Hitman 2

Hitman 2 presents a demanding workload for the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 combination, with benchmark results showing a clear trade-off between visual fidelity and frame rate. The measured data indicates that the "Medium" preset offers the most balanced experience, providing a substantial improvement over "Low" settings while maintaining playable performance across most resolutions. At 1920x1080, Medium delivers an average of 98.6 FPS, which is a significant jump from the 74.7 FPS seen at High, and it remains comfortably above the 54.2 FPS recorded at Ultra. At 2560x1440, Medium maintains a playable 60.6 FPS average, while the High preset dips to 48.5 FPS, making Medium the only preset that consistently hits a 60 FPS target at this resolution. The 3840x2160 results are less favorable, with Medium averaging 33.4 FPS and High falling to 25.8 FPS, indicating that this combo is not suited for 4K gaming with any preset.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data strongly suggests that the "Medium" preset is the optimal choice for this hardware pairing. At 1920x1080, Medium achieves 98.6 FPS, which is 33% higher than the High preset's 74.7 FPS and nearly double the Ultra preset's 54.2 FPS. This substantial gap indicates that the transition from Medium to High incurs a heavy performance cost that is not justified by the marginal visual gains in a stealth title where smooth camera movement is critical. The 2560x1440 results reinforce this recommendation, as Medium produces a 60.6 FPS average, while High drops to 48.5 FPS and Ultra falls to 36.1 FPS. For users prioritizing a consistent frame rate, Medium is the only preset that delivers a 60 FPS experience at 1440p. At 3840x2160, even Medium struggles with a 33.4 FPS average, and the Low preset at 46.8 FPS becomes the only viable option for 4K, though it still falls short of ideal smoothness. The data shows that the Low preset, while offering higher frame rates, sacrifices too much visual quality, with the 132 FPS at 1080p being excessive for the genre and the 85.5 FPS at 1440p not providing a proportional benefit over Medium.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 plays a central role in limiting this combo's performance in Hitman 2, as evidenced by the sharp FPS drops when settings are increased. The GPU features 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus with 336.0 GB/s bandwidth, and its 1920 shading units operate at a boost clock of 1680 MHz. The measured results show that the GPU's memory capacity and bandwidth become significant constraints at higher settings and resolutions. At 3840x2160, the Ultra preset produces a meager 16.8 FPS average, indicating that the 6 GB frame buffer is overwhelmed by the high-resolution textures and effects. The GPU's 58th percentile ranking among all GPUs and its average benchmark score of 16074 place it as a mid-range part, which is consistent with its performance in this game. The RTX 2060's Turing architecture, with 30 RT cores and 240 tensor cores, does not provide a meaningful advantage here, as Hitman 2's standard rendering path relies more on raw rasterization throughput. The 160 W TDP and 1365 MHz base clock suggest that thermal throttling is unlikely to be a major factor, but the data clearly shows that the GPU is the bottleneck when moving from Medium to High or Ultra settings, as the CPU has ample headroom with its 20 cores and 30 MB of L3 cache.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 ranks 1481 out of 1795 tested combos in Hitman 2, placing it in the lower percentile of all systems benchmarked. This rank reflects a significant imbalance between the CPU and GPU, as the processor is a high-end part with a 97th percentile ranking among all CPUs, while the GPU sits at only the 58th percentile. The combo's position in the bottom 18% of tested systems indicates that the RTX 2060 is the primary limiter, preventing the Core Ultra 7 265K from demonstrating its full potential. The CPU's nearest rivals, including the Intel Core Ultra 7 265KF with a -0.2% delta and the Intel Core i9-14900KF with a -0.2% delta, show that the processor is competitive with top-tier alternatives, but this advantage is largely negated by the GPU's mid-range performance. In practical terms, this combo performs closer to systems with much weaker CPUs paired with similar GPUs, as the frame rates are dictated almost entirely by the graphics card's capabilities at the settings tested.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The benchmark data provides a comprehensive view of performance across three resolutions and four settings presets. At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves the highest average at 132 FPS, followed by Medium at 98.6 FPS, High at 74.7 FPS, and Ultra at 54.2 FPS. The progression from Low to Medium represents a 25% performance drop, while the jump from Medium to High costs 24% more performance, and High to Ultra costs an additional 27%. At 2560x1440, the pattern is similar but with lower absolute numbers: Low averages 85.5 FPS, Medium 60.6 FPS, High 48.5 FPS, and Ultra 36.1 FPS. The relative cost of each preset step increases at this resolution, with the Medium-to-High transition costing 20% and the High-to-Ultra transition costing 26%. At 3840x2160, performance degrades significantly: Low averages 46.8 FPS, Medium 33.4 FPS, High 25.8 FPS, and Ultra drops to just 16.8 FPS. The data shows that the gap between Medium and High narrows at 4K, with only a 23% difference, while the Low-to-Medium gap widens to 29%, suggesting that the GPU's memory bandwidth becomes a more dominant constraint at higher resolutions.

Resolution Scaling

The resolution scaling behavior reveals the limiting component clearly. When moving from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 at Medium settings, the average FPS drops from 98.6 to 60.6, a 39% reduction, which is proportionally larger than the 78% increase in pixel count. This indicates that the GPU is already near its limits at 1080p Medium, and the additional pixel workload has a disproportionate impact. The drop from 2560x1440 to 3840x2160 at Medium is even more severe, with FPS falling from 60.6 to 33.4, a 45% reduction for a 125% increase in pixels. At High settings, the scaling is more linear: 74.7 FPS at 1080p drops to 48.5 FPS at 1440p (35% reduction) and then to 25.8 FPS at 4K (47% reduction). The Low preset shows the most resilience, with 132 FPS at 1080p dropping to 85.5 FPS at 1440p (35% reduction) and then to 46.8 FPS at 4K (45% reduction). This pattern suggests that the RTX 2060's 336.0 GB/s memory bandwidth is the key bottleneck at higher resolutions, as the performance degradation accelerates when the 6 GB frame buffer is exceeded. The CPU's dual-channel DDR5 memory support with 102.4 GB/s bandwidth is not a limiting factor here, as the frame rates are consistently GPU-bound across all tested configurations.