Evolve

# Evolve with Intel Core Ultra 5 125H + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile

The Intel Core Ultra 5 125H paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile delivers a surprisingly balanced performance profile in Evolve, with the GPU emerging as the dominant bottleneck at higher resolutions while the CPU's 14 cores and 18 threads prove more than adequate for the game's demands. The measured data shows this combination ranks 833rd out of 3,700 tested combos, placing it in the top 22.5% of all systems evaluated. At 1080p Low settings, the combo achieves 263 FPS on average, but this drops to 42 FPS at 4K Ultra, revealing a performance curve that is heavily influenced by resolution and settings rather than CPU limitations. The Core Ultra 5 125H, with its 3.60 GHz base clock and 4.50 GHz boost clock, sits in the 79th percentile among all CPUs, while the RTX 4090 Mobile, with 9,728 shading units and 16 GB of GDDR6 memory, ranks in the 84th percentile among all GPUs — yet the game's frame rates suggest the GPU is the primary constraint in most scenarios.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate collapse from 1080p to 4K is dramatic and clearly indicates a GPU-bound workload at higher resolutions. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 263 at 1920x1080 to 177 at 2560x1440, then further to 101 at 3840x2160 — a 61.6% reduction from 1080p to 4K. This steep decline is characteristic of a system where the RTX 4090 Mobile's rendering capacity, not the CPU's processing speed, dictates performance. The 14-core Intel processor, with its 18 threads and 18 MB of shared L3 cache, does not appear to be the limiting factor, as even at 4K Low the system maintains triple-digit frame rates.

The scaling pattern at Medium settings reinforces this interpretation. At 1080p Medium, the combo averages 204 FPS, which falls to 137 FPS at 1440p and 78 FPS at 4K. The min-to-max range at Medium settings — 174-235 FPS at 1080p, 116-157 FPS at 1440p, and 66-90 FPS at 4K — shows that the frame time variance remains consistent across resolutions, suggesting the GPU is being saturated progressively as pixel count increases. The RTX 4090 Mobile's 576.0 GB/s memory bandwidth and 32.98 TFLOPS of FP32 compute are being taxed more heavily at higher resolutions, while the CPU's workload remains relatively static.

At High settings, the resolution scaling is even more pronounced: 160 FPS at 1080p, 107 FPS at 1440p, and 61 FPS at 4K. This represents a 61.9% drop from 1080p to 4K, nearly identical to the Low settings drop. The consistency of this percentage across settings suggests that the GPU's pixel throughput, not its shading complexity, is the binding constraint. The RTX 4090 Mobile's 112 ROPs and 189.8 GPixel/s pixel rate are being pushed to their limits at 4K, regardless of whether the game is running at Low or High quality.

Ultra settings tell a similar story but with lower absolute numbers: 111 FPS at 1080p, 74 FPS at 1440p, and 42 FPS at 4K. The 4K Ultra result falls below the 60 FPS threshold that many consider the minimum for smooth gameplay. The data indicates that this combination is best suited for 1440p gaming at High or Ultra settings, where it delivers 107 FPS and 74 FPS respectively, while 4K gaming requires dropping to Medium settings to maintain a playable 78 FPS average.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS this combo achieves in Evolve?

A: The highest measured average FPS is 263 at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This drops to 204 FPS at Medium, 160 FPS at High, and 111 FPS at Ultra for the same resolution.

Q: Can this system handle 4K gaming in Evolve?

A: Yes, but with caveats. At 4K Medium, the combo averages 78 FPS with a min of 66 FPS and max of 90 FPS. At 4K High, it drops to 61 FPS, and at 4K Ultra, it falls to 42 FPS. Low settings at 4K yield 101 FPS, but visually compromised.

Q: How does the CPU's performance compare to similar processors?

A: The Intel Core Ultra 5 125H has an average benchmark score of 27,507, placing it in the 79th percentile of all CPUs. It is 0.1% below the AMD Ryzen 7 5800 (27,535), 0.3% below the Intel Core i5-12600K and AMD Ryzen 7 5700X (both 27,578), and 0.5% above the AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 5355G (27,382).

Q: How does the GPU's performance compare to similar graphics cards?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile has an average benchmark score of 43,667, placing it in the 84th percentile of all GPUs. It is 0.8% above the NVIDIA Quadro M6000 (43,301), 0.9% above the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 Mobile (43,268) and Quadro M6000 24 GB (43,262), and 0.9% below the NVIDIA RTX A6000 (44,075).

Q: What is the best settings/resolution combination for smooth gameplay?

