Thief

The AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER combination delivers a thoroughly playable experience in Thief across all tested resolutions and settings, but the performance scaling pattern reveals a system that is clearly GPU-bound at higher resolutions while still maintaining strong frame rates at 1080p. The measured data shows a progression from 102.5 FPS at 1080p High to 92.3 FPS at 1440p High, and finally to 67.9 FPS at 4K High, illustrating how the rendering load shifts as pixel count increases.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is substantial but not catastrophic. At High settings, the average FPS falls from 102.5 at 1920x1080 to 92.3 at 2560x1440, a reduction of roughly 10 percent, and then to 67.9 at 3840x2160, which is about 34 percent lower than the 1080p result. This pattern indicates that the RTX 4070 SUPER remains the dominant factor even at 1440p, where the GPU still has enough headroom to maintain near-triple-digit frame rates, but the 4K result shows the expected heavy lifting required for four times the pixel count of 1080p.

Looking at the Low preset, the scaling is different. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 123.4 FPS, while at 1440p Low it reaches 109.4 FPS, and at 4K Low it still produces 92.7 FPS. The gap between 1080p and 4K at Low settings is only about 25 percent, which is smaller than the High preset's 34 percent drop. This suggests that at Low settings, the CPU has more influence on the upper frame rate ceiling, and the GPU is less saturated, so the resolution penalty is comparatively muted.

The Medium and Ultra presets reinforce the GPU-bound nature of this pairing. At Medium, the frame rates are 114.5 FPS at 1080p, 102.4 FPS at 1440p, and 87 FPS at 4K. At Ultra, the numbers are 99.8 FPS at 1080p, 89.2 FPS at 1440p, and 63.1 FPS at 4K. The Ultra 4K result is the lowest of the entire dataset, sitting below the 67.9 FPS High 4K figure, which is expected given the added visual effects. The consistent downward slope across all settings indicates that no single resolution produces an anomalous result; the component scaling is steady and predictable.

What this data says about the limiting component is clear: the RTX 4070 SUPER is the bottleneck at 4K, where even a capable processor like the Ryzen 5 3600 cannot compensate for the GPU's rendering load. At 1080p, the frame rates are high enough that the CPU's role becomes more apparent, particularly when moving from Low to Ultra settings, where the FPS delta is about 24 percent. For a game from 2014, the absolute frame rates are excellent, and the scaling behavior suggests that users with high-refresh 1080p monitors will see the most benefit, while 4K users will need to accept either High or Medium settings to stay above 60 FPS.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 3600 is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 2 architecture, with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 4.20 GHz. It features 32 MB of shared L3 cache and supports DDR4 memory with a dual-channel bus. In the context of Thief, which is a 2014 stealth title, the CPU's single-threaded performance is more relevant than its multi-threaded capabilities, but the benchmark data shows that this processor has solid all-around numbers.

The Cinebench R23 results show a multicore score of 15045 and a single-core score of 2124, while the 3DMark single-thread test returns 696 and the max-thread test returns 4603. These scores indicate a processor that handles both lightly-threaded and heavily-threaded workloads competently, which is important for a game that may not scale perfectly across many cores. The Ryzen 5 3600's percentile ranking of 76 among all CPUs places it in the upper tier, and its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i5-11400 with an average score of 18150 and a delta of -0.1 percent, meaning the 3600 is essentially tied with that chip in synthetic benchmarks.

In Thief, the CPU's influence is most visible at 1080p Low settings, where the 123.4 FPS result suggests that the processor can feed the GPU efficiently at lower resolutions. At 1080p Ultra, the frame rate drops to 99.8 FPS, but this is more likely due to increased GPU load than CPU limitations. The 12 threads provide enough parallelism for modern game engines, and the boost clock of 4.20 GHz offers adequate single-thread speed for a title that relies on game logic and AI. The 65W TDP and 7nm process node indicate that this is an efficient part, though those details do not directly affect gameplay performance.

Comparing to the nearest rivals, the Ryzen 5 3600 sits within 0.3 percent of the AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS and within 0.2 percent of the AMD Ryzen 5 1600, showing that its synthetic performance is competitive with both newer and older parts. For Thief, the CPU is not the limiting factor at any resolution above 1080p, as the GPU takes over the bottleneck role. At 1080p, the CPU's headroom is sufficient to keep frame rates high, but the data does not show any scenario where the processor causes a severe frame rate collapse.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus, providing 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU has a base clock of 1980 MHz and a boost clock of 2475 MHz, with 7168 shading units and 80 ROPs. Its performance in synthetic benchmarks is strong, with a Passmark G3D score of 29995 and a 3DMark Steel Nomad score of 4627, placing it in the 84th percentile of all GPUs.

