I installed Hitman few weeks ago and was sure my computer wouldn't run it smoothly at decent settings, but to my surprise I could set everything as high as my 3GB of VRAM allows and it maintained mostly stable 60 FPS with GPU usage ranging from 50-100%. That was in tutorial levels, Paris and Sapienza.

Then I played the Icon and the performance went to shit, initially I thought it was due to nighttime and lot of fire particles, but after slogging through that and continuing with next levels Marrakesh and Bangkok I still got that terrible performance. Even going back to Paris and tutorial levels I get that low frame rate with 95-100% of GPU usage at all times, even if I stared at nothing.

Today I tried messing with settings in a last ditch effort before uninstalling and discovered that the built-in benchmark featuring Paris level still runs perfectly fine with same settings and normal GPU usage. What the? Why did my gameplay GPU performance go to crap? Looking at afterburner stats I can see it's not issue with GPU clocks - they are still stable. No game or driver updates either before that happened.

Help please

My specs are i7 4720HQ, 16GB RAM, GTX 970M with 20% core OC and system and games are on different SSD's.

Maybe your CPU is throttling due to heat? Have you checked your temperatures, and how do other games run?

EDIT: No your GPU usage is high, it's probably not the CPU throttling. How do other games run?

Dumb hypothesis, and I don't think it would happen with a 970M, but you never know.
It sounds like your laptop is trying to use your intel integrated chip instead of your nvidia one for some reason. I had that happen in the past.
You should check your nvidia control panel (not geforce experience), then the settings used for this game (force it on nvidia instead of autoselection or intel).

Might have been a laptop mode you've changed at some point or similar...

Define terrible performance real quick. Like, drops to 20-40 fps? Is that constant through a level or only in certain areas?

I know I found the game more demanding in Marrakech than I did Paris or Sapienza.

LelouchZero said:

Maybe your CPU is throttling due to heat? Have you checked your temperatures, and how do other games run?

EDIT: No your GPU usage is high, it's probably not the CPU throttling. How do other games run?

Click to expand...

Everything else I play runs as well as usual, CPU is nowhere near throttling.

Eolz said:

Dumb hypothesis, and I don't think it would happen with a 970M, but you never know.
It sounds like your laptop is trying to use your intel integrated chip instead of your nvidia one for some reason. I had that happen in the past.
You should check your nvidia control panel (not geforce experience), then the settings used for this game (force it on nvidia instead of autoselection or intel).

Might have been a laptop mode you've changed at some point or similar...

Click to expand...

I have had that issue before with games running on integrated Intel GPU, but that's only before I set them to run on correct card. Hitman ran on correct card from the beginning and still runs since Afterburner and GPU activity tray icon show GPU being used and integrated card wouldn't run such game well anyway.

JonnyDBrit said:

Define terrible performance real quick. Like, drops to 20-40 fps? Is that constant through a level or only in certain areas?

I know I found the game more demanding in Marrakech than I did Paris or Sapienza.

Click to expand...

Average fps is 20-55, no matter where I am or where I look. It's really unstable. Benchmark still runs fine btw.

dp

LMAO, okayy. I actually figured it out myself. Well... kinda.

I recalled people complaining that playing online ran worse than offline during the launch month. So I tried putting Steam in offline mode and tried how Bangkok runs, since it never went above 40 fps at the dense starting area. In offline mode it runs perfectly fine and GPU usage is sane again.

Uhhh... Does anyone know any fixes for this nonsense? Or shall I uninstall it anyway? I don't want to lose the online features and my progress and seems like online mode destroys the performance so I can't really play.

Edit: Offline mode vs Online:


Exact same location at same time and same settings