Lockdown Protocol

Lockdown Protocol is a light, fast-paced FPS released in March 2024, and the pairing of Intel's Core Ultra 7 265HX with NVIDIA's RTX 4060 Mobile produces measured frame rates that comfortably clear high-refresh territory at 1080p and remain playable at 1440p. The data below comes from measured runs across four presets and three resolutions, and it tells a consistent story: this game leans on the GPU far more than the CPU, and the RTX 4060 Mobile's 8 GB of GDDR6 sets the ceiling at 4K while the 20-core Arrow Lake-HX processor sits largely idle at high frame rates.

CPU Role — cores, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265HX is a mobile flagship-class part from Intel's Core Ultra Series 2, built on the Arrow Lake-HX architecture and fabricated by TSMC on a 3 nm process. It carries 20 cores and 20 threads — notably, one thread per core with no SMT-style doubling in this dataset — with a base clock of 2.60 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz. Cache resources include 192 KB of L1 per core, 3 MB of L2 per core, and a shared 30 MB L3 slice, feeding a dual-channel DDR5 memory subsystem with 102.4 GB/s of bandwidth. The chip sits in the 93rd percentile versus all CPUs in the database with an average benchmark score of 63173.

That aggregate score places it in remarkably tight company. Its nearest rivals — the Intel Core i7-13790F at 63080 (a 0.1 percent gap), the AMD Ryzen AI 7 450G at 63331 (-0.2 percent), the AMD Ryzen AI Embedded P185 at 62839 (0.5 percent), and Intel's own Core Ultra 7 255HX at 62738 (0.7 percent) — are all within a fraction of a percent. In other words, the 265HX is effectively indistinguishable from a cluster of desktop and mobile peers in synthetic throughput, and none of them would move Lockdown Protocol's frame rates meaningfully.

The individual benchmark scores reinforce the picture of a balanced, high-throughput design. Cinebench R23 returns 40642 multi-core and 5737 single-core; Cinebench R20 posts 17069 and 2409 respectively; Cinebench R15 logs 4096 multi-core against 578 single-core. PassMark's multithread score is 47985 with a single-thread result of 4500, and the physics score of 2978 indicates strong simulation throughput. For a competitive FPS like Lockdown Protocol, the number that matters most is the single-thread figure — game logic, draw-call submission, and netcode handling rarely scale across twenty cores — and 5737 in R23 single-core is comfortably above the threshold where CPU-side stalls would appear.

The measured data confirms the CPU is not the constraint. At 1080p Low the combo reaches 168 fps; if the 265HX were a limiting factor, frame rates would flatten as settings drop, yet the spread from Ultra to Low at 1080p is wide (78 to 168 fps), which is the signature of a GPU-bound configuration. Even the highest recorded frame rate leaves substantial headroom on a processor whose TDP is rated at 55 W and whose multiplier is unlocked for further tuning on platforms that permit it.

FAQ

Q: Can the Core Ultra 7 265HX and RTX 4060 Mobile run Lockdown Protocol at 4K?

A: Yes, but with preset compromises. The measured 4K results range from 37 fps on Ultra to 80 fps on Low, with Medium delivering 57 fps average (48 minimum, 65 maximum). High preset lands at 49 fps. Medium or Low is the sensible 4K choice on this hardware.

Q: What frame rate does this combo achieve at 1080p?

A: Between 78 fps (Ultra) and 168 fps (Low), with High at 104 fps and Medium at 119 fps average (102 minimum, 137 maximum). Every preset exceeds 60 fps at 1080p, making it a clean high-refresh experience.

Q: How does the CPU rank against other processors?

A: The 265HX sits in the 93rd percentile of all CPUs with an average score of 63173. Its closest rivals — the Intel Core i7-13790F, AMD Ryzen AI 7 450G, AMD Ryzen AI Embedded P185, and Intel Core Ultra 7 255HX — are all within 0.1 to 0.7 percent of its score, so CPU choice within this tier makes no practical difference for this game.

Q: Is the GPU a bottleneck in Lockdown Protocol?

A: Largely yes, and especially at higher resolutions. Frame rates scale strongly with settings and resolution — from 168 fps at 1080p Low down to 37 fps at 4K Ultra — indicating the RTX 4060 Mobile's 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus (256 GB/s bandwidth) is the limiting component, not the CPU.

