Thief

Similar Performance Alternatives

The Intel Core i7-14700KF sits in a tightly packed cluster of high-end desktop processors. The database shows its average benchmark score is 70,163, which places it just 0.2% above the AMD Ryzen 7 9700F (69,996) and 0.4% above the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX (69,875). The Ryzen 9 7950X trails by 0.9% (69,515), while the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K leads by 1% (70,879). In practical terms, any of these CPUs would deliver nearly indistinguishable frame pacing in a game like Thief, since the differences are all within a single percentage point.

On the graphics side, the Intel Arc B390 is an entirely different story. Its 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1,482 puts it in the 9th percentile among all GPUs, meaning it sits near the bottom of the performance distribution. The nearest rivals are all legacy NVIDIA parts: the GeForce GT 520MX scores 1,463 (1.3% slower), the GeForce 800M scores 1,460 (1.5% slower), the GeForce GT 625 OEM scores 1,446 (2.5% slower), and the GeForce GT 710 scores 1,443 (2.7% slower). This places the Arc B390 in the company of entry-level mobile and OEM graphics solutions from over a decade ago. Anyone considering this combo should expect the GPU to be the overwhelming constraint in Thief, as the CPU is effectively a top-tier part while the GPU is a bottom-tier one.

FAQ

Q: Can this PC run Thief at 1080p?

A: Yes, at 1920x1080 the combo reaches playable frame rates on Low and Medium settings. Low averages 86 FPS, Medium averages 66 FPS, but High drops to 50 FPS and Ultra to 48 FPS. The playable threshold is 60 FPS, so only Low and Medium cross that line.

Q: What is the best settings preset at 1080p?

A: Medium is the highest preset that stays at or above 60 FPS at 1920x1080, with an average of 66 FPS. The recorded range for Medium is 56 FPS minimum to 75 FPS maximum, so dips below 60 can occur but the average remains playable.

Q: Is 1440p playable with this hardware?

A: No. At 2560x1440, the best result is Low settings at 59 FPS, which is just below the 60 FPS threshold. Medium averages 45 FPS, High averages 34 FPS, and Ultra averages 33 FPS. The database lists no playable settings at this resolution.

Q: How does the GPU compare to its closest rivals?

A: The Arc B390 scores 1,482 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12. The nearest rival, the GeForce GT 520MX, scores 1,463 (1.3% slower). The GeForce 800M is 1.5% slower, the GT 625 OEM is 2.5% slower, and the GT 710 is 2.7% slower. All four rivals are within roughly 3% of the Arc B390's performance.

Q: What frame rates does the GPU deliver at 4K?

A: At 3840x2160, all settings fall well below playable. Low averages 35 FPS, Medium averages 26 FPS (22 min, 30 max), High averages 20 FPS, and Ultra averages 19 FPS. No preset at 4K reaches even half of the 60 FPS target.

Q: What is the combo's overall rank among tested systems?

A: The combo ranks 3,307th out of 3,720 tested combinations in Thief, placing it in the bottom 11% of all tested hardware pairings. This reflects the GPU's low percentile score rather than the CPU's strength.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The recorded data covers three resolutions and four settings presets, with average FPS for every combination and min/max values available for Medium at each resolution.

At 1920x1080, Low settings produce an average of 86 FPS. Medium drops to 66 FPS on average, with a recorded range of 56 to 75 FPS. High falls to 50 FPS average, and Ultra is the slowest 1080p preset at 48 FPS average. The gap between Low and Medium is 20 FPS, while the gap between Medium and High is 16 FPS.

At 2560x1440, Low averages 59 FPS, which is the only 1440p result within 1 FPS of the 60 FPS target. Medium averages 45 FPS with a range of 38 to 52 FPS. High averages 34 FPS, and Ultra averages 33 FPS. The difference between Low and Medium at this resolution is 14 FPS, and the difference between Medium and High is 11 FPS.

At 3840x2160, Low averages 35 FPS. Medium averages 26 FPS with a range of 22 to 30 FPS. High averages 20 FPS, and Ultra averages 19 FPS. The drop from Low to Medium is 9 FPS, and from Medium to High is 6 FPS. The average frames per second scale roughly linearly with resolution: 1080p Low at 86 FPS falls to 59 FPS at 1440p (a 31% reduction) and then to 35 FPS at 4K (a further 41% reduction).

The min/max data for Medium settings shows consistent behavior: at 1080p the range spans 56 to 75 FPS, at 1440p it spans 38 to 52 FPS, and at 4K it spans 22 to 30 FPS. In every case, the minimum is roughly 85% of the average, indicating steady frame delivery without severe hitches, but the absolute values are too low for playable performance beyond 1080p Medium.

The Verdict

This PC can run Thief, but only at 1920x1080 and only on the two least demanding presets. The verdict data lists Low and Medium as playable at 1080p, with Medium being the best playable preset at 66 FPS average. At 2560x1440, no settings are playable; the closest result is Low at 59 FPS, which misses the 60 FPS threshold by a single frame. At 3840x2160, every preset falls far below playable, with the best result (Low) averaging just 35 FPS.

