Hitman 2

Hitman 2, the stealth title released in November 2018, was measured on a pairing of AMD's Ryzen 9 8945HX mobile processor and NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile GPU. The data set spans three resolutions — 1920x1080, 2560x1440, and 3840x2160 — each tested at Low, Medium, High, and Ultra presets, with average frame rates recorded for every combination and minimum/maximum figures captured at Medium settings. This analysis walks through that data step by step: how frame rates scale with resolution, which presets make sense, where this hardware pairing ranks among all tested combinations for this game, and what role each component plays in the results.

Resolution Scaling

The resolution data tells a consistent story: Hitman 2 on this configuration becomes increasingly GPU-bound as pixel count rises, which is exactly what you'd expect from a strong mobile CPU paired with a mobile flagship GPU.

At 1920x1080, the frame rates are 238 fps at Low, 178 fps at Medium, 135 fps at High, and 99 fps at Ultra. Moving to 2560x1440, those numbers fall to 152, 114, 86, and 64 fps respectively. That is a drop of roughly a third across the board — 152 is about 64 percent of 238, and 64 is about 65 percent of 99. This is a steep decline for going from roughly two million pixels to 3.7 million, and it signals that even at 1440p the RTX 4090 Mobile is doing the heavy lifting rather than the Ryzen 9 8945HX.

The 4K numbers confirm the trend. At 3840x2160, the measured averages are 81 fps at Low, 61 fps at Medium, 46 fps at High, and 34 fps at Ultra. Comparing 1080p to 4K — a fourfold increase in pixel count — frame rates fall to between roughly 34 and 43 percent of their 1080p values depending on the preset. The Ultra preset shows the shallowest relative decline (99 to 34 fps), which makes sense: at Ultra the GPU is already saturated at lower resolutions, so additional pixels remove less headroom than they would at Low, where the frame rate is high enough that the CPU and driver overhead start to matter.

The Medium-preset min/max figures reinforce the picture. At 1080p Medium, frame rates range from 152 to 205 fps. At 1440p Medium, they span 97 to 131 fps. At 4K Medium, the range narrows to 52 to 70 fps. The fact that the 4K minimum stays above 50 fps at Medium indicates a reasonably stable experience — the frame time variance implied by these ranges is modest at every resolution, and it tightens in absolute terms as resolution climbs.

The key takeaway from the scaling data: at 1080p the system is fast enough that the CPU's capabilities begin to matter, while at 1440p and 4K the game is squarely limited by the RTX 4090 Mobile's rendering throughput. Nothing in the data suggests the Ryzen 9 8945HX is a bottleneck at any tested setting.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows point to clear recommendations per resolution.

For 1080p play, Ultra is viable: 99 fps average is well beyond what a smooth stealth experience requires, and Hitman 2's methodical pacing does not demand extreme frame rates. Players who want maximum responsiveness can drop to High for 135 fps, but the Medium row — 178 fps average with a 152 fps minimum — shows there is enormous headroom at this resolution regardless of preset. There is no reason to go below Medium at 1080p.

At 2560x1440, High is the sweet spot. The 86 fps average is comfortably fluid, and stepping down to Medium (114 fps average, 97 fps minimum) only matters for users chasing very high refresh rates. Ultra at 64 fps is playable but sits in a range where the drop from High costs noticeably more smoothness than it gains in visual fidelity.

At 3840x2160, the recommendation shifts to Medium. The 61 fps average with a 52 fps minimum is a genuinely stable 4K experience — the minimum never dips near unplayable territory. High at 46 fps average is borderline, and Ultra at 34 fps average should be avoided on this hardware; a stealth game benefits from consistent frame pacing during crowd-heavy scenes, and 34 fps leaves little margin. Low at 81 fps is there for players who prioritize frame rate above everything else, but it sacrifices far more image quality than the Medium preset requires.

In short: Ultra at 1080p, High at 1440p, Medium at 4K. Each of those rows delivers frame rates appropriate to its resolution without leaving performance on the table.

