Hitman 2

The Intel Core i3-12100F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D presents a stark contrast in a 2018 stealth title: a four-core budget processor from the Alder Lake generation driving the flagship Blackwell 2.0 GPU. Benchmark results for Hitman 2 show this combination produces a wide range of frame rates, from 304 FPS at 1080p Low down to 52 FPS at 4K Ultra. The data indicates that the experience is heavily dependent on the graphics preset, with the CPU becoming a significant bottleneck at lower resolutions and the GPU taking over as the primary limiter at 4K.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows indicate that the Medium preset offers the most balanced experience across all three tested resolutions. At 1920x1080 Medium, the combo delivers 273 FPS average, which is only 31 FPS lower than the 304 FPS achieved on Low, while providing a substantial 120 FPS advantage over the 153 FPS seen on Ultra. The Medium preset also provides the only complete FPS data set in the entire table, with a 232 FPS minimum and 314 FPS maximum at 1080p, suggesting a stable frame delivery.

Moving to 2560x1440, the Medium preset again stands out with a 175 FPS average, complete with a 149 FPS minimum and 201 FPS maximum. This represents a 59 FPS drop from the 234 FPS on Low but a 77 FPS improvement over the 98 FPS on Ultra. At 3840x2160, the Medium preset yields 93 FPS average, with 79 FPS minimum and 107 FPS maximum, which is the only 4K row with full FPS data. The High preset at 4K produces 71 FPS, while Ultra drops to 52 FPS, making Medium the only setting that comfortably clears 60 FPS at 4K while maintaining a playable minimum.

For players prioritizing high refresh rates at 1080p, the Low preset's 304 FPS is the clear choice, but the Medium preset's 273 FPS is close enough that the visual quality upgrade is likely worth the 31 FPS sacrifice. At 1440p, Medium's 175 FPS average is ideal for high-refresh monitors, and at 4K, Medium's 93 FPS is the only tested setting that offers a smooth experience without dipping into the 50s. The Ultra preset is the least advisable option at any resolution, as it produces the lowest frame rates across the board, including a 52 FPS average at 4K that falls below standard 60 Hz refresh thresholds.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D brings substantial specifications to this pairing, including 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus and a 1.79 TB/s memory bandwidth. The GPU's boost clock of 2407 MHz, built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a 5 nm process from TSMC, delivers 104.8 TFLOPS of FP32 performance. The 92,200 million transistors on a 750 mm² die represent a massive compute resource, and the 21760 shading units suggest this is a GPU designed to handle far more demanding workloads than Hitman 2.

In this game, the GPU's role shifts dramatically depending on the resolution and settings. At 1080p Low, the combination achieves 304 FPS, but this figure is likely constrained by the CPU rather than the GPU, as the i3-12100F's four cores struggle to feed frames fast enough to saturate the RTX 5090 D. The data supports this interpretation: at 1080p, moving from Low to Medium only reduces FPS from 304 to 273, a modest 31 FPS drop, while moving from Medium to Ultra reduces FPS from 273 to 153, a much larger 120 FPS drop. This non-linear scaling suggests that at lower settings, the CPU is the limiting factor, and the GPU's full potential is not being utilized.

At 4K Ultra, however, the GPU becomes the clear bottleneck. The 52 FPS average at 4K Ultra represents a massive 252 FPS drop from the 304 FPS at 1080p Low, and this gap is almost entirely attributable to the GPU's rendering load. The RTX 5090 D's 32 GB of VRAM is far more than Hitman 2 requires, even at 4K Ultra, so memory capacity is not a limiting factor. The GPU's texture and pixel rates—1,636.8 GTexel/s and 423.6 GPixel/s respectively—are the relevant specifications here, and the data shows these are sufficient to produce only 52 FPS at the highest settings, indicating that the game's engine and the GPU's architecture have a performance ceiling in this title.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a predictable pattern that highlights the shifting bottleneck. At High settings, the average FPS drops from 207 at 1080p to 132 at 1440p, a 75 FPS reduction, and then to 71 at 4K, another 61 FPS reduction. This represents a 65.7% decrease from 1080p to 4K, which is less than the 4x pixel count increase, suggesting that the CPU is still contributing to performance at both 1440p and 4K High.

The Low preset shows even more dramatic scaling: 304 FPS at 1080p drops to 234 at 1440p (a 70 FPS decrease) and then to 124 at 4K (a 110 FPS decrease). The total drop from 1080p to 4K on Low is 180 FPS, or 59.2%. This larger absolute drop at 4K Low compared to 1080p Low indicates that even at low settings, the GPU's rendering load at 4K becomes significant, but the CPU remains a constraint at 1080p and 1440p.

