Hitman 2

The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus paired with the AMD Radeon RX 7600 produces a highly resolution-dependent experience in Hitman 2. The measured frames per second (FPS) data shows a clear progression: at 1920x1080, the combination delivers smooth, high-refresh-rate gameplay, but as resolution climbs to 3840x2160, the frame rate collapses to levels that are borderline unplayable for a stealth action title. This scaling pattern is the central story of this benchmark analysis.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is drastic and reveals the GPU as the primary limiting factor. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combo averages 145 FPS. At 2560x1440 with the same Low settings, that figure falls to 93 FPS, a reduction of approximately 36%. Moving to 3840x2160 at Low, the average plummets to 49 FPS, which is roughly 66% lower than the 1080p result. The trend is consistent across every settings tier. With High settings, the averages are 82 FPS at 1080p, 53 FPS at 1440p, and 28 FPS at 4K. Medium settings yield 109 FPS, 70 FPS, and 37 FPS respectively. Ultra settings produce 61 FPS, 39 FPS, and 21 FPS.

The magnitude of these drops indicates that the Radeon RX 7600’s rendering pipeline becomes saturated well before the CPU’s capabilities are exhausted. At 1080p, the delta between Low (145 FPS) and Ultra (61 FPS) is 84 FPS, showing that the GPU has headroom to work harder as visual fidelity increases. At 4K, the same delta is only 28 FPS (49 FPS Low vs 21 FPS Ultra), suggesting that even at Low settings, the GPU is already near its practical limit for this game. The 4K results are uniformly low: 21 FPS at Ultra, 28 FPS at High, 37 FPS at Medium, and 49 FPS at Low. None of these reach the 60 FPS threshold commonly considered smooth gameplay.

The scaling pattern also shows that the CPU is not the bottleneck at higher resolutions. If the Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus were limiting performance, the FPS would remain relatively flat across resolutions, with the GPU having spare capacity. Instead, the data shows steep declines as pixel count increases, which is the classic signature of a GPU-bound scenario. At 1080p, the CPU’s strong single-thread performance (a single-core score of 736 in Cinebench R15 and 4823 in Passmark) likely helps maintain high minimum frame rates, but the overall ceiling is set by the graphics card. The single measured minFps values in the data—93 FPS at 1080p Medium, 59 FPS at 1440p Medium, and 32 FPS at 4K Medium—further confirm this. The drop in minimum FPS from 1080p to 4K is 61 FPS, aligning with the average FPS drop of 72 FPS for Medium settings across those two resolutions.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus is a 24-core, 24-thread processor based on the Arrow Lake Refresh architecture, manufactured on a 3 nm TSMC process. Its base clock is 3.70 GHz, boosting up to 5.80 GHz. In synthetic benchmarks, this CPU posts a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 51731 and a single-core score of 7303, placing it in the 96th percentile of all CPUs in the database. Its average benchmark score of 84003 is 0.2% higher than the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, 1.1% higher than the AMD EPYC 4584PX, and 1.2% higher than the AMD EPYC 9135. It trails the AMD EPYC 7F72 by 1.3%.

For Hitman 2, a game released in 2018, the CPU’s role is less about raw core count and more about single-thread efficiency and memory bandwidth. The game’s AI and simulation logic typically scale with a few strong cores rather than many weaker ones. The 290K Plus’s boost clock of 5.80 GHz is exceptionally high, and its Passmark single-thread score of 4823 confirms excellent per-core performance. The L3 cache is 36 MB shared, which helps with repetitive data access patterns common in game logic. Memory bandwidth is rated at 115.2 GB/s over a dual-channel DDR5 interface, which is ample for a game of this era.

The data suggests that the CPU is never the limiting factor in this pairing. At 1080p Low, the combo reaches 145 FPS, which is likely near the upper bounds of what the RX 7600 can produce in this title. If the CPU were weak, we would expect to see FPS plateaus or inconsistent scaling between Low and Medium settings at the same resolution. Instead, the FPS scales smoothly with settings changes: at 1080p, Low yields 145 FPS, Medium 109 FPS, High 82 FPS, and Ultra 61 FPS. This linear progression indicates that the CPU is feeding the GPU adequately at all settings levels. The CPU’s 24 threads, while not fully utilized by a 2018 game, provide headroom for background tasks and future titles, but in this specific benchmark, the processor’s contribution is to avoid becoming a bottleneck.

