I'm bumping this old thread, hoping someone can help me about an issue I am experiencing with this game. It's a really strange one to be honest.
Before I go on explaining my issue, I just want to express my huge satisfaction with this game. To me, it's perhaps the most impressive game that came out this gen. All the physics / AI simulation, coupled with those sweet graphics make for an awesome experience. I just enjoy vagabonding around the maps and look at all the little details. Fantastic experience. I'm a bit pissed I didn't play this game earlier, especially since I've always been very fond of games such as Splinter Cell and the likes. I've played Hitman codename 47 Hitman 2 and Contracts back in the days, but I missed on Blood Money and the rest (though I understand Absolution isn't very good). Still, glad I finally decided to purchase the gold edition, along the GOTY edition of 2016 to play all the maps.
That said, here goes...
Hitman 2 framerate stutters like crazy when I am hitting what appears to be a capped framerate of around 100-105fps. I suspect my cpu is the main bottleneck here, regarding this capped framerate, and everything seems to point in that direction, but I'm just not sure that really is the case since I have additional weird behavior related to this.
Basically, the game is capped at around 100-105fps, no matter the settings I am using. I have a 1080p screen, so I'm running the game at 1920x1080 obviously. It doesn't matter if I run the game at 720p and if I lower every setting to low; it will still cap at around 100-105fps. Feels like a cpu bottleneck at that point, right?
We know Hitman 2 is a game that stresses the cpu a lot. It has cloth physics, multiple AI, etc. This leads me to believe that the fps should fluctuate at some point, when the AI and the physics simulation are more stressed out. Well, the thing is that even at max settings/1080p, the game will stick to 100-105fps like a fucking magnet. It just won't drop below it at any point. No matter the simulation, no matter the amount of NPC, it sticks to its maximum fps output like it doesn't know that lower values exist.
So far, that's weird, but hey, it kind of means that I am guaranteed to have a great experience, right? Not so much unfortunately. The thing is that the game stutters like crazy at that framerate. It may be running at 100-105 fps, but it's feels like it's running at 27-28 fps, sometimes a bit above it. This feels like some seriously bad frame pacing.
What's really weird is that if I use the supersampling option and crank it up to let's say, 1.5x (2880x1620) then the framerate starts to drop below the maximum fps output and go anywhere between 70-95fps. This isn't the really weird part. The really weird part is that at that point, it now feels butter smooth. No more stutter, no more bad frame pacing. I'm gaming on a 240hz display, so this is why 80+ fps, even though it isn't G-Synced, still feels really smooth.
So if I hit the 100fps threshold, it stutters, and if I run the game below it, it runs like butter.
Another thing: The V-Sync option in this game simply does not work for me. No matter I enable or disable it, no matter I choose option 1 or 2, the game will always try to output as much fps as it can.
The game has the same behavior in DX11 or DX12; it doesn't matter. Same goes for windowed/fullscreen/exclusive fullscreen options.
Specs:
Laptop: ASUS Zephyrus S GX531GX
Display: 1080p 15.4 inches 240hz display (no G-sync)
RAM: 16gb DDR4 2666mhz
CPU: i7 9750H 6 cores 12 threads
GPU: RTX 2080 max-Q 90w version 8gb RAM
SSD: 1TB NVME
The cpu is undervolted so the temps are fantastic and it can maintain its 4.0GHZ all cores clock. The gpu is overclocked (core is autoOC by afterburner, memory is running at 13.4ghz instead of 12ghz; I've tried disabling the overclock and it didn't change a thing).