Performance Guide

If you struggle with performance issues, this article might help you. We will constantly be working on new solutions to improve the FPS and your overall performance.

Disclaimer: Please take note that any 3rd-party applications mentioned here should be used at your own discretion!

Update Your Graphics Card Drivers

To have an up-to-date and functional GPU driver is one of the most important and essential measures to keep your gameplay experience smooth.

For both, Nvidia and AMD cards, there are automatic solutions available to have the latest drivers available:

Nvidia: Geforce Experience
AMD: AMD Radeon Software

Reinstalling & Updating Your Drivers

Should you struggle with your performance, or see graphical glitches, it can be the case that your GPU driver is not working correctly or is outdated. To fix this, we recommend a clean removal of your current driver and installing the newest driver.

For the removal are many tools on the Internet available, for instance, the Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU).

Know Your Graphics Card Driver

After having your driver removed you need of course a new one. Since there are so many different GPU models out there it can be a hassle to find out which one is suited for you, but don't worry, we got your back!

You can either use the automatic tools from Nvidia and AMD or grab the drivers manually.

To find out what exact GPU model you have built in your setup, you can create a DxDiag Report and lookup (Ctrl + F enables the search function in any editor) "Card name". Here is an example of an Nvidia card:

As soon as you have retrieved this information, you can go to the vendor's support page to manually download the latest driver by filling in the information:

Nvidia drivers can be downloaded here
AMD drivers can be downloaded here

Windows Updates

Your operating system (OS) is the platform all your applications are running on. Keeping it updated should always have a high priority to retrieve all technical and security updates.

Windows 10

Select the Start button
Go to Settings
Select Update & Security
Click on Windows Update
Select Check for updates.

Adjust Settings

Depending on your hardware, there might be simply not enough resources available to run the game.

Minimum Requirements

Please always keep our minimum hardware requirements in mind:

CPU: Intel CPU Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz / AMD CPU Phenom II X4 940

RAM: 8 GB RAM

Storage: 80GB

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 / Radeon HD 7870

OS: 64-bit Windows 10

DirectX: Version 12

Network: Broadband Internet Connection

If you undercut these requirements, you need to upgrade your components to be able to play the game.

Background Processes

Windows and 3rd party applications are sometimes getting out of hand and feel a bit too much at home. It's always good to control what program or service is allowed to be executed and what can be discarded to free up resources.

Clean Boot

If you are having issues running the game properly, there might be another application interfering with HITMAN 3.

To test this out, you can simply run a Clean Boot so that your OS boots only with the basic programs and drivers.

Temperatures

Heat is your hardware's enemy. If your components are getting too hot, your system will throttle down its performance to keep it cool, avoiding physical damage.

Dust

If your case is getting too dusty the airflow from your fans might no longer function properly, and the heat cannot get blown out of your system.

It is recommended to keep an eye on the dust in your tower and remove it. Be careful that you don't damage any components by being too rough to the material or expose them to electric static shocks.

The gentlest way to remove dust is with compressed air. You can even blow the fans free (don't let the fans turn though or the mechanics can be damaged if they rotate too fast!)

Fan Control

When you're dust-free, an increase in the fan's RPM can often result in lower temperatures. To do this, you can use applications to control the speed of the fans.

A popular application for this purpose is MSI Afterburner, but there are many more out there.

Thermal Paste

The CPU's thermal paste can lose its efficiency over time, and it might be wise to reapply it.

It's not advised to do this when you don't feel comfortable handling hardware in general, but there are many video guides on the internet you can look up. Be aware that it is a delicate measure, so don't be too shy to ask a knowledgeable friend or professional technician for help!

Windows Power Plan

Especially Laptops have often on default low power settings enabled. That is useful to save the battery's life and extending its powered duration but can result in a low-performance output.

Power Settings

For gaming, in general, it is useful to set the power settings to 'High Performance' in your Windows settings. You can check and change this by following these steps:

Press the Windows-Key (on your keyboard) + X
Select Power Options
Click on the right side Additional power settings
Check High Performance

Plan Settings

Above you see pre-created plan settings, but you can adjust these if you like and customize them.

Simply click on Change Plan Settings and go to Change advanced power settings.

Within the new window, you can decide how Windows is supposed to control and distribute power.

File Management

To empower Windows to access important files, it is important to get certain obstacles out of the way.

Defragmentation - HDD's

When moving, deleting, copying, pasting, cutting files it can happen to rip apart the structure of files. Windows still knows what segments it needs to put together, but should there be noncontiguous fragments of data it can take longer to process them.

To reconnect the fragments, it's useful to run a Defragmentation. You can either use the built-in Windows tool or use a 3rd party tool to do this.

Firmware - SSD

If you use an SSD, it's recommended to deactivate any automatic defragmentation for it since it lowers the life expectancy of it.

Instead, make sure to install the latest firmware and run the included optimization program. The relevant software can be found on the homepage of your SSD vendor.

Disk Optimization

When you suffer under stutters and long loading screens it's worth checking your disk health. You can use a tool like HDTune to run a benchmark test and have a look.

Should you see any issues on your precious hard drive, it may be wise to let a repair tool have a look at it. A tool capable of doing this is DiskFresh, but as always - there are many other options out there :)

Getting Rid of Useless Files

If you run updates, delete files, even if you surf on the internet: after a while, your OS just starts hoarding a lot of old data which it doesn't need or touch which can slow down your performance (have a look at the Defragmentation).

Windows got a Disk cleanup option implemented which you can use, but again (You probably saw it coming) there are also other tools you can use.

One of them is CCleaner which is also handy in cleaning your registry entries.

Hibernation Mode

Parts of your resources are on default used by Windows to frequently save an image of your memory (RAM) in case you decide to send your system to sleep. If you never use this feature, it is useful to disable it.

How to Disable the Hibernation Mode

Press the Windows-Key on your Keyboard or click Start in your Taskbar
Type in cmd to search for the command prompt application
Right-click on it and select 'Run as Administrator'
Type in the following command: powercfg.exe /hibernate off
Press Enter