70 FPS High and 53 FPS Ultra results at 4K. The performance of this GPU places it in the 86th percentile of all GPUs in the database, and its average benchmark score of 54247 is nearly identical to the RTX 4080 SUPER (deltaPct of 0.1%), indicating that this card is performing exactly as expected relative to its closest competitor.

Resolution Scaling

The data shows a clear and predictable performance drop as resolution increases from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160. At High settings, the average FPS falls from 148 at 1080p to 109 at 1440p, a reduction of 39 FPS, and then to 70 at 4K, a further reduction of 39 FPS. This pattern indicates that the GPU is the primary limiting factor, as the workload scales directly with the number of pixels rendered. The 1440p result is roughly 73.6% of the 1080p performance, and the 4K result is roughly 47.3% of the 1080p performance, which is consistent with a GPU-bound scenario.

This scaling is even more pronounced at Low settings, where the frame rate drops from 239 FPS at 1080p to 175 FPS at 1440p and then to 113 FPS at 4K. The percentage drop from 1080p to 4K is about 52.7%, which suggests that when the CPU is less burdened by graphics settings, the GPU still becomes the bottleneck as resolution increases. However, the absolute FPS values at Low settings remain high across all resolutions, indicating that the CPU is not a limiting factor until the frame rate reaches very high levels. The gap between High and Low settings narrows as resolution increases, from a 91 FPS difference at 1080p to a 43 FPS difference at 4K, further confirming that the GPU's pixel processing capacity is the main constraint at higher resolutions.

The scaling pattern for Medium settings is similar, with a drop from 170 FPS at 1080p to 124 FPS at 1440p and 80 FPS at 4K. This consistency across all presets reinforces the conclusion that the RTX 4080's pixel throughput is the dominant factor in determining performance. The CPU’s influence is only visible in the absolute maximum frame rates at 1080p Low, where the 239 FPS result suggests a CPU limit that prevents the GPU from pushing even higher.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the data shows a broad range of performance depending on the graphical preset. Low settings deliver an average of 239 FPS. Moving to Medium, the average drops to 170 FPS, with a minimum of 144 FPS and a maximum of 195 FPS. High settings produce 148 FPS on average. Ultra, the most demanding preset, yields 111 FPS. The 128 FPS spread between Low and Ultra highlights the significant impact of settings at this resolution, where the GPU is capable of very high frame rates but is throttled by the increased workload of higher quality effects.

At 2560x1440, the performance scales down as expected. Low settings average 175 FPS. Medium averages 124 FPS, with a minimum of 106 FPS and a maximum of 143 FPS. High settings produce an average of 109 FPS. Ultra delivers 81 FPS. The reduction from 1080p is consistent across all settings, with a drop of roughly 64 FPS for Low, 46 FPS for Medium, 39 FPS for High, and 30 FPS for Ultra. This shows that higher settings are less impacted by the resolution increase, as the GPU is already working harder on the visual quality.

At 3840x2160, the GPU is under maximum load. Low settings still manage an average of 113 FPS. Medium averages 80 FPS, with a minimum of 68 FPS and a maximum of 92 FPS. High settings average 70 FPS. Ultra drops to just 53 FPS. The minimum FPS of 68 at Medium suggests that even this preset can experience occasional stutters in demanding scenes. The data points to 4K being the domain of the Low and Medium presets for this hardware combination, with High being marginal and Ultra not recommended for consistent smoothness.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core Ultra 5 135H and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 combination is ranked 1202 out of 3714 tested combos in Lockdown Protocol. This places it in the top third of all systems tested, which is a strong showing for a mobile CPU paired with a desktop-class GPU. The rank reflects the high performance of the RTX 4080, which is offset by the more limited capabilities of the Ultra 5 135H, a mobile processor.

This ranking is influenced by the fact that the system can achieve very high frame rates at 1080p and 1440p, but it is not at the very top of the charts. The top-ranked systems likely feature more powerful desktop CPUs that can sustain even higher frame rates at the lowest settings. The combo's rank also indicates that it is well ahead of the majority of systems, which likely feature older or lower-tier hardware. The data shows that this combination is a high-performance option that will provide a great experience in most scenarios, but it is not the absolute best for maximizing FPS in a competitive shooter.

The GPU’s performance, at the 86th percentile, is the primary driver of this ranking. The 135H, while a capable processor, is not in the same performance tier as the GPU. This creates a slight imbalance, but in a game like Lockdown Protocol, which is likely more GPU-intensive at higher resolutions, the overall experience remains excellent. The ranking of 1202 out of 3714 confirms that this is a high-end configuration that will handle the game with ease at most settings and resolutions.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 135H is a mobile processor with 14 cores and 18 threads, based on the Meteor Lake architecture. It has a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 4.60 GHz, with 18 MB of shared L3 cache. This CPU, while not a top-tier desktop part, provides ample processing power for gaming. The benchmark results show that it is not the primary bottleneck in most of the measured scenarios. The CPU's performance is ranked in the 81st percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 29093, which is nearly identical to the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X (deltaPct of -0.1%).

The CPU’s role becomes more apparent at 1080p Low settings, where the average FPS of 239 suggests that the processor is nearing its limit. At this high frame rate, the CPU must process a large number of draw calls and game logic updates, which can become a limiting factor. The gap between 1080p Low (239 FPS) and 1440p Low (175 FPS) is significant, but the drop is more attributable to the GPU's increased pixel workload. However, the fact that the 1080p Low result is so high indicates that the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU with enough data to achieve such frame rates.

In contrast, at 4K, the CPU's influence is minimal. The frame rate drops to 113 FPS at Low and 53 FPS at Ultra, which are purely GPU-bound numbers. The CPU is not the limiting factor at this resolution. The data suggests that for the majority of gaming scenarios, the Ultra 5 135H is more than sufficient to keep up with the RTX 4080, only becoming a potential bottleneck at extremely high frame rates with the lowest graphical settings. The 18 MB of L3 cache and high boost clock of 4.60 GHz are likely key contributors to its ability to handle the game's single-threaded and multi-threaded demands.