Hitman 3 PC Performance Review and Optimisation Guide

Graphics Settings Comparisons – Low, Medium, High and Ultra  

Hitman 3 has no pre-defined graphical presets, which makes traditional graphics comparisons challenging. For the comparisons below, we created Low, Medium, High and Ultra settings for Hitman 3, and they are set up as follows. 

– Low – Super Sampling set to 1.0, Anisotropic Filtering set to 16x, Variable Rate Shading set to off, Simulation Quality Set to Base, and all other settings set to Low

– Medium – Super Sampling set to 1.0, Anisotropic Filtering set to 16x, Variable Rate Shading set to off, Simulation Quality set to Best, and all other settings set to Medium/Normal

-High – Super Sampling set to 1.0, Anisotropic Filtering set to 16x, Variable Rate Shading set to off, Simulation Quality set to Best, and all other settings set to High

-Ultra – Super Sampling set to 1.0, Anisotropic Filtering set to 16x, Variable Rate Shading set to off, Simulation Quality set to Best, and all other settings set to Ultra and High (where Ultra options are not available)

While there are lower than low settings within Hitman 3, we feel that these settings are not worth using on most systems. Plenty of scalability is offered with our Low, Medium, High, and Ultra settings, and testing more configurations adds significantly to our testing workload. 

When moving from our Low to Medium settings, draw distances for grass and LOD pop-in is reduced significantly. This makes Hitman’s visuals more consistent and prevents a lot of noticeable pop-in for higher detail models and other assets. While low settings look pretty good in Hitman 3, higher settings are preferable if you have strong enough hardware. 
  

(Low VS Medium)
  

At high settings draw distances are pushed further out, shadows become more details and less pixelated and pop-in is significantly reduced. This is an ideal setup for those who want a high-fidelity experience without pushing settings too high and framerates too low on mid-range GPUs. 
 

(Medium VS High)
  

At Ultra settings, Hitman 3’s draw distances are pushed further out and the game’s pop-in issues become even harder to notice. Otherwise, it is hard to tell the difference between High and Ultra settings, and screen space reflections are not much sharper and ambient occlusion is not much better looking than before. 
 

(High VS Ultra)