Hitman 2

Resolution Scaling

The measured frame rates for Hitman 2 with the Intel Core i7-14700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 show a clear and predictable scaling pattern as resolution increases from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 236 at 1080p to 151 at 1440p, then to 81 at 4K. This represents a 36% reduction moving from 1080p to 1440p, and a further 46% reduction moving from 1440p to 4K. The progression is steep but consistent, indicating that the GPU is becoming the primary constraint as pixel count rises.

At High settings, the scaling is similar in shape but with lower absolute values: 134 FPS at 1080p, 86 FPS at 1440p, and 46 FPS at 4K. The percentage drops are 36% and 47% respectively, nearly identical to the Low settings pattern. This consistency suggests that the rendering workload scales almost linearly with resolution for this title, regardless of the quality preset. The RTX 4070's 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus with 504.2 GB/s bandwidth appears sufficient to avoid memory-related bottlenecks at these settings, as the frame rate declines track pixel count rather than showing sudden cliff effects.

The Ultra preset tells a different story. At 1080p, Ultra delivers 99 FPS; at 1440p, it drops to 63 FPS (a 36% reduction); and at 4K, it falls to 34 FPS (a 46% reduction from 1440p). The relative scaling is remarkably uniform across all four presets — Low, Medium, High, and Ultra — with 1440p consistently delivering roughly 64% of the 1080p frame rate, and 4K delivering roughly 54% of the 1440p frame rate. This uniformity indicates that Hitman 2's rendering pipeline is well-balanced, with no single setting causing a disproportionate resolution penalty.

The Medium preset, which is the only one with recorded min and max FPS values, shows a similar trend: 177 FPS average at 1080p (min 151, max 204), 113 FPS at 1440p (min 96, max 130), and 60 FPS at 4K (min 51, max 69). The gap between minimum and maximum FPS narrows as resolution increases — a 53 FPS spread at 1080p, 34 FPS at 1440p, and 18 FPS at 4K. This suggests that at higher resolutions, the system is more consistently GPU-bound, with less variance introduced by CPU-driven frame pacing or scene complexity fluctuations.

What does this scaling tell us about the limiting component? At 1080p Low, the 236 FPS average is well above what most displays can show, and the 20-core, 28-thread i7-14700K with a 5.60 GHz boost clock is clearly feeding the GPU adequately. As resolution increases, the RTX 4070's pixel throughput becomes the dominant factor. The fact that even at 4K Low the system maintains 81 FPS indicates the GPU has substantial headroom, but the 4K Ultra result of 34 FPS shows that the most demanding settings push the card to its limits. The data points to a balanced pairing where the CPU rarely bottlenecks at any resolution, and the GPU's performance ceiling is the main determinant of achievable frame rates.

Settings Recommendations

With four presets measured — Low, Medium, High, and Ultra — the data provides a clear picture of how quality settings trade off against frame rate. At 1080p, even the Ultra preset maintains 99 FPS average, which is smooth for most gaming scenarios. However, the jump from High to Ultra costs 35 FPS (from 134 to 99), a 26% reduction for what is typically a modest visual uplift. The Medium preset at 177 FPS offers a much larger safety margin above 144 Hz displays, while Low at 236 FPS approaches the limits of high-refresh monitors.

At 1440p, the recommendation becomes more nuanced. High settings deliver 86 FPS, which is comfortably above 60 FPS but below the 100+ FPS that many competitive players prefer. Medium settings at 113 FPS provide a better balance, while Ultra at 63 FPS is borderline for 60 Hz displays and below ideal for 144 Hz panels. Low at 151 FPS is the only preset that fully saturates a 144 Hz display at this resolution.

The 4K results are more constrained. High settings at 46 FPS and Medium at 60 FPS are both playable, but Ultra at 34 FPS dips below the 40 FPS threshold many consider the minimum for smooth gameplay. Low at 81 FPS is the only 4K preset that maintains a high frame rate. Based on the measured rows, the best experience per preset is resolution-dependent: at 1080p, High offers the optimal balance of visual quality and performance; at 1440p, Medium provides the highest frame rate above 100 FPS while retaining decent visuals; and at 4K, Medium is the recommended choice, delivering exactly 60 FPS average with a minimum of 51 FPS, which keeps frame pacing consistent.

The Medium preset's min FPS values are worth noting. At 1080p, the minimum of 151 FPS still exceeds the average of the High preset at 134 FPS, meaning Medium never dips below what High typically sustains. This consistency makes Medium a strong recommendation for users who prioritize smoothness over absolute visual fidelity. The Ultra preset, while offering the highest quality, carries a significant performance penalty at every resolution — a 59% reduction from High at 1080p (99 vs 134), 27% at 1440p (63 vs 86), and 26% at 4K (34 vs 46).

