Lockdown Protocol

FAQ

Q: What is the overall performance ranking of this CPU and GPU combination in Lockdown Protocol?

A: The combo ranks 897th out of 2,828 tested combinations in the game, placing it in the top 32% of systems. This indicates a solidly above-average configuration capable of high frame rates at most settings.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The Intel Core Ultra 5 235 scores 46,062 in the average benchmark, sitting almost exactly between the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 (46,030, 0.1% faster) and the Intel Core i9-13900HX (46,098, 0.1% slower). It edges out the AMD EPYC 4364P by 0.2% and the AMD EPYC 7303 by 0.2%. Its performance percentile of 89 indicates it outperforms 89% of all CPUs.

Q: What is the GPU's benchmark standing relative to its closest competitors?

A: The Radeon RX 7800 XT has an average benchmark score of 11,627, which puts it at the 51st percentile of all GPUs. It trails the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 by 0.5%, but leads the AMD Radeon Pro 5500M by 0.9% and the NVIDIA Tesla K20c by 1.3%. It sits 1.8% behind the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT.

Q: What memory configuration does this system use?

A: The CPU supports dual-channel DDR5 memory with a bandwidth of 102.4 GB/s, while the GPU features 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus delivering 624.1 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU's memory is a significant asset for high-resolution gaming.

Q: What are the key clock specifications for both components?

A: The CPU has a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz. The GPU has a base clock of 1295 MHz, a game clock of 2124 MHz, and a boost clock of 2430 MHz. The GPU's memory runs at 2438 MHz with 19.5 Gbps effective speed.

Q: Is there a frame rate difference between 4K Medium and 4K Ultra settings?

A: Yes, the data shows a substantial drop. At 3840x2160 with Medium settings, the average frame rate is 79 FPS with a minimum of 67 FPS and maximum of 91 FPS. At Ultra settings, the average falls to 52 FPS. This represents a 34% reduction in average frame rate when moving from Medium to Ultra at 4K.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT is built on the RDNA 3.0 architecture using the Navi 32 chip, manufactured on a 5 nm process by TSMC. This GPU contains 28,100 million transistors on a 346 mm² die, with a transistor density of 81.2M per mm². Its 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 624.1 GB/s of bandwidth, which is particularly relevant for Lockdown Protocol's high-resolution performance.

The GPU's clock behavior shows a clear hierarchy: 1295 MHz base, 2124 MHz game clock, and 2430 MHz boost. The game clock is the more realistic sustained frequency during gaming workloads, while the boost represents peak capability. With 3,840 shading units, 240 texture mapping units, and 96 raster operations pipelines, the card processes geometry and pixel data efficiently. Its 60 ray accelerators handle dedicated ray tracing workloads, though the game's performance suggests rasterization remains the primary demand.

The synthetic benchmark data places this GPU at the 51st percentile, with a PassMark G3D score of 24,176 and a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 4,157. Its Geekbench Vulkan score of 54,228 indicates strong API-level performance. The nearest rivals in the data are notably older or lower-tier cards: the GTX 1660 and RX 6500 XT, both of which the RX 7800 XT roughly matches in average score despite being vastly different hardware generations. This suggests the benchmark database has a wide spread of GPU scores, and the RX 7800 XT sits near the median.

The GPU's performance in Lockdown Protocol reflects its memory bandwidth and compute capabilities. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 235 FPS, which drops to 109 FPS at Ultra settings. At 4K Ultra, the average falls to 52 FPS, indicating that the GPU becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions and settings. The card's 37.32 TFLOPS of FP32 compute power and 583.2 GTexel/s texture rate provide substantial headroom for the game's effects, but the 96 ROPs and 233.3 GPixel/s pixel rate become constraints at 4K Ultra.

Resolution Scaling

The measured frame rates show clear scaling patterns across resolutions. At 1080p Low, the system produces 235 FPS. Moving to 1440p Low reduces this to 172 FPS, a 27% drop. At 4K Low, the frame rate falls to 111 FPS, another 35% reduction from 1440p. This pattern indicates that even at Low settings, the GPU is increasingly taxed as pixel count grows.