A: For 60+ FPS consistently, 1440p High (107 FPS) or 1440p Ultra (74 FPS) are excellent choices. At 1080p, even Ultra settings deliver 111 FPS. At 4K, Medium settings (78 FPS) are the highest quality option that stays above 60 FPS.

Q: Is this combo more CPU-limited or GPU-limited in Evolve?

A: The data indicates GPU limitation at higher resolutions. The frame rate drops by roughly 61-62% from 1080p to 4K across settings, which is a hallmark of GPU saturation. The CPU's 14 cores and 18 threads, combined with its 79th percentile ranking, suggest it has ample headroom for this game.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 125H brings 14 cores and 18 threads to this combination, configured in the Meteor Lake architecture on a 7 nm process. Its base clock of 3.60 GHz and boost clock of 4.50 GHz provide the single-thread performance needed for Evolve's game logic and physics, while the 18 MB of shared L3 cache and 2 MB per-core L2 cache help reduce memory latency. The CPU's 28 W TDP is modest for a mobile processor, but its benchmark results — 1,647.5 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 12,804.5 in multi-core — demonstrate capable processing power for a 2015-era game like Evolve.

The CPU's overall benchmark average of 27,507 places it in the 79th percentile of all CPUs, with nearest rivals including the AMD Ryzen 7 5800 (27,535, 0.1% ahead) and the Intel Core i5-12600K (27,578, 0.3% ahead). These deltas are negligible, meaning the Core Ultra 5 125H offers desktop-class performance in a mobile package. In Evolve, this processing headroom is evident: even at 1080p Low where the frame rate reaches 263 FPS, the CPU is unlikely to be the bottleneck, as the GPU is capable of far higher frame rates in less demanding scenarios.

The Passmark multi-thread score of 21,100 and single-thread score of 3,399 further indicate that the CPU can handle Evolve's multi-threaded rendering tasks without causing frame drops. The 236,209 Passmark data compression score and 51,670 floating point math score suggest robust general-purpose compute, though these are not directly tied to gaming. The CPU's memory bandwidth of 89.6 GB/s over a dual-channel DDR5 interface provides sufficient data throughput for the GPU, especially given the RTX 4090 Mobile's own 576.0 GB/s bandwidth.

The 4.50 GHz boost clock is particularly relevant for Evolve, which was released in 2015 and may rely more on single-thread performance than modern titles. The Core Ultra 5 125H's 1,647.5 Cinebench R23 single-core score is respectable, and the 0.3% delta from the Intel Core i5-12600K suggests that the CPU is not leaving performance on the table. In practice, the measured FPS data shows no CPU-induced frame drops — the min FPS values at Medium settings (174 at 1080p, 116 at 1440p, 66 at 4K) are all reasonable percentages of their respective averages.

How This Combo Ranks

This combination of Intel Core Ultra 5 125H and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile ranks 833rd out of 3,700 tested combos in Evolve, placing it in the top 22.5% of all systems benchmarked. This ranking reflects the balance between the CPU's 79th percentile performance and the GPU's 84th percentile performance, though the game's results suggest the GPU is the more influential component. The 833rd rank out of 3,700 means that 2,867 combinations performed better, which is expected given that many of those likely feature higher-end desktop CPUs or more recent GPUs.

The combo's rank is somewhat lower than what the individual component percentiles might suggest. This is likely due to Evolve's relatively modest CPU requirements — the game was released in 2015 and does not heavily utilize multi-core processors. The RTX 4090 Mobile's 84th percentile ranking is more relevant to the game's performance, and the GPU's 27,212 Passmark G3D score and 180,831 Geekbench OpenCL score indicate strong rasterization capabilities that directly benefit Evolve's rendering.

When compared to other mobile combos, this system sits in the upper quartile, but the data shows that the RTX 4090 Mobile is the star performer. The GPU's nearest rivals — the NVIDIA Quadro M6000 (0.8% lower average score), RTX 5050 Mobile (0.9% lower), and RTX A6000 (0.9% higher) — are all professional or newer cards, yet the 4090 Mobile holds its own. The CPU's nearest rivals show similar tight clustering, with all deltas within 0.5%, indicating that the Core Ultra 5 125H is well-matched to its competitors.

