Hitman 2

# Hitman 2 with Intel Core Ultra 7 155H + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090

The pairing of the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 produces a system that is heavily GPU-bound at higher settings, with performance scaling that reveals a clear bottleneck shift as resolution changes. The RTX 5090, sitting at the 92nd percentile among all GPUs, dominates the frame rate conversation, while the Ultra 7 155H, at the 83rd percentile among CPUs, provides sufficient headroom only at lower resolutions and settings. The data shows a system that can deliver exceptional frame rates at 1080p but struggles to maintain playable performance at 4K with maximum settings, indicating that the mobile-class CPU becomes a limiting factor precisely when the GPU is pushed hardest.

Settings Recommendations

For the best balance of visual fidelity and frame rate, the Medium preset at 1440p is the standout choice, delivering 119 FPS average with a minimum of 101 FPS and a maximum of 137 FPS. This represents a 32% improvement over High settings at the same resolution, while sacrificing relatively little in visual quality for a stealth game where smoothness matters more than particle effects. At 1080p, Medium pushes further to 186 FPS average with a minimum of 158 FPS, which is well beyond what any display can refresh, making it the ideal choice for competitive or high-refresh-rate play.

The Ultra preset is the clear outlier across all resolutions. At 1080p, Ultra drops to 104 FPS, a 44% reduction from Medium, and at 1440p it falls to 66 FPS, while at 4K it bottoms out at 35 FPS. These numbers indicate that Ultra settings introduce a disproportionately heavy load that the system cannot sustain at higher resolutions. For 4K users, the Low preset at 85 FPS is the only reasonable option, though even this falls short of the 1440p Medium experience. The High preset at 4K, at 48 FPS, is borderline playable but inconsistent with the smoothness expected from this GPU tier.

The data strongly suggests that Medium is the sweet spot for this combination. At 1080p, Medium delivers 186 FPS, which is 79% higher than High's 141 FPS and 45% higher than Low's 249 FPS when measured as a fraction of the gap between Low and Ultra. At 1440p, Medium's 119 FPS is 32% higher than High's 90 FPS, and the minimum frame rate of 101 FPS ensures consistent pacing. The Medium preset at 1440p offers the best experience per the measured rows, because it maintains a comfortable margin above 100 FPS while still providing enough graphical detail for a game that relies on visual cues for stealth gameplay.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 155H is a 16-core, 22-thread processor from the Meteor Lake architecture, with a base clock of 3.80 GHz and a boost clock of 4.80 GHz. Its 24 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel DDR5 memory support provide a solid foundation for gaming, but the data reveals that this mobile-class chip is not the primary driver of Hitman 2's performance. The CPU's benchmark scores, including a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 15028 and a single-core score of 1743, place it at the 83rd percentile among all CPUs, which is respectable but clearly secondary to the GPU's 92nd percentile standing.

When comparing to nearest rivals, the Ultra 7 155H is essentially tied with the Intel Core i5-14600T, showing a 0% delta in average benchmark score (32707 vs 32697). It edges out the AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 by 0.1% (32662) and trails the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850H by 0.4% (32812) and the AMD Ryzen 5 7400F by 0.2% (32750). These tiny margins indicate that the CPU sits in a crowded mid-range performance band, neither dominating nor lagging its direct competitors.

The game's frame rate behavior across resolutions tells the story of CPU involvement. At 1080p, where the GPU is least stressed, the system achieves 249 FPS on Low settings, suggesting the CPU can feed frames at a very high rate. However, at 4K Ultra, the frame rate collapses to 35 FPS, which is a 86% drop from the 1080p Low figure. This dramatic scaling indicates that the CPU is not the primary constraint at higher resolutions; rather, the GPU's workload becomes the limiting factor. The CPU's role is to provide sufficient single-thread performance for game logic and AI, and the data shows it does this adequately, but it does not scale performance in a way that compensates for GPU limitations at 4K.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is a massive GPU, built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a 5 nm process node and 92,200 million transistors on a 750 mm² die. It features 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, delivering 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth, which is far more than any current game requires. The GPU's clock speeds are 2017 MHz base and 2407 MHz boost, and it achieves a PassMark G3D score of 39650, placing it at the 92nd percentile among all GPUs.

The GPU's benchmark scores are exceptional. Its 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 18355 and Geekbench Vulkan score of 376728 demonstrate raw compute capability that dwarfs the CPU's contributions. When compared to nearest rivals, the RTX 5090 leads the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB by 0.3% (79605 vs 79842 average score) and the Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB by 0.6% (79396), while trailing the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X by 1.4% (80959). These rivals are professional and workstation cards, not gaming GPUs, which highlights that the RTX 5090's gaming performance is in a league of its own relative to the benchmark database.

In Hitman 2 specifically, the GPU's role is dominant. The frame rate differences between settings at each resolution are primarily GPU-driven. At 4K, going from Low (85 FPS) to High (48 FPS) to Ultra (35 FPS) shows a clear GPU workload progression. The RTX 5090's 32 GB of VRAM is never a constraint at any resolution or setting, as even the most demanding Ultra preset at 4K only requires a fraction of that capacity. The GPU's 104.8 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 1,636.8 GTexel/s texture rate are the specifications that matter here, and the data shows they are sufficient to push 1080p Low to 249 FPS, but not sufficient to maintain high frame rates at 4K Ultra due to the sheer pixel and shading workload.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and settings combination for this system?

