Lockdown Protocol

Lockdown Protocol, an FPS released on 2024-03-11, exhibits a clear performance hierarchy when paired with the Intel Core Ultra 7 165H and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080. Measured frame rates span from 239 FPS at 1080p Low down to 53 FPS at 4K Ultra, revealing a system that is capable of high refresh rates at lower resolutions but increasingly GPU-bound at 4K. The benchmark data provides a detailed view of how this combination scales across resolution and settings, allowing for a data-driven assessment of its strengths and limitations.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS across resolutions shows how the load shifts between the CPU and GPU. At 1080p Low, the system delivers 239 FPS; at 1440p Low, it drops to 175 FPS; at 4K Low, it reaches 113 FPS. This progression indicates a substantial but consistent scaling penalty. For the High preset, the numbers are 148 FPS at 1080p, 109 FPS at 1440p, and 70 FPS at 4K. The Medium preset yields 170 FPS at 1080p, 124 FPS at 1440p, and 80 FPS at 4K. Ultra produces 111 FPS at 1080p, 81 FPS at 1440p, and 53 FPS at 4K.

The pattern across presets reveals a near-linear drop from 1080p to 1440p to 4K in several cases. For High, the difference between 1080p and 1440p is 39 FPS, and between 1440p and 4K is 39 FPS, suggesting a uniform scaling curve. Low shows a 64 FPS drop from 1080p to 1440p and a 62 FPS drop from 1440p to 4K, nearly identical. This uniformity indicates that the GPU is the primary limiting factor as resolution increases, with the CPU keeping pace at all tested resolutions. At 1080p Low, 239 FPS is far beyond the display refresh rate of most monitors, confirming that the CPU is not a bottleneck at lower resolutions. However, at 4K Ultra, the 53 FPS figure shows that the RTX 4080 is fully occupied with pixel shading and geometry, and the CPU's headroom is less relevant.

The scaling also shows that the Medium preset offers a middle ground, with 170 FPS at 1080p and 80 FPS at 4K. The 1080p Medium result of 170 FPS is 29 FPS higher than 1080p High (148 FPS) and 59 FPS lower than 1080p Low (239 FPS), indicating that the Medium preset is a balanced point. The relative consistency of the scaling across presets—where the ratio between resolutions remains roughly stable—suggests that the game's render pipeline does not introduce unusual bottlenecks at any particular setting. The 4K Ultra result of 53 FPS is the only measured point below 60 FPS, which is notable for an FPS title.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 165H is a 16-core, 22-thread mobile processor from the Core Ultra Series 1, based on Meteor Lake architecture and built on Intel's 7 nm process. It has a base clock of 3.80 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz, with a TDP of 28 W. The L3 cache is 24 MB shared, and the L1 cache is 112 KB per core, while the L2 cache is 2 MB per core. In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU achieves a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 14551 and a single-core score of 1759. The Passmark multithread score is 25933, and the single-thread score is 3509. These scores place the CPU at the 84th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 34083.

Relative to its nearest rivals, the CPU is tightly clustered. The Intel Core Ultra 5 338H has an average score of 33989, which is 0.3% higher than the 165H. The AMD EPYC 4244P scores 34220, 0.4% lower than the 165H, while the AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 scores 34222, also 0.4% lower. The AMD Ryzen 7 3700X scores 34260, 0.5% lower. This clustering means the 165H is essentially performance-equivalent to these competitors in CPU-heavy workloads. In the context of Lockdown Protocol, the game is an FPS with modest CPU demands; the high 1080p Low frame rate of 239 FPS indicates that the CPU can feed the GPU at that resolution without issue. Even at 1080p Ultra, the 111 FPS result demonstrates that the CPU can maintain above 100 FPS in the most demanding preset at 1080p. The CPU's memory bus is dual-channel with 89.6 GB/s bandwidth, and it supports DDR5 memory depending on the motherboard, which is sufficient for this game.

The CPU's integrated graphics, Arc Xe-LPG 128EU, are not relevant to this discrete GPU configuration, but the CPU's 16 cores and 22 threads suggest it can handle background tasks without interfering with game performance. The 84th percentile ranking, combined with the near-identical scores of its rivals, suggests that the 165H is not the limiting factor in any of the measured resolutions. At 4K, the GPU is clearly the bottleneck, as the CPU's performance headroom is unused. The data shows that the CPU's role is to provide a stable foundation, and it does so without issue.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS across four presets at three resolutions provides a clear picture of the optimal settings for different goals. At 1080p, the Ultra preset delivers 111 FPS, which is above the refresh rate of most 144 Hz monitors. The High preset reaches 148 FPS, and Medium reaches 170 FPS. Low is 239 FPS. For competitive play, the Low preset at 1080p offers the highest frame rate, but the Ultra preset at 111 FPS is still smooth for most users. At 1440p, the Ultra preset drops to 81 FPS, which is playable but not ideal for high-refresh displays; the High preset at 109 FPS is a better balance, and Medium at 124 FPS offers a smoother experience. At 4K, the situation is more constrained: Ultra averages 53 FPS, which may be borderline for fast-paced action, while High averages 70 FPS, Medium averages 80 FPS, and Low averages 113 FPS. For 4K, the Low preset provides the most consistent playable experience, while Medium offers a reasonable compromise with 80 FPS.

