Hitman
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The sixth entry in the popular Hitman series sees Agent 47 return to our screens in full DX12 glory and with an even larger inventory of assassination methods. Gorgeous to look at yet intensive on hardware, this is a title that demands a quality GPU.
Surely this is a typo and a mistake, right? The answer is no; the results are consistent every time we run them. The SLI setup is significantly slower than a single card. The next question is how can this be so? Optimising for multi-GPU graphics subsystems under DX11 is the domain of the GPU manufacturer and is implemented in the driver. This is why you see decent scaling in the previous games.
DX12, on the other hand, as used here, puts the onus on the games developer to optimise the engine for SLI or CrossFire. The results speak for themselves, that is, you are better off with one card rather than two.
Running the same game and settings via the DX11 codepath gives very similar results for a single card. Two MSI GeForce GTX 1070 cards produce an average 96fps at 2,560x1,440 and 67fps at 3,840x2,160, or reasonable scaling from one to two. Those wanting to play this game with a couple of GeForces need to run DX11.
The frame-time analysis on Hitman DX12 reinforces the scaling problems we see the above graphs. DX12, for now, is a no-no for Hitman in SLI.
