Hitman 2

Hitman 2 on the AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile is a story of a CPU with enormous headroom paired with a GPU that runs out of steam at higher resolutions. The measured data shows a machine that absolutely flies at 1080p — 217 frames per second on Low settings — but which falls to 31 frames per second at 4K Ultra. Where the balance sits between those extremes, and which preset extracts the most from this pairing, is what the numbers below unpack.

CPU Role

The Ryzen 9 8945HX is a 16-core, 32-thread Zen 4 "Dragon Range" mobile processor built on TSMC's 5 nm node, with a 2.50 GHz base clock and a 5.40 GHz boost. It carries 64 KB of L1 and 1 MB of L2 cache per core plus a 64 MB slab of L3, feeds on dual-channel DDR5 with 83.2 GB/s of bandwidth, and exposes PCIe Gen 5 across 28 CPU lanes. Its 55 W TDP and AMD Socket FL1 package mark it as a genuinely high-end mobile part rather than a thin-and-light chip.

In synthetic terms, the 8945HX sits in the 95th percentile of all CPUs in the database. Its average benchmark score of 76212 puts it within a fraction of a percent of some serious silicon: the Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX trails it by just 0.1%, the AMD EPYC Embedded 8224P and Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9945WX both edge ahead by 0.4%, and even the desktop Ryzen 9 9950X3D lands 0.6% behind. Cinebench R23 scores of 42713 multi-core and 6030 single-core, alongside a PassMark single-thread result of 3907, confirm a chip that is strong in both throughput and per-core responsiveness.

For Hitman 2, that single-thread muscle matters most. The game launched in November 2018, when eight-core consumer CPUs were rare, and its Glacier engine leans on one fast main thread for world simulation and crowd logic. The data here reflects that: at 1080p Low the combo hits 217 fps, and even 1080p Ultra manages 91 fps — figures that require a CPU able to feed frames that quickly. There is no sign of a processor bottleneck anywhere in the measured rows. Where frame rates drop, they drop in proportion to resolution and settings, which is the signature of GPU limitation, not CPU limitation. The 8945HX is, for this title, more CPU than the game knows how to ask for.

FAQ

Q: Can this hardware run Hitman 2 at 4K?

A: Yes, but with caveats. At 3840x2160 the combo averages 74 fps on Low, 55 fps on Medium (dipping to 47 at minimum), 42 fps on High, and 31 fps on Ultra. Medium is the only 4K preset that holds above 50 fps on average.

Q: Is the CPU or the GPU the limiting factor in this pairing?

A: The GPU. Frame rates scale down sharply as resolution climbs — 163 fps at 1080p Medium versus 55 fps at 4K Medium — while the Ryzen 9 8945HX sits in the 95th percentile of all CPUs. A CPU bottleneck would flatten that curve; this one doesn't.

Q: How does the RTX 4080 Mobile compare to its rivals?

A: Its average benchmark score of 38135 places it in the 81st percentile of all GPUs. The nearest rivals in the database are effectively tied with it: the GeForce MX570 and RTX 5080 Mobile score within 0.4–0.6%, while the desktop RTX 4070 and Tesla P4 sit 1.3% behind.

Q: What is the highest frame rate measured for this combo in Hitman 2?

A: 217 fps, at 1920x1080 on Low settings. The highest peak recorded in any row is 187 fps, at 1080p Medium.

Q: How does this combo rank against other hardware pairings for this game?

A: It ranks 1232 out of 3711 measured combinations — roughly the top third of the database for Hitman 2.

Q: Is the data measured or estimated?

A: Measured. Every frame rate figure on this page comes from actual benchmark runs, not projections.

Resolution Scaling

The scaling story is told best by the Medium preset, the only setting tier with minimum and maximum frame rates recorded at every resolution. At 1920x1080 the combo delivers 163 fps average, with a floor of 138 and a ceiling of 187. Move to 2560x1440 and the average falls to 104 fps — a 36% drop — with frame rates ranging from 89 to 120. At 3840x2160 the average is 55 fps, ranging from 47 to 64, a further 47% decline from 1440p.

That is a steep, resolution-driven falloff, and it points squarely at the GPU. A CPU-limited configuration loses relatively little performance when pixel count quadruples, because the processor's work per frame barely changes. Here, quadrupling the pixel count from 1080p to 4K cuts the Medium frame rate by 66%. The RTX 4080 Mobile's 432 GB/s of memory bandwidth and 24.72 TFLOPS of FP32 throughput are simply being asked to shade 8.3 million pixels per frame at 4K instead of two million at 1080p.

