Hitman 2 – DirectX 12 in the test

– Hitman 2 now also supports DirectX 12. BitcoinMinersHashrate has tested the API on AMD and Nvidia graphics cards as well as AMD and Intel CPUs and compared it with DirectX 11. It shows that AMD products – both processors and graphics cards – benefit from DirectX 12, while Nvidia and Intel products do not.

Hitman 2 and DirectX 12

After Hitman (Test) was already equipped with DirectX 12 at the start in March 2016, Hitman 2 (Test) only had DirectX 11 as an API for the release. And that was potentially a problem, because the game is very CPU-heavy in some scenes.

Since the last update to version 2.20, Hitman 2 has also supported DirectX 12 and the question is how the low-level API works in the game. The editors will test this in the coming sections on a GeForce GTX 1080, a GeForce RTX 2070 and a Radeon RX Vega 64. The CPUs used are a Ryzen 7 2700X and a Core i9-9900K.

Radeon and Ryzen (often) gain with DirectX 12

Both the graphics card and processor benchmarks show that one manufacturer in particular can benefit from DirectX 12: AMD. DirectX 11 is the (almost) always better choice for other manufacturers.

DirectX 12 can only be set in Hitman 2 in the launcher before the game actually starts. In the game itself there is no way to change the API. Hitman 2 behaves there exactly as with DirectX 11: There are no new settings.

Test system with AMD, Intel and Nvidia

In the following tests, a Core i9-9900K and a Ryzen 7 2700X are used, each with a 32 GB DDR4 memory (dual-rank, 16-16-16-38-1T, clock depending on the CPU) Specification). The graphics cards are a GeForce GTX 1080 FE, GeForce RTX 2070 and a Radeon RX Vega 64, which also work according to the AMD and Nvidia specifications. "Windows 10 October Update" (1809) including all currently available patches is installed as the operating system. Adrenaline 19.3.3 is used as the AMD driver and GeForce 419.67 as the Nvidia driver. The maximum graphic details are activated in all test series.

Hitman 2 has very different hardware requirements depending on the sequence. For example, some places are very CPU-demanding, while others almost exclusively load the graphics card. Accordingly, the editorial team uses two test scenes for the article. The GPU-demanding sequence shows a lot of vegetation and plays at the beginning of the "Whittleton Creek" mission. In the CPU demanding scene, however, there are many NPCs through which Agent 47 has to wriggle. She plays "Miami" at the beginning of the mission.

Graphics card benchmarks with DirectX 11 and DirectX 12

On a fast Intel processor like the Core i9-9900K used here, regardless of the test scene, only the Radeon RX Vega 64 can benefit from DirectX 12. In 1,920 × 1,080, the Radeon graphics card can grow in the GPU limit by six percent in the frame rate and one percent in the frame times. In 2,560 × 1,440, the advantage in FPS shrinks to four percent, but the frame times improve by seven percent.

However, the resolution doesn't matter on an Nvidia graphics card and the trend is clear: Both the GeForce GTX 1080 and the GeForce RTX 2070 with the new Turing architecture are significantly slower with DirectX 12. The GeForce RTX 2070 in particular loses performance significantly in the GPU demanding scene, the frame times are 23 percent worse with DirectX 12.

If the test scene is CPU-limited, the Radeon RX Vega 64 sprints forward significantly more on an Intel processor. DirectX 12 is then five and 27 percent faster in Full HD and three and four percent faster in WQHD. The big difference in frame times is particularly striking. In sequences with many NPCs, DirectX 12 runs much better on an AMD graphics card.

Nvidia does not change anything. DirectX 11 is also significantly better than DirectX 12 in the other test scene. Again, the difference is rather small in the FPS, but large again in the frame times. Interestingly, this time the Pascal model loses significantly more than the Turing successor.

On the next page: Processor benchmarks with DirectX 11 and DirectX 12