Hitman 2

# How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i5-11400F paired with the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT achieves a combo rank of 756 out of 3711 tested combinations in Hitman 2. This places the pairing in the top 20.4% of all tested configurations, a strong result for a stealth title that rewards both CPU responsiveness and GPU throughput. The ranking reflects the balance between a mid-range 11th Gen processor and a high-end RDNA 3 graphics card, where the GPU clearly carries the heavier load in most scenarios.

Benchmark data shows the CPU sits at the 71st percentile against all processors, with an average benchmark score of 17177. Its nearest rivals in aggregate performance include the AMD EPYC 7H12 (deltaPct 0.3), Intel Core i5-12450H (deltaPct -0.4), AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 8300G (deltaPct -0.6), and Intel Core Ultra 7 164U (deltaPct 0.6). These margins are remarkably tight, all within 0.6% of each other, indicating that the i5-11400F delivers compute performance squarely in line with a broad cluster of competing parts. The GPU, meanwhile, ranks at the 55th percentile among all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 13745, but its nearest rivals are surprising — the AMD Radeon 660M (deltaPct -0.5), NVIDIA RTX A2000 Mobile (deltaPct -0.5), AMD Radeon RX 570X (deltaPct -0.9), and AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT (deltaPct 1.5). The RX 7900 XT's aggregate score is dragged down by synthetic tests that do not reflect its gaming prowess, yet in Hitman 2 the measured frames tell a different story.

The combo's rank of 756 suggests that while the hardware is capable, it does not dominate the leaderboard — many other pairings achieve higher average FPS in this title. However, the data indicates that this configuration is well above the median, and the specific FPS measurements reveal where the strengths and bottlenecks lie.

# Settings Recommendations

For Hitman 2, the measured data shows a clear progression across settings presets at each resolution, and the optimal choice depends on the user's display target. At 1080p, the High preset delivers 145 FPS average, which is already far above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth play. The Medium preset jumps to 191 FPS average (with min 162 and max 220), while Low reaches 255 FPS. Ultra drops to 106 FPS. Given that the gap between High and Medium is 46 FPS — a 31.7% improvement — while the visual fidelity difference between these presets is typically modest in stealth titles, Medium offers the best balance of fluidity and image quality at 1080p. The min FPS of 162 at Medium ensures no noticeable stutter even in crowded scenes.

At 1440p, the High preset averages 92 FPS, which is still comfortably playable. Medium scales up to 122 FPS (min 104, max 141), and Low reaches 163 FPS. Ultra drops to 68 FPS, which remains above 60 but with less headroom for demanding moments. For a 144Hz display, Medium is the recommended preset — it maintains a 104 FPS minimum, avoiding dips below the refresh rate in most situations. High is acceptable for 60Hz displays, but the 30 FPS difference between High and Medium at this resolution makes Medium the value pick for competitive or fast-paced play.

At 4K, the situation changes dramatically. High averages 49 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS target. Medium averages 65 FPS (min 55, max 75), making it the only preset that consistently hits near-60 FPS performance. Ultra drops to 36 FPS, and Low reaches 87 FPS but at a significant visual cost. For 4K users, Medium is the clear recommendation — it provides the highest average FPS that stays above the 60 FPS line in average terms, while the 55 FPS minimum is a minor dip that most players will tolerate in a stealth game where reaction time is less critical. Pushing to High sacrifices 16 FPS (24.6% drop) for marginal visual gains, which is not worthwhile when the average already falls below 60.

# Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals the GPU as the primary limiting component in this pairing. At High settings, the average FPS drops from 145 at 1080p to 92 at 1440p (a 36.6% reduction) and then to 49 at 4K (a 46.7% reduction from 1440p). This scaling pattern is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario — the CPU has ample headroom at lower resolutions, but the RX 7900 XT's rendering workload grows quadratically with pixel count.

At Medium settings, the progression is 191 FPS (1080p) → 122 FPS (1440p) → 65 FPS (4K). The percentage drops are 36.1% from 1080p to 1440p and 46.7% from 1440p to 4K, nearly identical to the High preset's scaling. This consistency across presets reinforces that resolution, not settings, drives the FPS decline — a hallmark of GPU limitation. The CPU, with 6 cores and 12 threads at boost clocks up to 4.40 GHz, is not the constraint here; if it were, we would see smaller FPS differences between 1440p and 4K as the GPU waits on the processor.

