Hitman 2

# How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 lands at rank 604 out of 3001 tested combos in Hitman 2. That places this configuration in the top 20% of all combinations tested, a strong showing for a stealth title that rewards both CPU-driven simulation and GPU rendering headroom. The rank reflects a balanced pairing: the CPU sits at the 94th percentile among all processors, while the GPU ranks at the 82nd percentile among all graphics cards. Neither component is a bottleneck in the traditional sense, but the data suggests the GPU is the more likely constraint at higher resolutions.

The combo's position becomes more meaningful when viewed against the field. With 3001 combos in the database, being 604th means this system outperforms roughly 2,397 other pairings. That is not a top-tier enthusiast result, but it is comfortably within high-performance territory. The measured FPS numbers confirm this: at 1080p Ultra, the combo delivers 105 FPS average, which is well above playable thresholds for a stealth game where smooth camera pans and crowd AI matter more than twitch reflexes.

What is curious is how the rank shifts when considering the CPU's benchmark standing. The Ryzen 7 9700F's average benchmark score of 69,996 puts it within 0.7% of the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X and 0.2% of the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX. Yet this combo still lands at 604th overall. That suggests the GPU, despite its 82nd percentile ranking, is doing the heavy lifting in determining the final position. The RTX 5070's PassMark G3D score of 29,137 is its strongest synthetic result, but its nearest rivals—AMD Radeon Pro 580, Pro WX 7100, Pro 5300, and RTX A500 Mobile—are all workstation-class cards with different driver optimizations. This makes the RTX 5070's position in gaming benchmarks somewhat unusual; it is outperforming these rivals by 0.1% to 2% in synthetic tests, yet the real-world Hitman 2 results show a wide spread across settings.

FAQ

Q: Is the AMD Ryzen 7 9700F a bottleneck for the RTX 5070 in Hitman 2?

A: The data does not indicate a CPU bottleneck. The CPU's multithread benchmark score of 36,470 and single-thread score of 4,691 are strong, and the combo achieves 253 FPS at 1080p Low. If the CPU were limiting, we would expect to see diminishing returns when lowering resolution, but the FPS scales significantly from 1080p to 1440p to 4K, which points to the GPU as the primary limiter at higher settings.

Q: What is the best settings preset for this combo at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the High preset delivers 92 FPS average, while Medium delivers 121 FPS and Ultra drops to 67 FPS. The Medium preset offers the best balance, with a minimum FPS of 103 and maximum of 139, ensuring smooth gameplay without sacrificing too much visual fidelity. High is also viable at 92 FPS, but Medium provides a larger safety margin.

Q: How does this combo perform at 4K compared to 1080p?

A: At 4K, the combo drops from 143 FPS (1080p High) to 49 FPS (4K High), a 66% reduction. At Low settings, the drop is from 253 FPS to 86 FPS, a similar 66% reduction. This consistent scaling across settings suggests the GPU is the limiting factor at 4K, as the CPU has ample headroom to drive lower resolutions.

Q: Is the RTX 5070's 12GB VRAM sufficient for Hitman 2 at maximum settings?

A: The measured data shows that at 4K Ultra, the combo averages 36 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold many players target. The VRAM size is not directly measured in the FPS data, but the performance drop from Medium (65 FPS) to Ultra (36 FPS) at 4K indicates that the Ultra preset is taxing the GPU heavily, likely due to both compute and memory demands.

Q: How does the Ryzen 7 9700F compare to its nearest CPU rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The Ryzen 7 9700F scores 69,996 on average, which is 0.2% higher than the Intel Core i7-14700KF (70,163) but 0.2% lower than the same Intel chip when comparing deltaPct values. It is 0.7% ahead of the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X and 0.9% ahead of the Intel Core i7-14700K. These are negligible differences, meaning the CPU choice among these four would not meaningfully change Hitman 2 performance.

Q: What does the combo rank of 604 out of 3001 mean for a typical player?

A: Being in the 80th percentile of all tested combos means this system is well above average for Hitman 2. The measured FPS at 1080p High (143 FPS) and 1440p High (92 FPS) indicates the combo is suitable for high-refresh-rate monitors at 1080p and solid 60+ FPS gameplay at 1440p with High settings.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data provides a clear hierarchy of settings for this combo. At 1920x1080, all presets are playable, but the sweet spot is Medium: 189 FPS average with a minimum of 161 FPS and maximum of 218 FPS. This delivers a fluid experience on any monitor, including 144Hz panels, while maintaining a comfortable margin above the minimum. High at 1080p drops to 143 FPS, still excellent, but Medium offers a 32% performance uplift with minimal visual compromise in a game like Hitman 2 where shadows and reflections are the main differentiators.

At 2560x1440, the recommendation shifts to Medium as well. The 121 FPS average with a 103 FPS minimum is ideal for 1440p gaming, especially on displays with adaptive sync. High at 92 FPS is acceptable for slower-paced stealth sections, but the 29 FPS gap between Medium and High suggests the GPU is working harder than necessary for the visual gain. Ultra at 67 FPS is playable but dips below the 70 FPS threshold that many players consider smooth, making it a secondary choice for those prioritizing image quality over frame rate consistency.

For 3840x2160, the data becomes more restrictive. Medium is the only preset that maintains a 60+ FPS average at 65 FPS, with a minimum of 55 FPS and maximum of 74 FPS. High drops to 49 FPS, which is borderline for a stealth game, and Ultra falls to 36 FPS, which is likely too choppy for comfortable play. Low at 86 FPS is viable but sacrifices too much visual detail for a game that relies on environmental storytelling. The recommendation is Medium at 4K if the player has a G-Sync or FreeSync display, otherwise High at 1440p is the better overall experience.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers a wide range of performance across settings. Low settings produce an average of 253 FPS, which is exceptionally high and indicates the CPU can feed the GPU far beyond any standard monitor refresh rate. Medium averages 189 FPS with a minimum of 161 and maximum of 218, showing consistent frame pacing. High averages 143 FPS, still well above 120 FPS. Ultra averages 105 FPS, which is the only 1080p preset that dips below the 120 FPS mark, but it remains smooth for most displays.

