Lockdown Protocol

# Lockdown Protocol with Intel Core Ultra 5 245 + Intel Arc B370

The Intel Core Ultra 5 245 paired with the Intel Arc B370 integrated graphics produces a combination that ranks 2611th out of 2828 tested combos in Lockdown Protocol, placing it in the bottom 8% of all configurations. This is a system where the GPU is the dominant bottleneck at every resolution, with the CPU’s strong multi-threaded performance largely untapped due to the graphics solution’s limitations. The data shows a playable experience only at 1080p with Low settings, where the average frame rate reaches 80 FPS, but every other configuration falls short of the 60 FPS threshold that most FPS players target.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and settings combination for this system in Lockdown Protocol?

A: The measured data shows 1920x1080 with Low settings delivers the highest average FPS at 80, making it the only configuration that exceeds 60 FPS. At 2560x1440 Low, the average drops to 58 FPS, which is borderline playable but below the 60 FPS target.

Q: How does the Intel Core Ultra 5 245 compare to its nearest CPU rivals?

A: The Ultra 5 245 has an average benchmark score of 48995, which is 0.4% below the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5755G (49196) and 0.5% below the AMD Ryzen 9 7900 (49228). It is 0.6% ahead of the Intel Xeon Gold 5318H (48698) and 0.8% ahead of the Intel Core i5-14600K (48618).

Q: What is the GPU’s performance percentile compared to all other graphics cards?

A: The Intel Arc B370 sits at the 5th percentile among all GPUs, with an average 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1184. It performs within 0.7% of the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5570 (1186) and the AMD Radeon HD 7650M (1192), and is 1.4% faster than the AMD FirePro M2000 (1168).

Q: Does the CPU or GPU limit performance more in Lockdown Protocol?

A: The GPU is the limiting factor. The Ultra 5 245 ranks in the 90th percentile among all CPUs, while the Arc B370 ranks in the 5th percentile among GPUs. The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K shows a dramatic drop that is characteristic of GPU-bound scenarios, not CPU-bound ones.

Q: How much FPS is lost when moving from 1080p to 1440p and 4K at High settings?

A: At High settings, the average FPS drops from 49 at 1920x1080 to 36 at 2560x1440 (a 26.5% reduction), and then to 23 at 3840x2160 (a 53.1% reduction from 1080p). This steep decline indicates the GPU is overwhelmed as pixel count increases.

Q: Is the Ultra preset ever playable at any resolution?

A: No. The Ultra preset yields an average of 37 FPS at 1080p, 27 FPS at 1440p, and 18 FPS at 4K. None of these reach the 60 FPS threshold, and even the 1080p result is below the 40 FPS minimum commonly considered acceptable for slower-paced games.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 245 is a 14-core, 14-thread processor based on the Arrow Lake-S architecture, built on a 3 nm process by TSMC. It operates with a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.10 GHz, with a TDP of 65 watts. The CPU features 24 MB of shared L3 cache and a dual-channel DDR5 memory interface with 102.4 GB/s of bandwidth. Its benchmark results are strong: a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 32924 and a single-core score of 4648, placing the chip in the 90th percentile of all CPUs.

In Lockdown Protocol, this CPU is more than capable of feeding frames to the GPU. The PassMark multi-thread score of 38706 and single-thread score of 4394 indicate that both lightly-threaded and heavily-threaded workloads are handled comfortably. However, the game’s measured FPS does not reflect this CPU strength. The 80 FPS at 1080p Low is the ceiling for this combo, and it is far below what the CPU could support if paired with a discrete graphics solution.

The processor’s 14 cores and 14 threads (no hyper-threading) are sufficient for modern FPS titles, including Lockdown Protocol, which benefits from multiple cores for game logic, physics, and AI. The 5.10 GHz boost clock provides the single-thread responsiveness that FPS games often rely on for frame pacing and input latency. Yet, because the Arc B370 is an integrated GPU sharing system memory, the CPU’s memory bandwidth advantage is mitigated by the GPU’s need to access the same DDR5 pool, creating a contention point that further limits performance.

Compared to its nearest rivals, the Ultra 5 245 is effectively tied with the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5755G (-0.4%), AMD Ryzen 9 7900 (-0.5%), Intel Xeon Gold 5318H (+0.6%), and Intel Core i5-14600K (+0.8%) in average benchmark scores. This means the CPU is not the differentiator in this combo’s low ranking; any of these processors would produce similar FPS when paired with the same GPU.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core Ultra 5 245 and Intel Arc B370 ranks 2611th out of 2828 tested combos in Lockdown Protocol. This places it in the bottom 7.7% of all configurations, a position driven almost entirely by the GPU’s limited capabilities. The combo rank is consistent across all resolutions, with no setting combination lifting the system out of the bottom percentile range.

The CPU’s 90th percentile standing among all processors contrasts sharply with the GPU’s 5th percentile standing. When a system pairs a top-decile CPU with a bottom-decile GPU, the resulting FPS is determined by the GPU’s ceiling. In this case, the CPU is never the bottleneck; even at 1080p Low with 80 FPS average, the GPU is working near its maximum throughput. The data shows that upgrading the GPU would yield substantial FPS gains, while upgrading the CPU would yield none for this game.

The 2828 total combos include systems with discrete GPUs ranging from entry-level to flagship, so this combo’s 2611th position reflects a fundamental hardware mismatch for gaming. The Arc B370’s 3DMark Steel Nomad score of 1184 is comparable to GPUs from over a decade ago, such as the ATI Radeon HD 5770 (1190), which explains why the system struggles to maintain playable frame rates at higher settings.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average FPS ranges from 80 on Low to 37 on Ultra. The Low preset delivers 80 FPS, which is the only result above 60 FPS in the entire dataset. Medium averages 57 FPS with a minimum of 48 and maximum of 65, indicating that even this preset occasionally dips below the playable threshold. High averages 49 FPS, and Ultra averages 37 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 43 FPS, showing a steep performance cost for higher visual fidelity.