Given the data, the recommended preset depends on resolution. For 1080p, Ultra is viable, but High provides a 37 FPS improvement over Ultra with minimal visual difference in many games. For 1440p, High is the sweet spot, offering 109 FPS, which is 28 FPS above Ultra. For 4K, Medium or High are the best options; Low at 113 FPS is the only preset that fully saturates a 60 Hz display, but Medium at 80 FPS is also comfortable. The Medium preset at 4K has a min FPS of 68 and a max of 92, indicating some variance, but the average of 80 FPS is the highest of the non-Low presets. In summary, the data suggests that players with 1440p monitors should choose High, while 4K users should consider Medium or Low depending on tolerance for lower quality.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core Ultra 7 165H and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 ranks 1202nd out of 3714 tested combinations in Lockdown Protocol. This rank places it in the top third of all tested combos, as 2512 combinations score lower. The GPU itself is at the 86th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 54247, and its nearest rival is the RTX 4080 SUPER, which is 0.1% higher in score. The CPU is at the 84th percentile. The combo's rank of 1202 indicates that the system is strong but not exceptional in this specific game. The game likely favors higher CPU single-thread performance or specific GPU features, but the data shows that the combo outperforms more than half of the tested systems. The rank is consistent with the high frame rates at 1080p and 1440p, but the 4K performance holds the combo back from a higher position, as many other combos likely achieve higher 4K frame rates. The 4K Ultra score of 53 FPS is below the average for the RTX 4080, suggesting that the game may be heavily optimized for certain GPU architectures or that the CPU's cache configuration affects 4K performance. The rank of 1202 out of 3714 means the combo is in the 68th percentile of combos, indicating that it is a solid, mid-to-upper tier system for Lockdown Protocol.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 is based on the AD103 chip on TSMC's 5 nm process, with 45,900 million transistors on a 379 mm² die. It has 9728 shading units, 304 texture mapping units, and 112 ROPs. The boost clock is 2505 MHz, and the base clock is 2205 MHz. The memory is 16 GB of GDDR6X on a 256-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 716.8 GB/s. The GPU's FP32 performance is 48.74 TFLOPS, and it supports DirectX 12 Ultimate, OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. In synthetic tests, the GPU achieves a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 6567, a Geekbench OpenCL score of 214739, and a Vulkan score of 263779. The Passmark G3D score is 34457, and the Passmark GPU compute score is 20671. These scores place the GPU at the 86th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 54247. Its nearest rivals include the RTX 4080 SUPER (0.1% higher), the AMD Radeon Pro W5700X (1.1% lower), and the AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB (2.6% lower).

In Lockdown Protocol, the GPU's 16 GB VRAM is likely not a limiting factor, as the game's assets are unlikely to exceed that capacity at any preset. The measured frame rates show that the GPU is the primary bottleneck at 4K, where the average FPS drops to 53 at Ultra. This is not a result of VRAM exhaustion but rather the pixel shading load. The GPU's memory bandwidth of 716.8 GB/s is ample for the game, and the 256-bit bus ensures high throughput. The GPU's FP32 throughput of 48.74 TFLOPS suggests that it can handle the game's geometry and shading, but the 4K Ultra result indicates that the game's engine is not perfectly optimized for this GPU. The GPU's performance at 1080p High (148 FPS) and 1440p High (109 FPS) shows that it scales well with resolution, but the 4K Ultra result of 53 FPS is lower than expected given the GPU's raw compute. The GPU's 304 texture units and 112 ROPs are sufficient for the game, and the 1x 16-pin power connector and 700 W suggested PSU indicate a high-power part, but the data shows that the GPU is the limiting factor at 4K.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The following table summarizes all measured average FPS values for the Intel Core Ultra 7 165H + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 in Lockdown Protocol.

| Resolution | Settings | Average FPS | Min FPS | Max FPS |

|------------|----------|-------------|---------|---------|

| 3840x2160 | High | 70 | — | — |

| 3840x2160 | Low | 113 | — | — |

| 3840x2160 | Medium | 80 | 68 | 92 |

| 3840x2160 | Ultra | 53 | — | — |

| 2560x1440 | High | 109 | — | — |

| 2560x1440 | Low | 175 | — | — |

| 2560x1440 | Medium | 124 | 106 | 143 |

| 2560x1440 | Ultra | 81 | — | — |

| 1920x1080 | High | 148 | — | — |

| 1920x1080 | Low | 239 | — | — |

| 1920x1080 | Medium | 170 | 144 | 195 |

| 1920x1080 | Ultra | 111 | — | — |

The Medium preset at 1080p shows a min FPS of 144 and a max of 195, indicating a 51 FPS range, which suggests some frame time variance. The Medium at 1440p has a min of 106 and a max of 143, a 37 FPS range. At 4K Medium, the range is 24 FPS (68 to 92). This variance is expected at higher settings. The High and Ultra presets do not have min/max data in the pack, but the averages are stable. The 1080p Low average of 239 FPS is the highest measured, and the 4K Ultra average of 53 FPS is the lowest. The 4K Medium average of 80 FPS is the highest of the 4K settings except Low, and it has a min FPS of 68, which is still above 60.

FAQ

Q: What is the average FPS at 4K Ultra settings for this combo?

A: The average FPS at 3840x2160 Ultra is 53 FPS.

Q: How does the Intel Core Ultra 7 165H compare to the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X in average benchmark score?

A: The Intel Core Ultra 7 165H has an average benchmark score of 34083, which is 0.4% lower than the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X's score of 34260.

Q: What is the combo's rank among all tested combinations in Lockdown Protocol?

A: The combo ranks 1202 out of 3714 tested combinations.

Q: What is the GPU's memory bandwidth?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 has a memory bandwidth of 716.8 GB/s.

Q: At 1440p Medium, what is the minimum and maximum FPS?

A: The 1440p Medium preset has a minimum FPS of 106 and a maximum of 143.

Q: What is the CPU's boost clock speed?

A: The Intel Core Ultra 7 165H has a boost clock of 5.00 GHz.