At 2560x1440, the pattern continues but with a steeper drop-off. Low averages 162 FPS, a 36% reduction from 1080p Low. Medium averages 121 FPS with a minimum of 103 and maximum of 139, which is a solid result for 1440p. High averages 92 FPS, which is playable but not ideal for high-refresh monitors. Ultra averages 67 FPS, which is the first preset to approach the 60 FPS threshold—it exceeds it, but barely.

At 3840x2160, the GPU is clearly stressed. Low averages 86 FPS, which is surprising given the resolution, but the RTX 5070's compute power handles the reduced workload. Medium averages 65 FPS with a minimum of 55 and maximum of 74, indicating some frame dips in crowded scenes. High averages 49 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS target. Ultra averages 36 FPS, which is the lowest measured result and suggests the game's Ultra preset at 4K is too demanding for this combo.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a consistent pattern across all settings. At Low, the drop is from 253 FPS to 162 FPS at 1440p (36% reduction) and then to 86 FPS at 4K (66% reduction from 1080p). At Medium, the numbers are 189 FPS, 121 FPS, and 65 FPS—a 36% drop to 1440p and a 66% drop to 4K. High follows the same trajectory: 143 FPS, 92 FPS, and 49 FPS. Ultra is the exception: 105 FPS, 67 FPS, and 36 FPS, with a 36% drop to 1440p and a 66% drop to 4K.

This consistent scaling is a strong indicator that the GPU is the limiting component. The CPU's performance does not change with resolution, so if the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect the FPS to remain relatively flat from 1080p to 1440p before dropping at 4K. Instead, the FPS decreases proportionally with the pixel count, which is a classic GPU-bound signature. At 1080p, the CPU has enough headroom to push the GPU to its limits; at 4K, the GPU's shading and memory bandwidth become the constraints.

The RTX 5070's memory bandwidth of 672.0 GB/s and 12GB of GDDR7 memory are likely factors in the 4K scaling. Hitman 2's large, detailed environments require significant texture bandwidth, and the 192-bit bus width may be a limiting factor at 4K Ultra where the game loads the highest-resolution assets. The fact that Medium at 4K (65 FPS) is closer to High at 1440p (92 FPS) than to Ultra at 1080p (105 FPS) suggests that the GPU's compute throughput scales well with resolution, but memory bandwidth becomes a constraint at higher settings.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F is an 8-core, 16-thread processor based on the Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge) on a 4nm TSMC process. Its base clock is 3.80 GHz with a boost clock of 5.50 GHz, and it carries a 65W TDP. The CPU's benchmark results show a strong single-thread score of 4,691 and a multithread score of 36,470, with a PassMark single-thread percentile that places it at the 94th percentile among all CPUs. These numbers indicate the CPU is well-suited for Hitman 2, which relies on both single-threaded AI logic and multi-threaded scene rendering.

In Hitman 2, the CPU's role is to handle game logic, NPC AI, and physics calculations, particularly in crowded areas like the Miami race track or the Mumbai streets. The 8 cores and 16 threads provide ample parallelism for these workloads, and the high boost clock of 5.50 GHz ensures responsive single-threaded performance. The measured FPS at 1080p Low (253 FPS) demonstrates that the CPU can feed the GPU far beyond typical display refresh rates, confirming it is not a bottleneck at lower resolutions.

The CPU's nearest rivals in benchmark scores—AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX (69,875), Intel Core i7-14700KF (70,163), AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (69,515), and Intel Core i7-14700K (69,355)—are all within 0.9% of the 9700F's average score. This suggests that swapping between these CPUs would have a negligible impact on Hitman 2's frame rates. The 32MB of shared L3 cache is likely sufficient for the game's data access patterns, and the DDR5 memory support with 89.6 GB/s bandwidth provides fast access to game assets.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 is a Blackwell 2.0 architecture GPU on a 5nm TSMC process, with 6,144 shading units, 192 TMUs, and 80 ROPs. Its base clock is 2325 MHz with a boost clock of 2512 MHz, and it features 12GB of GDDR7 memory on a 192-bit bus with 672.0 GB/s bandwidth. The GPU's PassMark G3D score of 29,137 places it at the 82nd percentile among all GPUs, and its 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 5,077 indicates solid DirectX 12 performance.

In Hitman 2, the GPU's role is to render the game's detailed environments, including complex lighting, shadows, and reflections. The RTX 5070's 48 RT cores and 192 tensor cores provide hardware acceleration for ray-traced effects, though the measured FPS data does not specify whether ray tracing is enabled. The GPU's FP32 performance of 30.87 TFLOPS and texture rate of 482.3 GTexel/s are sufficient for the game's visual demands, as evidenced by the 143 FPS at 1080p High.

The GPU's 12GB VRAM is a key consideration at higher resolutions and settings. At 4K Ultra, the combo averages 36 FPS, which is likely due to both compute and memory limitations. The 192-bit memory bus and 672.0 GB/s bandwidth are adequate for 1440p High (92 FPS) but become strained at 4K, where the game requires more texture data and higher resolution buffers. The GPU's nearest rivals—AMD Radeon Pro 580 (40,318), Pro WX 7100 (40,063), Pro 5300 (40,870), and RTX A500 Mobile (39,568)—are all workstation cards with different performance profiles, but the RTX 5070 outperforms them by 0.1% to 2% in synthetic benchmarks, indicating it is a strong gaming choice for this title.