The Ultra preset shows a similar pattern: 106 FPS at 1080p, 68 FPS at 1440p, and 36 FPS at 4K. The 1080p-to-1440p drop is 35.8%, and the 1440p-to-4K drop is 47.1%. Interestingly, the Low preset exhibits the steepest percentage declines: 255 FPS at 1080p, 163 FPS at 1440p (36.1% drop), and 87 FPS at 4K (46.6% drop). Even at Low settings, where the CPU has less work per frame, the GPU still dominates the scaling curve. This suggests that for users targeting 4K, the RX 7900 XT's 20 GB of GDDR6 memory and 800.0 GB/s bandwidth are being taxed heavily, while the i5-11400F's 51.2 GB/s memory bandwidth is not a factor.

# Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the configuration delivers its highest frame rates. Low settings produce 255 FPS average, followed by Medium at 191 FPS (min 162, max 220), High at 145 FPS, and Ultra at 106 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 149 FPS, a 58.4% reduction, indicating that the GPU has substantial headroom even at the highest quality preset. The 1080p results are all above the 60 FPS threshold, with even Ultra maintaining 106 FPS — this makes 1080p a non-issue for this hardware.

At 2560x1440, the averages are 163 FPS (Low), 122 FPS (Medium, min 104, max 141), 92 FPS (High), and 68 FPS (Ultra). The Medium preset's min FPS of 104 is notable — it stays above 100 FPS even in demanding scenes, which is excellent for high-refresh-rate monitors. High drops to 92 FPS average, still fluid but with less margin, while Ultra at 68 FPS is just above the 60 FPS line. The 1440p results show that this combo is well-suited for 144Hz gaming at Medium or 60Hz at Ultra.

At 3840x2160, the numbers tighten considerably. Low averages 87 FPS, Medium 65 FPS (min 55, max 75), High 49 FPS, and Ultra 36 FPS. Only Low and Medium exceed the 60 FPS average threshold, and Medium's 55 FPS minimum is the only sub-60 reading in the entire dataset. High and Ultra fall below playable-for-competitive standards, though they remain acceptable for slower-paced stealth gameplay. The 4K data confirms that this combo is not ideal for max-settings 4K gaming — users must drop to Medium to maintain playable frame rates.

# GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT is the dominant component in this pairing, and its specifications explain the measured FPS patterns. The GPU features 20 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 320-bit bus, yielding 800.0 GB/s of bandwidth. With 5376 shading units, 336 TMUs, and 192 ROPs, the card is built for high-resolution rendering. Its boost clock reaches 2394 MHz, with a game clock of 2025 MHz and base clock of 1387 MHz. The RDNA 3.0 architecture, fabricated on TSMC's 5 nm process with 57,700 million transistors on a 529 mm² die, delivers 51.48 TFLOPS of FP32 compute.

In Hitman 2, the GPU's memory capacity is not a limiting factor — the game's textures at 4K Ultra would require far less than 20 GB. Instead, the bottleneck emerges from the rendering load. The card's 459.6 GPixel/s pixel rate and 804.4 GTexel/s texture rate are substantial, yet at 4K Ultra the 36 FPS average indicates that the game's draw calls and shading complexity overwhelm the GPU's throughput. The 65 FPS at 4K Medium shows that reducing settings lowers the per-pixel work enough to approach 60 FPS.

The GPU's benchmark scores are mixed: PassMark G3D scores 29009, while DirectX 12 scores a lowly 110 and DirectX 11 scores 340. These synthetic results are misleading for Hitman 2, which appears to favor the card's raw compute and memory bandwidth. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 5623 and Geekbench Vulkan score of 71068 suggest strong modern API performance. The GPU's 55th percentile ranking against all GPUs understates its gaming capability — the nearest rivals include integrated and mobile parts with far lower gaming performance, indicating that the average benchmark score is skewed by workloads that do not reflect Hitman 2's specific demands.

