Hitman 2

The Intel Core i7-14700F paired with the AMD Radeon RX 9070 ranks 1136th out of 3711 tested combos in Hitman 2, placing it in the upper third of all systems measured, which is a strong result for a stealth title that rewards both high frame rates and consistent frame pacing. This combination lands in the 69th percentile for GPU performance and the 91st percentile for CPU performance among all tested parts, meaning the processor is more exceptional relative to its peers than the graphics card, yet the overall system still delivers playable performance across every resolution tested. The data shows a clear pattern: at 1080p the CPU carries the load, at 1440p the balance shifts toward the GPU, and at 4K the graphics card becomes the definitive bottleneck, with average frame rates dropping from triple digits to sub-60 territory as resolution increases.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo rank of 1136 out of 3711 tested combinations places this system comfortably in the top 31 percent of all tested hardware pairings for Hitman 2, which is a notable achievement given that the game is nearly seven years old and has been benchmarked against a vast array of modern and legacy components. This ranking reflects the synergy between a 20-core processor with 28 threads and a current-generation RDNA 4.0 graphics card, both of which are active production parts as of their respective release dates in January 2024 and March 2025. When compared to other tested combos, this system outperforms roughly 69 percent of all configurations tested, which aligns closely with the GPU's percentile rank of 69, suggesting that the graphics card is the primary determinant of overall standing in this particular title.

The CPU's percentile rank of 91 against all tested CPUs is significantly higher than the GPU's 69, indicating that the i7-14700F is a stronger performer relative to its competition than the RX 9070 is relative to its own rivals. This disparity becomes evident in the benchmark results: the processor achieves a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 35122 and a single-core score of 4958, while the GPU posts a Passmark G3D score of 25381 and a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 6290. In the context of Hitman 2, which is not heavily multithreaded but does benefit from high single-core performance, the CPU's strong showing in single-threaded tests (Passmark single-thread score of 4257) helps maintain high frame rates at lower resolutions where the GPU is not the limiting factor.

The nearest rivals for the CPU include the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X with an average score of 53288 and a delta of 0.6 percent, placing the i7-14700F essentially on par with that high-end Ryzen processor, while the GPU's closest competitors include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER with an average score of 24170 and a delta of -1.2 percent, meaning the RX 9070 trails that older card by a slim margin in aggregate benchmarks. These comparisons matter for Hitman 2 because the game's performance profile at 1440p and 4K is heavily influenced by GPU throughput, and the RX 9070's position relative to these rivals indicates that it delivers competitive frame rates without being class-leading. The overall combo rank of 1136 suggests that while this system is not among the absolute top performers, it sits well above the median and provides a smooth experience across all tested settings.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 brings 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus with a bandwidth of 644.6 GB/s, which is more than sufficient for Hitman 2's texture and geometry demands at any resolution, including 4K Ultra where the average frame rate drops to 32 FPS. The GPU's clock speeds include a base of 1330 MHz, a boost of 2520 MHz, and a game clock of 2070 MHz, with memory running at 2518 MHz (20.1 Gbps effective), and these clocks directly influence the measured frame rates across all settings. At 4K High, the average FPS of 43 is well below the 60 FPS threshold, while at 4K Low the average climbs to 76 FPS, demonstrating that the GPU's raw compute throughput is the limiting factor at this resolution regardless of the graphical preset.

The GPU's die is built on a 4 nm process at TSMC with 53,900 million transistors on a 357 mm² die, featuring 3584 shading units, 224 texture mapping units, and 128 render output units, along with 56 ray tracing cores. These specifications translate to a pixel rate of 322.6 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 564.5 GTexel/s, with FP32 performance of 36.13 TFLOPS, which are the metrics that determine how quickly the card can fill frames in a game like Hitman 2 that features large, detailed environments with many NPCs. The 16 GB frame buffer is particularly relevant at 4K where texture streaming can exceed 8 GB, and the data shows that even with this ample memory, the card cannot maintain smooth frame rates at the highest settings, indicating that raw compute is the bottleneck rather than memory capacity.

Comparing the RX 9070 to its nearest rivals in aggregate benchmarks, it sits between the AMD Radeon RX 6800S (average score 24063, delta -0.8 percent) and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER (average score 24170, delta -1.2 percent), meaning it is essentially within one percent of both cards in overall GPU performance. However, in Hitman 2 specifically, the measured FPS at 1080p Low of 223 shows that the card has ample headroom at lower resolutions, while at 4K Ultra the 32 FPS result reveals its limitations when pushed to maximum settings. The GPU's Passmark G3D score of 25381 places it in the 69th percentile of all GPUs, which is a respectable but not elite position, and this is reflected in the 4K results where the card struggles to break 60 FPS even at Low settings.