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070, built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with a 5 nm process from TSMC, plays the central role in determining frame rates across all measured configurations. The GPU's 5888 shading units, 184 texture mapping units, and 64 ROPs are supported by 12 GB of GDDR6X memory operating at 1313 MHz (21 Gbps effective) across a 192-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 504.2 GB/s. The boost clock of 2475 MHz, up from a 1920 MHz base, allows the card to scale its performance dynamically under load.

The 35,800 million transistors on a 294 mm² die give the RTX 4070 a transistor density of 121.8M per mm², which is high but not exceptional for the 5 nm node. The card's 46 RT cores and 184 tensor cores indicate it is well-equipped for ray-traced workloads, though Hitman 2's measured results are all raster-based. The FP32 throughput of 29.15 TFLOPS and texture rate of 455.4 GTexel/s provide ample compute for this title, as evidenced by the strong frame rates at lower resolutions.

The GPU's 200 W TDP and dual-slot design with a single 16-pin power connector place it in the mid-range power envelope, and the suggested 550 W PSU is a realistic requirement. The PCIe 4.0 x16 interface provides sufficient bandwidth for the 12 GB frame buffer, even at 4K where texture data exceeds what smaller memory pools would struggle to cache. The 504.2 GB/s bandwidth is a key specification for Hitman 2, which features dense, detailed environments with many unique textures per level.

In the context of the measured results, the RTX 4070's role is clear: it is the primary performance limiter at higher resolutions, but it has enough headroom to deliver playable frame rates even at 4K. The 4K Ultra result of 34 FPS shows the card's limits, while the 1080p Low result of 236 FPS demonstrates its ceiling when unconstrained by resolution. The GPU's percentile rank of 81 among all GPUs and its average benchmark score of 37648 confirm it sits in the upper-midrange tier, capable of handling most titles at high settings but not at the absolute top end for 4K ultra-quality gaming.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the data shows a full progression across all four presets. Low settings deliver an average of 236 FPS, which is the highest measured result in the entire dataset. Medium settings reduce this to 177 FPS, with a minimum of 151 FPS and a maximum of 204 FPS, providing a 53 FPS window of variance. High settings drop further to 134 FPS, and Ultra sits at 99 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 137 FPS, representing a 58% reduction in frame rate when moving from the least to most demanding preset.

At 2560x1440, the same pattern persists with lower absolute values. Low settings produce 151 FPS, Medium averages 113 FPS with a range of 96 to 130 FPS, High reaches 86 FPS, and Ultra drops to 63 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra is 88 FPS, a 58% reduction that mirrors the 1080p scaling. The Medium preset's min of 96 FPS is notably higher than the Ultra preset's average of 63 FPS, meaning that even the worst-case frame time at Medium is smoother than the typical frame time at Ultra.

At 3840x2160, the frame rates compress significantly. Low settings average 81 FPS, Medium hits 60 FPS with a minimum of 51 FPS and maximum of 69 FPS, High manages 46 FPS, and Ultra falls to 34 FPS. The Low-to-Ultra spread is 47 FPS, a 58% reduction that again matches the pattern seen at lower resolutions. The Medium preset's 60 FPS average with an 18 FPS variance (51-69) makes it the only 4K preset that sustains a consistent 60 FPS experience, albeit with occasional dips below that threshold.

Comparing across resolutions, the 1080p Medium result of 177 FPS is nearly three times the 4K Ultra result of 34 FPS, illustrating the combined impact of resolution and settings. The 1440p Ultra result of 63 FPS is nearly identical to the 4K Medium result of 60 FPS, suggesting that users can trade resolution and quality to achieve similar performance. Specifically, running 1440p Ultra provides 3 FPS more than 4K Medium, but with significantly higher visual quality per pixel. The data also shows that the 1080p Ultra result of 99 FPS is slightly higher than the 1440p High result of 86 FPS, reinforcing that resolution has a larger impact on performance than settings within this range.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i7-14700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 achieves a rank of 916 out of 3711 tested combinations in Hitman 2. This places the pairing in the top 24.7% of all tested systems, indicating that it performs well above the median but is not among the elite configurations. The rank reflects the balanced nature of the pairing — the CPU is not holding back the GPU at any measured resolution, and the GPU's performance is sufficient to place the combo in the upper quartile.

