Hitman: World of Assassination seems to have a secret ‘performance mode’ on the Nintendo Switch 2

Hitman: World of Assassination seems to have an unofficial “performance mode” on the Nintendo Switch 2
After changing the game’s resolution from 4K to 720p, the game’s performance significantly increases in some locations
Digital Foundry conducted an investigation and found Whittleton Creek offered the biggest frame-rate difference, hitting 59.93FPS at 720p

The Nintendo Switch 2 version of Hitman: World of Assassination appears to have an unofficial “performance mode” hidden behind its settings.

That’s according to Digital Foundry’s Richard Leadbetter (via Eurogamer), who received an email claiming that the game can run at a higher frame rate after changing the resolution settings from 4K to 720p.

“Hitman: World of Assassination on Switch 2 runs around 30-45 fps around 90 percent of the time,” the email from Harry Mingham reads. “Out of curiosity, I went into the system settings and changed the TV output res from 4K to 720p, went back into the game and found it vastly improves performance. The Hawkes Bay Mission ran at… a very solid and stable frame-rate.”

Leadbetter then conducted an investigation and captured scenes from Paris, Mumbai, Berlin, and Whittleton Creek at 720p, 1080p, and 4K resolution.

He found that Whittleton Creek offered the biggest frame-rate difference, hitting 59.93FPS at 720p, 46.88FPS at 1080p, and just 40.45FPS at 4K, showing a 62.5 percent increase in performance when the game is set to the lowest resolution.

Leadbetter explained that this is happening simply because setting the game to 720p “seems to be producing a straight 720p image, allowing for a much higher frame-rate”.

It appears that the game renders at a slightly higher resolution at 1080p, with pixel counts suggesting 1152p to 1188p, but when the Switch 2 is set to 4K, performance drops, but the pixel count stays the same.

Meanwhile, Berlin at 720p output is 61 percent faster than 4K, while 1080p is seven points clear of 4K.

“This is a slightly more demanding scene than Whittleton Creek with 720p averaging 55.1fps, 1080p at 36.7fps, and 4K at 34.26fps,” Leadbetter said.

It was found that scenes that are packed with NPCs reduce performance. There are wide gaps in frame rates between the resolution in certain areas in Paris, for example, but when Agent 47 enters more crammed areas, the gap closes significantly.

At 720p, the game can hit 42FPS, 1080p can reach 39FPS, but 4K struggles at 35FPS.

“720p should be higher, but the bottleneck shifts from a GPU limitation to the CPU instead. Frame rates also close up in Mumbai for similar reasons,” Leadbetter explained.

While players can reduce their resolution to 720p in favor of higher performance, Digital Foundry says that the problem is that the “very noticeable” lower resolution won’t make Hitman: World of Assassination look good.

Here’s hoping IO Interactive will consider adding an official performance mode in the future.