The nearest rival comparison further contextualizes the CPU’s standing. With an average score 0.2% above the Core Ultra 9 285K, the 290K Plus is practically identical in overall processing power. Its 1.1% lead over the EPYC 4584PX and 1.2% lead over the EPYC 9135 are marginal in real-world gaming terms. The negative delta of 1.3% versus the EPYC 7F72 is also negligible. These small percentage differences mean that swapping the 290K Plus for any of these rivals would not change the Hitman 2 FPS results in any meaningful way, as the game is not CPU-bound in this configuration.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7600 is the clear performance ceiling in this combo. This GPU, based on the Navi 33 chip and RDNA 3.0 architecture, features 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, delivering 288.0 GB/s of bandwidth. Its boost clock is 2655 MHz, with a game clock of 2250 MHz. The GPU has 2048 shading units, 128 TMUs, and 64 ROPs, with a pixel rate of 169.9 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 339.8 GTexel/s. Its FP32 performance is 21.75 TFLOPS. In the database, the RX 7600 scores 16634 in Passmark G3D, which places it in the 57th percentile of all GPUs. Its average benchmark score of 15171 is 0.2% lower than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 OEM, 0.6% higher than the AMD Radeon Pro 560X, 0.7% lower than the AMD Radeon 680M, and 0.7% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti.

The 8 GB VRAM capacity is sufficient for Hitman 2 at 1080p and 1440p, but the 4K results suggest that memory bandwidth and raw compute are insufficient for high-fidelity rendering at that resolution. At 4K Ultra, the average FPS is 21, which is below the minimum playable threshold for most gamers. The GPU’s 128-bit memory bus and 288.0 GB/s bandwidth are modest by modern standards, and Hitman 2’s large, detailed environments require substantial memory throughput at 4K. The data shows that even at 4K Low, the RX 7600 only manages 49 FPS, indicating that the GPU’s compute units are saturated regardless of texture quality.

The GPU’s role is also evident in the scaling between settings at each resolution. At 1080p, going from Low to Ultra reduces FPS from 145 to 61, a 58% drop. At 1440p, the same settings change drops FPS from 93 to 39, a 58% drop as well. At 4K, Low to Ultra drops from 49 to 21, a 57% drop. This consistent proportional decline across resolutions suggests that the GPU’s shading units, TMUs, and ROPs are the bottleneck, as increasing pixel count and settings both add similar relative workloads. The minFps data for Medium settings (93 at 1080p, 59 at 1440p, 32 at 4K) shows that frame pacing degrades proportionally, reinforcing that the GPU is consistently the limiting component.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS rows, the optimal settings for this combo depend heavily on the target resolution and frame rate goal. For 1920x1080, the High preset delivers 82 FPS average, which is smooth for a stealth game. Medium offers 109 FPS, which is even better for high-refresh-rate monitors, while Low hits 145 FPS. Ultra drops to 61 FPS, which is still playable but not ideal if aiming for 60+ FPS with headroom. The data suggests that Medium at 1080p is the sweet spot: 109 FPS average with a minimum of 93 FPS, providing a comfortable margin above 60 FPS and good visual quality.

For 2560x1440, the Medium preset produces 70 FPS average with a 59 FPS minimum, which is borderline but acceptable for most players. High yields 53 FPS, which is playable but may suffer in crowded scenes. Low gives 93 FPS, which is excellent for competitive or fast-paced play. Ultra at 39 FPS is not recommended for smooth gameplay. The best experience at 1440p is Medium, as it offers the highest visual fidelity while maintaining an average above 60 FPS. If a player prioritizes frame rate over visuals, Low at 93 FPS is the better choice.