A: The data shows that 1440p Medium provides the best overall experience, delivering 119 FPS average with a minimum of 101 FPS. This combination offers smooth gameplay while maintaining visual quality, and it outperforms 4K High (48 FPS) by 148% while providing a more consistent frame time experience.

Q: Is the system capable of 4K gaming in Hitman 2?

A: Yes, but only at lower settings. At 4K Low, the system achieves 85 FPS, and at 4K Medium it drops to 64 FPS. However, 4K High (48 FPS) and 4K Ultra (35 FPS) fall below the 60 FPS threshold, making them less suitable for smooth gameplay.

Q: How does the RTX 5090 compare to its nearest rivals in this benchmark context?

A: The RTX 5090's average benchmark score is 79842, placing it 0.3% ahead of the Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB (79605) and 0.6% ahead of the Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB (79396), while trailing the Radeon Pro Vega 64X by 1.4% (80959). These differences are minimal, but the RTX 5090 is designed for gaming, whereas the rivals are workstation-oriented.

Q: Does the CPU bottleneck the GPU at higher resolutions?

A: No, the opposite is true. At 4K, the frame rate drops from 249 FPS at 1080p Low to 85 FPS at 4K Low, a 66% reduction that is consistent with GPU-bound scaling. The CPU's performance remains constant, so the frame rate decline is attributable to the GPU's rendering workload, not CPU limitations.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Medium and Ultra settings at 1440p?

A: Medium at 1440p delivers 119 FPS average, while Ultra at 1440p delivers 66 FPS. This represents a 53 FPS difference, with Ultra being 45% slower. The minimum frame rate for Medium is 101 FPS, ensuring consistent pacing, whereas Ultra's minimum is not recorded but the average suggests significant variability is likely.

Q: How does the system handle high refresh rate displays?

A: At 1080p, the system can exceed 240 FPS on Low settings (249 FPS) and 180 FPS on Medium (186 FPS), making it suitable for 240 Hz displays. At 1440p, Medium's 119 FPS is sufficient for 120 Hz displays, but High (90 FPS) and Ultra (66 FPS) fall short of 120 FPS thresholds.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate progression from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic GPU-bound scaling pattern. At Low settings, the system delivers 249 FPS at 1080p, 159 FPS at 1440p, and 85 FPS at 4K. This represents a 36% drop from 1080p to 1440p and a 66% drop from 1080p to 4K. The scaling ratio from 1440p to 4K is 53% (159 to 85 FPS), which is consistent with the pixel count increase from 3.7 million to 8.3 million pixels (a 2.25x increase), indicating the GPU is the limiting component.

At Medium settings, the pattern is similar: 186 FPS at 1080p, 119 FPS at 1440p, and 64 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1080p to 4K is 66%, identical to the Low setting drop. This consistency across settings strongly suggests that the CPU is not introducing variable overhead, and the GPU's pixel throughput is the dominant factor. At High settings, the numbers are 141 FPS at 1080p, 90 FPS at 1440p, and 48 FPS at 4K, showing a 66% drop from 1080p to 4K as well.

The Ultra setting breaks this pattern slightly: 104 FPS at 1080p, 66 FPS at 1440p, and 35 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1080p to 4K is 66%, matching the other settings, but the absolute numbers are much lower. This indicates that Ultra settings introduce a fixed additional workload that scales with resolution, but the percentage drop remains consistent, reinforcing that the GPU is the limiting factor at all resolutions. The CPU's role is to maintain frame delivery, and the data shows it does so without introducing additional bottlenecks at higher resolutions, since the frame rate drops are proportional to pixel count increases.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers its highest frame rates across all settings. Low settings produce 249 FPS average, which is the maximum measured in this dataset. Medium settings achieve 186 FPS average, with a minimum of 158 FPS and a maximum of 214 FPS, providing a wide and smooth frame rate envelope. High settings drop to 141 FPS average, while Ultra settings fall to 104 FPS average. The progression from Low to Ultra at 1080p shows a 58% reduction in frame rate, from 249 to 104 FPS, with each settings tier costing roughly 40-45 FPS.

At 2560x1440, the performance scales down proportionally. Low settings deliver 159 FPS average, which is 36% lower than the 1080p Low figure. Medium settings produce 119 FPS average (101 min, 137 max), maintaining a smooth experience. High settings achieve 90 FPS average, and Ultra settings drop to 66 FPS average. The transition from 1080p to 1440p costs approximately 36% of frame rate at each setting level, which is consistent with the 2.25x pixel increase from 1080p to 1440p being partially offset by the GPU's memory bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s.

At 3840x2160, the system's performance becomes more constrained. Low settings deliver 85 FPS average, which is still playable but represents a 66% drop from 1080p Low. Medium settings achieve 64 FPS average, with a minimum of 54 FPS and a maximum of 73 FPS, placing it right at the edge of smooth gameplay. High settings fall to 48 FPS average, and Ultra settings bottom out at 35 FPS average. The 4K Medium result, at 64 FPS, is the only 4K setting that approaches the 60 FPS threshold, while 4K High and Ultra are clearly below playable standards for a stealth game requiring precise timing.

The data across all resolutions and settings shows a consistent pattern: Medium settings offer the best balance of frame rate and visual quality, with the 1440p Medium result of 119 FPS being the single best combination of resolution and smoothness. The Ultra preset is uniformly the worst performer, with its 35 FPS at 4K being the lowest measured result, and even at 1080p it drops below the 120 FPS threshold that many displays target. This system is best utilized with Medium settings at 1440p or 1080p, where the GPU's power is effectively harnessed without the unnecessary overhead of Ultra settings.