Hitman 2

The AMD Ryzen 9 5900X paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 produces a clear hierarchy in Hitman 2, with the measured FPS data showing that the High preset is the optimal balance of visual fidelity and performance across all tested resolutions. At 1920x1080, the High preset delivers 194 FPS average, while the Medium preset achieves 257 FPS and Low reaches 306 FPS. The Ultra preset at 1080p drops to 143 FPS, making it the least attractive option for high-refresh-rate displays. Moving to 2560x1440, High maintains 124 FPS, which is still well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, while Medium offers 164 FPS and Low reaches 219 FPS. At 3840x2160, High produces 66 FPS, which is playable but close to the 60 FPS minimum for many users; Medium provides 87 FPS and Low hits 117 FPS. The Ultra preset at 4K falls to 49 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS target.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data indicates that the High preset is the most balanced choice for this combination, as it consistently delivers playable frame rates at every resolution while preserving a substantial level of graphical quality. At 1080p, High achieves 194 FPS, which is 51 FPS lower than Medium but still far above the refresh rates of most standard monitors. The gap between High and Medium narrows at higher resolutions: at 1440p, High delivers 124 FPS versus 164 FPS for Medium, a difference of 40 FPS; at 4K, High produces 66 FPS versus 87 FPS for Medium, a difference of 21 FPS. The Ultra preset, however, shows a significant penalty at every resolution, with 143 FPS at 1080p, 91 FPS at 1440p, and 49 FPS at 4K. Given that Ultra at 4K drops below 60 FPS, the data suggests that users seeking maximum visual fidelity should only consider Ultra at 1080p or 1440p, where the frame rates remain above 90 FPS.

For users prioritizing high refresh rates, the Low preset offers the highest FPS at all resolutions, with 306 FPS at 1080p, 219 FPS at 1440p, and 117 FPS at 4K. The Medium preset provides a middle ground, with 257 FPS at 1080p, 164 FPS at 1440p, and 87 FPS at 4K. The performance scaling from Low to Ultra is roughly linear in percentage terms across resolutions, but the absolute FPS differences are more pronounced at lower resolutions. The data shows that the High preset at 4K produces a 66 FPS average, which is exactly at the threshold for smooth gameplay on standard 60 Hz displays, making it the recommended choice for 4K users who want to avoid the visual degradation of Low settings. At 1080p and 1440p, the High preset is recommended for users with 144 Hz or 165 Hz monitors, as the frame rates exceed those refresh rates.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 features 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s. The GPU has a base clock of 2017 MHz and a boost clock of 2407 MHz, with memory clocked at 1750 MHz (28 Gbps effective). The card contains 21760 shading units, 680 texture mapping units, and 176 ROPs, along with 170 ray tracing cores and 680 tensor cores. The measured FPS data in Hitman 2 shows that the GPU's memory capacity is not a limiting factor at any resolution or settings level, as the game's requirements are well within the 32 GB capacity. The GPU's pixel rate is 423.6 GPixel/s and texture rate is 1,636.8 GTexel/s, which are sufficient to handle the game's rendering demands.

The benchmark results show that the RTX 5090's performance in Hitman 2 is more heavily influenced by the settings preset than by the resolution scaling, indicating that the GPU is the primary bottleneck at higher settings. At 4K Ultra, the frame rate drops to 49 FPS, which suggests that the GPU's computational resources are fully utilized. At 4K Low, the frame rate jumps to 117 FPS, a 139% improvement over Ultra, which demonstrates the GPU's headroom when the workload is reduced. The GPU's 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 18355 and PassMark G3D score of 39650 place it in the 92nd percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 79842. The nearest rival, NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB, has an average score of 79605, representing a 0.3% difference, while the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X scores 80959, which is 1.4% higher.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a clear pattern of performance degradation as resolution increases, with the RTX 5090 showing substantial headroom at 1080p but becoming more constrained at 4K. At High settings, the frame rate drops from 194 FPS at 1080p to 124 FPS at 1440p (a 36% reduction) and then to 66 FPS at 4K (a 47% reduction from 1440p). This scaling indicates that the GPU is the primary limiting component at higher resolutions, as the CPU's 12 cores and 24 threads provide sufficient processing power. At Low settings, the frame rates are 306 FPS at 1080p, 219 FPS at 1440p, and 117 FPS at 4K, showing a similar proportional drop. The Medium settings row includes minimum and maximum FPS values: at 4K Medium, the range is 74 to 101 FPS with an average of 87; at 1440p Medium, the range is 140 to 189 FPS with an average of 164; at 1080p Medium, the range is 218 to 295 FPS with an average of 257.

