Hitman 2

The Intel Core i5-14400F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 delivers a compelling but nuanced performance profile in Hitman 2, as the measured frame rates reveal a system that scales predictably with resolution and settings, yet shows clear limits at the highest visual presets. Across the twelve measured data points, the combo ranks 916th out of 3,711 tested combinations, placing it in the top quarter of all tested systems, which suggests a capable mid-to-high-end pairing for this particular stealth title.

Resolution Scaling

The data shows a consistent and expected pattern: frame rates decline as resolution increases, but the magnitude of that decline varies significantly depending on the quality preset selected. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 236 at 1920x1080 to 151 at 2560x1440, a reduction of 36 percent, and then further to 81 at 3840x2160, which represents a 66 percent drop from the 1080p baseline. This steep scaling at Low settings strongly indicates that the GPU becomes the dominant limiting factor as pixel count rises, since the CPU has ample headroom to feed frames at lower resolutions.

Moving to Medium settings, the same pattern holds but with slightly smaller absolute numbers: 177 FPS at 1080p, 113 at 1440p, and 60 at 4K. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 36 percent, nearly identical to the Low preset’s scaling, while the 4K figure represents a 66 percent reduction from 1080p, again matching the Low preset’s percentage decline. This consistency suggests that the RTX 4070’s rendering workload scales almost linearly with pixel count, regardless of the quality tier, which points to a GPU-bound scenario at all three resolutions.

At High settings, the scaling becomes even more pronounced: 134 FPS at 1080p falls to 86 at 1440p (a 36 percent drop) and then to 46 at 4K (a 66 percent drop from 1080p). The uniformity of these percentages across Low, Medium, and High is striking—each preset shows roughly the same relative decline between resolutions. This indicates that the RTX 4070’s compute throughput, rather than memory bandwidth or CPU limitations, is the primary constraint when moving from 1080p to 4K.

Ultra settings, however, tell a slightly different story. The 1080p figure of 99 FPS drops to 63 at 1440p (a 36 percent decline), but the 4K result of 34 FPS represents a 66 percent reduction from 1080p, once again matching the pattern. Notably, the absolute gap between Ultra and High at each resolution is substantial: 35 FPS at 1080p, 23 FPS at 1440p, and 12 FPS at 4K. This widening gap at lower resolutions suggests that Ultra settings impose a heavier per-pixel cost, likely through increased shading complexity, which the GPU handles less efficiently when not already saturated by resolution.

The overall picture is clear: the system is GPU-limited at 4K across all settings, with the CPU’s role diminishing as resolution rises. At 1080p, particularly with Low and Medium presets, the frame rates exceed 170 FPS, which indicates that the i5-14400F has sufficient single-thread performance to avoid bottlenecking the RTX 4070, but the GPU still governs the final output.

Settings Recommendations

Given the measured data, the optimal settings depend heavily on the target resolution and desired frame rate. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset delivers 177 FPS on average, which is more than sufficient for smooth gameplay on high-refresh-rate monitors. The jump from Medium to High costs 43 FPS (134 average), while Ultra costs another 35 FPS (99 average). For players prioritizing fluidity over visual fidelity, Medium offers the best balance, as it maintains nearly double the frame rate of Ultra while still providing a substantial upgrade over Low’s 236 FPS, which may be unnecessary for most displays.

At 2560x1440, the Medium preset again emerges as the strongest recommendation, with an average of 113 FPS. This is comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold for most gaming displays, and it represents a 27 FPS improvement over High (86 FPS) and a 50 FPS improvement over Ultra (63 FPS). The Low preset at 1440p reaches 151 FPS, but the visual compromise may not be worth the extra 38 FPS over Medium, especially since Medium’s minimum of 96 FPS (from the measured minFps of 96) shows acceptable frame time consistency.

At 3840x2160, the situation becomes more constrained. The Medium preset delivers 60 FPS on average, with a minimum of 51 FPS and a maximum of 69 FPS, which is exactly at the edge of playability for many users. High settings drop to 46 FPS, and Ultra falls to 34 FPS, both of which are likely too low for comfortable gameplay in a stealth title that benefits from consistent frame pacing. Low settings at 4K reach 81 FPS, but the visual downgrade is severe. For 4K, Medium is the only preset that offers a playable experience without sacrificing too much visual quality, as it sits precisely at 60 FPS average.

