Hitman 2

# Hitman 2 with AMD Ryzen 9 9900X + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050

This combination of AMD's 12-core Zen 5 flagship and NVIDIA's entry-level Blackwell GPU produces a curiously lopsided result in Hitman 2, a 2018 stealth title that predates both components by several years. The data shows a system that can demolish 1080p at maximum settings yet struggles to maintain playable frame rates at 4K, revealing a pairing where CPU headroom vastly exceeds what the GPU can exploit.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and settings preset for this combo in Hitman 2?

A: The measured data shows 1080p Low delivers the highest average at 152 FPS, while 1080p Ultra still achieves 64 FPS. At 1440p, only Low (97 FPS) and High (55 FPS) remain above 60 FPS. At 4K, no preset reaches 60 FPS, with Low averaging 52 FPS and Ultra dropping to 22 FPS.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X scores an average benchmark of 57,498, placing it in the 92nd percentile of all CPUs. It trails the Intel Core i9-14900 by 1.1% and the Intel Xeon Platinum 8260M by 1.4%, while edging out the AMD EPYC 7313 by 0.2% and essentially matching the AMD EPYC 9015 (0.1% behind).

Q: What is the GPU's standing relative to other graphics cards?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 holds an average benchmark score of 21,035, putting it in the 66th percentile of all GPUs. It sits within 1.6% of the AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT, trails the AMD Radeon RX Vega M GL by 0.6% and the AMD Radeon HD 8970M by 1.0%, and sits 1.6% behind the NVIDIA RTX A4000 Mobile.

Q: How does frame rate scale between 1080p and 4K at High settings?

A: At High settings, the average FPS drops from 86 at 1080p to 55 at 1440p (a 36% reduction) and then to 29 at 4K (a 66% reduction from 1080p). This steep decline indicates the GPU becomes the limiting factor as resolution increases.

Q: Which settings preset shows the smallest performance penalty at each resolution?

A: At every resolution, moving from Low to Medium costs roughly 25-33% of average FPS: 152 to 114 at 1080p, 97 to 73 at 1440p, and 52 to 39 at 4K. The jump from High to Ultra is more severe, cutting FPS by roughly 26% at 1080p (86 to 64), 25% at 1440p (55 to 41), and 24% at 4K (29 to 22).

Q: Does the combo rank highly among all tested systems for this game?

A: The combination ranks 1,837th out of 3,001 tested combos for Hitman 2, placing it in the lower-middle portion of the database. This ranking reflects the GPU's modest positioning despite the CPU's strong benchmark performance.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X brings substantial processing capability to this pairing. With 12 cores and 24 threads based on the Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge), the CPU operates at a base clock of 4.40 GHz and boosts to 5.60 GHz. Its 64 MB of L3 cache and dual-channel DDR5 memory support provide ample throughput for game logic and AI calculations in Hitman 2's sandbox-style levels.

Synthetic benchmarks underscore the CPU's strength. The Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 32,172 and single-core score of 2,253 indicate strong performance in both heavily threaded and lightly threaded workloads. The Geekbench multi-core result of 22,174 and single-core score of 3,010 reinforce this picture. In 3DMark tests, the CPU scales from 1,286 in single-thread to 13,929 at max threads, showing healthy scaling across thread counts.

The CPU's 92nd percentile ranking among all CPUs places it near the top of the performance hierarchy, with nearest rivals including the Intel Core i9-14900 (1.1% faster) and the AMD EPYC 9015 (0.1% faster). This suggests that in CPU-bound scenarios — such as Hitman 2's complex crowd simulations and NPC AI — the processor should rarely bottleneck the system.

However, the measured frame rates tell a different story. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 152 FPS, a figure that suggests the CPU can feed frames at high rates. Yet at 1080p Ultra, the average drops to 64 FPS, indicating that GPU-side effects, shadow quality, and texture filtering are imposing significant costs. The CPU's single-thread performance, as evidenced by the 3DMark single-thread score of 1,286 and Cinebench R15 single-core score of 353, should be more than adequate for a 2018 title like Hitman 2, which was designed for far older hardware.

