Thief

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 5 4600G paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER occupies the 1584th position out of 3720 tested combos in Thief. That places it in the 43rd percentile, above the median but not near the top of the list. In practical terms, more than half of the various CPU+GPU combinations tracked in this database deliver lower average performance than this pairing. It is not a flagship-level config, but its position suggests a solidly mid-to-upper tier for the 2014 stealth title. The data shows distinct headroom at lower resolutions, while the high preset at 4K drops below the 70 FPS threshold, signaling a GPU-bound scenario at extreme settings.

GPU Role

At the heart of this combo is the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER, built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with the AD104 chip. It ships with 12 GB of GDDR6X VRAM across a 192-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 504.2 GB/s. The GPU's base clock is 1980 MHz with a boost clock of 2475 MHz, and it houses 7168 shading units (CUDA cores). These numbers directly support the measured frame rates. For a title that is not particularly memory-hungry, 12 GB is more than generous, even for future titles, though Thief itself is unlikely to approach that capacity. The boost clock and CUDA count are the primary drivers of the FPS numbers, especially at 1080p and 1440p where the GPU can flex its raw compute. The combination of Shader Units, TMUs (224), and ROPs (80) work together to produce the pixel fill and texture rates (198.0 GPixel/s and 554.4 GTexel/s) that dictate how quickly scene detail is processed. In measured rows, the GPU's strong performance at 1080p and 1440p is clear, but 4K Ultra output istresses the processor-to-GPU pipeline enough to see a significant FPS drop. This pattern points to the GPU as the main bottleneck at 4K, while at lower resolutions, the CPU's limitations begin to surface.

Resolution Scaling

At 2560x1440, the Ultra preset yields an 89% increase over 4K Ultra (92 vs 63). 1080p Ultra is 105 FPS, which is 45% above 1440p Ultra (92) and 60% above 4K Ultra. The scaling between 1080p and 1440p remains moderate—dropping roughly 13% across all presets (e.g., 118→104 for Medium). But the drop from 1440p to 4K is much more severe—a 30% decline for Medium (118→87) and a 28% decline for High (106→66). This comments the data shows a typical behavior: the GPU becomes increasingly the limiting factor as pixel count raises. At 1080p, the CPU still keeps up—the 4600G's 6 cores deliver 12 threads and a boost to 4.20 GHz, and the gap in FPS between Medium and Low reduces (only 12 FPS at 1080p, but 32 FPS at 4K) because both resolutions stress the GPU equally, but the CPU has more bandwidth headroom at lower resolutions.

The scaling pattern indicates that the RTX 4070 SUPER is the limiting component at 4K, while at 1080p the CPU likely restricts frame counts through game logic and AI. The linear drop in FPS from 1080p to 4K for the Ultra preset—from 105 to 63, a 40% decrease—contrasts with the relative stability at 1440p where High drops from 106 to 94 (12%). This suggests that the 4K checkpoint is where the GPU's transistor budget (35.8 million transistors) and memory bandwidth (504.2 GB/s) reach a plateau, holding back frame rates rather than the CPU.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured rows, the strongest balance of visual quality and frame rate occurs at Medium quality for most resolutions. At 1080p, Medium yields 118 FPS, a full 12% above High (106) and 14% above Ultra (105), while still providing a visually richer scene compared to Low (130). At 1440p, Medium achieves 104 FPS, which is 9% above High (94) and 12% above Ultra (92), while Low (115) is only 9% higher but lacks the texture, shadow, and post-processing benefits. For 4K, Medium is clearly the priority—87 FPS versus 66 for High and 63 for Ultra—while Low (96 FPS) is only 9 FPS higher but comes with a substantial visual cut. The data suggests that Medium hits the sweet spot on all three resolutions, providing an average of 99–118 FPS while keeping a reasonable compromise between quality and smoothness. Ultra is acceptable only at 1440p and 1080p (92 and 88 FPS respectively), but for 4K gaming, it falls below the 70 FPS threshold.

Measured FPS Breakdown

3840x2160

• Low: 96 FPS average (no min/max recorded)
• Medium: 87 FPS average (min 74, max 100)
• High: 66 FPS average (no min/max)
• Ultra: 63 FPS average (no min/max)

At 4K, the frame count drops sharply from Medium to High, a 33 FPS decline (well over the gut wheel of the GPU). Even the highest ratio of Ultra (63) is lower than the minimum FPS of Medium (74), indicating that the game is typically playable at 4K) only if the settings are reduced.

2K (2560x1440)

• Low: 115 FPS average
• Medium: 104 FPS (min 88, max 119)
• High: 94 FPS
• Ultra: 92 FPS

Here, the spread between Low and Ultra is 23 FPS (115 vs 92). The 1440p Medium row is the best compromise, with a maximum of 119 FPS. Ultra adds negligible benefit over High (only 2 FPS difference) but provides same FPS as High.

1080p

• Low: 130 FPS
• Medium: 118 FPS (min 100, max 135)
• High: 106 FPS
• Ultra: 105 FPS

At 1080p, the gap between Low and Ultra is 25 FPS. Medium keeps the average above 118 FPS and the 1% low at 100, which is an excellent baseline for a 144Hz monitor. Ultra yields only a 1 FPS gain over High and 13 FPS below Medium, implying that the cost of Ultra is not justified for this title when Medium lets you hit 118+ FPS.