For High settings, the scaling is similar but with lower absolute numbers: 146 FPS at 1080p, 107 FPS at 1440p (27% drop), and 69 FPS at 4K (36% drop from 1440p). The consistent percentage drops suggest that the game's rendering workload scales roughly linearly with pixel count, and that the CPU is not a bottleneck at these settings.

The Medium settings tier offers the most complete data with minimum and maximum frame rates. At 1080p Medium, the average is 167 FPS with a minimum of 142 and maximum of 192. At 1440p Medium, the average drops to 122 FPS (27% reduction), with a minimum of 104 and maximum of 141. At 4K Medium, the average falls to 79 FPS (35% reduction from 1440p), with a minimum of 67 and maximum of 91. The minimum frame rates at each resolution scale similarly, which suggests consistent frame pacing without sudden spikes.

Ultra settings show the steepest scaling. At 1080p Ultra, the average is 109 FPS. At 1440p Ultra, this drops to 80 FPS (27% reduction). At 4K Ultra, the average is 52 FPS (35% reduction from 1440p). The fact that the percentage drops are nearly identical across all settings tiers (roughly 27% from 1080p to 1440p, and 35% from 1440p to 4K) indicates that the GPU's memory bandwidth and compute resources scale predictably with resolution.

The limiting component analysis is clear: at 1080p, the system achieves over 100 FPS at all settings, indicating that the GPU has headroom and the CPU can feed it adequately. At 4K Ultra, the 52 FPS average suggests the GPU is fully saturated, as the 16 GB memory buffer and 624.1 GB/s bandwidth are the primary resources being consumed. The CPU's 14 cores and 24 MB of L3 cache are unlikely to bottleneck at any resolution, given the frame rates achieved.

Measured FPS Breakdown

1080p Results: At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the system achieves an average of 235 FPS. Medium settings produce an average of 167 FPS, with a minimum of 142 and maximum of 192 FPS. High settings deliver 146 FPS average. Ultra settings produce 109 FPS average. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a 54% reduction in average frame rate, with the largest single drop occurring between Medium and High (21 FPS) and between High and Ultra (37 FPS).

1440p Results: At 2560x1440 with Low settings, the average is 172 FPS. Medium settings deliver 122 FPS average, with a minimum of 104 and maximum of 141 FPS. High settings produce 107 FPS average. Ultra settings yield 80 FPS average. The drop from Low to Ultra is 92 FPS, representing a 53% reduction. The Medium settings tier shows a wider spread between minimum and maximum (37 FPS) compared to 1080p's 50 FPS spread, indicating slightly tighter frame pacing.

4K Results: At 3840x2160 with Low settings, the average is 111 FPS. Medium settings produce 79 FPS average, with a minimum of 67 and maximum of 91 FPS. High settings deliver 69 FPS average. Ultra settings yield 52 FPS average. The drop from Low to Ultra is 59 FPS, a 53% reduction. The Medium tier shows a 24 FPS spread between minimum and maximum, which is the tightest of any resolution, suggesting that 4K Medium provides the most consistent frame delivery.

Cross-Resolution Comparison: The data shows that at any given settings tier, the frame rate drops by approximately 27% from 1080p to 1440p, and another 35% from 1440p to 4K. This consistent scaling indicates that the GPU's pixel throughput is the dominant factor. The 4K Ultra result of 52 FPS is the only sub-60 FPS average in the entire dataset, making it the sole configuration that falls below the standard smoothness threshold. All other settings and resolutions maintain averages above 69 FPS, with most exceeding 100 FPS.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 235 features 14 cores and 14 threads, a design without hyper-threading. It has a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz, with a 65 W TDP. The Arrow Lake architecture uses a 3 nm process from TSMC, containing 17,800 million transistors on a 243 mm² die. Its cache hierarchy includes 192 KB of L1 per core, 3 MB of L2 per core, and 24 MB of shared L3 cache.

In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU scores 14,769 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 2,085 in single-core. Its PassMark multi-thread score is 37,816, and single-thread score is 4,516. The data compression benchmark shows 390,711, and floating-point math reaches 117,951. These scores place the CPU at the 89th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 46,062.

