Hitman 2

The Intel Core Ultra 5 225 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 delivers an exceptional Hitman 2 experience, ranking in the top 2.3% of all tested combinations. The data reveals a system where the GPU is the clear performance limiter at 4K, while the CPU’s strength becomes apparent only at lower resolutions. Across all measured settings, the combo provides playable frame rates even at maximum quality, with headroom for high-refresh-rate displays at 1440p and 1080p.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K demonstrates a classic GPU-bound scenario, with the most dramatic drops occurring at the highest visual fidelity settings. At Low settings, the average frame rate falls from 342 FPS at 1920x1080 to 117 FPS at 3840x2160, representing a 65.8% reduction. This steep decline indicates that even the RTX 5090’s immense compute resources are taxed heavily by the pixel count at 4K, while the CPU has ample headroom to feed frames at lower resolutions.

The scaling pattern shifts with each preset tier. At Medium settings, the drop from 1080p (257 FPS) to 4K (87 FPS) is a 66.1% reduction, nearly identical in percentage terms to Low. High settings see a slightly smaller relative decline: 194 FPS at 1080p falls to 66 FPS at 4K, a 66.0% drop. Ultra settings show the most severe absolute scaling, with 143 FPS at 1080p plummeting to 49 FPS at 4K — a 65.7% decrease. The consistency of these percentage drops across all four presets strongly suggests a uniform GPU bottleneck at 4K, rather than any CPU or memory constraint.

At 2560x1440, the resolution scaling becomes more favorable for high-refresh-rate gaming. Low settings produce 219 FPS, Medium delivers 164 FPS, and High reaches 124 FPS. The transition from 1440p to 4K at High settings costs 58 FPS (from 124 to 66), while the same resolution change at Low costs 102 FPS (from 219 to 117). This widening gap at lower settings confirms that the RTX 5090’s raw shading power is the limiting factor — when pixel fill rate becomes the bottleneck, the CPU’s 10 cores and 4.90 GHz boost clock are more than sufficient to keep up.

The 1080p results further illustrate this dynamic. At 1920x1080, Low settings achieve 342 FPS, which is 56.2% higher than the 4K Low result. The fact that 1080p Ultra (143 FPS) nearly matches 4K Medium (87 FPS) in raw throughput demonstrates how pixel count dominates performance. The Intel Core Ultra 5 225, with its 20 MB of shared L3 cache and 102.4 GB/s memory bandwidth, never appears as the limiting component in this dataset — every resolution scaling curve follows GPU-bound expectations.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data provides a clear hierarchy for optimal settings, with the most balanced experience appearing at Medium preset across all resolutions. At 4K, Medium delivers 87 FPS average with a minimum of 74 FPS and maximum of 101 FPS. This is the only 4K preset with reported min/max frame data, suggesting smooth frame pacing. The 87 FPS average is 33.8% higher than High’s 66 FPS and 77.6% higher than Ultra’s 49 FPS, making Medium the clear choice for 4K gameplay without sacrificing visual quality for playability.

For 1440p users, High settings at 124 FPS provide an excellent balance, though Medium at 164 FPS offers a 32.3% performance uplift. The data shows that 1440p Ultra (91 FPS) is viable, but High’s 124 FPS average is substantially better for competitive play or high-refresh-rate displays. At 1080p, the choice depends on the display’s refresh rate. Low settings reach 342 FPS, which exceeds any current consumer monitor’s capability, while Ultra still delivers a highly playable 143 FPS. Medium at 257 FPS offers the best combination of visual fidelity and frame rate headroom for 240Hz displays.

The Ultra preset appears to be the least efficient choice across all resolutions. At 4K, it produces 49 FPS — below the 60 FPS threshold that many players consider minimum for smooth gameplay. The gap between High and Ultra at 4K is 17 FPS (66 to 49), a 25.8% reduction for what is typically an incremental visual improvement. At 1080p, Ultra’s 143 FPS is 44.3% lower than Medium’s 257 FPS, suggesting that the Ultra preset’s additional effects impose a disproportionate performance cost.