The data implies the CPU is never the primary constraint in this pairing. Even at 4K Ultra, where average FPS collapses to 22, the bottleneck appears to be the GPU's processing limits rather than any CPU deficiency. The CPU's 24 threads and high boost clock provide a comfortable margin that the RTX 5050 cannot fully utilize at higher resolutions.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 represents the entry point of the Blackwell 2.0 architecture, built on a 5 nm process with 16,900 million transistors on a 149 mm² die. Its 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus provides 320.0 GB/s of bandwidth, while the GPU operates at a base clock of 2317 MHz and a boost of 2572 MHz.

The GPU's compute capabilities include 2,560 shading units, 80 texture mapping units, 32 ROPs, 20 ray tracing cores, and 80 tensor cores. Peak FP32 throughput reaches 13.17 TFLOPS, with texture rate at 205.8 GTexel/s and pixel rate at 82.30 GPixel/s. These specifications position the card in the 66th percentile of all GPUs, with nearest rivals including the AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT (1.6% slower) and the NVIDIA RTX A4000 Mobile (1.6% faster).

In Hitman 2, the GPU's role becomes increasingly dominant as resolution rises. At 1080p, the card delivers 152 FPS on Low and 64 FPS on Ultra, showing that even this entry-level GPU can handle the game's DX12 workload at modest resolutions. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 2,502 and PassMark DirectX 12 score of 66 provide context for its API-level performance, though these synthetic results do not directly translate to Hitman 2's engine.

The 8 GB VRAM capacity proves sufficient at all tested settings — the game's 2018 release date means texture budgets are modest by modern standards. However, the 128-bit memory bus and 320.0 GB/s bandwidth appear to constrain performance at higher resolutions. The steep FPS drops from 1080p to 4K — 152 to 52 at Low, 86 to 29 at High — suggest memory bandwidth or fill-rate limitations rather than VRAM capacity issues.

The GPU's modest standing among rivals, particularly its proximity to older cards like the AMD Radeon HD 8970M, indicates that Hitman 2's performance ceiling is largely defined by this card. The PassMark G3D score of 17,326 and Geekbench OpenCL score of 90,334 confirm its mid-range positioning, which aligns with the measured FPS results showing sub-60 performance at 4K across all presets.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Ryzen 9 9900X and RTX 5050 achieves a rank of 1,837 out of 3,001 tested combos for Hitman 2, placing it in the 38.8th percentile of all tested systems. This relatively low standing reflects the GPU's limited performance in this title, despite the CPU's top-tier benchmark results.

The disparity between the CPU's 92nd percentile and GPU's 66th percentile creates an imbalanced system. In games like Hitman 2 that scale well across CPU threads, the 9900X's 12 cores and 24 threads provide far more processing headroom than the RTX 5050 can exploit. The result is a combo that performs below what the CPU alone would suggest, ranking in the bottom 40% of all tested combinations.

This ranking implies that for Hitman 2 specifically, the GPU is the dominant factor in determining overall system performance. The CPU's nearest rivals — the Intel Core i9-14900 and various EPYC and Xeon parts — would likely produce similar in-game results when paired with the same GPU, as the measured FPS values are constrained by the RTX 5050's capabilities rather than the processor's.

The rank also suggests that many systems with weaker CPUs but stronger GPUs would outperform this pairing in Hitman 2. The game's 2018 release means it does not demand modern high-core-count processors; a mid-range CPU paired with a faster GPU would likely achieve higher frame rates. The data indicates that this combo is optimized for CPU-heavy workloads rather than gaming performance in this specific title.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a consistent pattern of performance degradation as resolution increases, with the rate of decline accelerating at higher settings. At Low settings, the system delivers 152 FPS at 1080p, 97 FPS at 1440p (a 36.2% drop), and 52 FPS at 4K (a 65.8% drop from 1080p). This scaling indicates that the GPU's pixel throughput and memory bandwidth become increasingly strained at higher resolutions.