The nearest rivals are all within 0.2% of the Core Ultra 5 235's score. The AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 is 0.1% faster, the Intel Core i9-13900HX is 0.1% slower, and both AMD EPYC processors are 0.2% faster. This tight grouping suggests that the CPU's performance is well-balanced within its class, though it does not lead its segment.

In Lockdown Protocol, the CPU's role appears secondary to the GPU. The frame rates at 1080p Low (235 FPS) and Medium (167 FPS) are high enough that the CPU is not limiting performance. Even at 1080p Ultra (109 FPS), the CPU has sufficient headroom. The consistent percentage drops across resolutions (27% from 1080p to 1440p, 35% from 1440p to 4K) at every settings tier indicate that the GPU is the scaling bottleneck, not the CPU.

The CPU's 5.00 GHz boost clock and 14 cores provide ample single-threaded and multi-threaded performance for the game's logic and physics. The 24 MB of L3 cache helps with data locality. However, the fact that the system's ranking in the game is 897 out of 2,828 combinations suggests that other systems with stronger GPUs achieve higher frame rates at 4K Ultra, which is where the GPU becomes the limiting factor.

The CPU's memory bandwidth of 102.4 GB/s via dual-channel DDR5 is sufficient to feed the GPU's demands. The PCIe Gen 5 interface with 20 lanes provides ample bandwidth for the GPU's PCIe 4.0 x16 connection. The integrated Arc Xe-LPG Graphics 24EU is irrelevant for gaming with a discrete GPU installed, but it does indicate the CPU can handle basic display tasks without the discrete card.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data provides clear guidance for optimizing the Lockdown Protocol experience with this hardware. The 4K Medium setting delivers 79 FPS average with a minimum of 67 FPS, which is the only 4K configuration that maintains a minimum frame rate above 60 FPS. Given that 4K Ultra drops to 52 FPS average, and 4K High produces 69 FPS average (which may dip below 60 FPS in demanding scenes, given the Medium minimum of 67 FPS), 4K Medium is the recommended choice for 4K displays.

For 1440p displays, the High setting at 107 FPS average provides an excellent balance between visual quality and performance. The Medium setting at 122 FPS with a minimum of 104 FPS offers more headroom for competitive play, while Ultra at 80 FPS is still perfectly playable. Given that 1440p High's 107 FPS is well above the 60 FPS threshold, and the jump to Ultra only costs 27 FPS for significantly better visuals, 1440p Ultra at 80 FPS is a strong choice for those prioritizing image quality. However, the 1440p Medium configuration with its 104 FPS minimum and 141 FPS maximum provides the most consistent frame delivery, making it ideal for fast-paced FPS gameplay.

For 1080p displays, all settings are viable. Low produces 235 FPS for maximum competitive advantage, Medium delivers 167 FPS with a minimum of 142, High achieves 146 FPS, and Ultra reaches 109 FPS. The recommended setting depends on the user's priority: competitive players should select Low or Medium for the highest frame rates, while those wanting the best visual experience can choose Ultra without dropping below 100 FPS. The 1080p High setting at 146 FPS represents the best balance for most users, offering strong visuals with frame rates well beyond display refresh rates.

The data shows that the system is most comfortable at 1080p and 1440p, where it consistently exceeds 80 FPS at all settings. At 4K, the Medium setting is the clear sweet spot, as it maintains a minimum of 67 FPS while providing significantly better visuals than Low. The 4K High and Ultra settings should only be used on displays with adaptive sync technology, as their average frame rates (69 and 52 FPS respectively) may exhibit visible stuttering without it.

The measured minimum frame rates for Medium settings at all resolutions (142 FPS at 1080p, 104 FPS at 1440p, 67 FPS at 4K) indicate that this setting tier provides the most consistent performance. The maximum frame rates (192, 141, and 91 respectively) show that the system can burst well above average in less demanding scenes. This consistency is valuable for competitive FPS play, where frame time spikes can affect aiming and reaction times. Therefore, for players prioritizing smoothness over absolute visual fidelity, the Medium preset at any resolution is the recommended starting point.