The data indicates that the RTX 5090’s 32 GB of GDDR7 memory is never a constraint, even at 4K Ultra. The bottleneck is purely computational. For the best experience per the measured rows, Medium at 4K or High at 1440p represent the sweet spots, each providing frame rates that comfortably exceed 60 FPS while maintaining meaningful visual quality. Players prioritizing maximum frame rates should select Low at 1080p for 342 FPS, while those seeking visual fidelity should accept Ultra’s 49 FPS at 4K as the cost of maximum settings.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core Ultra 5 225 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 combination achieves rank 68 out of 3001 tested combos in Hitman 2, placing it in the 97.7th percentile. This top-tier ranking is expected given the RTX 5090’s position as the flagship GeForce 50-series GPU, but it also reflects the CPU’s ability to avoid bottlenecking the GPU at the resolutions where the combo was measured. The ranking places this combo ahead of 2,933 other tested configurations, with only 67 combinations delivering higher average frame rates in this specific game.

The GPU’s individual benchmark percentile of 92nd among all GPUs, combined with an average benchmark score of 79,842, supports the high combo ranking. The CPU’s percentile of 85th among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 36,938, is respectable but not class-leading. The fact that this combo still ranks in the top 2.3% of all tested combinations indicates that Hitman 2’s performance is heavily weighted toward GPU capability, allowing the Ultra 5 225 to punch above its weight class when paired with a top-tier graphics card.

Comparing to the CPU’s nearest rivals, the AMD Ryzen 5 5600F scores 36,945 (0% delta), the AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D scores 37,018 (-0.2% delta), and the AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 450 scores 37,093 (-0.4% delta). These negligible differences (all within 0.5%) suggest that any of these CPUs would produce nearly identical Hitman 2 results when paired with the RTX 5090. The combo’s rank is therefore primarily a function of the GPU’s performance class rather than CPU differentiation.

The GPU’s nearest rivals paint a similar picture. The NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB scores 79,605 (0.3% delta), the Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB scores 79,396 (0.6% delta), and the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT scores 78,940 (1.1% delta). These rival GPUs are all within 1.4% of the RTX 5090’s average benchmark score, yet the RTX 5090’s 32 GB VRAM and Blackwell architecture provide substantial real-world advantages in games like Hitman 2 that the synthetic benchmarks may not fully capture. The combo’s rank of 68 reflects the RTX 5090’s position as one of the fastest gaming GPUs available, with only a handful of more specialized or newer combinations ahead.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The dataset provides average frame rates for 12 distinct configurations — three resolutions (1920x1080, 2560x1440, 3840x2160) across four settings presets (Low, Medium, High, Ultra). At 1920x1080, the results are: Low 342 FPS, Medium 257 FPS (min 218, max 295), High 194 FPS, and Ultra 143 FPS. The Medium preset is the only 1080p configuration with min/max data, showing a 77 FPS spread between minimum and maximum frame rates, which indicates consistent frame delivery.

At 2560x1440, the measured averages are: Low 219 FPS, Medium 164 FPS (min 140, max 189), High 124 FPS, and Ultra 91 FPS. The 1440p Medium preset shows a 49 FPS spread, tighter than the 1080p Medium spread, suggesting that the GPU’s workload is more consistent at this resolution. The step from High to Ultra at 1440p costs 33 FPS (from 124 to 91), a 26.6% reduction, which is the largest percentage drop between adjacent presets at any resolution.

At 3840x2160, the averages are: Low 117 FPS, Medium 87 FPS (min 74, max 101), High 66 FPS, and Ultra 49 FPS. The 4K Medium preset’s min/max spread of 27 FPS is the tightest of any measured configuration, indicating exceptional frame pacing at this demanding resolution. The progression from Low to Ultra at 4K shows an almost linear degradation: 117 to 87 to 66 to 49 FPS, with each preset step costing approximately 20-30% performance.

