Hitman 2

The Intel Core i9-14900K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 delivers a broad performance envelope in Hitman 2, but the shape of that envelope is heavily dictated by resolution. At 1080p, the combination is overwhelmingly CPU-bound, with the RTX 5070’s headroom exposed by the processor’s strength. The measured data shows a 256.6 FPS average at Low settings in 1920x1080, which is 75% higher than the 146 FPS recorded at High settings. This massive gap between Low and High at the same resolution indicates that the GPU is not the limiting factor at the lowest preset; the i9-14900K’s 24 cores and 32 threads are feeding the pipeline faster than the graphics card can render at higher fidelity.

Moving to 2560x1440, the balance shifts. The Low preset average drops to 161.9 FPS, a 37% reduction from the 1080p Low figure. This is a steeper decline than the pixel count alone would suggest, signaling that the GPU is beginning to take on a more dominant role. At High settings, the 1440p average is 93.1 FPS, which is 36% lower than the 1080p High result. The scaling from 1440p to 4K is even more pronounced. At 3840x2160, the High preset yields 48.8 FPS, a 48% drop from the 1440p High score. This halving of performance from 1440p to 4K at High settings is a clear sign that the RTX 5070’s 12 GB of GDDR7 memory and 192-bit bus are being saturated.

The Ultra preset tells a similar story with an even sharper cliff. At 1080p Ultra, the combo averages 105 FPS, which is playable but far from the Low preset’s 256.6 FPS. At 1440p Ultra, that drops to 70.8 FPS, and at 4K Ultra, it collapses to 39 FPS. The progression from 105 to 70.8 to 39 FPS as resolution climbs shows that the GPU’s shading units and memory bandwidth are the primary constraints at the highest quality settings. The data indicates that the i9-14900K is never the bottleneck at 4K; even at Low settings, the 89.6 FPS average is far below what the CPU could theoretically push, given its 1080p Low performance of 256.6 FPS.

Resolution Scaling

The resolution scaling pattern in Hitman 2 for this combo is textbook GPU-bound behavior at higher pixel counts, with a notable CPU-bound exception at 1080p Low. From 1080p Low to 1440p Low, the average FPS falls from 256.6 to 161.9, a 37% reduction. This is a larger drop than the 1.78x pixel count increase would imply, which suggests that even at Low settings, the game’s draw calls and shadow computation are stressing the RTX 5070’s fixed-function units. However, the real bottleneck emerges when comparing Low to Ultra at the same resolution. At 1080p, the gap between Low and Ultra is 151.6 FPS (256.6 vs 105), while at 4K, the gap narrows to 50.6 FPS (89.6 vs 39). This compression of the settings range at 4K indicates that the GPU is running out of raw throughput, making the difference between Low and Ultra less impactful on the final framerate.

The 4K results are the most telling for identifying the limiting component. At 3840x2160, the High preset achieves only 48.8 FPS, which is 33% lower than the Medium preset’s 66.8 FPS. The jump from Medium to High at 4K costs 18 FPS, while the jump from High to Ultra costs only 9.8 FPS. This non-linear scaling suggests that the game’s Ultra preset includes effects that are heavily dependent on memory bandwidth, and the RTX 5070’s 672.0 GB/s bandwidth is insufficient to maintain fluidity. The data shows that at 4K, the combo is firmly GPU-limited across all settings, with the i9-14900K’s boost clock of 6.00 GHz providing ample headroom that remains unused.

Settings Recommendations

For players targeting 1080p, the High preset at 146 FPS is the sweet spot, offering a 39% improvement over Ultra’s 105 FPS while likely retaining most visual fidelity. The Medium preset at 191.3 FPS is also viable for competitive play, but the jump from Medium to High costs 45 FPS, which is a significant trade-off for marginal visual gains. At 1440p, the High preset’s 93.1 FPS is the recommended choice, as it stays above the 90 FPS threshold while delivering better image quality than Medium’s 123.3 FPS. The Ultra preset at 70.8 FPS is playable but not ideal for fast-paced stealth action, where consistent frame pacing matters more than absolute quality.

