Hitman: Absolution

The second-to-last game in our lineup is Hitman: Absolution. The latest game in Square Enix’s stealth-action series, Hitman: Absolution is a DirectX 11 based title that though a bit heavy on the CPU, can give most GPUs a run for their money. Furthermore it has a built-in benchmark, which gives it a level of standardization that fewer and fewer benchmarks possess.

On a competitive basis Hitman: Absolution ends up being the second and last title where the GTX 780 Ti just doesn’t have enough performance to overcome AMD’s lead. Compared to where we were 2 weeks ago the GTX 780 Ti significantly cuts into the 290X’s lead, but in the end it’ll come up 3% behind. Though as with Bioshock we’re admittedly looking at another scenario where everyone is already past 60fps, so the absolute performance difference is somewhat academic.

As for our multi-GPU setups at 4K the story is much the same. Both 290X CF and GTX 780 Ti SLI get above 60fps, but it’s 290X CF that takes the top spot.

Looking briefly at our minimum framerates, as we’re approaching a CPU limited scenario we have a mix of results. Despite losing on averages, the GTX 780 Ti wins on minimums by 2fps, bottoming out at 64fps and making it the first GK110 card to offer a minimum over 60fps. On the other hand if we scale up to 4K and multi-GPU setups, the GTX 780 Ti SLI will clearly come up short versus the 290X CF, with the latter being the only setup to break 60fps there.

Total War: Rome 2 GRID 2
Comments Locked

302 Comments

View All Comments

  • fewafwwaefwa - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link

    sterven.
  • looncraz - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link

    When game producers author the games they will do it with a mind towards Mantle and exploiting the AMD GPU characteristics exposed by Mantle on PCs for their console games.

    When creating portable software you create as thin of an abstraction layer as possible, that layer will now be much closer to the metal with unoptimized DirectX alternatives being manually added. That could very well mean that AMD hardware will have a noticeable advantage on PCs and game producers will only need to do a little extra work to become compatible with other DX-10/11 compatible video cards on Windows/Linux - so nVidia will become something of a "don't forget about me!" rather than "let's build to a generic platform and pull in the nVidia GPU extensions..."
  • Basstrip - Friday, November 8, 2013 - link

    I think they've ALWAYS programmed directly to the core. I think it's safe to assume that the processes translate fairly well and that although they might not be the same, they are similar.

    It just seems so economic to streamline the whole process. Less of a headache than to constantly try optimize things for multiple platforms.

    AMD chips on consoles may not be able to support mantle on the hardware side but programming for consoles and for pc will definitely NOT be 2 completely different things.
  • elajt_1 - Friday, November 8, 2013 - link

    Something I read on Extremetech: Feedback we’ve gotten from other sources continues to suggest that Microsoft’s low-level API for the Xbox One is extremely similar to Mantle, and the difference between the two is basically semantic. This doesn’t square very well with Microsoft’s own statements; we’ll continue to investigate.
    http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/168671-xbox-one-...
  • klmccaughey - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link

    The difference is a couple of header files. Izzy Wizzy! And you have your API calling code in Xbox transferable to a PC, the header files compile the API's to Mantle API - but both API's are essentailly the same. It couldn't be easier.
  • polaco - Friday, November 8, 2013 - link

    The point of mantle I think is to provide an easy way to port from PC to console or Console to PC. So giving the possibility to allow an easier cross compilation.
  • L33T BEANS - Friday, November 8, 2013 - link

    Basing someones intelligence on a single statement is unwise.
  • Totally - Sunday, November 10, 2013 - link

    Reading these comments makes me wonder, if these people slinging mantle around like a buzzword actually know what it does, because going by the comments alone trying to pitting it against g-sync they clearly don't. Mantle is as relevant to gamers as Cuda is. Yes it does have a direct impact but the benefits aren't for the end user.
  • klmccaughey - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link

    You do not understand. The API on the consoles is basically "Mantle". Mantle copies verbatim the API calls for the consoles. They just call it the API on the console. Port the code across, change a few headers, and you have your Mantle calls ;)
  • MonkeyM - Sunday, November 10, 2013 - link

    They will sell DIY kits, you don't need a new monitor, as per the press conference.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now