The resolution scaling data shows that the frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is roughly 66% at High settings (from 194 to 66 FPS) and 62% at Low settings (from 306 to 117 FPS). This consistent percentage drop across settings suggests that the GPU's rendering pipeline is scaling linearly with pixel count, which is typical for a game that is not heavily CPU-bound. The fact that the 4K High frame rate of 66 FPS is only 34% of the 1080p High frame rate of 194 FPS indicates that the game's performance is largely determined by the GPU's fill rate and shading capabilities. The RTX 5090's 1.79 TB/s memory bandwidth and 104.8 TFLOPS FP32 performance are the key specifications driving this behavior, as Hitman 2's visual effects and geometry processing scale with resolution.

FAQ

Q: What is the best preset for 4K gaming on this system?

A: The High preset at 3840x2160 delivers 66 FPS average, which is above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. Medium provides 87 FPS and Low reaches 117 FPS, but Ultra drops to 49 FPS, which is below 60 FPS.

Q: How does the RTX 5090 compare to its nearest rival in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 5090 has an average benchmark score of 79842, which is 0.3% higher than the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB (79605) and 1.1% higher than the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (78940). The AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X scores 80959, which is 1.4% higher than the RTX 5090.

Q: What frame rates can I expect at 1440p with High settings?

A: The measured data shows 124 FPS average at 2560x1440 with High settings. For comparison, Medium delivers 164 FPS, Low delivers 219 FPS, and Ultra delivers 91 FPS.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor in Hitman 2?

A: The resolution scaling data suggests the GPU is the primary bottleneck. The frame rate drops by approximately 66% from 1080p to 4K at High settings, which indicates that the GPU's rendering capacity is the limiting factor rather than the CPU's 12 cores and 24 threads.

Q: Does the RTX 5090's 32 GB memory capacity matter for this game?

A: The 32 GB GDDR7 memory is far more than Hitman 2 requires, and the measured FPS data does not show any memory-related stuttering or performance degradation. The game's performance is more closely tied to the GPU's shading and rasterization capabilities.

Q: How does the RTX 5090 perform in the 3DMark Steel Nomad benchmark?

A: The GPU scores 18355 in the 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 test, which is part of its overall benchmark profile. The GPU also scores 334370 in Geekbench OpenCL and 376728 in Geekbench Vulkan.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 5900X is a 12-core, 24-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture (Vermeer codename), manufactured on TSMC's 7 nm process. It has a base clock of 3.70 GHz and a boost clock of 4.80 GHz, with a 64 MB L3 cache and 512 KB L2 cache per core. The CPU's benchmark scores show strong multi-threaded performance, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 16262 and a single-core score of 1527. The Geekbench multi-core score is 14118, and the single-core score is 2083. The PassMark multithread score is 39002, with a single-thread score of 3469.

In Hitman 2, the CPU's role appears to be secondary to the GPU, as the frame rates scale primarily with resolution and settings. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 9075 and max-thread score of 10075 indicate that the CPU can handle substantial multi-threaded workloads, but the game's measured FPS data shows that the GPU becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions. The CPU's 87th percentile ranking among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 41376, places it slightly above the Intel Core Ultra 7 366H (41263, 0.3% difference) and the Intel Core Ultra 7 356H (41215, 0.4% difference). The AMD Ryzen AI 5 PRO 440 scores 41208 (0.4% difference), while the Intel Core i7-14650HX scores 41576 (-0.5% difference).