The margin data reinforces the consistency of the GPU limit. At 1080p Medium, the spread between minimum and average is 25 fps; at 1440p it is 15 fps; at 4K it is 8 fps. Frame delivery tightens as the GPU becomes the sole pacing element, which is typical: the wildly high frame rates at 1080p have more variance because the CPU and engine logic intermittently gate the render loop, while at 4K the graphics load dominates every frame uniformly.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full settings ladder reads: Low 217 fps, Medium 163 fps (min 138, max 187), High 123 fps, Ultra 91 fps. Every tier clears 60 fps comfortably, and even Ultra pushes past 90. This is the resolution where the pairing is at its most effortless — Low nearly touches the 220 fps mark, and the Medium floor of 138 fps means the worst moments are still far above any high-refresh threshold.

At 2560x1440: Low 139 fps, Medium 104 fps (min 89, max 120), High 79 fps, Ultra 58 fps. The first crack appears at Ultra, which drops below 60. Medium remains a smooth triple-digit experience on average, and its 89 fps minimum means it never falls out of high-refresh territory even at the worst recorded moment.

At 3840x2160: Low 74 fps, Medium 55 fps (min 47, max 64), High 42 fps, Ultra 31 fps. Only Low stays above 60. Medium hovers in the mid-50s with dips toward the high 40s, High lands in the low 40s, and Ultra at 31 fps is below any comfortable threshold for a stealth game that demands precise timing on guards' patrol routes.

Reading down each settings column reveals another pattern: the Low-to-Medium gap is larger than Medium-to-Ultra at every resolution. At 1080p, dropping from Medium to Low buys 54 fps; climbing from High to Ultra costs 32 fps. Hitman 2's Medium preset captures most of the visual essentials, while Ultra's cost is steep relative to what the measured frame rates surrender.

GPU Role

The RTX 4080 Mobile is an Ada Lovelace part on the AD104 die, fabricated on TSMC's 5 nm process. That 294 mm² die packs 35,800 million transistors at a density of 121.8 million per square millimetre. The hardware inventory: 7424 shading units, 232 texture mapping units, 80 render outputs, 58 RT cores, and 232 tensor cores. Clocks run from a 1290 MHz base to a 1665 MHz boost, with 12 GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus running at 2250 MHz — 18 Gbps effective — for 432.0 GB/s of bandwidth. Peak rates work out to 133.2 GPixel/s and 386.3 GTexel/s, with FP32 and FP16 both at 24.72 TFLOPS. The card targets 110 W and connects over PCIe 4.0 x16, with DirectX 12 Ultimate, Vulkan 1.4, and OpenGL 4.6 support.

In the database it ranks in the 81st percentile of all GPUs with an average score of 38135, backed by a PassMark G3D result of 24926 and Geekbench OpenCL and Vulkan compute scores of 159575 and 145807 respectively. Its nearest rivals are a tight pack: the GeForce MX570 leads it by 0.4%, the RTX 5080 Mobile by 0.6%, while the desktop RTX 4070 and the Tesla P4 trail by 1.3% each. In other words, this is a GPU performing squarely at its class expectation — a strong mobile part bracketed by comparable hardware on both sides.

Against Hitman 2, those specifications map cleanly onto the measured results. The game dates to November 2018 and was built for hardware long predating ray tracing as a mainstream expectation, so the 58 RT cores go largely unexercised by this title's native renderer; the raw rasterization throughput of 7424 shading units is what drives these frame rates. The 12 GB frame buffer is never in question at any tested preset — Hitman 2's asset pool is small by modern standards. What limits the results is pure pixel-throughput arithmetic: 133.2 GPixel/s divided by a 4K Ultra workload of 31 fps leaves the GPU saturated, which is why 4K Ultra is where the pairing finally buckles.

Settings Recommendations

For 1080p play, Ultra is the clear pick. At 91 fps average — the slowest 1080p result recorded — it still outpaces what most laptop displays can show, and every lower preset simply trades image quality for frame rates the panel may not render anyway. The 8945HX's 5.40 GHz boost keeps the CPU side of the equation invisible at this resolution.

For 1440p, High is the sweet spot. It averages 79 fps with the visual pipeline fully loaded, and stepping down to Medium for 104 fps is only worth it on a display with a very high refresh rate. Avoid Ultra here: 58 fps average is under 60, and on a stealth game where timing a guard's footsteps matters, the margin is too thin.

For 4K, Medium is the recommendation. At 55 fps average with a 47 fps floor, it is playable and holds most of the game's visual character, whereas High at 42 fps and Ultra at 31 fps sacrifice smoothness for detail the frame rate cannot support. Players who insist on 60 fps at 4K must accept Low's 74 fps average, though that is a steep visual compromise for a title whose atmosphere depends on its lighting and detail.

The overall verdict from the data: this combination ranks 1232 of 3711 for Hitman 2, and it performs best when the resolution is left at or below 1440p, where the RTX 4080 Mobile's rasterization engine stays fed and the 95th-percentile CPU is never the excuse.