Red Dead Redemption 2

The Intel Core Ultra 5 225 is a 10-core, 10-thread desktop processor from the Arrow Lake-S family, running at a 3.30 GHz base clock and a 4.90 GHz boost clock. This configuration places it in the 85th percentile among all CPUs, with a multi-threaded Cinebench R23 score of 25891 and a single-core score of 3655. Its nearest rivals in aggregate benchmark score are tightly clustered: the AMD Ryzen 5 5600F scores 36945, the AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D scores 37018, the AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 450 scores 37093, and the Intel Core i9-12900T scores 37112; the Core Ultra 5 225's deltaPct against these is 0, -0.2, -0.4, and -0.5 respectively, meaning it is essentially neck-and-neck with all of them.

For Red Dead Redemption 2, this CPU headroom is mostly a non-factor. The measured FPS data shows that at 1080p Low, the system achieves 51 FPS, but dropping the resolution to 1440p Low yields 38 FPS, and 4K Low yields 25 FPS. If the CPU were the primary limiter, you would expect FPS to stay relatively flat across resolutions, as the GPU would be doing the heavy lifting at higher resolutions. Instead, the FPS drops significantly with each resolution increase, which points directly to the GPU as the bottleneck in this pairing. The CPU's 20 MB of shared L3 cache and 102.4 GB/s of dual-channel DDR5 memory bandwidth are sufficient to feed the GPU, but the data indicates the processor is not the constraining component in this game's workload.

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

The Core Ultra 5 225 is built on a 3 nm process at TSMC, with 17,800 million transistors on a 243 mm² die. It has 192 KB of L1 cache per core, 3 MB of L2 cache per core, and 20 MB of shared L3 cache. The processor supports DDR5 memory on a dual-channel bus, delivering 102.4 GB/s of bandwidth. The data from synthetic benchmarks shows strong single-threaded performance: a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 3655, which is relevant because Red Dead Redemption 2's engine still relies on a few heavily loaded threads for game logic and draw call submission.

PassMark single-thread score of 4412 and Cinebench R15 single-core score of 368 reinforce this capability. Multi-threaded workloads are also handled well, with Cinebench R23 multicore at 25891 and PassMark multithread at 30459. However, the game's actual FPS results do not reflect CPU-bound behavior. The 1080p Low preset yields 51 FPS, while 1440p Low drops to 38 FPS and 4K Low to 25 FPS. If the CPU were the bottleneck, the 1080p result would not be so much higher than the 1440p result, because the CPU would have to do the same amount of work regardless of resolution. The FPS scaling pattern here is a classic GPU-limited signature.

The processor's 10 cores and 10 threads are more than adequate for a game released in 2018. The PassMark physics score of 2342 and data compression score of 302811 show that the CPU handles complex calculations without breaking a sweat. Compare this to its nearest rivals: the Ryzen 5 5600F and Ryzen 5 5500X3D are within 0.2% of its aggregate score, and the Core i9-12900T is only 0.5% behind. This means swapping the CPU to any of these alternatives would not meaningfully change the FPS in Red Dead Redemption 2, because the GPU is what is holding the system back. The CPU is effectively a non-issue in this configuration.

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

The Intel Arc B390 is a mobile-oriented integrated graphics solution from the Panther Lake generation, built on Xe3-LPG architecture at Intel's 3 nm node. It operates with a base clock of 300 MHz and a boost clock of 2500 MHz, with a TDP of 80 W. The memory subsystem is entirely system-shared, meaning there is no dedicated VRAM; the GPU borrows from system memory, and bandwidth is system-dependent. This is a critical detail for a game like Red Dead Redemption 2, which is known for consuming large amounts of video memory at high settings and resolutions.

