Hitman 3 on PC May Just Be the Best Way to Play Agent 47’s Latest Adventure
Image source IO Interactive
thing: it’s time for us to critique, discuss and nitpick! But before we can do that, we also find it important to talk about Hitman 3’s technical aspects, especially with regards to how well (or badly) it runs on PC. So how well does the culmination of IO Interactive’s World of Assassination trilogy run on PC? Let’s talk about it.
Hitman 3 Minimum PC Requirements
- OS: Windows 10 64-bit
- CPU: Intel Core i5 2500K 3.3GHz / AMD Phenom II X4 940
- Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 / AMD Radeon HD 7870
- RAM: 8GB
- Storage: 80GB
- DirectX 12
Hitman 3 Recommended PC Requirements
- OS: Windows 10 64-bit
- CPU: Intel Core i7 4790 4 GHz
- Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 / AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 8GB
- RAM: 16GB
- Storage: 80GB
- DirectX 12
Hitman 3 PC Graphics Options
One of the great things about Hitman 3’s PC release is that it gives you access to a plethora of graphics options before you even really start the game. The interesting thing is that the options window from before starting the game also features a robust benchmarking tool that allows you to pick exactly the options you want to disable or enable for testing purposes.
- GPU Choice
- Monitor
- Fullscreen Resolution
- Display Mode (Exclusive Fullscreen, Borderless Windowed, Windowed)
- Vsync (On, Off)
- Vsync Interval (100% FPS, 50% FPS)
- HDR (On, Off)
- Super Sampling (1.00-2.00)
- Level of Detail (Low, Medium, High, Ultra)
- Texture Quality (Trilinear, Anisotropic 2x, Anisotropic 4x, Anisotropic 8x, Anisotropic 16x)
- SSAO (Minimum, Low, Medium, High, Ultra)
- Shadow Quality (Low, Medium, High, Ultra)
- Mirrors Reflection Quality (Off, Low, Medium, High)
- SSR Quality (Off, Low, Medium, High)
- Variable Rate Shading (Off, Quality, Performance)
- Motion Blur (Off, Low, Medium, High)
- Simulation Quality (Graphics) (Base, Best)
The addition of Super Sampling, while not common, is always a welcome sight. It's an option that allows players to raise the rendering resolution of the game and then show all that extra detail in their chosen resolution of choice. What this means is that if your PC can handle 4K, but your monitor only goes up to 1080p, you can supersample the game at a higher resolution and get some of the benefits on your 1080p monitor.
Hitman 3 is clearly an incredibly well-optimised game, which is all the more impressive when you consider just what goes into even a single level of Hitman.
Despite filling the screen with plenty of NPCs to hide amongst, an impressive level of AI for the various guards and targets Agent 47 has to face, and the level of interactive many levels offer, Hitman 3's minimum requirements are incredibly low.
Image Source IGN
For our review, we played Hitman 3 on a PC with an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 clocked at 4 GHz, 32GB of RAM, and a Zotac GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, and things ran at a smooth 144 frames per second almost the entire time.
We played Hitman 3 with at 1920x1080 on a 144Hz monitor with a mix of graphics set between Medium and High, Anisotropic 4x texture filtering, and Super Sampling set at 1.00. Despite our otherwise mid-range gaming PC, Hitman 3 ran brilliantly, running at a silky smooth 144 frames per second.
Really, the only time we noticed any dip in frame rates involved either level streaming or a downright absurd amount of particles flying everywhere. As long as you're not hooking up landmines under every NPC you see, the frame rate will never really dip.
The benchmarks largely mirrored our own experience while playing the game. We found that the sweet spot was raising some of the graphics quality but keeping super sampling at 1.00 allowed for consistent frame rates on our mid-range gaming rig, and making full use of our 144 Hz monitor's capabilities.
Hitman 3 PC – Good or Bad?
Hitman 3’s PC release is downright fantastic, and we would argue that it is the definitive version of the game. Despite some initial hiccups about owning the previous versions of the game on a different digital distribution platform, things seem to have largely sorted themselves out.
And, of course, let's not forget how incredible the file compression system used in Hitman 3 ends up working out in practice. Where Hitman 2 with all of its levels came out to over 150GB, Hitman 3 with all content, including previous games, comes out to around 60GB. The system requirements say 80GB, which will probably be closer to the game's ultimate size once its DLC is out.
Low end PCs will be able to handle Hitman 3 quite well, and high-end systems will appreciate the level of options IO Interactive has provided to make Hitman 3 look incredible. If you’re looking at Hitman 3 and have a relatively modern gaming PC, the PC release might just be the way to go.
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