Hitman 2

The AMD Ryzen 7 5700X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 pairing delivers a versatile experience in Hitman 2, but the optimal settings depend entirely on your target resolution and refresh rate. At 1080p, the High preset is the sweet spot, delivering a robust 130.6 FPS average. This is more than sufficient for high-refresh-rate monitors while maintaining substantial visual fidelity over the Medium preset’s 167.6 FPS, which is a massive jump that sacrifices notable detail. The Ultra preset at 1080p, with a 97.7 FPS average, remains playable but begins to dip below the 100 FPS threshold that many gamers prefer. For 1440p, High is the clear recommendation, hitting 86.2 FPS, which is ideal for 144Hz monitors. Dropping to Medium at 1440p yields 111.3 FPS, but the visual compromise is not worth the extra headroom unless you are chasing the highest refresh rates. At 4K, the calculus changes drastically; Medium at 60.7 FPS is the only viable preset for a smooth experience, as High drops to 42.2 FPS and Ultra becomes unplayable at 29.9 FPS. The Low preset is consistently the top performer for raw frame rates, hitting 226.4 FPS at 1080p, but it should be reserved for competitive play where visual fidelity is secondary.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 is the dominant component in this pairing for Hitman 2, as evidenced by the scaling of frame rates across resolutions. The GPU’s 10 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 320-bit bus, delivering 760.3 GB/s of bandwidth, provides ample headroom for the game’s textures at 1440p and even 4K, though the capacity becomes a limiting factor at the highest settings. The architecture, built on Samsung’s 8 nm process with 28,300 million transistors, pushes a boost clock of 1710 MHz. This combination of high bandwidth and clock speed allows the card to maintain strong performance, but the data shows a clear ceiling. The 42.2 FPS at 4K High versus 86.2 FPS at 1440p High demonstrates that the GPU’s raw compute—29.77 TFLOPS of FP32 performance—is being saturated as pixel count increases. The card’s 80th percentile ranking among all GPUs places it in the upper echelon, but it is not a top-tier performer for 4K Ultra in this specific title. The 0.9% deficit to the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE in average benchmark scores suggests that while the RTX 3080 is powerful, it is not the absolute fastest in its class for this workload. The 1% lead over the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Mobile indicates a close race, but the desktop variant’s power delivery and thermal headroom give it a slight edge in sustained sessions. For 4K Ultra, the 29.9 FPS result is a clear signal that the RTX 3080’s 10 GB frame buffer and processing power are insufficient for maxed-out settings at that resolution, making it a 1440p-centric card for this game.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 5700X provides a solid foundation for the RTX 3080 in Hitman 2, though its role is secondary to the GPU. The 8-core, 16-thread Zen 3 design, running at a base clock of 3.40 GHz and boosting to 4.60 GHz, ensures that the GPU is not starved for data. The 32 MB of shared L3 cache is particularly beneficial for gaming, as it reduces memory latency and improves frame pacing. The CPU’s multi-threaded strength is evident in its Cinebench R23 multicore score of 22620, which places it in the 83rd percentile of all CPUs, indicating it is more than capable of handling the game’s AI and physics simulation. However, the single-core performance, with a Cinebench R23 score of 3193, is the more critical metric for Hitman 2, and it delivers. The data shows that at 1080p Low, where the GPU is less stressed, the CPU can push frame rates to 226.4 FPS, proving it is not a bottleneck. This is further supported by the fact that the 5700X’s average benchmark score of 26214 is nearly identical to its nearest rivals, with a 0.1% delta from the Intel Core i9-11900KF and a -0.2% delta from the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X. This indicates that the CPU is performing exactly as expected for its class. The 65 W TDP is remarkably efficient for the performance on offer, allowing for sustained boost clocks without thermal throttling, which is crucial for maintaining consistent frame times. In this pairing, the CPU’s job is to feed the RTX 3080, and the data confirms it does so effectively up to 1440p, where the GPU becomes the primary limiter.

How This Combo Ranks

In the broader database of tested combinations, this pairing of the AMD Ryzen 7 5700X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 ranks 554th out of 1795 combos for Hitman 2. This places it in the 69th percentile, meaning it outperforms roughly two-thirds of all tested systems in this specific game. While not a top-tier champion, this is a strong showing for a mid-range-to-high-end pairing. The rank is likely held back by the GPU’s performance at 4K Ultra, where the 29.9 FPS average drags down the overall composite score. The combo’s strength is clearly in the 1440p High and 1080p High presets, where it achieves 86.2 and 130.6 FPS respectively. These results indicate that the system is well-balanced for high-refresh-rate gaming at standard resolutions, but it is not optimized for 4K enthusiasts. The rank of 554 suggests that there are many systems with newer, more powerful GPUs that can handle 4K Ultra, but for the vast majority of users targeting 1080p or 1440p, this combo is a formidable contender. The CPU’s 83rd percentile ranking and the GPU’s 80th percentile ranking combine to form a system that is greater than the sum of its parts in this game, as the CPU’s strong single-thread performance compensates for the GPU’s limitations at higher resolutions. The data indicates that this is a well-matched duo, with neither component being a significant weak link in the 1440p and below scenarios.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic GPU-bound scenario, with a steep decline in performance as resolution increases. At High settings, the average FPS drops from 130.6 at 1080p to 86.2 at 1440p—a 34% reduction—and then to 42.2 at 4K, a 68% reduction from the 1080p baseline. This pattern is even more pronounced at Ultra settings, where the frame rate falls from 97.7 at 1080p to 63.4 at 1440p and then to 29.9 at 4K, a 69% drop from 1080p. This scaling curve is characteristic of a system where the GPU is the primary bottleneck, as the CPU’s performance remains constant across resolutions. The 1080p to 1440p drop is less severe, indicating that the CPU is still able to feed the GPU effectively, but the 1440p to 4K transition is brutal, highlighting the RTX 3080’s limits with 4K rendering. The Medium preset shows a similar trend, with 167.6 FPS at 1080p, 111.3 FPS at 1440p, and 60.7 FPS at 4K. The Low preset, however, tells a different story: 226.4 FPS at 1080p, 144.6 FPS at 1440p, and 79.2 FPS at 4K. The 4K Low result is surprisingly high, suggesting that when the GPU’s workload is reduced, it can still deliver playable frame rates even at 4K, though the visual quality is heavily compromised. The data conclusively shows that the limiting component is the GPU, as the CPU’s performance headroom is sufficient at all resolutions, evidenced by the fact that the 1080p Low frame rate of 226.4 FPS is likely near the CPU’s maximum output. For users with a 4K display, the choice is between Medium at 60.7 FPS or Low at 79.2 FPS, both of which represent significant visual sacrifices. This system is best utilized at 1440p, where the High preset delivers a smooth 86.2 FPS, striking the optimal balance between visual fidelity and performance.