Hitman 2

The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 combination delivers a wide performance envelope in Hitman 2, with measured average frame rates ranging from 33.4 FPS at 4K Ultra to 227.8 FPS at 1080p Low. This pairing of a 16-core Zen 3 processor with an Ampere flagship GPU produces a dataset that clearly distinguishes between GPU-bound and CPU-bound operating points, making it a useful reference for understanding scaling behavior in this stealth title.

Resolution Scaling

The measured frame rates show a predictable and steep decline as resolution increases, but the shape of that curve changes dramatically depending on the quality preset. At Low settings, the transition from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 costs 83.3 FPS (from 227.8 to 144.5), and moving further to 3840x2160 drops another 65.0 FPS down to 79.5. This represents a 65.1% reduction from 1080p to 4K at Low, indicating that even at the lowest quality settings, the GPU is still the dominant scaling factor.

The High preset shows a similar but less severe percentage drop: 128.1 FPS at 1080p falls to 81.9 FPS at 1440p, then to 46.4 FPS at 4K. That is a 63.8% decrease from 1080p to 4K, which is remarkably close to the Low preset’s scaling. Medium settings follow the same pattern with 170.5, 111.1, and 60.6 FPS across the three resolutions, a 64.5% total drop. The consistency of these percentage reductions across presets suggests that Hitman 2’s rendering pipeline scales resolution in a largely uniform manner, regardless of the quality level applied.

Ultra settings, however, tell a different story. The 4K Ultra result of 33.4 FPS is the lowest measured value in the entire dataset, and the scaling from 1080p Ultra (93.4 FPS) to 4K Ultra represents a 64.2% reduction. While the percentage is similar to other presets, the absolute values are low enough that 4K Ultra is effectively unplayable for smooth gameplay. The fact that 1440p Ultra (60.9 FPS) nearly matches 4K High (46.4 FPS) in the opposite direction indicates that the game’s Ultra preset adds substantial per-pixel work beyond what High does, likely through increased shadow quality, ambient occlusion, or draw distances that disproportionately affect higher resolutions.

The data indicates that at 1080p Low, the frame rate of 227.8 FPS is high enough that the CPU’s role becomes more prominent; however, the consistent percentage drops across presets suggest the RTX 3080 remains the limiting component even at 1080p. The 1440p results sit in a comfortable middle ground where the GPU is clearly the bottleneck, but the headroom at Low settings (144.5 FPS) shows that the CPU can feed the GPU effectively when pixel load is moderate.

Settings Recommendations

For users targeting 60 FPS as the minimum acceptable average, the measured data provides clear guidance. At 3840x2160, only the Low preset (79.5 FPS) and Medium preset (60.6 FPS) clear this threshold; High (46.4 FPS) and Ultra (33.4 FPS) fall short. The Medium preset at 4K is the optimal balance for 4K displays, delivering 60.6 FPS while maintaining better visual fidelity than Low. Notably, 4K Medium produces a higher frame rate than 1440p Ultra (60.9 FPS) by a margin of 0.3 FPS, making the Medium preset a more resolution-efficient choice for high-resolution displays.

At 2560x1440, all presets except Ultra exceed 60 FPS, with High (81.9 FPS) and Medium (111.1 FPS) offering substantial headroom. The 1440p Ultra result of 60.9 FPS is just above the 60 FPS mark, but the gap between Ultra and High (21.0 FPS) suggests that High is the better choice for users who want smoother motion without sacrificing most visual features. The 1440p Low result of 144.5 FPS is excellent for competitive play, but the visual compromises are significant.

For 1920x1080, every preset exceeds 90 FPS, meaning users can freely select Ultra (93.4 FPS) for maximum quality without dropping below 60 FPS. The 1080p Medium (170.5 FPS) and High (128.1 FPS) presets provide ample refresh-rate headroom for 144 Hz monitors, while Low (227.8 FPS) approaches the practical limit for 240 Hz displays. The data suggests that 1080p Ultra is the recommended preset for this resolution, as the 93.4 FPS average remains well above playable thresholds while delivering the full visual experience.

Across all resolutions, the Medium preset offers the most consistent experience relative to its demands, providing 60.6 FPS at 4K, 111.1 FPS at 1440p, and 170.5 FPS at 1080p. This makes Medium the safest recommendation for users who prioritize frame rate stability over maximum eye candy.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X brings 16 cores and 32 threads to the table, with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 4.90 GHz. Its 64 MB of L3 cache and 8,300 million transistors on a 7 nm TSMC process position it as a high-end desktop part. In Hitman 2, the CPU’s influence is most visible at 1080p Low, where the 227.8 FPS average indicates that the game’s draw call and scene management threads can be fed rapidly by this processor’s single-thread performance.

