Hitman 2

The AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER combination delivers a playable experience in Hitman 2, but the data clearly indicates that the graphics card is the limiting factor at higher resolutions. The measured results show a wide performance spread across the four presets, with the optimal choice depending heavily on your target resolution and refresh rate.

Settings Recommendations

At 1080p, the High preset offers the best balance of visual fidelity and performance. The data shows an average of 79.8 FPS, which is well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. While the Low preset reaches 145.2 FPS and Medium hits 108.6 FPS, the jump from Medium to High costs only 28.8 FPS while providing a significant visual upgrade. The Ultra preset drops to 60.8 FPS, which is exactly at the 60 FPS baseline but leaves little headroom for demanding scenes.

For 1440p, the Medium preset is the recommended starting point. It delivers 67.9 FPS on average, which is comfortably playable. The High preset falls to 51.4 FPS, which may be acceptable for slower-paced stealth gameplay but risks dipping below 50 FPS during crowded encounters. The Low preset at 91.4 FPS is unnecessarily fast for a stealth title, and the visual downgrade is not worth the extra frames. Ultra at 41.9 FPS is too demanding for this GPU at this resolution.

At 4K, the situation becomes more constrained. The Low preset is the only option that maintains playability, with an average of 52.1 FPS. Medium drops to 39.4 FPS, and High falls to 25.3 FPS, making both unsuitable for consistent gameplay. The Ultra preset at 22.3 FPS is effectively a slideshow. Given the stealth genre's reliance on observing enemy patterns, the Low preset at 4K is the pragmatic choice, though 1440p Medium provides a better overall experience.

GPU Role

The RTX 2060 SUPER's 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This memory configuration is adequate for Hitman 2 at 1080p and 1440p, where the card's 7.181 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 64 ROPs handle the game's rendering demands. The boost clock of 1650 MHz and base clock of 1470 MHz are modest by modern standards, and the benchmark results reflect this: the card sits at the 63rd percentile among all GPUs.

The performance degradation from 1080p to 4K reveals the GPU's architectural limits. At 1080p High, the card produces 79.8 FPS, but at 4K High this collapses to 25.3 FPS—a 68% reduction. This steep drop indicates that the GPU's shading units and texture units are overwhelmed by the pixel count at 4K. The card's 136 TMUs and 224.4 GTexel/s texture rate are simply insufficient for 4K High settings. The RTX 2060 SUPER is an end-of-life product, and its Turing architecture, built on a 12 nm process, lacks the raw throughput needed for 4K gaming in this title.

FAQ

*Q: Is the RTX 2060 SUPER capable of 60 FPS at 1080p in Hitman 2?*

A: Yes, at 1080p the card achieves 79.8 FPS on High and 108.6 FPS on Medium, both above the 60 FPS threshold. Even the Ultra preset reaches 60.8 FPS, indicating the GPU can handle 1080p at all settings.

*Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in Hitman 2?*

A: The data suggests 1440p Medium is the sweet spot, delivering 67.9 FPS with a good balance of quality and performance. 1080p High provides higher frame rates at 79.8 FPS, while 4K is only playable on Low settings.

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

A: At High settings, the frame rate drops from 79.8 FPS at 1080p to 51.4 FPS at 1440p, a loss of 28.4 FPS. At Low settings, the drop is from 145.2 FPS to 91.4 FPS, a loss of 53.8 FPS.

Q: Can the CPU keep up with the GPU in this game?

A: The Ryzen 5 9600X has 6 cores and 12 threads, with a boost clock of 5.40 GHz. Its 85th percentile ranking among all CPUs suggests it has ample headroom. The data shows that at 1080p Low, the combo reaches 145.2 FPS, indicating the CPU is not a bottleneck at lower GPU loads.

Q: Does the Ultra preset offer a worthwhile improvement over High?

A: At 1080p, Ultra delivers 60.8 FPS compared to High's 79.8 FPS, a 19 FPS penalty. At 1440p, Ultra drops to 41.9 FPS versus High's 51.4 FPS, and at 4K Ultra falls to 22.3 FPS. The visual gains are marginal for the significant performance cost.

Q: How does this GPU compare to its closest rival in terms of overall benchmark scores?

A: The RTX 2060 SUPER has an average benchmark score of 19774, which is 0.5% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070's score of 19680. It also edges out the GTX TITAN by 0.3%, with scores of 19774 versus 19706.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific configuration of the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER ranks 1293 out of 1795 tested combos in Hitman 2, placing it in the 72nd percentile. This ranking reflects the GPU's age and performance class; the RTX 2060 SUPER is a mid-range card from the Turing generation, and its 63rd percentile ranking among all GPUs pulls the combo down despite the strong CPU.

The CPU itself scores 28246 on average across all benchmarks, placing it in the 85th percentile among all processors. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core i5-13490F, scores 28173, a delta of just 0.3%—essentially a statistical tie. The AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS scores 28369, which is 0.4% higher, again a negligible difference. This indicates the 9600X is a strong performer, but its capabilities are underutilized in this pairing because the GPU becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions.

The combo's rank suggests that for Hitman 2, this pairing is better suited to 1080p gaming, where the CPU's single-thread performance (3dmark single-thread score of 1253 and passmark single-thread score of 4570) can help push frame rates higher. At 1440p and above, the GPU's limitations cap performance, making the CPU's advantages moot.

Resolution Scaling

The measured data shows a clear pattern of performance degradation as resolution increases. At 1080p High, the combo achieves 79.8 FPS. Moving to 1440p High reduces this to 51.4 FPS, a 35.6% drop. Moving further to 4K High results in 25.3 FPS, a 68.3% drop from 1080p. This scaling pattern is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario, where the pixel count directly impacts rendering load.

The Low preset shows a similar trend: 145.2 FPS at 1080p, 91.4 FPS at 1440p (a 37% drop), and 52.1 FPS at 4K (a 64% drop). The consistent percentage reductions across presets confirm that the GPU is the primary bottleneck. If the CPU were limiting, the frame rates would compress more at higher resolutions as the GPU becomes less stressed, but this is not observed.

The data also reveals that the RTX 2060 SUPER's memory bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s is sufficient at 1080p but strained at 4K. The 8 GB VRAM capacity is not exceeded at these settings, but the sheer pixel throughput required at 3840x2160 overwhelms the card's compute resources. The 4K Medium result of 39.4 FPS and the 4K Ultra result of 22.3 FPS illustrate this clearly—the gap between Medium and Ultra at 4K is 17.1 FPS, whereas at 1080p the gap between Medium and Ultra is 47.8 FPS, showing that the GPU's limits compress the performance range at higher resolutions. The limiting component is unambiguously the GPU, and users seeking higher resolution performance would need a more powerful graphics card to leverage the 9600X's capabilities.