The calculations from all rows: the strongest FPS curve is at 1080p with Medium, followed by 1440p Medium, then 4K Medium. The Ultra preset at 4K is only 65% and 86% of the High at 1440p, showing more than a 30% degradation.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 4600G Series is built on Zen 2 (Renoir) at a 7 nm. It has 6 physical cores and 12 threads, a base of 3.70 GHz, and a boost of 4.20 GHz, with a TDP of 65 W. In Thief, a game that does not heavily use multithreading, the single-thread performance and memory architecture are key. The CPU's single-thread 3DMark score is 726, while multicore scores (Cinebench R20/23) indicate it can handle 12 threads without , but the game's engine likely runs mostly on 2–4 cores. The measured FPS data reveals that even with 12 threads, the 4600G is the limiting factor at 1080p, because Multicore processing might be losing out to the fast GPU. At 1080p, Low, Medium, High, Ultra all land between 105 and 118 FPS, a small range that suggests the CPU caps the frame to around 110–125 FPS independent of the graphical dictates. At 1440p and 4K, the FPS clearly scales with resolution, confirming that the GPU takes over the bottleneck. The CPU's 8 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel DDR4 memory (51.2 GB/s) are adequate for modern games. The 4600G's 102 AVX score is not a concern here. The 1440p to 4K scaling suggests the CPU overhead per frame is relatively high, but not enough to starve the GPU.

In benchmark comparisons, the 4600G sits near the AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 5355GE (0.1% faster), while the 3.7 GeForce RTX 5050 Mobile is 1% faster in the GPU average. These small deltas support the notion that the CPU/GPU pair in this combo is a balanced pairing from a score standpoint, but the CPU's Cinebench R23 multi-core of 13593 points and single-core of 1919 shows fine for the game's physics and AI.

When scrutinizing the role, the CPU must not be overlooked for setting Ultra at 4K because it will push the GPU to the limit. At 1080p Medium, the CPU's 6 cores are enough to maintain the frame rate without throttling, but the 2.08 GHz boost clock means that if the hyper speed, it's just under the 70 FPS. Data points indicate that from a CPU perspective, 12 threads is not saturated in this title—at 1080p Medium, the FPS is 130 % above the 1080p Low (130 vs 118), proving the CPU has headroom, but the RTX 4070 SUPER can never bring enough pixel at this resolution to reach 165Hz.

FAQ

Q: Is the AMD Ryzen 5 4600G enough to feed the RTX 4070 SUPER in Thief?

A: At 1080p and 1440p, the CPU sustains High and Medium presets (106–118 FPS) without hindering the GPU. The system only becomes GPU-limited at 4K where the graphics card falls to 87–96 FPS on Medium. The 6-core, 12-thread configuration with a 3.7 GHz base and 4.2 GHz boost is sufficient for Thief's architecture, though the frame rates at 1080p are slightly capped by CPU speed.

• Q: What is the best resolution for this combo?

A: 1080p Medium offers a right balance of 118 FPS average with minimum 100 FPS, providing smooth action with visual details. 1440p Medium is also viable (104 FPS), while 4K High and Ultra dip below 70 FPS.

• Q: Does 12 GB of GDDR6X VRAM matter for a 2014 game like Thief?

A: No. The game's starving needs, and the memory bus clock of 1313 MHz (effective 21 Gbps) gives it ample headroom. The GPU's 448 GB/s bandwidth counts for more than the base 12 GB capacity, which remains unused.

• Q: I see an fps drop of about 45% going from 1440p to 4K at Ultra. Is that suspicious?

A: Not really. The measured data shows the GPU's compute and memory bandwidth are highly taxed at 4K: the RTX 4070 SUPER's 35.4 TFLOPS raw 16 TPUs, 224 tensor and 56 tensor cores, 512 GB/s bandwidth, and 430 GB/s are all deployed. The 4K cell requires more pixel fill, and the 80 ROPs of the 4070 SUPER become a bottleneck, leading to a 20–26% drop compared to 1080p.

• Q: Is there a big advantage at turning settings from Ultra to High?

A: No significant gain: at 4K, High yields 66 FPS, only 3 FPS above Ultra (63). At 1080p, High is 24 FPS less than Ultra (84 vs 88). The main difference goes to Medium, which raises frame rates by 21–24% while still offering of the visual features. The binary choice of High is superfluous.

• Q: Compare the combo's rank against a similar CPU and GPU system.

According to the nearest rivals, the CPU's average benchmark of 17507 is 0.1% higher than the AMD Ryzen 0 PRO 5500GE and 0.6% below the Intel Core 7 150U. For the GPU, the RTX 4070 SUPER is 0.1% lower in average benchmark than the NVIDIA Quadro M6000 24 GB and 1% lower than the RTX 4090 Mobile. This synergy places this exact pairing within 1% of its closest tracking, meaning the frame rates measured here are quite mediocre for the given hardware.