Hitman 2

The Intel Core i5-9400 and AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT pairing lands at rank 1354 out of 1795 tested combos in Hitman 2, placing it in the lower-middle tier of the database. This position reflects a combination that can handle the game at playable framerates in most scenarios but struggles to deliver a consistently smooth experience at the highest visual presets. The data indicates a system built around a six-core processor from 2018 and a 2019 graphics card, both now end-of-life, which together produce a performance profile that is competent but far from elite in this specific title.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo's rank of 1354 out of 1795 represents roughly the 25th percentile of all tested pairings, meaning approximately three-quarters of other CPU-GPU combinations deliver higher average framerates in Hitman 2. This is a significant finding because it shows the pairing is not competitive with modern hardware, but it also isn't a bottom-tier configuration. The GPU's individual percentile ranking against all GPUs is 68, which is notably higher than the combo's overall rank, suggesting the processor is holding the pairing back more than the graphics card in this game's specific workload. When examining the GPU's nearest rivals, the RX 5700 XT sits within 0.9 percent of the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000 and within 0.6 percent of the GeForce RTX 5060 Mobile, showing that its raw compute capability remains relevant. However, the CPU's percentile ranking is exactly 50, placing it squarely in the middle of all processors tested, and its nearest rival, the Intel Xeon E-2134, is only 0.4 percent faster, indicating that the i5-9400 is not a bottleneck in synthetic tests but may behave differently in real gaming scenarios.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT is built on the Navi 10 chip using the RDNA 1.0 architecture on a 7 nm process from TSMC, with 10,300 million transistors packed into a 251 mm² die. It comes equipped with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is a critical factor for Hitman 2's detailed environments. The GPU operates at a base clock of 1605 MHz, a game clock of 1755 MHz, and a boost clock of 1905 MHz, with memory running at 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective). These clocks translate to a pixel rate of 121.9 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 304.8 GTexel/s, with FP32 performance at 9.754 TFLOPS. In the measured results, the GPU's capabilities become clear as settings increase: at 1080p, the gap between Low and Ultra settings is substantial, with the card delivering 144.7 FPS on Low but dropping to 60.1 FPS on Ultra. This indicates that while the GPU has enough raw power for high refresh rates at lower settings, the demands of Hitman 2's Ultra preset push the card to its limits, particularly at higher resolutions where the 8 GB frame buffer and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth become more stressed.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 provides six physical cores and six threads, with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.10 GHz, running on the Coffee Lake architecture with a 14 nm process. It has a 9 MB shared L3 cache and supports DDR4 memory in dual-channel configuration, offering 42.7 GB/s of memory bandwidth. The CPU's synthetic benchmark scores show a single-core Cinebench R23 result of 1125 and a multi-core score of 7969, which places it at the 50th percentile of all CPUs. In Hitman 2, which is known for its AI-driven crowd simulations and complex physics, the six-core design without hyper-threading means the processor must manage all game threads directly. The data suggests this becomes a limiting factor at higher framerates: at 1080p Low, the combo reaches 144.7 FPS, but this is likely near the CPU's ceiling for maintaining frame pacing. The nearest rival, the Intel Core i3-10305, scores nearly identically with a 0.2 percent delta, yet the i5-9400's six cores should theoretically provide more headroom for background tasks. The 65 W TDP and Intel Socket 1151 compatibility indicate this is a mainstream desktop part, not a high-end enthusiast chip, which aligns with its mid-pack percentile ranking.

Measured FPS Breakdown

Looking at the measured FPS data, the pattern across resolutions and settings is consistent with a GPU-bound system at higher quality presets. At 1920x1080, the results are: Low 144.7 FPS, Medium 109.3 FPS, High 78.8 FPS, and Ultra 60.1 FPS. This represents a drop of 84.6 FPS from Low to Ultra, a 58 percent reduction, showing how dramatically the Ultra preset impacts performance. At 2560x1440, the framerates fall to 91.5 FPS on Low, 68.8 FPS on Medium, 53.3 FPS on High, and 37.2 FPS on Ultra. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1440p is 54.3 FPS, a 59 percent decrease, which is proportionally similar to 1080p. At 3840x2160, the situation becomes more challenging: Low produces 50.4 FPS, Medium 40.1 FPS, High 26.1 FPS, and Ultra drops to just 18.5 FPS. The drop from Low to Ultra at 4K is 31.9 FPS, a 63 percent reduction, indicating that the GPU is the primary bottleneck at this resolution. The Ultra preset at 4K is effectively unplayable, while even High at 4K falls below the 30 FPS threshold, making 1440p the practical ceiling for this combination when aiming for smooth gameplay.

Resolution Scaling

The scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals critical insights about which component limits performance in Hitman 2. At Low settings, the framerate drops from 144.7 FPS at 1080p to 91.5 FPS at 1440p (a 37 percent reduction) and then to 50.4 FPS at 4K (a 65 percent reduction from the 1080p baseline). This steep decline at Low settings, where the CPU has less work to do per frame, indicates the GPU is becoming the limiting factor as pixel count increases. At Ultra settings, the drop is even more pronounced: from 60.1 FPS at 1080p to 37.2 FPS at 1440p (a 38 percent reduction) and then to 18.5 FPS at 4K (a 69 percent reduction). The fact that the percentage drop from 1080p to 4K is larger at Ultra (69 percent) than at Low (65 percent) suggests that the combination of higher resolution and higher settings places an overwhelming burden on the GPU. The data shows that at 1080p, the system can deliver smooth gameplay even at High settings (78.8 FPS), but at 4K, even Medium settings (40.1 FPS) struggle to maintain a consistent 40 FPS. This scaling behavior points to a system where the GPU's 8 GB of VRAM and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth are sufficient for 1080p and 1440p gaming but become inadequate at 4K, particularly when the game's texture and shading demands increase with the Ultra preset. The i5-9400's role as a limiting factor is most evident at 1080p Low, where the 144.7 FPS result approaches the practical ceiling for a six-core, six-thread processor in this game, whereas at higher resolutions the GPU takes over as the primary constraint.