Across all resolutions, the Medium preset consistently provides the most stable frame delivery, as evidenced by the reported min/max values. The High preset at 4K (66 FPS) is the only other 4K configuration that approaches 60 FPS, while Ultra at 4K (49 FPS) falls below the threshold for smooth gameplay on standard 60Hz displays. The data shows that the combo is capable of exceeding 100 FPS at 4K only with Low settings, while at 1440p, High and below all exceed 120 FPS, and at 1080p, every preset exceeds 140 FPS.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 serves as the primary performance driver in this combo, with its 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus delivering 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth. This memory configuration is far beyond what Hitman 2 requires, even at 4K Ultra, where the game’s texture loading is unlikely to exceed even a fraction of the available memory. The 32 GB capacity ensures zero memory-related stuttering or texture pop-in across all measured configurations.

The GPU’s clock speeds — 2017 MHz base and 2407 MHz boost — combined with 21,760 shading units and 680 TMUs, provide the computational throughput that dominates this game’s performance profile. The 104.8 TFLOPS of FP32 compute power explains why the combo scales so predictably with resolution: Hitman 2’s rendering pipeline is heavily shader-bound, and the RTX 5090’s massive shading array is the determining factor at every settings level. The 176 ROPs deliver a pixel rate of 423.6 GPixel/s, which is the key specification for 4K performance, where pixel fill rate becomes the limiting factor.

The GPU’s benchmark results reinforce its gaming prowess: a Passmark G3D score of 39,650 and a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 18,355 place it in the 92nd percentile of all GPUs. The Geekbench Vulkan score of 376,728 and OpenCL score of 334,370 indicate strong compute capabilities, though these are more relevant to productivity workloads than to Hitman 2’s specific requirements. The GPU’s 5 nm process node and 92,200 million transistors on a 750 mm² die represent the largest consumer GPU die in the dataset, explaining its ability to maintain high frame rates across all resolutions.

The RTX 5090’s position relative to its nearest rivals — all within 1.4% in average benchmark score — suggests that its gaming performance is not solely a function of raw compute but also of architectural efficiency. In Hitman 2, the GPU’s role is unambiguous: it is the bottleneck at 4K, the co-equal partner at 1440p, and the sole performance limit at 1080p. The CPU’s 10 cores and 10 threads, with a 3.30 GHz base and 4.90 GHz boost clock, never appear as the limiting factor in any measured configuration, as evidenced by the consistent GPU-bound scaling patterns.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and settings combination for 60+ FPS in Hitman 2 with this hardware?

A: At 3840x2160, both Medium (87 FPS) and High (66 FPS) presets exceed 60 FPS, while Ultra (49 FPS) does not. At 2560x1440 and 1920x1080, every preset including Ultra (91 FPS and 143 FPS respectively) comfortably exceeds 60 FPS.

Q: How much performance is gained by dropping from Ultra to Medium settings at 4K?

A: At 3840x2160, Medium delivers 87 FPS average compared to Ultra’s 49 FPS, representing a 77.6% performance increase. The Medium preset also provides reported min/max frames of 74/101 FPS, indicating stable performance.

Q: Is the Intel Core Ultra 5 225 a bottleneck for the RTX 5090 in this game?

A: The data shows no evidence of CPU bottlenecking. Frame rates scale consistently with resolution and settings in a GPU-bound pattern, and the CPU’s 3.30 GHz base clock with 4.90 GHz boost is sufficient to feed the GPU at all measured configurations, including 342 FPS at 1080p Low.

Q: How does this combo rank compared to other tested configurations?

A: This combo ranks 68th out of 3,001 tested combinations, placing it in the top 2.3% of all configurations. This high ranking is driven primarily by the RTX 5090’s 92nd percentile GPU performance, while the CPU’s 85th percentile ranking is secondary.

Q: What frame rates can I expect at 1440p with this setup?

A: At 2560x1440, the measured averages are: Low 219 FPS, Medium 164 FPS (min 140, max 189), High 124 FPS, and Ultra 91 FPS. All presets provide excellent playability, with even Ultra exceeding 90 FPS.

Q: Does the RTX 5090’s 32 GB VRAM provide any advantage in Hitman 2?

A: The 32 GB GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus with 1.79 TB/s bandwidth exceeds the game’s requirements at all resolutions and settings. None of the measured configurations show memory-related performance limitations, and the memory capacity is not a factor in the frame rate differences between presets.