The GPU has 1536 shading units, 48 texture mapping units, and 24 raster output units, along with 12 ray tracing cores. Its theoretical peak performance is 7.680 TFLOPS FP32 and 15.36 TFLOPS FP16, with a pixel rate of 60.00 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 120.0 GTexel/s. In 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, it scores 1482, placing it in the 9th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rivals are all ancient discrete parts: the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX scores 1463 (1.3% higher), the GeForce 800M scores 1460 (1.5% higher), the GeForce GT 625 OEM scores 1446 (2.5% higher), and the GeForce GT 710 scores 1443 (2.7% higher). This GPU is performing at the level of decade-old entry-level graphics cards, which explains why the measured FPS in Red Dead Redemption 2 are so low.

The benchmark results confirm this. At 1080p Low, the system manages 51 FPS, which is barely playable. At 1080p Medium, it drops to 39 FPS, and at 1080p High, it falls to 32 FPS. At 1080p Ultra, the average is just 23 FPS. The GPU's shared memory architecture is likely the culprit for the steep degradation at higher settings, as the system memory bandwidth cannot keep up with the texture and geometry demands of Red Dead Redemption 2. The 4K results are even more telling: 25 FPS at Low, 19 FPS at Medium, 16 FPS at High, and 11 FPS at Ultra. These numbers are far below the territory of playability, and the data indicates that the Arc B390 is not suitable for this game at any resolution above 1080p Low.

FAQ — 4-6 Q&A pairs answerable from FACT PACK data

Q: Can this system run Red Dead Redemption 2 at 1080p with playable framerates?

A: At 1080p Low, the measured average FPS is 51, which is above the typical 30 FPS playability threshold. However, at 1080p Medium, the average drops to 39 FPS, and at 1080p High, it falls to 32 FPS. The 1080p Ultra preset yields only 23 FPS on average. So, the system is only reliably playable at 1080p Low.

Q: How does the Intel Arc B390 compare to its nearest GPU rivals?

A: The Arc B390 scores 1482 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12. Its nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX, scores 1463, which is 1.3% higher. The GeForce 800M scores 1460 (1.5% higher), the GeForce GT 625 OEM scores 1446 (2.5% higher), and the GeForce GT 710 scores 1443 (2.7% higher). The Arc B390 is essentially at performance parity with these very old entry-level GPUs.

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

A: The FPS data suggests it is not. If the CPU were the bottleneck, the FPS would remain similar across different resolutions. Instead, the FPS scales down significantly as resolution increases: from 51 FPS at 1080p Low, to 38 FPS at 1440p Low, to 25 FPS at 4K Low. This pattern indicates the GPU is the limiting component.

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

A: According to the measured data, 1080p Low is the only combination that achieves an average FPS above 50, with 51 FPS. The 1440p Low preset gets 38 FPS, and the 4K Low preset gets 25 FPS, both of which are below ideal playability. For any reasonable experience, 1080p Low is the recommended target.

Q: How much FPS does the Ultra preset cost compared to Low at 1080p?

A: At 1080p, the Low preset averages 51 FPS, while the Ultra preset averages 23 FPS. This is a drop of 28 FPS, meaning the Ultra preset delivers less than half the framerate of the Low preset. The Medium preset at 39 FPS and High preset at 32 FPS fall in between.

Q: Where does this combo rank among all tested configurations for Red Dead Redemption 2?

A: The combo of the Intel Core Ultra 5 225 and Intel Arc B390 ranks 2568 out of 2902 total combinations tested for this game. This places it in the bottom 11% of all systems, which is consistent with the low GPU benchmark scores.

Measured FPS Breakdown — resolution by resolution, settings by settings, exact numbers

The measured FPS data covers three resolutions and four settings presets, providing a full grid of twelve data points. Starting at 3840x2160, the system achieves an average of 25 FPS on Low, 19 FPS on Medium, and 16 FPS on High. The Ultra preset is the worst, with only 11 FPS average. The Medium preset at 4K has reported minimum and maximum FPS of 16 and 22, respectively, showing the framerate is not stable even within a single run.