The processor’s benchmark scores reinforce its capability: Cinebench R23 multicore reaches 38,607 points, while single-core hits 5,450 points. PassMark single-thread performance is 3,470, and the 3DMark 2-thread score of 1,856 shows solid dual-core efficiency, which is critical for games that rely on a few heavily loaded threads. The Ryzen 9 5950X’s passmark multithread score of 45,424 indicates massive parallel throughput, but Hitman 2’s frame rates at 1080p (ranging from 93.4 to 227.8 FPS) suggest that the game does not fully utilize all 32 threads; otherwise, the CPU would likely push even higher frame rates at the lowest resolutions.

The data shows that the CPU is not the limiting factor in most tested configurations. At 4K Ultra, the GPU produces only 33.4 FPS, leaving the CPU with significant idle capacity. Even at 1080p Ultra (93.4 FPS), the CPU has headroom, as evidenced by the fact that lowering settings to Low at the same resolution nearly triples the frame rate to 227.8 FPS. This indicates that the RTX 3080’s pixel throughput, not the CPU’s instruction throughput, governs the frame rate across most of the measured spectrum.

The Ryzen 9 5950X’s average benchmark score of 49,062 places it in the 93rd percentile among all CPUs, with nearest rivals including the Intel Core i5-14600K (delta of -0.2%) and Intel Core i5-14600KF (delta of -0.6%). These rivals perform within 1% of the Ryzen 9, suggesting that in Hitman 2, the CPU is unlikely to differentiate performance significantly among top-tier processors, as the game’s frame rates are more sensitive to GPU load.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the Ryzen 9 5950X and RTX 3080 achieves a rank of 558 out of 1,795 tested combos in Hitman 2. This places it in the 68.9th percentile of all combinations, meaning approximately 31% of tested combos perform better. Given that the RTX 3080 sits in the 80th percentile among all GPUs and the CPU is in the 93rd percentile, the combo rank is lower than either component’s individual percentile, indicating that the GPU is the performance ceiling in this pairing.

The rank of 558 suggests that while this combo is solidly above average, it is not near the top of the leaderboard for Hitman 2. Combos with higher-ranked GPUs, such as those with more VRAM or higher pixel rates, would likely outperform this setup at 4K Ultra where the RTX 3080’s 10 GB of VRAM and 760.3 GB/s bandwidth are taxed. The GPU’s passmark G3D score of 25,086 and 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 4,407 are respectable, but the 4K Ultra result of 33.4 FPS shows that the combo’s absolute performance is limited by the GPU’s ability to process the game’s most demanding settings.

Compared to its nearest GPU rivals, the RTX 3080’s average benchmark score of 35,787 is within 1% of the AMD Radeon Pro Duo (delta -0.2%), AMD Radeon 880M (delta +0.4%), and AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE (delta -0.9%). This tight clustering means that swapping the GPU for any of these rivals would likely produce similar frame rates in Hitman 2, reinforcing that the combo’s rank is more dependent on the GPU than the CPU. The RTX 3080’s 80th percentile GPU ranking, combined with the 93rd percentile CPU ranking, yields a combo rank that reflects the GPU’s relative position more heavily.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 is built on the GA102 chip with 28,300 million transistors on an 8 nm Samsung process. Its 10 GB of GDDR6X memory operates across a 320-bit bus, delivering 760.3 GB/s of bandwidth. The base clock is 1440 MHz with a boost clock of 1710 MHz, and the memory runs at 19 Gbps effective. With 8,704 shading units, 272 TMUs, 96 ROPs, and 68 RT cores, the RTX 3080 is a high-throughput design that excels at rasterization-heavy titles like Hitman 2.

The GPU’s role in this game is clearly dominant, as evidenced by the measured frame rates across all presets and resolutions. At 1080p Low, the GPU produces 227.8 FPS, but at 4K Ultra, it drops to 33.4 FPS—a 6.8x difference that directly correlates with the pixel count increase from 2.07 million to 8.29 million pixels. The pixel rate of 164.2 GPixel/s and texture rate of 465.1 GTexel/s are substantial, yet the game’s Ultra preset at 4K demands more than these rates can sustain for a 60 FPS target.

The VRAM capacity of 10 GB does not appear to be a limiting factor in the measured results, as frame rates scale consistently with resolution and settings without any sudden drops that would suggest memory paging. The memory bandwidth of 760.3 GB/s is sufficient for the game’s textures at 4K, though the 33.4 FPS at Ultra suggests that raw shader throughput, not bandwidth, is the bottleneck. The FP32 performance of 29.77 TFLOPS provides ample compute, but the game’s visual effects at Ultra likely rely on dependent texture fetches and shadow computations that are less parallelizable.

The GPU’s passmark DirectX 12 score of 100 and DirectX 11 score of 207 are relative metrics, but the 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 4,407 and Geekbench Vulkan score of 145,176 indicate strong API-level performance. The RTX 3080’s 80th percentile ranking among GPUs, with nearest rivals including the AMD Radeon Pro Duo (delta -0.2%) and Radeon RX 7900 GRE (delta -0.9%), shows that it is a mid-to-upper tier part. In Hitman 2, the data confirms that the GPU is the primary driver of frame rate, with the CPU providing ample headroom and the combo’s overall rank reflecting the GPU’s position in the broader hierarchy.