At 3840x2160, none of the settings presets reach 60 FPS. Low averages 49 FPS, Medium 37 FPS, High 28 FPS, and Ultra 21 FPS. For a stealth game where precise timing and awareness are crucial, 49 FPS at Low is the only remotely playable option, and even that is below the 60 FPS threshold. The recommendation for 4K is to avoid this combination unless the player is willing to accept significant compromises. The data indicates that Medium at 1080p or Low at 1440p provides the best balance of playability and visual quality for this specific CPU-GPU pairing.

How This Combo Ranks

In the benchmark database, this specific combination of Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus and AMD Radeon RX 7600 ranks 2090 out of 3001 tested combos for Hitman 2. This places it in the lower third of all configurations, which aligns with the GPU’s modest performance percentile of 57. The CPU’s high percentile (96) does not compensate for the GPU’s limitations in this game. A combo ranking of 2090 out of 3001 means that approximately 70% of tested systems achieve higher average FPS in Hitman 2, which is expected given that the RX 7600 is a mid-range graphics card in a game that can be demanding at high settings.

The ranking is likely influenced by the 4K results dragging down the overall average. At 1080p, this combo’s performance (82 FPS High, 109 FPS Medium) is competitive with many mid-range systems. However, the database ranking considers all measured resolutions and settings, and the 4K Ultra score of 21 FPS is among the lowest for any modern GPU. The combo’s rank of 2090 suggests that it is outperformed by systems with higher-end GPUs, such as those with 16 GB VRAM or wider memory buses, which can handle 1440p and 4K more effectively. The delta between this combo and the top-ranked systems is likely substantial, though the exact figures are not provided in the data.

The CPU’s nearest rivals, which are all within 1.3% of its average benchmark score, would not change this combo’s ranking if swapped in, as the GPU is the bottleneck. The GPU’s nearest rivals—the RTX 3050 OEM, Radeon Pro 560X, Radeon 680M, and GTX 660 Ti—all have average scores within 0.7% of the RX 7600, meaning that swapping to those GPUs would produce nearly identical FPS results in Hitman 2. This combo’s rank is therefore more representative of the GPU class than the specific CPU choice.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured FPS data for this combo in Hitman 2 is as follows:

At 3840x2160, the Ultra preset averages 21 FPS with no min or max recorded. High averages 28 FPS. Medium averages 37 FPS, with a minimum of 32 FPS and a maximum of 43 FPS. Low averages 49 FPS. All 4K results are below 50 FPS, making this resolution unsuitable for smooth play.

At 2560x1440, Ultra averages 39 FPS. High averages 53 FPS. Medium averages 70 FPS, with a minimum of 59 FPS and a maximum of 80 FPS. Low averages 93 FPS. The Medium preset at 1440p offers the best combination of visual quality and playable frame rates, with the 59 FPS minimum still above the 30 FPS playability floor.

At 1920x1080, Ultra averages 61 FPS. High averages 82 FPS. Medium averages 109 FPS, with a minimum of 93 FPS and a maximum of 125 FPS. Low averages 145 FPS. The Medium preset at 1080p is the standout result, delivering over 100 FPS average with a minimum that never drops below 93 FPS, ensuring a consistently smooth experience.

The data also reveals that the gap between Low and Ultra settings narrows as resolution increases. At 1080p, the difference is 84 FPS (145 vs 61). At 1440p, it is 54 FPS (93 vs 39). At 4K, it is 28 FPS (49 vs 21). This progressive narrowing indicates that the GPU’s pixel throughput becomes the dominant constraint at higher resolutions, making settings adjustments less impactful. For players who want to maximize frame rates, dropping to Low settings at 1440p (93 FPS) provides a better experience than using Ultra at 1080p (61 FPS). Conversely, for those who prioritize image quality, High at 1080p (82 FPS) is a solid choice that maintains high frame rates while offering improved visuals over Medium.

In summary, this combo is best suited for 1080p gaming, where it delivers excellent performance across all settings. At 1440p, it remains capable with Medium or Low settings. At 4K, it falls short of playable frame rates on all presets, confirming that the RX 7600 is the limiting factor. The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus provides ample CPU headroom, but the GPU’s 8 GB VRAM and 128-bit memory interface restrict its performance in higher resolutions.