Moving to 2560x1440, the results improve but remain low. The Low preset averages 38 FPS, Medium averages 29 FPS, and High averages 24 FPS. The Ultra preset at 1440p averages 17 FPS. The Medium preset at this resolution has a minimum of 24 FPS and a maximum of 33 FPS. At 1920x1080, the Low preset finally crosses into playable territory with an average of 51 FPS. The Medium preset averages 39 FPS, with a minimum of 33 FPS and a maximum of 44 FPS. The High preset averages 32 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 23 FPS.

The pattern across all resolutions is consistent: each step up in settings costs a significant chunk of performance. At 1080p, going from Low to Medium costs 12 FPS, from Medium to High costs 7 FPS, and from High to Ultra costs 9 FPS. At 1440p, the drops are 9 FPS, 5 FPS, and 7 FPS respectively. At 4K, the drops are 6 FPS, 3 FPS, and 5 FPS. The absolute numbers are all low, but the relative cost of Ultra settings is steep, particularly at 1080p where it nearly halves the framerate compared to Low.

Resolution Scaling — how FPS drops from 1080p to 4K and what it says about the limiting component

The FPS scaling across resolutions is a textbook example of a GPU-bound system. At Low settings, the system delivers 51 FPS at 1080p, 38 FPS at 1440p, and 25 FPS at 4K. This represents a 25% drop from 1080p to 1440p, and a further 34% drop from 1440p to 4K. The total drop from 1080p to 4K is 26 FPS, or just over half the original framerate. This steep decline is expected when the GPU is the limiting factor, because the pixel count increases dramatically with resolution.

At Medium settings, the scaling is similar: 39 FPS at 1080p, 29 FPS at 1440p, and 19 FPS at 4K. High settings show 32 FPS at 1080p, 24 FPS at 1440p, and 16 FPS at 4K. Ultra settings show 23 FPS at 1080p, 17 FPS at 1440p, and 11 FPS at 4K. In every case, the FPS drops by roughly 25-30% when moving from 1080p to 1440p, and by another 25-35% when moving from 1440p to 4K. This consistent proportional decline is the signature of a GPU that is saturated at 1080p Low and completely overwhelmed at higher resolutions.

If the CPU were the bottleneck, you would expect the FPS to plateau or even increase at higher resolutions, because the GPU would have more time to complete each frame while the CPU feeds it at a constant rate. The data shows the opposite: FPS falls continuously as resolution rises. The Arc B390's shared memory architecture exacerbates this, as the system-dependent bandwidth becomes a larger issue at higher resolutions where more data needs to be moved. The conclusion is unambiguous: the Intel Arc B390 is the sole limiting factor in this configuration.

Settings Recommendations — which preset gives the best experience per the measured rows

Given the measured data, the only setting that yields an average FPS above 50 is 1080p Low, at 51 FPS. The 1440p Low preset at 38 FPS and the 1080p Medium preset at 39 FPS are both below the 40 FPS mark, which is generally considered the minimum for a smooth experience in an action-adventure game like Red Dead Redemption 2. The 1080p High preset at 32 FPS and 1080p Ultra at 23 FPS are both too low for comfortable play.

For players who prioritize framerate stability, the 1080p Low preset is the clear choice. It is the only tested configuration that stays above 50 FPS, and it leaves the most headroom for the game's open-world environments, which can cause framerate dips in busy areas. The 1080p Medium preset at 39 FPS is a secondary option if the visual degradation of Low is unacceptable, but the 12 FPS loss is significant.

For those who insist on playing at 1440p, the Low preset at 38 FPS is the best available option, but it is borderline playable. The Medium preset at 1440p drops to 29 FPS, which is below the 30 FPS threshold. At 4K, all presets are effectively unplayable, with the highest average being 25 FPS at Low. The Ultra presets at any resolution should be avoided entirely, as they all produce average FPS below 25, with the 4K Ultra result of 11 FPS being a slideshow. In summary, the data recommends 1080p Low as the only sensible settings for this hardware combination.