Q: Where does this CPU/GPU combination rank for Lockdown Protocol specifically?

A: It ranks 2276 out of 3714 tested combinations in this game — slightly below the midpoint, reflecting that the GPU, in the 67th percentile versus all GPUs, is the weaker half of the pairing relative to the 93rd-percentile CPU.

Q: Does the game favor CPU or GPU upgrades?

A: GPU, clearly. With the 265HX already in the 93rd percentile and frame scaling tracking settings and resolution almost linearly, additional CPU performance would be wasted; frame output is gated by the RTX 4060 Mobile's shading and memory resources.

Resolution Scaling

The measured data shows a classic GPU-bound scaling curve. At Low settings, average frame rates run 168 fps at 1920x1080, 123 fps at 2560x1440, and 80 fps at 3840x2160. Moving from 1080p to 1440p costs roughly 27 percent of the frame rate; moving from 1080p to 4K costs roughly 52 percent. That near-proportional decline with pixel count — 4K pushes four times the pixels of 1080p while the frame rate roughly halves — is exactly what happens when the GPU's rasterization and memory bandwidth resources are the constraint rather than the CPU.

The same pattern holds across every preset. Medium drops from 119 fps at 1080p to 88 at 1440p and 57 at 4K. High goes 104, 76, 49. Ultra goes 78, 57, 37. In each case the 1440p result sits at roughly 73 to 76 percent of the 1080p figure, and the 4K result at roughly 47 to 51 percent. The consistency of those ratios across presets is diagnostic: it rules out a CPU ceiling, because a CPU-limited configuration would show frame rates converging at lower settings and higher resolutions instead of declining proportionally.

The Medium-preset minimum frame rates add nuance. At 1080p Medium the range is 102 to 137 fps; at 1440p it is 74 to 101; at 4K it is 48 to 65. The 4K minimum of 48 fps sits just below the 60 fps line, meaning even the balanced preset cannot guarantee a locked 60 at native 4K on this GPU. At 1440p, the 74 fps minimum clears 60 comfortably, which positions 1440p Medium as the sweet spot where consistency and visual quality intersect.

For a competitive FPS, the takeaway is straightforward. The CPU side of the equation — 20 cores boosting to 5.30 GHz with 93rd-percentile aggregate performance — never intrudes. Every resolution-dependent loss traces back to the RTX 4060 Mobile's fixed rendering resources, and players chasing maximum frame rates should prioritize resolution reduction over CPU-side changes.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows point to clear preset choices per resolution.

At 1920x1080, every option is viable: even Ultra averages 78 fps. But for a competitive FPS where responsiveness matters, High at 104 fps or Medium at 119 fps average (with a 102 fps floor) offers the better trade. Low at 168 fps is available for players who want maximum headroom on a high-refresh display, though the visual cost in an FPS may be more noticeable than the benefit beyond a certain point.

At 2560x1440, Medium is the recommended target: 88 fps average with a 74 fps minimum keeps frame times tight, while High at 76 fps remains playable if visual fidelity is preferred and dips below 60 are tolerable. Ultra at 57 fps falls under the 60 fps line and is best avoided for competitive play on this panel.

At 3840x2160, the recommendation shifts decisively toward Medium or Low. Medium averages 57 fps with a 48 fps minimum — acceptable for single-player-paced play, borderline for competitive matches. Low's 80 fps average restores fluidity, and given the 128-bit memory bus and 8 GB buffer of the RTX 4060 Mobile, reducing texture-heavy preset load is the most effective lever. High at 49 fps and Ultra at 37 fps do not sustain 60 fps and are not recommended at native 4K on this configuration.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the Lockdown Protocol results database, the Core Ultra 7 265HX plus RTX 4060 Mobile pairing ranks 2276 out of 3714 tested combinations. That places it just below the midpoint of all measured configurations for this game — a fair reflection of an asymmetric pairing. The CPU contributes 93rd-percentile class performance, while the GPU sits in the 67th percentile versus all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 22729.

The GPU's rival cluster frames its position precisely. The RTX 4060 Mobile is within 0.7 percent of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 (22895), 0.8 percent ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT (22549), 1.3 percent behind the Intel Arc B580 (23021), and 1.3 percent ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Mobile (22435). That is a tightly banded mid-tier field, and it means Lockdown Protocol performance on this laptop GPU is representative of what those rivals deliver rather than an outlier.

