Hitman 2

The AMD Ryzen 5 8400F and Intel Arc B570 pairing delivers a playable Hitman 2 experience, but the data clearly shows that the graphics card is the primary constraint at higher resolutions and settings. This analysis breaks down the measured frame rates to identify the optimal configuration and the role each component plays.

Settings Recommendations

For the best balance of visual fidelity and smooth gameplay, the Medium preset at 1920x1080 is the clear recommendation. The measured data shows an average of 93 FPS at this setting, with a minimum of 79 FPS and a maximum of 106 FPS. This provides a comfortable margin above the 60 FPS threshold for most displays, and the minimum frame rate indicates that the experience will remain fluid during demanding scenes.

While the Low preset at 1080p achieves a higher average of 123 FPS, the visual downgrade is substantial. The jump from Low to Medium only costs 30 FPS on average (123 to 93), but the Medium preset typically offers significantly better textures, shadows, and ambient occlusion. The measured FPS range at Medium (79-106) is also tighter than the single average figure suggests, indicating consistent performance.

The High preset at 1080p is viable for players with 60Hz monitors, as the average of 70 FPS remains above this threshold. However, the lack of a reported minimum frame rate makes it riskier than Medium, where the 79 FPS floor is documented. The Ultra preset at 1080p drops to 52 FPS on average, which falls below the ideal 60 FPS target and introduces noticeable stutter on standard refresh displays.

At 2560x1440, the Medium preset becomes the most balanced option. The average of 59 FPS is borderline for 60Hz displays, but the reported minimum of 50 FPS and maximum of 68 FPS show that the frame rate fluctuates significantly. This makes it a viable choice for gamers with adaptive sync monitors who can tolerate occasional dips below 60 FPS. The High preset at this resolution averages 45 FPS, which is playable but not ideal for fast-paced stealth gameplay.

The data strongly advises against 4K gaming with this combination. Even at the Low preset, the average of 42 FPS falls below the 60 FPS target, and the Medium preset at 4K averages only 32 FPS. The Ultra preset at 4K is effectively unplayable at 18 FPS on average. For 4K displays, the recommended approach is to run the game at 1080p or 1440p and rely on display scaling, as the GPU does not have the headroom for native 4K rendering at acceptable settings.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B570 is the decisive component in this pairing for Hitman 2. The GPU's specifications reveal why it struggles at higher resolutions. It features 10 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 160-bit bus, providing 380.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The base and boost clocks are both 2500 MHz, which is a modest clock speed for a modern discrete GPU. The card has 2304 shading units, 144 texture mapping units, and 80 raster output units, with a pixel rate of 200.0 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 360.0 GTexel/s.

The benchmark results show the Arc B570 sits at the 65th percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 20556. Its nearest rivals in the database are the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile (scoring 20534, a 0.1% difference) and the Intel Arc A750 (scoring 20582, a -0.1% difference). This places the B570 in a competitive mid-range tier, but Hitman 2's engine appears to be particularly demanding on the memory subsystem and fill rate.

The FPS data supports this interpretation. At 1080p, the GPU delivers 123 FPS on Low and 93 FPS on Medium, showing that the card has adequate raw compute for lower workloads. However, the drop to 70 FPS on High and 52 FPS on Ultra indicates that the higher presets introduce effects that heavily tax the ROPs and pixel rate. The 10 GB VRAM is sufficient for 1080p and 1440p, but the 160-bit bus width likely becomes a bottleneck at 4K, where the memory bandwidth of 380.0 GB/s is insufficient to feed the GPU cores at high settings.

The GPU's 150 W TDP and 1x 8-pin power connector suggest a power-efficient design, but this does not compensate for the raw performance ceiling. The measured FPS at 4K Ultra (18 FPS) and 4K High (24 FPS) confirm that the B570 is not a 4K-capable card for this title, regardless of the CPU's capabilities.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for a consistent 60+ FPS experience?

A: The 1920x1080 resolution at Medium settings is the only configuration that guarantees a smooth experience, with an average of 93 FPS and a minimum of 79 FPS. At 1440p, the Medium preset averages just under 60 FPS at 59 FPS, making 1080p the safer choice for fixed 60Hz displays.

Q: How much performance is lost when moving from 1080p to 1440p?

A: At Medium settings, the average FPS drops from 93 at 1080p to 59 at 1440p, a reduction of 34 FPS (approximately 37%). At High settings, the drop is from 70 FPS to 45 FPS, a reduction of 25 FPS (approximately 36%). This consistent percentage drop indicates a GPU-bound scenario.

Q: Is the Ultra preset playable at any resolution?

A: No. The Ultra preset only achieves a playable frame rate at 1080p, where it averages 52 FPS. At 1440p it drops to 33 FPS, and at 4K it is unplayable at 18 FPS. The data suggests Ultra is only suitable for screenshot use or cinematic observation, not active gameplay.

Q: How does the Arc B570 compare to its closest rival in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The Arc B570's average benchmark score is 20556, which is only 0.1% below the Intel Arc A750's score of 20582. It is also 0.1% above the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile's score of 20534. This indicates near-identical synthetic performance among these three GPUs.

Q: Does the CPU bottleneck the GPU in this game?

A: The data suggests the CPU is not the limiting factor at higher resolutions. At 4K, the FPS drops dramatically across all settings (from 42 at Low to 18 at Ultra), which is characteristic of a GPU bottleneck. The CPU's high single-thread performance (2943 in Cinebench R23 single-core) is more than sufficient for Hitman 2's AI and physics workloads.

