Hitman 2016: PC graphics performance benchmark review

Game reviews 126 Page 9 of 9 Published by

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Graphics memory (VRAM) usage

Graphics memory (VRAM) usage

How much graphics memory does the game utilize versus your monitor resolution with different graphics cards and respective VRAM sizes ? Well, lets have a look at the chart below. Hitman is a cache what you can continuously type of title, meaing VRAM numbers vary all the time. The listed MBs used in the above chart is the maximum measured utilized graphics memory during the test run. During game-play the game is constantly swapping and loading stuff. As such in the most scenarios you'll notice your VRAM is filled, then memory gets emptied chunk by chunk bit and then filled again. As such the VRAM numbers we monitored continuously jump up and down. We measured in-game, not the benchmark.
 

Vram1

 

What I can conclude is that the title is VERY graphics memory hungry when you use the best image quality settings. Really up-to 1920x1080 2~3GB is actually minimal but better yet a 4GB card seems sufficient. At 2560x1440 HD a 4GB card is a requirement if you want to game at the best image quality settings. If you are lacking graphics memory and feel that in your perf, simply flick down in complex AA levels (if you have them enabled) and watch your graphics card memory free itself.  

Vram2


When we free the game of any VRAM restrictions we see the following: I highlighted the GeForce GTX Titan X in the above chart, it has 12GB of graphics memory and as such is not VRAM limited. As you can see we are hovering in the 3.7 GB domain at Full HD, but in Ultra HD VRAM really starts to get filled and even reaches 5GB, we reach roughly 5GB of VRAM usage before the game reaches its equilibrium. Again, most of the VRAM behaviour we see is a caching effect, e.g. the VRAM is filled as much as it can regardless of whether that is required. So that 5 GB is not needed, 4GB would be sufficient, but if you notice a stutter here and there ... it's loading textures etc.

I find Hitman to be a fun title, but they probably should have stuck at DX11. The many DX12 related issues we stumbled into might be fascinating for a technology editor, but for an end-user a darn shameful experience. I mean active framelocks that we can only disable by using 2 monitors and varying refresh rates etc ... come on. The DX12 implementation feels rushed, for Nvidia it doesn't do even anything. That's it for this update you guys. I'll revisit Crossfire support soon, and once the DX12 issues are fixed (if they will be fixed at all) we'll re-do the numbers as well. 

Update Match 18th, 2016: After the release of the Radeon Crimson 16.3.1 Hotfix driver the DX11 vs DX12 results have been updated in the article. Also the FCAT frametime results for AMD have been updated.

Update April 30, 2016: Final DirectX 12 results have been added.

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