The ranking has a practical interpretation: the same GPU paired with a weaker CPU would likely rank lower, because the 265HX guarantees that no processor-side ceiling clips the frame rates the RTX 4060 Mobile can produce. Conversely, a faster GPU paired with this CPU would scale upward, since the measured results show pure GPU limitation. The 2276/3714 rank is therefore best read as the GPU's standing, with the CPU providing headroom rather than constraints.

Measured FPS Breakdown

All figures below are measured average frame rates unless minimum/maximum values are specified.

At 1920x1080:

• Low: 168 fps
• Medium: 119 fps average (102 minimum, 137 maximum)
• High: 104 fps
• Ultra: 78 fps

At 2560x1440:

• Low: 123 fps
• Medium: 88 fps average (74 minimum, 101 maximum)
• High: 76 fps
• Ultra: 57 fps

At 3840x2160:

• Low: 80 fps
• Medium: 57 fps average (48 minimum, 65 maximum)
• High: 49 fps
• Ultra: 37 fps

Reading across presets, each quality step carries a meaningful cost. At 1080p, dropping from Ultra to Low more than doubles the frame rate (78 to 168). At 1440p, the Ultra-to-Low spread is 57 to 123. At 4K, it is 37 to 80. The Medium preset's min/max envelopes show frame-time stability holds up acceptably — the 1080p Medium floor of 102 fps is above the 1080p Ultra average, and the 1440p Medium floor of 74 fps is above the 1440p Ultra average — indicating that preset choice, not scene complexity spikes, dominates the variance in this title.

Two thresholds matter for interpretation. First, 60 fps: every 1080p preset clears it, every 1440p preset except Ultra clears it, and only 4K Low clears it by a wide margin with 4K Medium close behind at 57. Second, high-refresh territory above 100 fps: only 1080p Low, 1080p Medium, and 1080p High reach it, plus 1440p Low at 123. Players with high-refresh panels should therefore treat 1080p as the competitive resolution for this pairing.

GPU Role — VRAM, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Mobile is an Ada Lovelace design on TSMC's 5 nm process, using the AD107 chip with 18,900 million transistors on a 159 mm² die at a density of 118.9M transistors per mm². Its rendering resources comprise 3072 shading units, 96 TMUs, 48 ROPs, 24 RT cores, and 96 tensor cores, delivering 11.61 TFLOPS of FP32 (with FP16 at a 1:1 ratio), a pixel rate of 90.72 GPixel/s, and a texture rate of 181.4 GTexel/s. Clocks run from a 1545 MHz base to an 1890 MHz boost, with memory clocked at 2000 MHz (16 Gbps effective).

The memory subsystem is the most consequential specification for this game's results: 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus, totaling 256 GB/s of bandwidth. At 4K, where the measured frame rate falls to 37 fps on Ultra and 49 on High, the combination of buffer size and bus width is the binding constraint — the proportional frame-rate decline across resolutions in the measured data is the fingerprint of a bandwidth- and buffer-limited configuration. Lockdown Protocol's 2024-era asset load at 4K Ultra pushes against the 8 GB ceiling, and the 37 fps average is the observable consequence.

The compute benchmarks contextualize where this GPU sits. PassMark G3D scores 17469, GPU compute reaches 6816, Geekbench OpenCL returns 89420, and Geekbench Vulkan 89569. The DirectX-specific PassMark results (216 for DirectX 9, 157 for DirectX 11, 107 for DirectX 10, 73 for DirectX 12) show generational API scaling typical of this tier. The GPU supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, so modern rendering paths are fully available, and the 24 RT cores plus 96 tensor cores provide hardware for ray-traced effects and upscaling workloads if enabled.

Its TDP is 115 W, connected over a PCIe 4.0 x8 bus, and it sits in the 67th percentile versus all GPUs. Against the measured frame data, the conclusion is coherent: at 1080p the RTX 4060 Mobile delivers a high-refresh experience in Lockdown Protocol with headroom to spare (168 fps at Low), at 1440p it delivers a balanced one (88 fps Medium with a 74 fps floor), and at 4K it requires preset reductions to stay smooth. The Core Ultra 7 265HX never appears in the equation as a limiter — every frame-rate boundary in this dataset is drawn by the GPU.