Hitman 2

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600X paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 delivers a robust Hitman 2 experience, but the optimal settings depend heavily on your display resolution and target frame rate. The data reveals a clear hierarchy: at 1080p, the combination is powerful enough to push High settings well past 100 FPS, while at 4K, even Medium settings struggle to hold 60 FPS. For the best balance of visual fidelity and performance, High settings at 2560x1440 is the sweet spot, delivering a 70 FPS average. If you are gaming at 1920x1080, High settings also shine with a 110 FPS average, offering a significant visual upgrade over Medium without the steep performance cost of Ultra. At 3840x2160, the hardware is simply outmatched by the Ultra preset, which drops to a 28 FPS average, making Medium the highest playable option at that resolution, albeit with a 50 FPS average that is below the 60 FPS ideal. For esports-style fluidity, the Low preset at 1080p provides a massive 194 FPS average, but this sacrifices most of the game's visual detail.

FAQ

Q: What is the best settings preset for a 60 FPS experience at 1440p?

A: The High preset at 2560x1440 yields a 70 FPS average, which is the only preset at that resolution that comfortably exceeds the 60 FPS threshold while providing better visual quality than Medium. The Ultra preset drops to a 52 FPS average, making it less suitable for smooth gameplay.

Q: Can this system run Hitman 2 at 4K with playable frame rates?

A: Yes, but only on lower settings. The data shows a 66 FPS average on Low and a 50 FPS average on Medium at 3840x2160. High settings drop to a 38 FPS average, and Ultra falls to 28 FPS, which are not ideal for a fluid experience.

Q: How much faster is the Low preset compared to Ultra at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves a 194 FPS average, while the Ultra preset manages 81 FPS. This represents a 113 FPS difference, or roughly a 140% performance increase, which is crucial for high-refresh-rate monitors.

Q: What frame rates can I expect on the Medium preset across all resolutions?

A: The Medium preset provides a 146 FPS average at 1080p, a 93 FPS average at 1440p, and a 50 FPS average at 4K. The measured minimum and maximum FPS for this preset are 124/168 at 1080p, 79/107 at 1440p, and 42/57 at 4K.

Q: Is the Ryzen 5 5600X a bottleneck for the RTX 3070 in this game?

A: No, the data suggests the opposite. At lower resolutions and settings, the frame rates scale significantly, indicating the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU. The performance drop at higher resolutions and settings is more characteristic of a GPU limitation.

Q: How does the RTX 3070's performance here compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The RTX 3070's average benchmark score is 17208, placing it 0.7% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT and 1% ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690. It trails the NVIDIA Tesla K40c by 1.5%, a professional-grade card.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 is the primary driver of Hitman 2's visual performance, particularly at higher resolutions. Its 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus provides a 448.0 GB/s memory bandwidth, which is essential for handling the game's detailed textures and large environments. The GPU's boost clock of 1725 MHz, combined with its 5888 shading units, allows it to process the complex lighting and shadow calculations that Hitman 2 is known for.

The benchmark results clearly illustrate the GPU's workload scaling. At 1920x1080, the RTX 3070 is not the limiting factor, as even the Ultra preset achieves an 81 FPS average. However, as the resolution increases to 3840x2160, the demand on the GPU's rasterization and memory bandwidth grows exponentially. The average FPS on High settings plummets from 110 at 1080p to 70 at 1440p and finally to 38 at 4K, demonstrating that the card's compute resources are saturated at higher pixel counts.

The GPU's 20.31 TFLOPS of FP32 compute power is substantial, but Hitman 2's engine appears to be heavily reliant on raw fill rate and memory throughput at 4K. The step from Medium (50 FPS) to High (38 FPS) at 4K is a 24% drop, showing that each incremental increase in texture quality and geometric detail has a pronounced impact on the RTX 3070. The card's 96 ROPs and 165.6 GPixel/s pixel rate are likely the bottlenecks at this resolution, as the game's draw calls and post-processing effects demand significant pixel throughput. In contrast, at 1080p, the game is more CPU-bound, allowing the GPU to render frames much faster, as evidenced by the 194 FPS average on the Low preset.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a comprehensive look at how the Ryzen 5 5600X and RTX 3070 combination handles Hitman 2 across a matrix of resolutions and presets. At 1920x1080, the system is exceptionally capable. The Low preset delivers a staggering 194 FPS average, which drops to 146 FPS on Medium (with a range of 124 to 168 FPS) and 110 FPS on High. The Ultra preset still manages a respectable 81 FPS average, making it a viable option for 60 Hz displays, though not ideal for high-refresh-rate gaming.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance scales down predictably but remains strong. The Low preset maintains a high 124 FPS average, while Medium offers a smooth 93 FPS (ranging from 79 to 107 FPS). High settings provide a solid 70 FPS average, which is a good target for most gamers. The Ultra preset, however, begins to show strain, dropping to a 52 FPS average, which may be below the refresh rate of some 1440p monitors.