The CPU's memory bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s and DDR4 support are adequate for the game's requirements, as the measured FPS data does not show any CPU-related bottlenecks. The fact that the frame rate at 1080p Low (306 FPS) is more than double the frame rate at 4K Low (117 FPS) indicates that the GPU's rendering capabilities are the primary constraint. The CPU's boost clock of 4.80 GHz and 12 cores provide sufficient single-thread and multi-thread performance for the game's AI, physics, and game logic systems, which do not appear to be limiting factors based on the resolution scaling analysis.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a comprehensive view of the system's performance across three resolutions and four settings presets. At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves 306 FPS average, which is the highest recorded frame rate in the dataset. The Medium preset delivers 257 FPS with a minimum of 218 FPS and a maximum of 295 FPS. The High preset produces 194 FPS, and the Ultra preset falls to 143 FPS. At this resolution, the differences between presets range from 51 FPS (Medium to High) to 63 FPS (High to Ultra), showing a steady degradation as settings increase.

At 2560x1440, the Low preset achieves 219 FPS, the Medium preset delivers 164 FPS (minimum 140, maximum 189), the High preset produces 124 FPS, and the Ultra preset drops to 91 FPS. The performance gap between Low and Ultra is 128 FPS, which is a 58% reduction. The Medium preset's minimum FPS of 140 is still above the 60 FPS threshold, indicating smooth performance even during demanding scenes. At 3840x2160, the Low preset achieves 117 FPS, the Medium preset delivers 87 FPS (minimum 74, maximum 101), the High preset produces 66 FPS, and the Ultra preset falls to 49 FPS. The Ultra preset at 4K is the only configuration that drops below 60 FPS average, making it the only setting that is not recommended for standard refresh rate displays.

The data shows that the Medium preset is the only one with recorded minimum and maximum FPS values, which provides insight into the frame time variance. At 1080p Medium, the range is 218 to 295 FPS (a 77 FPS spread); at 1440p Medium, the range is 140 to 189 FPS (a 49 FPS spread); at 4K Medium, the range is 74 to 101 FPS (a 27 FPS spread). This decreasing variance with resolution suggests that the GPU's workload becomes more consistent at higher resolutions, as the frame times are more evenly distributed.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 9 5900X with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 combination ranks 120th out of 3711 tested combos in Hitman 2, placing it in the top 3.2% of all configurations. This ranking is notable given that the RTX 5090 is a flagship GPU with a 92nd percentile ranking among all GPUs, and the Ryzen 9 5900X is in the 87th percentile among all CPUs. The combo's ranking suggests that the combination of a high-end CPU and top-tier GPU provides excellent performance in this game, despite the game's release date in 2018.

The combo's rank of 120 out of 3711 means that only 119 other combinations of CPUs and GPUs achieve higher average FPS in Hitman 2. This places the system well within the top tier of tested configurations, indicating that the hardware is well-suited for this game's engine. The RTX 5090's nearest GPU rivals, which include the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB and the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X, have similar average benchmark scores, but the actual in-game performance depends on the specific CPU pairing. The Ryzen 9 5900X's 12 cores and 24 threads, combined with its high boost clock of 4.80 GHz, provide a solid foundation for the RTX 5090's capabilities.

The measured FPS data supports this ranking, as the combo achieves playable frame rates at all resolutions and settings, with the only exception being 4K Ultra at 49 FPS. The system's ability to maintain over 60 FPS at 4K High and over 100 FPS at 1440p High demonstrates that it is well-balanced for this game. The ranking also indicates that the system is not being held back by either component, as the CPU and GPU are both in the upper percentiles of their respective categories. The combo's performance in Hitman 2 is a reflection of the hardware's overall capabilities, and the data shows that this pairing is more than sufficient for the game's requirements.