At 4K, the data strongly suggests avoiding Ultra altogether. The 39 FPS average is below the 40 FPS floor for smooth gameplay, and the Medium preset at 66.8 FPS is the highest playable option. The Low preset at 89.6 FPS is surprisingly competitive at 4K, offering a 34% improvement over Medium while sacrificing shadows and texture filtering. Given that the 4K High preset only manages 48.8 FPS, the recommendation is to use Medium at 3840x2160, as it provides a stable experience without the severe visual degradation of Low. The measured rows indicate that Medium at 4K is the best balance, with the RTX 5070’s 12 GB VRAM not being a limiting factor at this resolution, as Hitman 2’s textures fit comfortably within that allocation.

How This Combo Ranks

In the broader database of tested combinations, this specific pairing of the i9-14900K and RTX 5070 ranks 364th out of 1795 combos for Hitman 2. This places it in the top 20.3% of all tested systems, which is a strong showing given that the RTX 5070 is a mid-range Blackwell part. The rank reflects the CPU’s exceptional single-threaded performance, as evidenced by its Geekbench single-core score of 3064, which helps maintain high minimum framerates in a game that relies on physics and AI calculations. However, the rank is held back by the GPU’s 4K limitations, where the combo falls behind systems with higher-end graphics cards.

The i9-14900K’s nearest CPU rivals include the Intel Core i9-14900KF, which scores 0.7% higher on average, and the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K, which scores 0.9% higher. These differences are negligible in real-world gaming, meaning the CPU is not the reason for the combo’s rank. Instead, the RTX 5070’s percentile of 83 among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 41687, is the determining factor. The GPU’s nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090, scores 0.6% higher, which suggests that the RTX 5070 is roughly equivalent to a previous-generation flagship in compute terms. This parity explains why the combo struggles at 4K Ultra, where the RTX 3090’s larger memory bus would provide an advantage.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The full dataset reveals a consistent pattern across all resolutions. At 1920x1080, the combo delivers 256.6 FPS at Low, 191.3 FPS at Medium, 146 FPS at High, and 105 FPS at Ultra. The step from Low to Medium costs 65.3 FPS, while the step from Medium to High costs 45.3 FPS, and the step from High to Ultra costs 41 FPS. These diminishing returns are typical of a GPU that is not fully utilized at 1080p, as the i9-14900K’s 32 threads can generate frames faster than the RTX 5070 can render them at higher presets.

At 2560x1440, the averages are 161.9 FPS at Low, 123.3 FPS at Medium, 93.1 FPS at High, and 70.8 FPS at Ultra. The transition from Low to Medium costs 38.6 FPS, Medium to High costs 30.2 FPS, and High to Ultra costs 22.3 FPS. The narrowing gaps between presets indicate the GPU is becoming the bottleneck. At 3840x2160, the numbers are 89.6 FPS at Low, 66.8 FPS at Medium, 48.8 FPS at High, and 39 FPS at Ultra. Here, the cost of each settings increase is 22.8 FPS, 18 FPS, and 9.8 FPS respectively. The Ultra preset’s 39 FPS is the only sub-40 result in the entire dataset, confirming that 4K Ultra is not viable for this combo in Hitman 2.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070’s role in this game is defined by its memory subsystem and clock speeds. The GPU operates at a base clock of 2325 MHz and a boost clock of 2512 MHz, with 48 RT cores and 192 tensor cores available. In Hitman 2, which does not heavily utilize ray tracing, the traditional shading units and texture units are the primary workhorses. The GPU’s 80 ROPs and 192 TMUs provide a texture rate of 482.3 GTexel/s, which is sufficient for 1080p and 1440p but becomes strained at 4K Ultra due to the higher pixel throughput required.

The 12 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 192-bit bus provides 672.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This is the critical specification for Hitman 2’s 4K performance, as the game’s open-ended levels with many NPCs and dynamic lighting require substantial memory traffic. The data shows that at 4K, the GPU is bandwidth-limited, as evidenced by the 48.8 FPS at High and 39 FPS at Ultra. The effective memory clock of 28 Gbps is high, but the narrow 192-bit bus constrains total throughput. This limitation is mitigated at lower resolutions, where the i9-14900K’s 36 MB of shared L3 cache can pre-fetch data, reducing the load on the GPU’s memory controller. The GPU’s 30.87 TFLOPS of FP32 performance is more than adequate for the game’s compute shaders, but the memory bottleneck at 4K prevents the combo from achieving higher framerates.