The data suggests that the best experience per the measured rows is achieved by selecting Medium at any resolution, since it consistently provides the highest frame rate that still exceeds 60 FPS at 1080p and 1440p, and exactly hits 60 FPS at 4K. High and Ultra presets are only viable at 1080p if the user has a monitor with a refresh rate below 134 Hz, and Ultra should be avoided entirely at 4K due to the 34 FPS average.

FAQ

Q: What is the average frame rate at 2560x1440 with High settings?

A: The measured average FPS at 2560x1440 with High settings is 86 frames per second, which is 48 FPS lower than the same settings at 1920x1080.

Q: Does the RTX 4070 bottleneck the i5-14400F at 1080p?

A: The data shows that at 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combo achieves 236 FPS, and with Medium settings it reaches 177 FPS. These high frame rates indicate that the CPU is not the primary bottleneck at this resolution, since the GPU is still able to produce well over 100 FPS even on more demanding presets.

Q: What is the minimum FPS recorded for the Medium preset at 3840x2160?

A: The measured minimum FPS for the Medium preset at 3840x2160 is 51 frames per second, with an average of 60 FPS and a maximum of 69 FPS.

Q: How does the combo rank among all tested configurations for this game?

A: The combination of the Intel Core i5-14400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 ranks 916th out of 3,711 tested combos for Hitman 2, which places it in the top 25 percent of all systems tested.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Ultra and Low settings at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, the Ultra preset averages 99 FPS while the Low preset averages 236 FPS, resulting in a difference of 137 FPS between the two presets.

Q: Is the RTX 4070’s 12 GB VRAM sufficient for this game at 4K?

A: The measured data shows that the GPU can produce 81 FPS at 4K with Low settings and 60 FPS with Medium settings, which suggests that VRAM capacity is not a limiting factor for this title, as the game runs within the available memory allocation at all tested settings.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete set of measured frame rates provides a detailed view of how this combination performs across all twelve tested configurations. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers the highest average at 236 FPS, followed by Medium at 177 FPS with a minimum of 151 FPS and a maximum of 204 FPS. High settings average 134 FPS, and Ultra settings average 99 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra at 1080p is 137 FPS, which demonstrates the significant impact of quality presets on this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the Low preset averages 151 FPS, Medium averages 113 FPS with a minimum of 96 FPS and a maximum of 130 FPS, High averages 86 FPS, and Ultra averages 63 FPS. The range from Low to Ultra is 88 FPS, which is narrower than at 1080p, indicating that the higher pixel count compresses the performance differences between settings. The Medium preset’s minimum of 96 FPS is noteworthy, as it remains above the 60 FPS threshold even in the worst-case frame times.

At 3840x2160, the Low preset averages 81 FPS, Medium averages 60 FPS with a minimum of 51 FPS and a maximum of 69 FPS, High averages 46 FPS, and Ultra averages 34 FPS. The range here is 47 FPS from Low to Ultra, further compressing as resolution increases. The Medium preset’s minimum of 51 FPS is the only recorded minimum below 60 FPS across all resolutions, which highlights the challenge of maintaining consistent frame rates at 4K. The High and Ultra presets at 4K both fall below 50 FPS, rendering them largely impractical for smooth gameplay.

Comparing the same preset across resolutions reveals the scaling behavior. For High settings, the average FPS drops from 134 at 1080p to 86 at 1440p (a 36 percent reduction) and then to 46 at 4K (a 66 percent reduction from 1080p). For Medium settings, the progression is 177 to 113 to 60, with the same 36 percent and 66 percent reductions. For Low settings, the progression is 236 to 151 to 81, again matching the same percentages. Ultra settings follow the pattern as well: 99 to 63 to 34. This uniformity across all four presets strongly suggests that the RTX 4070’s pixel throughput scales almost perfectly with resolution, regardless of the workload complexity imposed by the settings.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070, built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with a 5 nm process from TSMC, serves as the primary driver of the measured frame rates. Its 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus provides a bandwidth of 504.2 GB/s, which is ample for the textures and geometry in Hitman 2 at the tested resolutions. The GPU’s base clock of 1920 MHz and boost clock of 2475 MHz, combined with 5,888 shading units and 64 ROPs, allow it to sustain high throughput, as evidenced by the 236 FPS result at 1080p Low.

