Hitman

The final game in our 2016 benchmark suite is the 2016 edition of Hitman, the latest title in the stealth-action franchise. The game offers two rendering paths: DirectX 11 and DirectX 12, with the latter being the case of DirectX 12 being added after the fact. As with past Hitman games, the latest proves to have a good mix of scenery and high model counts to stress modern video cards.

Hitman - 3840x2160 - Ultra Quality (DX11)

Hitman - 2560x1440 - Ultra Quality (DX11)

Wrapping things up on the gaming side, we have Hitman. While several DX11 games have added DX12 over the last year, Hitman is perhaps the most interesting case both for driver optimization purposes, and just what the developers have been able to wring out. For the latest generation of cards, the game’s DX12 performance is more or less a wash; it’s not consistently better than DX11 in GPU-bound scenarios. However once we get CPU-bound, the threading and CPU overhead improvements of DX12 make themselves felt, improving performance on even the all-powerful GTX 1080 Ti at 1440p.

By the numbers then, under DX12 the GTX 1080 Ti picks up 24% over the GTX 1080, which is actually a smaller than average gain. Against the GTX 980 Ti however, NVIDIA’s latest card leads by 83%, making for a very strong generational improvement.

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  • MrSpadge - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link

    An HBM2 equipped vega(n) rabbit?
  • eek2121 - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link

    Before you do that though, you should test Ryzen with the Ti. Reviewers everywhere are showing that for whatever reason, Ryzen shines with the 1080 Ti at 4k.
  • just4U - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link

    I did a double take there as I actually thought you type pull a rabbit out of my a... Was like ... wait, what?? (..chuckle) Anyway, good review Ryan. I read about the Ti being out soon.. didn't realize it was here already.
  • Drumsticks - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link

    Nice review Ryan.

    I can't wait to see what Vega brings. I'm hoping we at least get a price war over a part that can sit in between the 1080 and Ti parts. I would love to see Vega pull off 75% faster than a Fury X (50% clock speed boost, 20% more IPC?) but wow that would be a tough order. Let's just hope AMD can bring some fire back to the market in May.
  • MajGenRelativity - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link

    I'm also extremely interested in seeing what Vega brings as well. My wallet is ready to drop the bills necessary to get a card in this price range, but I'm waiting for Vega to see who gets my money.
  • ddriver - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link

    It will bring the same thing as ever - superior hardware nvidia will pay off most game developers to sandbag, forcing amd to sell at a very nice price to the benefit of people like me, who don't care about games but instead use gpus for compute.

    For compute amd's gpus are usually 2-3 TIMES better value than nvidia. And I have 64 7950s in desperate need of replacing.
  • MajGenRelativity - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link

    That's a lot of 7950s. What do you compute with them?
  • A5 - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link

    Fake internet money, I assume. And maybe help the power company calculate his bill...
  • ddriver - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link

    Nope, I do mostly 3D rendering, multiphysics simulations, video processing and such. Cryptocurrency is BS IMO, and I certainly don't need it.
  • MajGenRelativity - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link

    I'm assuming you do that for your job? If not, that's an expensive hobby :P

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