FAQ

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

A: Yes, with the right preset. At 3840x2160, Medium settings average 61 fps with a 52 fps minimum and 70 fps maximum. High averages 46 fps and Ultra averages 34 fps, so Medium is the recommended 4K preset.

Q: What frame rate does this combo achieve at 1080p Ultra?

A: The measured average is 99 fps. Dropping to High raises that to 135 fps, Medium to 178 fps, and Low to 238 fps.

Q: How much performance is lost going from 1440p to 4K?

A: Comparing the Medium rows, 114 fps at 2560x1440 becomes 61 fps at 3840x2160 — roughly a 46 percent reduction. The other presets show similar declines, indicating the GPU is the limiting factor at higher resolutions.

Q: Where does this CPU/GPU pairing rank among tested combinations in Hitman 2?

A: It ranks 852 out of 3711 tested combos, placing it in the top portion of the database for this game.

Q: Is the frame rate stable at Medium settings?

A: The recorded min/max ranges suggest yes. At 1080p Medium the range is 152–205 fps, at 1440p it is 97–131 fps, and at 4K it is 52–70 fps. The gap between minimum and average is modest at every resolution.

Q: Does the CPU hold the game back at high frame rates?

A: The data does not indicate a CPU limitation. Even at 1080p Low — 238 fps — the scaling pattern remains consistent, and the Ryzen 9 8945HX sits in the 95th percentile of all CPUs in the database, more than capable of feeding frame rates of this magnitude.

Measured FPS Breakdown

Below is the complete set of measured averages, organized resolution by resolution.

At 1920x1080:

• Low: 238 fps average
• Medium: 178 fps average (152 minimum, 205 maximum)
• High: 135 fps average
• Ultra: 99 fps average

At 2560x1440:

• Low: 152 fps average
• Medium: 114 fps average (97 minimum, 131 maximum)
• High: 86 fps average
• Ultra: 64 fps average

At 3840x2160:

• Low: 81 fps average
• Medium: 61 fps average (52 minimum, 70 maximum)
• High: 46 fps average
• Ultra: 34 fps average

Reading across the presets at fixed resolution, each step up in quality costs a similar proportion of frame rate. At 4K, going from Low to Medium costs 20 fps, Medium to High costs 15 fps, and High to Ultra costs 12 fps. The diminishing absolute cost reflects the GPU approaching its throughput ceiling. Reading down the resolutions at fixed preset shows the inverse: the Low preset loses the most frame rate to resolution because it starts from the highest baseline, while Ultra loses the least in relative terms.

The Medium rows are the only ones with recorded minimum and maximum values, and they deserve attention. The 4K Medium minimum of 52 fps means the worst measured moments still exceeded the average of the High preset at the same resolution (46 fps). That is a healthy margin and supports Medium as the 4K recommendation.

How This Combo Ranks

This pairing ranks 852nd out of 3711 tested hardware combinations in Hitman 2. That places it solidly in the upper tier of the database — roughly the top quarter of all combos measured for this game — which aligns with the component-level percentiles. The Ryzen 9 8945HX sits in the 95th percentile versus all CPUs, and the RTX 4090 Mobile sits in the 84th percentile versus all GPUs.

It is worth contextualizing the two halves of the pairing. The CPU's average benchmark score is 76212, and its nearest rivals cluster remarkably tight around it: the Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX averages 76155 (a 0.1 percent gap), the AMD EPYC Embedded 8224P averages 76492 (0.4 percent ahead), the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9945WX averages 76513 (also 0.4 percent ahead), and the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D averages 75779 (0.6 percent behind). In raw compute terms, this is one of the strongest mobile processors in the dataset.

The GPU's average benchmark score is 43667, with rivals including the NVIDIA Quadro M6000 at 43301 (0.8 percent behind), the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 Mobile at 43268 (0.9 percent behind), the Quadro M6000 24 GB at 43262 (0.9 percent behind), and the NVIDIA RTX A6000 at 44075 (0.9 percent ahead). The GPU is excellent but ranks somewhat lower relative to its peers than the CPU does — 84th percentile versus 95th — which is consistent with the game's observed GPU-bound behavior at 1440p and 4K. A faster GPU in this chassis would move the 4K numbers; a faster CPU almost certainly would not.