The Medium preset shows the most consistent scaling pattern: 273 FPS at 1080p, 175 at 1440p (a 98 FPS drop), and 93 at 4K (an 82 FPS drop). The Ultra preset scales from 153 FPS at 1080p to 98 at 1440p (a 55 FPS drop) and 52 at 4K (a 46 FPS drop). The Ultra preset's smaller absolute drops suggest that this setting is more consistently GPU-bound across resolutions, whereas the lower presets are increasingly CPU-bound as resolution decreases. The data shows that the RTX 5090 D can push extremely high frame rates at 1080p and 1440p, but the 4K results across all settings are more moderate, with only the Low preset exceeding 120 FPS and the Medium preset just missing 100 FPS.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combination produces its highest frame rates. The Low preset averages 304 FPS, making it the only tested configuration to exceed 300 FPS. The Medium preset averages 273 FPS, with a 232 FPS minimum and 314 FPS maximum, indicating a wide variance of 82 FPS between minimum and maximum. The High preset averages 207 FPS, and the Ultra preset drops to 153 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a total reduction of 151 FPS, with the largest single-step drop occurring between Medium and High (66 FPS) and between High and Ultra (54 FPS).

At 2560x1440, the Low preset averages 234 FPS, which is 70 FPS lower than its 1080p counterpart. The Medium preset averages 175 FPS, with a 149 FPS minimum and 201 FPS maximum, showing a variance of 52 FPS. The High preset averages 132 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 98 FPS. The step from Medium to High at 1440p is 43 FPS, and from High to Ultra is 34 FPS, indicating a more gradual decline than at 1080p. The 1440p results show that this combination can still drive high refresh rates on Medium and Low, but High and Ultra fall below 144 Hz.

At 3840x2160, the Low preset averages 124 FPS, the Medium preset averages 93 FPS with a 79 FPS minimum and 107 FPS maximum, the High preset averages 71 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 52 FPS. The total drop from Low to Ultra at 4K is 72 FPS, which is significantly less than the 151 FPS drop at 1080p. This narrower spread at 4K indicates that the GPU is the dominant bottleneck at this resolution, and the CPU's influence is reduced. The 4K results show that only the Low preset reliably exceeds 120 FPS, while Medium is the only other setting that stays above 60 FPS on average.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i3-12100F is a modest four-core, eight-thread processor from the Alder Lake-S architecture, with a base clock of 3.30 GHz and a boost clock of 4.30 GHz. It features 12 MB of shared L3 cache and a 58 W TDP, and its benchmark scores include a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 11860 and a single-core score of 1674. The PassMark multithread score of 14015 places it in the 68th percentile of all CPUs, and its nearest rivals include the Intel Core 3 N355 (0% delta), Intel Core i5-9500 (0.3% faster), and Intel Core 5 120UL (0.7% slower).

In Hitman 2, the CPU's role is most apparent at lower resolutions and settings. At 1080p Low, the 304 FPS average is almost certainly CPU-limited, as the RTX 5090 D is capable of far higher frame rates in this game. The data supports this: at 1080p, the FPS difference between Low and Medium is only 31 FPS, whereas the difference between Medium and Ultra is 120 FPS. This suggests that as the GPU load increases, the CPU has more headroom to feed frames, and the frame rate becomes more GPU-bound.

At 4K Ultra, the CPU's impact is minimized. The 52 FPS average at 4K Ultra is a GPU-limited result, and the CPU's four cores are likely not a constraint at this resolution. However, the data also shows that the CPU's single-thread performance matters, as Hitman 2 is a game that typically benefits from strong single-core performance. The i3-12100F's 3dmark single-thread score of 893 and PassMark single-thread score of 3444 are adequate for this title, but they do not match the performance of higher-end CPUs. The benchmark results indicate that the CPU is a bottleneck at 1080p and 1440p at lower settings, but at 4K, the GPU becomes the primary limiting factor.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i3-12100F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D ranks 40th out of 3001 tested combos in Hitman 2. This percentile placement is remarkably high, given that the CPU is a budget-oriented part with only four cores. The ranking suggests that the RTX 5090 D's raw power can compensate for the CPU's limitations in this particular game, especially at higher resolutions where the GPU is the bottleneck.

However, the ranking also highlights the imbalance of this pairing. While the combo places in the top 1.3% of all tested combinations, the FPS data shows that it cannot match what a more balanced pairing with a high-end CPU would achieve. At 1080p Low, the 304 FPS is likely below what the RTX 5090 D could achieve with a stronger CPU, and the CPU's percentile rank of 68th among all CPUs is much lower than the GPU's 92nd percentile rank. This disparity suggests that the combo's high ranking is primarily due to the GPU's dominance at higher resolutions, where the CPU matters less.

The nearest rivals for the CPU—the Intel Core 3 N355, Intel Core i5-9500, and Intel Core 5 120UL—all have similar average benchmark scores, with deltas of 0%, 0.3%, and -0.7% respectively. These CPUs are all in the same performance class as the i3-12100F, and swapping to any of them would likely produce nearly identical results in Hitman 2. The GPU's nearest rivals, including the AMD Radeon RX 6650M XT (1.1% faster) and AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (1.6% slower), are also closely matched in synthetic benchmarks, but the RTX 5090 D's 32 GB VRAM and 1.79 TB/s bandwidth give it a significant advantage in this game's 4K Ultra settings, where the 52 FPS result is respectable for a 2018 title on a 2025 flagship GPU.