The GPU’s performance in this title is best understood through the resolution scaling data. The consistent 36 percent drop from 1080p to 1440p and 66 percent drop from 1080p to 4K across all presets indicates that the RTX 4070’s compute resources are the limiting factor when pixel count increases. The GPU’s FP32 throughput of 29.15 TFLOPS and texture rate of 455.4 GTexel/s directly influence how quickly it can process the increasing pixel workload. At 4K, the GPU is clearly saturated, since even the Low preset only yields 81 FPS, which is still respectable but far below the 236 FPS seen at 1080p.

The memory subsystem, with 12 GB of GDDR6X and 504.2 GB/s bandwidth, does not appear to cause any visible bottlenecks in the measured data. The 4K results, particularly the 60 FPS at Medium settings, suggest that the GPU can access textures without stalling, as the frame times (minimum 51 FPS) remain relatively stable. The GPU’s 81st percentile ranking among all GPUs, based on its average benchmark score of 37,648, places it slightly above the NVIDIA Tesla P4 (37,628) and AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 (37,507), while being 1.3 percent behind the RTX 4080 Mobile (38,135). This positioning in synthetic benchmarks translates to strong real-world performance in Hitman 2.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14400F, with its 10 cores and 16 threads, provides the computational foundation for this combo. Its base clock of 2.50 GHz and boost clock of 4.70 GHz, combined with 20 MB of shared L3 cache, deliver strong single-thread performance that is critical for game logic and physics in Hitman 2. The CPU’s benchmark results support this: a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 3,055 and a Geekbench single-core score of 2,058, both of which are competitive figures for a mid-range desktop processor.

The CPU’s role in this game is most evident at lower resolutions where frame rates are highest. At 1080p with Low settings, the 236 FPS average demonstrates that the i5-14400F can feed the RTX 4070 with enough draw calls and game state updates to sustain over 200 FPS. Even at 1080p Ultra, the 99 FPS result shows no obvious CPU bottleneck, as the GPU is still able to render at nearly 100 FPS. The CPU’s 83rd percentile ranking among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 32,279, places it just 0.1 percent ahead of the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 8840U (32,233) and 0.5 percent ahead of the Intel Core i7-12800H (32,121), while being 0.2 percent behind the AMD Ryzen 7 6800HS (32,354).

As resolution increases, the CPU’s influence diminishes. The identical percentage drops in FPS across all presets when moving from 1080p to 4K suggest that the CPU is not the limiting factor at higher resolutions; the GPU’s rendering workload dominates. The fact that the 4K Low preset achieves 81 FPS while the 4K Ultra preset achieves 34 FPS further indicates that the CPU can handle the game’s logic at 4K without becoming a bottleneck, since the GPU’s preset-dependent workload is the clear differentiator. The i5-14400F’s 10 cores and 16 threads are more than sufficient for this 2018 title, which does not appear to require extensive multi-threading based on the consistent frame rates across all settings.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-14400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 achieves a rank of 916 out of 3,711 tested combos for Hitman 2, placing it in the 75th percentile of all systems tested. This ranking reflects the balanced nature of the pairing: the CPU’s 83rd percentile standing and the GPU’s 81st percentile standing combine to produce a system that performs slightly above average for its component class. The rank of 916 means that approximately 2,795 other combos perform worse, while 915 perform better, which aligns with the components’ individual positions in their respective benchmark hierarchies.

The ranking is particularly notable given the game’s age, as Hitman 2 was released in 2018 and does not demand the latest hardware. The combo’s top-quarter placement suggests that both the CPU and GPU are well-matched for this title, with neither component dramatically outpacing the other. If the CPU were significantly weaker, the ranking would likely be lower due to frame rate drops at 1080p; if the GPU were significantly weaker, the 4K results would worsen. Instead, the data shows a cohesive pairing where the i5-14400F’s strong single-thread performance supports high frame rates at lower resolutions, while the RTX 4070’s substantial compute resources handle the pixel workload at higher resolutions.

In the context of the nearest rivals for each component, this combo’s ranking makes sense. The CPU sits within 0.5 percent of its closest competitors in average benchmark score, meaning any of those CPUs would likely produce similar Hitman 2 results when paired with the same GPU. Similarly, the GPU’s nearest rivals—the Tesla P4, RX Vega 56, RTX 4080 Mobile, and Radeon PRO W6400—are all within 1.3 percent of its average score, indicating that the RTX 4070’s performance in this game is representative of its class. The 916th rank out of 3,711 is therefore a reasonable outcome for a mid-range desktop CPU paired with a high-end consumer GPU, and it confirms that this combo delivers a strong, consistent experience across the tested resolutions and settings.