At Medium settings, the progression is 114 FPS at 1080p, 73 FPS at 1440p (a 36.0% drop), and 39 FPS at 4K (a 65.8% drop from 1080p). The consistency of these percentage declines across Low and Medium presets suggests a uniform scaling factor driven by the GPU's fixed memory bandwidth of 320.0 GB/s.

High settings show a slightly steeper decline: 86 FPS at 1080p, 55 FPS at 1440p (a 36.0% drop), and 29 FPS at 4K (a 66.3% drop). Ultra settings follow a similar trajectory: 64 FPS at 1080p, 41 FPS at 1440p (a 35.9% drop), and 22 FPS at 4K (a 65.6% drop). The near-identical percentage drops across all settings presets strongly indicate that resolution scaling is independent of quality level — a hallmark of GPU-bound performance.

The 1440p to 4K transition is particularly punishing, with average FPS roughly halving at every settings level. This suggests that the GPU's 8 GB VRAM and 128-bit memory interface cannot sustain the bandwidth demands of 4K rendering, even for a 2018 title. The CPU's role in resolution scaling is minimal, as the same 12-core processor that delivers 152 FPS at 1080p Low is equally capable of feeding frames at 4K — the limitation lies entirely with the RTX 5050's rendering pipeline.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers its strongest performance. Low settings produce an average of 152 FPS, Medium yields 114 FPS with a minimum of 97 and maximum of 131, High achieves 86 FPS, and Ultra reaches 64 FPS. The minimum FPS at Medium (97) exceeds the average FPS at High (86), indicating that the Medium preset provides a more consistent experience than the higher settings.

Moving to 2560x1440, performance drops noticeably. Low averages 97 FPS, Medium averages 73 FPS with a range of 62 to 84, High averages 55 FPS, and Ultra drops to 41 FPS. The 1440p Medium result shows the narrowest FPS range relative to its average, suggesting this is a stable operating point for the GPU.

At 3840x2160, the system struggles across all presets. Low averages 52 FPS, Medium averages 39 FPS with a range of 33 to 45, High averages 29 FPS, and Ultra falls to 22 FPS. The 4K Medium minimum of 33 FPS falls below the Low average of 52 FPS, indicating that even the lowest quality settings cannot maintain fluid performance at this resolution.

The complete dataset shows that the only preset achieving an average above 60 FPS at 1440p is Low (97 FPS), while at 4K, no preset reaches 60 FPS. At 1080p, all presets except Ultra (64 FPS) exceed 60 FPS, with Low and Medium providing particularly high frame rates. The minimum FPS values recorded only for Medium settings across all resolutions suggest this preset was tested with additional data collection, though the available figures show no unexpected frame-time spikes.

Settings Recommendations

The data supports 1080p Medium as the optimal balance for this combo in Hitman 2. With an average of 114 FPS and a minimum of 97 FPS, this preset provides a comfortable margin above 60 FPS while maintaining visual quality improvements over Low. The 131 FPS maximum indicates the system has headroom to handle busy scenes without dropping below the minimum recorded value.

For users prioritizing maximum visual fidelity at 1080p, High settings at 86 FPS average remain playable, while Ultra at 64 FPS approaches the 60 FPS threshold. The 22 FPS difference between High and Ultra at 1080p represents a 25.6% performance cost for the extra visual effects, which may not justify the quality gain in a stealth game where frame rate consistency matters for precise movement.

At 1440p, Low settings (97 FPS) are the only preset that comfortably exceeds 60 FPS. Medium at 73 FPS average with a 62 FPS minimum remains viable, but High (55 FPS) and Ultra (41 FPS) fall below the smoothness threshold. Users with 1440p displays should select Medium for the best combination of visual quality and playable frame rates.

4K resolution is not recommended with this GPU for Hitman 2. Even Low settings at 52 FPS average fall below 60 FPS, and Medium's minimum of 33 FPS will produce noticeable stutter during action sequences. The 22 FPS Ultra result is effectively unplayable. The data suggests that 1080p Medium or 1440p Medium provide the best measured experiences, with the GPU's 8 GB VRAM and 320.0 GB/s bandwidth proving insufficient for consistent 4K performance in this title.