A recent discovery indicates that the critically acclaimed title, Hitman: World of Assassination, running on the Nintendo Switch 2, exhibits an undocumented “performance mode” that significantly boosts frame rates based on the console’s system-level display settings. This unique characteristic, which can lead to a performance increase of up to 62.5 percent, was initially brought to light by an email from Harry Mingham and subsequently investigated by Digital Foundry.
The unusual behavior was first observed when changing the Switch 2’s TV output resolution from 4K to 720p in the system settings. Mingham noted a “vastly improved performance” with “a very solid and stable frame-rate” in the Hawkes Bay Mission. Further testing confirmed that Hitman: World of Assassination can achieve up to 60 frames per second (fps) when the console is set to 720p, even in demanding scenes where it might otherwise drop into the mid-40s.
Digital Foundry conducted extensive tests across various in-game locations, including Paris, Mumbai, Berlin, and Whittleton Creek, to analyze the impact of different system display settings (720p, 1080p, and 4K) on resolution and performance. Whittleton Creek, identified as a GPU-intensive area, showed the most significant frame rate differentials. At 4K, the average frame rate was 40.45fps. This increased to 46.88fps when the system was set to 1080p, and dramatically jumped to 59.93fps at 720p. This translates to a 9.7 percent performance improvement from 4K to 1080p, and a substantial 62.5 percent increase from 4K to 720p, making 720p 48.2 percent faster than 1080p.
The resolution behavior at 1080p and 4K settings is particularly intriguing. When the system is set to 1080p, the game appears to render at a slightly higher resolution, with pixel counts suggesting resolutions between 1152p and 1188p. Similarly, even when the Switch 2 is set to 4K, the pixel counts remain within the 1152p/1188p range, despite a noticeable performance drop. This suggests that the game may be rendering at a consistent internal resolution (around 1152p-1188p) and then upscaling to the selected output resolution, potentially utilizing technologies like DLSS, given the presence of rounded edges where aliasing might be expected. The performance drop at 4K is estimated to incur an approximate cost of 2.4ms, likely due to the upscaling process.
Similar patterns were observed in Berlin, another GPU-intensive scene. Setting the system output resolution to 720p resulted in a 61 percent faster performance compared to 4K. The “1080p” setting was seven points ahead of 4K. Specifically, 720p averaged 55.1fps, 1080p averaged 36.7fps, and 4K averaged 34.26fps in this location.
However, in CPU-intensive scenes, such as those with a high proliferation of Non-Player Characters (NPCs) in Paris and Mumbai, the performance differentials between the different resolution modes significantly converged. For instance, in the packed fashion show segment of the Paris stage, frame rates were closer: 42fps at 720p, 39fps at “1080p”, and 35fps at “4K”. This indicates that in such scenarios, the performance bottleneck shifts from the GPU to the CPU, limiting the benefits of lower resolutions.
For players, these findings present a trade-off. Setting the Switch 2 to 720p effectively maximizes frame rates, offering a smoother gameplay experience. However, this comes at the cost of a noticeably lower resolution, which may not be visually appealing. For owners of 4K displays, simply changing the system menu to 1080p can yield approximately a nine percent increase in frame rate, though this still appears to involve upscaling. Digital Foundry notes that the “4K” mode warrants further investigation to understand the computational cost of DLSS on the Nintendo hybrid, especially since pixel counts seem to be similar to the “1080p” mode.
The unusual nature of these resolution and frame rate shifts suggests they might not be an intended feature. Typically, a “performance mode” would be an in-game option provided by the developer. While game modes tied to system settings are not entirely new (e.g., PS4 Pro’s different 1080p and 4K modes), the dynamic nature of these changes occurring during gameplay, rather than just at game boot, is a novel aspect for a home console. It has been suggested that this behavior might be related to how the Switch and Switch 2 manage performance when switching between docked and portable play modes. Digital Foundry has reached out to Io Interactive for clarification on this undocumented behavior.