Moving to 2560x1440, the averages are 58 FPS on Low, 42 FPS on Medium (with min/max of 35/48), 36 FPS on High, and 27 FPS on Ultra. The 1440p Low result is close to 60 FPS but falls short, making it a marginal experience for competitive play. The Medium preset’s minimum of 35 FPS suggests noticeable stuttering during intense scenes. High and Ultra are clearly below acceptable thresholds for an FPS title.

At 3840x2160, performance degrades further: Low averages 38 FPS, Medium averages 27 FPS (min/max of 23/31), High averages 23 FPS, and Ultra averages 18 FPS. None of these are playable for a fast-paced shooter. The 4K Low result is roughly half of the 1080p Low result, highlighting the GPU’s inability to handle the four-fold increase in pixel count.

The Medium presets are the only ones with recorded minimum and maximum FPS values. At 1080p Medium, the range is 48-65 FPS, at 1440p Medium it is 35-48 FPS, and at 4K Medium it is 23-31 FPS. These ranges show that the frame time consistency degrades significantly at higher resolutions, with the gap between minimum and maximum widening proportionally.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B370 is an integrated GPU based on the Xe3-LPG architecture, built on a 3 nm process by Intel. It features 1280 shading units, 40 texture mapping units, and 20 raster operation units, along with 10 ray tracing cores. The GPU operates at a base clock of 300 MHz and a boost clock of 2400 MHz, with a TDP of just 25 watts. Its memory is system-shared, meaning it uses the same DDR5 pool as the CPU, with bandwidth described as "System Dependent."

The GPU’s performance metrics are modest: 6.144 TFLOPS of FP32 compute, a pixel rate of 48.00 GPixel/s, and a texture rate of 96.00 GTexel/s. In 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, it scores 1184, placing it at the 5th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rivals include the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5570 (1186, -0.2%), ATI Radeon HD 5770 (1190, -0.5%), AMD Radeon HD 7650M (1192, -0.7%), and AMD FirePro M2000 (1168, +1.4%). These comparisons illustrate the Arc B370’s performance class: it is competitive with GPUs from the early 2010s, not with modern discrete solutions.

In Lockdown Protocol, the GPU’s limitations are evident in every resolution. The 1080p Low result of 80 FPS is likely near the GPU’s maximum throughput, as the boost clock of 2400 MHz is already being pushed. The system-shared memory architecture means that the GPU competes with the CPU for memory bandwidth, which can cause additional frame time spikes. The fact that the 4K Low result (38 FPS) is less than half of the 1080p Low result (80 FPS) indicates that the GPU is severely bandwidth-constrained at higher resolutions, as the shared memory system cannot deliver the necessary data throughput.

Settings Recommendations

Given the measured data, the only configuration that provides a consistently playable experience is 1920x1080 with Low settings, which averages 80 FPS. This should be the default choice for any user prioritizing frame rate over visual fidelity. The Low preset minimizes the GPU’s workload, allowing it to maintain a frame rate that is smooth for an FPS title.

For users who require higher visual quality, the 1080p Medium preset (57 FPS average, 48 FPS minimum) is a compromise, but the minimum FPS of 48 may cause noticeable hitches during combat. The 1440p Low preset (58 FPS) is nearly identical in average FPS to 1080p Medium, but the higher resolution provides a sharper image; however, the lack of a recorded minimum suggests it may be less stable. The 1080p High preset (49 FPS) and 1440p Medium preset (42 FPS) are below the 60 FPS target and should be avoided for competitive play.

At 4K, no preset is recommendable. The best 4K result is 38 FPS on Low, which is below the 40 FPS minimum for even casual gaming. The Ultra presets at any resolution are not viable, with the best Ultra result being 37 FPS at 1080p. The data suggests that users should stick to 1080p Low or Medium, and if they want higher resolutions, they must accept frame rates in the 30-40 FPS range, which is suboptimal for a fast-paced FPS.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic GPU-bound pattern. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 80 at 1080p to 58 at 1440p (a 27.5% reduction) and then to 38 at 4K (a 52.5% reduction from 1080p). At High settings, the drop is from 49 at 1080p to 36 at 1440p (26.5%) and then to 23 at 4K (53.1%). This consistent ~50% reduction from 1080p to 4K across all settings indicates that the GPU is the limiting factor, as a CPU-bound system would show much smaller FPS differences between resolutions.

The scaling also shows that the Arc B370’s performance does not scale linearly with pixel count. A perfectly scalable GPU would halve its FPS when going from 1080p to 4K (four times the pixels), but this GPU loses slightly more than half, suggesting that memory bandwidth constraints become more severe at higher resolutions. The system-shared memory architecture means that as the GPU demands more data for 4K rendering, it must compete with the CPU for the same memory bus, leading to diminishing returns.

The steep drop from 1440p to 4K (roughly 35-37% reduction) compared to the drop from 1080p to 1440p (roughly 26-28% reduction) suggests that the GPU’s texture units and ROPs are being saturated at 4K. With only 20 ROPs and a texture rate of 96 GTexel/s, the GPU cannot fill the screen efficiently at 4K resolutions. This pattern confirms that the Intel Core Ultra 5 245 is not the bottleneck; if it were, the FPS would remain relatively flat across resolutions, as the CPU would be maxed out regardless of pixel count. Instead, the data shows a GPU that is progressively overwhelmed as resolution increases, reinforcing the conclusion that any meaningful performance improvement would require a more capable graphics solution.