Settings Recommendations

For the best experience on this system, the data indicates that Medium settings at 2560x1440 provide the optimal balance between visual quality and frame rate, delivering an average of 107 FPS with a minimum of 91 and a maximum of 123, which keeps the gameplay smooth and responsive during stealth sequences that require precise timing. At 1440p High, the average drops to 81 FPS, which is still playable but less consistent, while at 1440p Ultra the average falls to 60 FPS exactly, making it acceptable for slower-paced exploration but risky during action-heavy moments where frame drops could compromise stealth mechanics. The Medium preset at 1440p offers a 32 percent improvement over High settings (107 vs 81 FPS) and a 78 percent improvement over Ultra (107 vs 60 FPS), making it the clear choice for players who prioritize smoothness over maximum graphical fidelity.

At 1080p, the data shows that High settings deliver 126 FPS average, Medium delivers 167 FPS, and Low delivers 223 FPS, with Ultra at 93 FPS, meaning that even the most demanding preset at this resolution maintains a triple-digit frame rate, making 1080p High the recommended choice for competitive or high-refresh-rate displays. For 4K users, the situation is more constrained: Medium settings yield 57 FPS average with a minimum of 48 and a maximum of 66, which is borderline playable but may experience stutters, while Low settings yield 76 FPS average, making Low the only 4K preset that consistently stays above 60 FPS. The Ultra preset at 4K produces 32 FPS average, which is below the threshold for playable stealth action and should be avoided unless the player prioritizes visuals over performance.

The measured data reveals that the scaling from Low to Ultra at each resolution follows a consistent pattern: at 1080p, the drop from Low to Ultra is from 223 to 93 FPS (a 58 percent reduction), at 1440p from 143 to 60 FPS (a 58 percent reduction), and at 4K from 76 to 32 FPS (a 58 percent reduction), indicating that the game's settings scale uniformly across resolutions. Given this uniform scaling, the recommendation is to use Medium at 1440p for the best overall experience, as it provides a frame rate that is more than 75 percent higher than the 60 FPS target while still offering decent visual quality. For players with 1080p displays, High settings at 126 FPS are the sweet spot, as they provide excellent visual fidelity without sacrificing the high frame rates that this resolution is capable of delivering.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers its strongest performance across all settings, with Low producing 223 FPS average, Medium producing 167 FPS (minimum 142, maximum 192), High producing 126 FPS, and Ultra producing 93 FPS, demonstrating that the CPU and GPU combination has substantial headroom at this resolution. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 130 FPS, which is a massive range that shows how much the graphical settings affect performance when the resolution is not the limiting factor, and even the lowest performance at Ultra remains well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. The Medium preset at 1080p shows a minimum of 142 FPS and a maximum of 192 FPS, indicating that frame times are consistent enough for competitive play on high-refresh-rate monitors.

At 2560x1440, the performance drops noticeably but remains respectable, with Low producing 143 FPS, Medium producing 107 FPS (minimum 91, maximum 123), High producing 81 FPS, and Ultra producing 60 FPS exactly, which is the first time in the resolution ladder that a preset dips to the 60 FPS floor. The step from Medium to High at 1440p is a 26 FPS reduction (107 to 81), while the step from High to Ultra is a 21 FPS reduction (81 to 60), showing that the Ultra preset carries a heavy cost for marginal visual gains. The Medium preset at 1440p maintains a minimum of 91 FPS, which is comfortably above the playable threshold, making it the most versatile option for this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the performance is limited by the GPU, with Low producing 76 FPS, Medium producing 57 FPS (minimum 48, maximum 66), High producing 43 FPS, and Ultra producing 32 FPS, showing a clear progression where only Low settings stay above 60 FPS. The drop from Low to Medium at 4K is 19 FPS (76 to 57), while the drop from Medium to High is 14 FPS (57 to 43), and the drop from High to Ultra is 11 FPS (43 to 32), indicating that each settings tier reduces performance by a smaller absolute amount as the baseline gets lower. The Medium preset at 4K has a minimum of 48 FPS, which may cause noticeable stuttering in busy scenes, while the High preset's 43 FPS average is marginal for a game that relies on precise timing for stealth mechanics.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K at Medium settings shows a reduction from 167 FPS to 57 FPS, which represents a 66 percent drop in performance, indicating that the GPU becomes increasingly stressed as resolution increases. At High settings, the reduction from 1080p to 4K is from 126 FPS to 43 FPS (a 66 percent drop), while at Low settings the reduction is from 223 FPS to 76 FPS (also a 66 percent drop), showing that the scaling penalty is consistent across all settings presets. This uniform scaling pattern suggests that the GPU is the limiting component at higher resolutions, as the CPU's performance headroom at 1080p cannot compensate for the increased pixel count at 4K.

