Thief

# Thief — AMD Ryzen 5 4600G + AMD Radeon RX 570

The AMD Ryzen 5 4600G paired with the AMD Radeon RX 570 delivers a playable but constrained experience in Thief, a 2014 stealth title that remains demanding at higher settings. The combo's measured frame rates show a clear progression from smooth 1080p gameplay at lower presets to borderline unplayable 4K performance, with the GPU emerging as the dominant limiting factor across the resolution spectrum.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is severe and reveals the RX 570's bandwidth and compute limitations. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 76 FPS, but at 4K Low that figure falls to 32.4 FPS — a 57.4% reduction. This scaling pattern is consistent across all settings: High drops from 43.8 FPS at 1080p to 20.1 FPS at 4K (54.1% loss), Medium falls from 60.1 to 26.0 FPS (56.7% loss), and Ultra collapses from 39.6 to 14.6 FPS (63.1% loss).

The fact that the percentage drop is relatively uniform across presets — roughly 54-63% — indicates that the bottleneck shifts minimally with settings changes. This is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario where pixel throughput and memory bandwidth are the primary constraints. The RX 570's 224.0 GB/s memory bandwidth and 4 GB GDDR5 frame buffer are simply insufficient for 2160p resolutions in this title, regardless of how much the CPU can keep up.

At 1440p, the pattern continues but with more headroom. Low settings produce 50.7 FPS, which is a 33.3% reduction from the 1080p result — a milder drop than the 4K case. Ultra at 1440p yields 26.2 FPS, which is 33.8% lower than 1080p Ultra. The moderate scaling at 1440p suggests that the RX 570 still has some compute headroom at this resolution, but the 4K results show the GPU hitting a hard wall.

The 1080p results tell the most interesting story. The jump from Low (76 FPS) to Medium (60.1 FPS) is a 20.9% performance penalty, while Medium to High (43.8 FPS) costs another 27.1%. The step to Ultra (39.6 FPS) is comparatively mild at 9.6% from High. This non-linear scaling suggests that certain Ultra settings — likely shadow quality or ambient occlusion — are less demanding relative to the High-to-Medium gap, or that the engine's rendering pipeline hits diminishing returns at higher presets.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo ranks 1572nd out of 1642 tested combinations in Thief, placing it in the bottom 4.3% of all tested systems. This is a surprisingly low position for a setup that can achieve 76 FPS at 1080p Low, but the ranking reflects the full spectrum of tested hardware, which includes far more powerful configurations. The rank indicates that in the context of modern and high-end systems, this pairing is toward the tail end of performance.

The CPU itself, the Ryzen 5 4600G, sits in the 75th percentile among all CPUs tested, with an average benchmark score of 17489. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 5355GE (17482, 0% delta), Intel Core i5-12450H (17475, 0.1% ahead), Intel Core i3-14100T (17636, 0.8% ahead), and Intel Core i3-13100F (17665, 1% ahead). The 4600G's position is essentially tied with these competitors, which is notable given its integrated graphics capability — the Radeon Vega 7 iGPU — that adds die area without benefiting discrete GPU gaming.

The GPU, Radeon RX 570, resides in the 74th percentile among all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 30158. Its nearest rivals are surprising: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 (30109, 0.2% behind), AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT (30097, 0.2% behind), NVIDIA Tesla M60 (29969, 0.6% behind), and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Mobile (29928, 0.8% behind). These synthetic benchmark scores do not translate to gaming performance parity — the RX 570's 5.095 TFLOPS FP32 compute and 39.81 GPixel/s pixel rate are far below what modern GPUs deliver in real-world gaming, but the benchmark averages show the Polaris chip still holds its own in certain compute workloads.

The disconnect between the CPU's solid 75th percentile standing and the combo's bottom-4% game rank underscores that Thief is heavily GPU-limited for this pairing. The 4600G's six cores and twelve threads are more than adequate; the RX 570's 2048 shading units and 32 ROPs are the binding constraint.

FAQ

Q: What is the best settings preset for playable frame rates at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, Low settings deliver 76 FPS and Medium delivers 60.1 FPS, both above the 60 FPS threshold. High (43.8 FPS) and Ultra (39.6 FPS) fall below it, so Medium is the highest preset that maintains a smooth experience.

Q: Can this combo handle 1440p gaming in Thief?