The 833rd ranking out of 3,700 combos means that this system outperforms approximately 77.5% of tested configurations in Evolve. This is a strong result for a mobile platform, especially considering that Evolve's 4K Ultra settings (42 FPS) represent the only scenario where the combo falls below 60 FPS. The ranking reflects the system's ability to deliver high frame rates at 1440p and 1080p across all settings, with the 4K Medium result of 78 FPS being a particularly strong data point.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile is the dominant component in this pairing, and its specifications explain the measured FPS results. With 9,728 shading units, 304 TMUs, and 112 ROPs, the GPU is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture using a 5 nm process at TSMC. Its 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 576.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is crucial for high-resolution textures in Evolve. The GPU's boost clock of 1,695 MHz and base clock of 1,335 MHz are modest for a flagship mobile chip, but its 32.98 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 515.3 GTexel/s texture rate deliver substantial rendering power.

The RTX 4090 Mobile's benchmark results are impressive: 27,212 in Passmark G3D, 180,831 in Geekbench OpenCL, and 170,774 in Geekbench Vulkan. These scores place the GPU in the 84th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 43,667. Its nearest rival, the NVIDIA RTX A6000, scores 44,075 (0.9% higher), while the Quadro M6000 scores 43,301 (0.8% lower). This positioning confirms that the 4090 Mobile is a top-tier mobile GPU, though not the absolute fastest — which aligns with its 4K Ultra performance of 42 FPS in Evolve.

In Evolve specifically, the GPU's role becomes clear through the resolution scaling analysis. The 112 ROPs and 189.8 GPixel/s pixel rate are sufficient for 1080p and 1440p, where the combo delivers 111-263 FPS and 74-177 FPS respectively. However, at 4K, the pixel throughput demands push the GPU to its limits, resulting in 42-101 FPS depending on settings. The 16 GB VRAM is more than adequate for Evolve, which was released in 2015 and likely uses less than 8 GB even at 4K Ultra, so memory capacity is not a limiting factor.

The GPU's 120 W TDP and IGP slot width indicate it is a power-efficient design for a mobile flagship, but the performance data shows that it can be fully utilized in this game. The difference between 1080p Low (263 FPS) and 4K Ultra (42 FPS) — an 84% reduction — is entirely attributable to GPU workload scaling. The CPU's consistent performance across resolutions, as evidenced by the lack of frame drops at higher settings, confirms that the GPU is the primary driver of Evolve's frame rates.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its highest frame rates across all settings. Low settings produce an average of 263 FPS, Medium settings yield 204 FPS with a min-max range of 174-235 FPS, High settings achieve 160 FPS, and Ultra settings drop to 111 FPS. These numbers indicate that at 1080p, the system has substantial headroom even at Ultra settings, with all configurations exceeding 100 FPS. The 52 FPS difference between Low and Ultra settings (263 vs 111) shows that visual quality has a significant impact, but even the most demanding settings remain highly playable.

At 2560x1440, the performance scales predictably downward. Low settings average 177 FPS, Medium settings average 137 FPS with a min-max range of 116-157 FPS, High settings achieve 107 FPS, and Ultra settings yield 74 FPS. The transition from 1080p to 1440p represents a 32.7% reduction in frame rate at Low settings (263 to 177), a 32.8% reduction at Medium (204 to 137), a 33.1% reduction at High (160 to 107), and a 33.3% reduction at Ultra (111 to 74). This consistent ~33% drop suggests that the GPU's pixel processing is the bottleneck, as the resolution increase of 77.8% (from 2.07 million to 3.69 million pixels) is partially offset by the GPU's ability to maintain throughput.

At 3840x2160, the frame rates continue to fall but remain playable at most settings. Low settings average 101 FPS, Medium settings average 78 FPS with a min-max range of 66-90 FPS, High settings achieve 61 FPS, and Ultra settings drop to 42 FPS. The drop from 1440p to 4K is 42.9% at Low (177 to 101), 43.1% at Medium (137 to 78), 43.0% at High (107 to 61), and 43.2% at Ultra (74 to 42). This consistent ~43% reduction across all settings further confirms that the GPU is the limiting factor, as the pixel count increases by 125% (from 3.69 million to 8.29 million) and the GPU cannot fully compensate.

The Medium settings data provides the only min and max FPS measurements in the dataset. At 1080p Medium, the min of 174 FPS and max of 235 FPS represent a 61 FPS range, or approximately 30% of the average. At 1440p Medium, the min of 116 FPS and max of 157 FPS show a 41 FPS range, or about 30% of the average. At 4K Medium, the min of 66 FPS and max of 90 FPS show a 24 FPS range, or about 31% of the average. The consistency of this variance across resolutions suggests that frame pacing remains stable regardless of GPU load, which is a positive indicator for gameplay smoothness. The 4K Medium min of 66 FPS is comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold, while the 4K High average of 61 FPS is borderline and the 4K Ultra average of 42 FPS is likely to feel stuttery during intense action sequences.