The step from 1080p to 1440p at Medium settings yields a reduction from 167 FPS to 107 FPS (a 36 percent drop), while the step from 1440p to 4K at the same settings yields a reduction from 107 FPS to 57 FPS (a 47 percent drop), indicating that the 4K resolution imposes a disproportionately larger penalty than the jump to 1440p. This non-linear scaling is typical of GPU-bound scenarios, where the number of pixels quadruples from 1080p to 4K but only increases by 78 percent from 1080p to 1440p, and the measured data confirms that the RX 9070 cannot maintain 60 FPS at 4K except at Low settings. The CPU's role in this scaling is evident at 1080p Low, where the 223 FPS result indicates that the processor can feed the GPU far more frames than it can render at higher resolutions, but this headroom becomes irrelevant once the pixel count increases.

At 4K Ultra, the 32 FPS result is only 14 percent of the 223 FPS achieved at 1080p Low, showing that the combination of maximum settings and 4K resolution overwhelms the GPU's compute capabilities, despite the 16 GB of VRAM being more than sufficient. The data reveals that the limiting component shifts from CPU at 1080p Low (where 223 FPS indicates processor-driven performance) to GPU at 4K Ultra (where 32 FPS indicates graphics-bound performance), with the crossover occurring somewhere between 1440p and 4K. For players targeting 4K, the Low preset is the only viable option for maintaining 60 FPS, while Medium settings at 4K require accepting a frame rate near 57 FPS with occasional drops to 48 FPS.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700F features 20 cores and 28 threads with a base clock of 2.10 GHz and a boost clock of 5.40 GHz, which provides the single-thread performance necessary for Hitman 2's game logic and AI calculations, as evidenced by the Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4958 and the Passmark single-thread score of 4257. The processor's 33 MB of shared L3 cache and 2 MB per-core L2 cache help reduce memory latency, which is beneficial for a game that streams large environments and tracks numerous NPCs in real time. The 10 nm process node and Raptor Lake architecture with a 65 W TDP make this a power-efficient part, but the benchmark scores show that it punches well above its power envelope, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 35122.

In Hitman 2 specifically, the CPU's role is most apparent at 1080p Low, where the system achieves 223 FPS, a figure that far exceeds what the GPU could render if it were the sole bottleneck, indicating that the processor is capable of feeding frames at a rate well above the GPU's rendering capacity. The CPU's performance relative to its rivals shows that it is essentially on par with the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X (delta of 0.6 percent) and the AMD EPYC 7313P (delta of 0.8 percent), while slightly trailing the Intel Xeon 6505P (delta of -0.2 percent), meaning that this processor is competitive with top-tier consumer and server parts. The Passmark multi-thread score of 41317 and the Geekbench multi-core score of 19620 further confirm that the CPU has substantial headroom for any game that can utilize multiple cores, although Hitman 2's reliance on single-thread performance means the boost clock of 5.40 GHz is more critical than the core count.

The CPU's 91st percentile ranking against all tested CPUs indicates that it outperforms the vast majority of processors in the benchmark database, and this is reflected in the measured FPS at 1080p where the system achieves triple-digit frame rates even at Ultra settings (93 FPS). The processor's 28 threads provide ample parallelism for background tasks and game engine threads, but the data shows that Hitman 2 does not scale perfectly with core count, as the single-core score of 4958 in Cinebench R23 correlates more strongly with the 223 FPS at 1080p Low than the multi-core score of 35122 does. The CPU's launch MSRP is $359, and it supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory with dual-channel configuration, along with PCIe Gen 5 with 16 lanes, which provides sufficient bandwidth for the RX 9070's PCIe 5.0 x16 interface.

The processor's nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X, has an average benchmark score of 53288 compared to the i7-14700F's 53620, showing that the Intel part is 0.6 percent faster on aggregate, but in Hitman 2 this difference is unlikely to be noticeable given that both CPUs can drive frame rates well above 200 at 1080p Low. At 4K, the CPU's role diminishes almost entirely, as the frame rate drops to 32 FPS at Ultra settings, which is purely GPU-limited, and even at 4K Low the 76 FPS result is more than 60 percent lower than the 1080p Low figure, underscoring that the processor is not the constraint at higher resolutions. The conclusion from the measured data is that the i7-14700F provides exceptional single-thread performance that maximizes frame rates at 1080p and 1440p, while the RX 9070 becomes the limiting factor at 4K, making this combination best suited for high-refresh-rate 1080p or 1440p gaming in Hitman 2.