A: Yes, but only at lower presets. Low settings at 2560x1440 produce 50.7 FPS, while Medium drops to 36.7 FPS. High (29.2 FPS) and Ultra (26.2 FPS) are below 30 FPS, making them less desirable for consistent play.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its closest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The Ryzen 5 4600G scores 17489 on average, which is nearly identical to the AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 5355GE (17482, 0% difference) and Intel Core i5-12450H (17475, 0.1% difference). The Intel Core i3-14100T (17636) and i3-13100F (17665) are 0.8% and 1% ahead, respectively.

Q: Why is 4K performance so poor even at Low settings?

A: At 3840x2160 Low, the combo achieves 32.4 FPS, which is a 57.4% drop from 1080p Low (76 FPS). The RX 570's 4 GB GDDR5 memory and 224.0 GB/s bandwidth are insufficient for the 8.3 million pixels at 4K, causing the GPU to become the sole bottleneck.

Q: Is the RX 570's synthetic benchmark score competitive with modern GPUs?

A: The RX 570's average benchmark score is 30158, which places it within 0.8% of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Mobile (29928) and 0.2% of the RTX 5060 (30109) in the aggregate benchmark data. However, this does not reflect gaming performance parity, as Thief's measured FPS shows.

Q: What frame rate can be expected at 1080p Ultra?

A: At 1920x1080 Ultra, the combo delivers 39.6 FPS. This is playable for slower-paced stealth gameplay but falls short of the 60 FPS target, and it is a 47.9% reduction from the 1080p Low result of 76 FPS.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full settings sweep shows a wide range: Low hits 76 FPS, Medium achieves 60.1 FPS, High reaches 43.8 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 39.6 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium is 15.9 FPS, while Medium to High costs 16.3 FPS. The High-to-Ultra step is only 4.2 FPS, suggesting diminishing returns on the highest preset.

Moving to 2560x1440, performance drops across the board. Low produces 50.7 FPS, a 33.3% reduction from 1080p. Medium yields 36.7 FPS, High delivers 29.2 FPS, and Ultra manages 26.2 FPS. The 1440p results show that only Low settings approach the 60 FPS target, and even then only at 84.5% of that goal.

At 3840x2160, the results are largely below playable thresholds. Low achieves 32.4 FPS, Medium drops to 26.0 FPS, High falls to 20.1 FPS, and Ultra is nearly unplayable at 14.6 FPS. The 4K data reveals a consistent pattern: each settings tier costs roughly 6-8 FPS at this resolution, with the GPU's pixel fill rate and memory bandwidth fully saturated.

The scaling from 1080p to 1440p to 4K at each preset follows a predictable curve. At Low, the frame rates are 76, 50.7, and 32.4 FPS respectively — a roughly 33% drop per resolution step. At Ultra, the figures are 39.6, 26.2, and 14.6 FPS, with the 4K result being a 63.1% reduction from 1080p. This asymmetry indicates that Ultra settings add memory pressure that disproportionately affects the highest resolution.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 570 is built on the Polaris 20 chip using GCN 4.0 architecture, fabricated on a 14 nm process at GlobalFoundries. The GPU contains 5,700 million transistors on a 232 mm² die, with a transistor density of 24.6M per mm². Its clock speeds are modest by modern standards: a base of 1168 MHz and boost up to 1244 MHz, with memory running at 1750 MHz (7 Gbps effective).

The memory subsystem is a critical factor in Thief's performance. The 4 GB GDDR5 frame buffer on a 256-bit bus provides 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth. In a game that scales resolution aggressively, this bandwidth becomes the limiting factor at 1440p and especially 4K. The 32 ROPs deliver a pixel rate of 39.81 GPixel/s, which translates to roughly 9.2 pixels per clock at the boost frequency — insufficient for 4K at high quality settings.

Compute resources include 2048 shading units and 128 TMUs, yielding 5.095 TFLOPS FP32 performance and a texture rate of 159.2 GTexel/s. These figures place the RX 570 in the 74th percentile among all tested GPUs in aggregate benchmarks, but Thief's measured FPS shows that real-world gaming performance lags behind what the synthetic scores suggest. The GPU's 150 W TDP and dual-slot design are typical for the Polaris generation, and its PCIe 3.0 x16 interface is adequate for this workload.

The integrated Radeon Vega 7 graphics on the Ryzen 5 4600G are not utilized when the discrete RX 570 is present, but the CPU's 51.2 GB/s dual-channel memory bandwidth and PCIe Gen 3, 20-lane configuration provide sufficient platform support. In Thief, the RX 570's 4 GB VRAM capacity proves adequate at 1080p, where texture streaming stays within budget, but the 224.0 GB/s bandwidth becomes the bottleneck as resolution increases. The data shows that the GPU is the limiting component in this pairing, with the 4600G's CPU performance never becoming the constraint.