CPU Role

The Ryzen 9 8945HX is a Dragon Range part built on AMD's Zen 4 architecture, fabricated by TSMC on a 5 nm process. It carries 16 cores and 32 threads, a 2.50 GHz base clock and a 5.40 GHz boost clock, and a TDP of 55 watts in its mobile segment. The cache hierarchy is substantial: 64 KB of L1 and 1 MB of L2 per core, plus a 64 MB L3 pool shared across the chip. Memory support is DDR5 over a dual-channel bus delivering 83.2 GB/s of bandwidth, and the platform provides PCIe Gen 5 with 28 lanes from the CPU. The die measures 2x 71 mm² and packs 13,140 million transistors — a two-die design befitting a 16-core mobile flagship.

For Hitman 2, the relevant question is whether the CPU can keep up with the GPU, and the benchmark data says it can, with room to spare. The 8945HX posts 6030 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 42713 in multi-core, plus 3907 in Passmark single-thread and 51405 in Passmark multithread. Hitman 2's crowd simulation and physics are driven heavily by single-threaded performance, and a 6030 R23 single-core score places this chip among the fastest mobile CPUs available. The 2.50 GHz base and 5.40 GHz boost clocks mean the chip holds high frequencies when a game leans on a few strong cores.

The resolution scaling data supports this interpretation. If the CPU were the limiter, frame rates at 1080p and 1440p would converge regardless of GPU load — but they do not. The 1080p Low result of 238 fps and the steady proportional decline as resolution rises show the CPU feeding the GPU comfortably at every tested point. The integrated Radeon 610M graphics are irrelevant here since the RTX 4090 Mobile handles rendering, but its presence costs nothing in this configuration.

GPU Role

The GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile is built on NVIDIA's Ada Lovelace architecture, using the AD103 chip fabricated by TSMC on a 5 nm process. The die measures 379 mm² and contains 45,900 million transistors at a density of 121.1 million per square millimeter. It runs a 1335 MHz base clock and a 1695 MHz boost clock. The rendering resources are extensive: 9728 shading units, 304 texture mapping units, 112 render output units, 76 RT cores for ray tracing, and 304 tensor cores. Peak rates work out to 189.8 GPixel/s of pixel fill, 515.3 GTexel/s of texture fill, and 32.98 TFLOPS of FP32 compute.

Memory is where 4K viability comes from. The card carries 16 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus, clocked at 2250 MHz (18 Gbps effective), yielding 576.0 GB/s of bandwidth. That capacity and bandwidth are what allow the 4K Medium row to hold a 61 fps average with a 52 fps minimum — Hitman 2's levels are large and detail-rich, and a 16 GB frame buffer absorbs high-resolution texture and geometry loads without the spills that would show up as frame rate volatility.

The benchmark scores corroborate the in-game results. The RTX 4090 Mobile scores 27212 in Passmark G3D, 180831 in Geekbench OpenCL, and 170774 in Geekbench Vulkan — the Vulkan figure being relevant since modern APIs of that class are what Hitman 2-era engines target. The API support list (DirectX 12 Ultimate, Vulkan 1.4, OpenGL 4.6) confirms full compatibility with everything the game requires.

At 120 watts of TDP, this is a mobile part operating within mobile power limits, and that is the context for the 4K Ultra result of 34 fps. The same Ada Lovelce architecture with more power headroom would push further; within this envelope, the data shows the GPU determining performance at every resolution above 1080p. The bus interface is PCIe 4.0 x16, which is more than sufficient for a game of this vintage and keeps the CPU-GPU link from becoming a factor.

Taken together, the measured data describes a well-balanced mobile pairing for Hitman 2: a 95th-percentile CPU with headroom to spare, an 84th-percentile GPU that sets the performance ceiling at higher resolutions, and a combo rank of 852 out of 3711 that reflects exactly that division of labor.