Q: What is the minimum FPS at 1440p Medium, and is it stable?

A: The minimum FPS at 1440p Medium is 50 FPS, with a maximum of 68 FPS. This wide range of 18 FPS indicates that the frame rate fluctuates noticeably, which may cause perceptible stutter on non-adaptive sync monitors. The 1080p Medium configuration has a narrower range of 27 FPS (79 to 106), suggesting more consistent performance.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured frame rate data for Hitman 2 with the Ryzen 5 8400F and Arc B570 is as follows:

1920x1080:

• Low: 123 FPS average
• Medium: 93 FPS average (79 min, 106 max)
• High: 70 FPS average
• Ultra: 52 FPS average

2560x1440:

• Low: 79 FPS average
• Medium: 59 FPS average (50 min, 68 max)
• High: 45 FPS average
• Ultra: 33 FPS average

3840x2160:

• Low: 42 FPS average
• Medium: 32 FPS average (27 min, 36 max)
• High: 24 FPS average
• Ultra: 18 FPS average

The data reveals a consistent pattern across all resolutions: each step up in settings from Low to Ultra costs roughly 25-30% of the previous frame rate. The only exception is the transition from High to Ultra at 1080p, where the drop is from 70 to 52 FPS (a 26% reduction), which aligns with the overall trend.

The minimum and maximum FPS values are only available for the Medium preset at each resolution. These values show that the frame pacing is relatively stable at 1080p (79-106 FPS range of 27 FPS), but becomes more erratic at 1440p (50-68 FPS range of 18 FPS) and 4K (27-36 FPS range of 9 FPS). The tighter range at 4K suggests the GPU is fully saturated and the frame rate is capped by the hardware limit, rather than fluctuating based on scene complexity.

Resolution Scaling

The resolution scaling behavior is critical to understanding this hardware combination. Moving from 1080p to 1440p at Medium settings reduces the average FPS from 93 to 59, a drop of 36.6%. Moving from 1440p to 4K at Medium settings further reduces the average from 59 to 32, a drop of 45.8%. This non-linear scaling is a classic indicator of a GPU bottleneck, where the memory bandwidth and pixel throughput become increasingly strained as the pixel count rises.

At Low settings, the scaling is more linear: 123 FPS at 1080p, 79 FPS at 1440p (a 35.8% drop), and 42 FPS at 4K (a 46.8% drop from 1440p). This suggests that even at the lowest quality preset, the GPU is still the limiting factor, and the CPU has ample headroom to feed the graphics card.

The Ultra preset shows the most severe scaling: 52 FPS at 1080p, 33 FPS at 1440p (a 36.5% drop), and 18 FPS at 4K (a 45.5% drop). The consistency of these percentage drops across all settings strongly indicates that the Arc B570's performance ceiling is determined by its fixed hardware resources (ROPs, texture units, memory bandwidth) rather than any dynamic workload characteristics.

The 4K results are particularly telling. The difference between Low (42 FPS) and Medium (32 FPS) at 4K is only 10 FPS, while the difference between Medium and High (24 FPS) is 8 FPS. This compression of frame rates at 4K suggests that the GPU is hitting a hard memory bandwidth limit, where additional graphics features have diminishing returns because the card cannot move data fast enough to render them.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 8400F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 4 architecture (codenamed Phoenix), manufactured on TSMC's 4 nm process. Its base clock is 4.20 GHz with a boost clock of 4.70 GHz, and it features 16 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU's benchmark results show strong single-thread performance: a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2943 and a 3DMark single-thread score of 951.

In multi-threaded workloads, the CPU scores 20851 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 6165 in 3DMark max threads. This places the 8400F at the 77th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 25005. Its nearest rivals are the AMD Ryzen 5 7500F (scoring 24964, a 0.2% difference) and the Intel Core i7-13620H (scoring 24911, a 0.4% difference). The 8400F is slightly ahead of both in synthetic benchmarks.

For Hitman 2, the CPU's role is to handle game logic, AI pathfinding, and physics calculations. The game is not known for being heavily multi-threaded, so the 8400F's strong single-thread performance (2943 in Cinebench R23 single-core) is more relevant than its multi-core capabilities. The CPU's 12 threads provide adequate headroom for background tasks and the game's auxiliary workloads, but the data shows that the CPU is never the bottleneck in this pairing.

Evidence for this comes from the FPS scaling. If the CPU were the limiting factor, we would expect to see similar frame rates across different resolutions, as the CPU workload does not change with resolution. Instead, the FPS drops by roughly 36% from 1080p to 1440p and another 46% from 1440p to 4K at every settings preset. This consistent scaling is the signature of a GPU-bound scenario.

The CPU's memory support for DDR5 with dual-channel configuration (83.2 GB/s bandwidth) is sufficient for the game's data streaming requirements. The 16 MB L3 cache is also adequate, though Hitman 2's engine does not appear to be cache-sensitive based on the observed performance patterns. The CPU's 65 W TDP indicates efficient operation, and its PCIe Gen 4 support with 20 lanes provides the necessary bandwidth for the Arc B570's PCIe 4.0 x8 interface.

In summary, the Ryzen 5 8400F is a capable partner for the Arc B570 in Hitman 2, providing ample processing power that never becomes a limiting factor. The GPU is the sole performance constraint, and the data clearly shows that users should target 1080p Medium for the best experience, with 1440p Medium being a viable alternative for those with adaptive sync displays.