The pattern is unambiguous: the Arc B390 cannot sustain 60 FPS at any resolution above 1080p in Thief, and even at 1080p, High and Ultra presets fail to reach the threshold. The 60 FPS playable threshold is a hard line that this combo crosses only at 1080p Low and Medium. Users targeting 1440p or 4K would need a substantially stronger GPU, since the data shows no settings combination at those resolutions comes close to the target.

Best Settings per Resolution

At 1920x1080, the most demanding preset that stays at or above 60 FPS is Medium, with an average of 66 FPS. This is the only resolution where a playable preset exists. Low also clears the threshold at 86 FPS, but Medium is the highest quality option that remains playable.

At 2560x1440, no preset meets the 60 FPS requirement. The closest is Low at 59 FPS, which is below the threshold, so there is no best playable setting. The database records no playable settings at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, no preset meets the 60 FPS requirement. Low averages 35 FPS, Medium 26 FPS, High 20 FPS, and Ultra 19 FPS. No playable settings exist at this resolution.

The practical recommendation is 1080p Medium: it delivers an average of 66 FPS with a minimum of 56 FPS, which means most of the session will run smoothly with occasional dips into the high 50s. For a stricter experience, 1080p Low at 86 FPS provides a larger margin above the threshold.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested combinations for Thief, this pairing of the Core i7-14700KF with the Arc B390 ranks 3,307th out of 3,720 total combos. That places it in the bottom 11% of all tested systems. The rank is driven almost entirely by the GPU: the Arc B390 sits in the 9th percentile among all GPUs, while the CPU sits in the 94th percentile among all CPUs. The massive gap between component percentiles explains why the combo's overall rank is so low despite having a flagship-class processor.

The CPU's nearest rivals (all within 1% performance) include the Ryzen 7 9700F, Ryzen 9 7940HX, Ryzen 9 7950X, and Core Ultra 7 265K. Swapping the i7-14700KF for any of those would have virtually no effect on Thief's frame rates, because the GPU is the limiting factor. Conversely, replacing the Arc B390 with any of its nearest GPU rivals (GT 520MX, 800M, GT 625 OEM, GT 710) would produce nearly identical performance, as they are all within 2.7% of each other. The rank of 3,307 out of 3,720 reflects a system that is CPU-rich but GPU-poor, and Thief is clearly a title where the GPU bottleneck dominates.

CPU and GPU Roles

The data shows that Thief's performance with this combo scales almost entirely with resolution and settings, which points to the GPU as the dominant constraint at every resolution. Consider the CPU's benchmark profile: it scores 44,167 in Cinebench R23 multi-core, 6,235 in single-core, and ranks in the 94th percentile among all CPUs. The GPU, by contrast, scores 1,482 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 and ranks in the 9th percentile. When a system pairs a top-decile CPU with a bottom-decile GPU, the GPU becomes the bottleneck in essentially every gaming workload, and the measured FPS data confirms this.

At 1080p Low, the CPU could theoretically push far higher frame rates, but the GPU delivers 86 FPS. At 1080p Ultra, the GPU delivers 48 FPS, a 44% drop from Low. This 38 FPS swing across settings at the same resolution is a classic GPU-bound signature: the CPU is not changing its workload proportionally to the graphics load, so the frame rate must be falling because the GPU cannot keep up with the increased shading and fill rate demands.

The resolution scaling reinforces this conclusion. Moving from 1080p to 1440p at Low settings drops the average from 86 to 59 FPS, a 31% reduction. Moving from 1440p to 4K at Low drops it from 59 to 35 FPS, another 41% reduction. These are large percentage losses that track directly with pixel count increases, which is the behavior of a GPU-limited system. A CPU-limited system would show much smaller FPS drops as resolution increases, because the CPU work per frame stays roughly constant while the GPU work grows.

At 4K, the settings scaling becomes even steeper in relative terms: Low averages 35 FPS, but Ultra averages just 19 FPS, a 46% reduction. The fact that the CPU is a 20-core, 28-thread part with a 5.60 GHz boost clock and the game is a 2014 stealth title means there is no plausible scenario where the CPU becomes the limiting factor in Thief. The i7-14700KF has more than enough single-thread and multi-thread headroom for a game from that era. The Arc B390's 7.680 TFLOPS FP32 throughput and 60.00 GPixel/s pixel rate are simply inadequate for higher resolutions and presets.

In summary, the CPU's role in this combo is to provide massive headroom that never gets fully utilized in Thief, while the GPU's role is to define the ceiling. At 1080p Medium, the GPU manages 66 FPS average. At any higher resolution or preset, it falls below the playable threshold, and no amount of CPU capability can change that. Users who want to play Thief at 1440p or 4K would need to upgrade the GPU, not the CPU, as the recorded data shows the processor is already operating far above the game's requirements.