At 3840x2160, the hardware's limitations become clear. The Low preset is the only option that surpasses 60 FPS, with a 66 FPS average. Medium settings fall to a 50 FPS average, with a minimum of 42 FPS and a maximum of 57 FPS, indicating noticeable frame pacing issues. High settings are playable but not ideal at 38 FPS, and the Ultra preset is rendered nearly unplayable at a 28 FPS average. This breakdown confirms that the RTX 3070 has enough power for high refresh rate 1080p and 1440p gaming, but it is not a 4K powerhouse for this title.

Resolution Scaling

The performance degradation from 1080p to 4K is steep and reveals the nature of the system's bottleneck. From 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 on the High preset, the average FPS drops from 110 to 70, a 36% decrease. This is a substantial loss, but it is less than half of the pixel count increase (from 2.07 million to 3.69 million pixels), suggesting that the CPU and GPU are sharing the workload effectively at this stage.

However, the scaling from 1440p to 4K is more punishing. The High preset average FPS falls from 70 to 38, a 46% drop. The pixel count increases from 3.69 million to 8.29 million, a 124% increase. This disproportionate drop in performance indicates that the system is no longer scaling with pixel count, a classic sign that the GPU has become the limiting factor. The RTX 3070's 8 GB VRAM and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth are simply not sufficient to feed the massive pixel fill rate demanded by 4K in Hitman 2.

This pattern is consistent across all settings. The Low preset shows a 124 FPS average at 1440p dropping to 66 FPS at 4K, a 47% reduction. The Ultra preset, which is already GPU-intensive, drops from 52 FPS at 1440p to 28 FPS at 4K, a 46% reduction. The consistency of this ~46-47% drop across all settings at 4K strongly suggests that the GPU's raw throughput, not the game's settings, is the primary determinant of performance at this resolution. The Ryzen 5 5600X, with its strong single-thread performance, is not the bottleneck here, as the frame rate is tied directly to the GPU's workload.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600X plays a crucial, but secondary, role in Hitman 2's performance. With 6 cores and 12 threads based on the Zen 3 architecture, it provides a solid foundation for the game's simulation and AI logic. Its 3.70 GHz base clock and 4.60 GHz boost clock ensure that single-threaded tasks, which are often critical in game engines, are handled with minimal latency. The CPU's 32 MB of L3 cache is also beneficial for keeping frequently accessed game data close to the cores.

The benchmark data indicates that the 5600X is not the limiting factor in most scenarios. At 1080p with the Low preset, the system achieves a 194 FPS average, which is a very high frame rate that requires a capable CPU to feed the GPU. In fact, the CPU's performance in synthetic tests like Cinebench R23 (11838 multicore, 1541 single-core) and 3DMark 16-thread (5582) shows it has ample headroom for gaming workloads. Its average benchmark score of 21771 places it in the 75th percentile of all CPUs, and it is nearly identical in performance to the AMD Ryzen 7 4800H (0.1% faster) and Intel Core i7-11700 (0.5% slower).

However, the CPU's influence wanes as the resolution increases. The performance drops from 1080p to 4K are almost entirely attributable to the GPU. The 5600X's 12 threads are more than sufficient for Hitman 2's engine, which is not known for being heavily multi-threaded. The data shows that the frame rate scales with resolution and settings in a way that is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario. This means that while the CPU is a competent partner, the RTX 3070 is the component that determines the ultimate playability at higher resolutions and graphical presets. The CPU's high single-thread score (917 in 3DMark single-thread) ensures it can keep up with the GPU's frame generation, but it does not contribute to the visual fidelity that drives the performance differences between presets.