In Thief, the GPU's role is dominant across all resolutions. The memory capacity of 12 GB is more than sufficient for this game, which is from 2014 and would not stress modern VRAM allocations even at 4K Ultra. The 504.2 GB/s bandwidth ensures that texture streaming and memory access are not bottlenecks, allowing the GPU to focus on pixel shading and geometry processing. The boost clock of 2475 MHz contributes to the high frame rates observed, particularly at 1080p where the GPU can run at near-peak efficiency.

The nearest rivals for the RTX 4070 SUPER include the NVIDIA RTX A6000 with an average score of 42653 and a delta of -0.2 percent, and the AMD Radeon RX 7650 GRE with a score of 42723 and a delta of -0.3 percent. These deltas are tiny, indicating that the 4070 SUPER performs within a narrow band of its competitors in synthetic tests. In actual game data, the GPU's capability is evident: it delivers over 60 FPS at 4K Ultra (63.1 FPS) and over 100 FPS at 1080p High (102.5 FPS). The 4K High result of 67.9 FPS is close to the 4K Ultra figure, suggesting that the GPU is the primary constraint at that resolution, and increasing settings from High to Ultra only costs about 7 percent performance.

The GPU's 220W TDP and dual-slot design are not directly relevant to game performance, but the 35.48 TFLOPS FP32 compute capability provides a measure of raw processing power that aligns with the observed frame rates. For a game like Thief, which is not particularly demanding by modern standards, the RTX 4070 SUPER is overqualified, but the data shows that it still scales predictably with resolution increases, confirming that the GPU is the main performance driver in this combination.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER ranks 779th out of 1642 tested combos in Thief, placing it in the upper half of all configurations. This rank reflects the balance between a mid-range CPU from 2019 and a high-end GPU from 2024, with the GPU's strength compensating for the CPU's relative age. The rank of 779 out of 1642 means that approximately 52 percent of tested combos outperform this one, while 48 percent fall below it, indicating that this pairing is slightly above the median but not exceptional.

The combo's position in the rankings is influenced by the game's age and resolution scaling. At 1080p, the high frame rates (over 100 FPS at High settings) would place this combo in a favorable position relative to many others, but at 4K, the 67.9 FPS High result is more modest. The rank of 779 suggests that there are many combos with newer CPUs or higher-tier GPUs that achieve better results, but also many with older or weaker components that perform worse. The data indicates that this is a well-matched pair for 1080p and 1440p gaming, where the GPU's power is fully utilized, but at 4K, the combo is less competitive against systems with top-tier CPUs.

The percentile rankings of the individual components reinforce this assessment. The CPU's 76th percentile and the GPU's 84th percentile suggest that the GPU is the stronger component, and the combo rank reflects that hierarchy. In Thief, the GPU's dominance means that the combo's overall rank is more dependent on the GPU than the CPU, which is consistent with the resolution scaling data showing a clear GPU bottleneck at higher resolutions.

FAQ

Q: What is the average FPS at 1080p High settings for this combo?

A: The average FPS at 1920x1080 with High settings is 102.5 FPS, which provides a smooth experience for most displays.

Q: How does the frame rate change from 1440p to 4K at High settings?

A: At 2560x1440 High, the average FPS is 92.3, and at 3840x2160 High, it drops to 67.9, a reduction of about 26 percent as pixel count increases.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor at 4K Ultra settings?

A: The data shows 63.1 FPS at 4K Ultra, which is the lowest result in the dataset, indicating that the GPU is the primary bottleneck at this resolution and settings level.

Q: What is the CPU's single-thread performance score?

A: The Cinebench R23 single-core score is 2124, and the 3DMark single-thread score is 696, both indicating adequate single-threaded capability for a 2014 game.

Q: How does the GPU compare to its nearest rival in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 4070 SUPER has an average benchmark score of 42576, which is 0.2 percent lower than the NVIDIA RTX A6000 and 0.3 percent lower than the AMD Radeon RX 7650 GRE.

*Q: What is the combo's rank among all tested configurations in Thief?*

A: The combo ranks 779th out of 1642 tested combos, placing it just above the median performance level for this game.