# FAQ

Q: Is the Intel Core i5-11400F sufficient for Hitman 2 at 4K?

A: Yes, the CPU is not the bottleneck at 4K. The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K is consistent (approximately 36-47% drops per resolution step), which indicates the GPU is the limiting factor. The i5-11400F's 6 cores and 12 threads with 12 MB shared L3 cache provide enough processing power to feed the RX 7900 XT at all tested resolutions.

Q: What is the best settings preset for a 60Hz 1440p display?

A: The High preset averages 92 FPS at 1440p, which exceeds 60 FPS with headroom. However, the Ultra preset at 68 FPS is also above 60 FPS. For a 60Hz display, both work, but High offers a safer margin (92 vs 68 FPS) while Ultra provides higher visual quality. The Medium preset at 122 FPS is overkill for 60Hz.

Q: Can this combo achieve 60 FPS at 4K?

A: Only the Medium preset achieves an average above 60 FPS at 4K (65 FPS), but its minimum FPS is 55, meaning occasional dips below 60. Low settings average 87 FPS and are the only preset that maintains 60+ FPS consistently. High and Ultra average 49 and 36 FPS respectively, which are below the 60 FPS target.

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

A: The i5-11400F's average benchmark score of 17177 is within 0.6% of all four nearest rivals: AMD EPYC 7H12 (17120, 0.3% lower), Intel Core i5-12450H (17239, 0.4% higher), AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 8300G (17278, 0.6% higher), and Intel Core Ultra 7 164U (17074, 0.6% lower). The performance cluster is extremely tight.

Q: Is the RX 7900 XT's 20 GB VRAM useful for Hitman 2?

A: Hitman 2 does not require 20 GB of VRAM at any tested settings, so the full capacity is not utilized. However, the GPU's 800.0 GB/s memory bandwidth is beneficial for the game's 4K rendering, as the bandwidth helps maintain texture streaming performance. The extra VRAM provides headroom for future titles or higher-resolution texture packs.

Q: What does the combo rank of 756 out of 3711 indicate?

A: It means this pairing outperforms roughly 79.6% of all tested CPU-GPU combinations in Hitman 2. The rank places it in the top quintile, though not among the elite configurations. The result is consistent with the hardware's mid-range CPU and high-end GPU positioning.

# CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-11400F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor from the Rocket Lake generation, built on Intel's 14 nm process. Its base clock is 2.60 GHz with a boost clock of 4.40 GHz, and it carries 12 MB of shared L3 cache alongside 512 KB L2 and 80 KB L1 per core. The CPU supports dual-channel DDR4 memory with 51.2 GB/s bandwidth and operates on the Intel Socket 1200 platform with PCIe Gen 4 (20 lanes). It has a 65 W TDP and is a locked (non-unlockable multiplier) part.

In Hitman 2, the CPU's role is to handle game logic, AI, and draw call submission. The 3DMark single-thread score of 868 and multi-thread score of 5652 (max threads) indicate modest single-core performance compared to modern parts, but adequate for this title. The Cinebench R23 scores of 2024 (single-core) and 14340 (multi-core) show that the processor delivers balanced performance across both metrics. The PassMark single-thread score of 2981 and multi-thread score of 16908 corroborate this.

The measured FPS data suggests the CPU is not a limiting factor at any resolution. At 1080p Low, the combo hits 255 FPS, which is far beyond what most displays support — this indicates the CPU can feed the GPU with frames at very high rates. If the i5-11400F were the bottleneck, we would expect the 1080p and 1440p results to be closer together, as the GPU would be waiting on the CPU. Instead, the FPS drops consistently with resolution, confirming the GPU is the primary constraint.

The CPU's percentile rank of 71 against all processors places it above average, but its nearest rivals in aggregate score include both server and mobile parts, showing that raw multithreaded performance is not exceptional. For Hitman 2, which is not heavily multithreaded, the single-thread performance (Cinebench R23 single-core 2024, Geekbench single-core 1777) is more relevant. These scores are sufficient to keep the RX 7900 XT fed, as evidenced by the 1080p results exceeding 100 FPS at all settings. The 12 MB L3 cache helps with the game's data locality, reducing memory latency that could otherwise impact frame pacing.