The i7-14700K's individual percentile of 94 among all CPUs is notably higher than the combo's overall rank, suggesting that the CPU has more headroom than the GPU provides. In contrast, the RTX 4070's percentile of 81 among all GPUs is closer to the combo's rank, reinforcing that the GPU is the limiting factor in this pairing. The CPU's nearest rivals in average benchmark score include the AMD EPYC 9115 (0.1% higher), AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (0.2% lower), AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX (0.7% lower), and AMD Ryzen 7 9700F (0.9% lower). These deltas are all within 1%, indicating that the i7-14700K's processing power is essentially on par with top-tier alternatives.

The GPU's nearest rivals show a wider spread. The NVIDIA Tesla P4 scores 0.1% higher, the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 scores 0.4% lower, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile scores 1.3% higher, and the AMD Radeon PRO W6400 scores 1.3% lower. The RTX 4070's average benchmark score of 37648 places it in a tightly contested mid-range segment where small differences in synthetic tests do not always translate to meaningful FPS differences in actual gameplay. The combo's rank of 916 out of 3711 suggests that the i7-14700K + RTX 4070 pairing is a well-balanced mid-to-high-end configuration that will handle Hitman 2 comfortably at most settings, but will not top leaderboards against systems with higher-tier GPUs.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700K provides the computational foundation for this pairing, with 20 cores and 28 threads operating at a 3.40 GHz base clock and boosting to 5.60 GHz. The Raptor Lake architecture, fabricated on Intel's 10 nm process with a 257 mm² die size, includes 80 KB of L1 cache per core, 2 MB of L2 cache per core, and 33 MB of shared L3 cache. This configuration delivers strong single-threaded and multi-threaded performance, as evidenced by benchmark scores such as 2160 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 33440.5 in multi-core.

In Hitman 2, the CPU's role is primarily to feed the GPU with draw calls and handle game logic, physics, and AI. The 1080p Low result of 236 FPS demonstrates that the i7-14700K can sustain very high frame rates without bottlenecking the RTX 4070. At 1080p, where the GPU has less pixel work to do, the CPU's single-thread performance becomes more critical. The 5.60 GHz boost clock ensures that the game's main thread, which often limits frame rates in CPU-bound scenarios, has ample headroom. The 28 threads provide sufficient parallelism for background tasks, but Hitman 2's engine does not appear to scale perfectly with core count, as the frame rates at 1080p are more indicative of strong single-thread performance.

The CPU's 94th percentile rank among all CPUs and its nearest rivals — all within 1% of its average benchmark score — confirm that it is a top-tier processor. The deltaPct values show that the AMD EPYC 9115 is 0.1% faster, the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X is 0.2% slower, and the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX is 0.7% slower. These margins are negligible in real-world gaming, meaning the i7-14700K's CPU performance is not a distinguishing factor in this combo's rank. The memory support for both DDR4 and DDR5, with dual-channel configuration, provides flexibility, though the measured results do not isolate memory speed as a variable.

The 125 W TDP and active production status indicate that this is a current-generation part designed for desktop use. The integrated UHD Graphics 770 is present but irrelevant to gaming performance when a discrete GPU is installed. The CPU's 10 nm process node, while not as advanced as the GPU's 5 nm TSMC process, still delivers sufficient performance for this title. The data suggests that the CPU is never the bottleneck in Hitman 2 for this pairing — even at 1080p Low with 236 FPS, the GPU is still able to keep up, and at higher resolutions the GPU becomes increasingly dominant.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS recorded for this combo in Hitman 2?

A: The highest average FPS is 236, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings.

Q: At what resolution and settings does the combo achieve exactly 60 FPS average?

A: At 3840x2160 resolution with Medium settings, the average FPS is exactly 60, with a minimum of 51 and maximum of 69.

Q: How does the i7-14700K compare to its closest rival in CPU benchmarks?

A: The i7-14700K's average benchmark score of 69355 is 0.1% lower than the AMD EPYC 9115's 69288, and 0.2% higher than the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X's 69515.

Q: What is the combo's rank among all tested systems in Hitman 2?

A: The combo ranks 916th out of 3711 tested combinations, placing it in the top 24.7% of all systems.

Q: What is the minimum FPS recorded for the Medium preset at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440 with Medium settings, the minimum FPS is 96, with a maximum of 130 and an average of 113.

Q: How much faster is 1080p Low compared to 4K Ultra?

A: The 1080p Low result of 236 FPS is 202 FPS higher than the 4K Ultra result of 34 FPS, representing a nearly 7x difference in frame rate.