Thief

# FAQ

Q: What is the combo rank of the AMD Ryzen 5 5500 with the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT in Thief?

A: This combination ranks 1204th out of 1642 tested combos in Thief, placing it in the lower-mid portion of the benchmark database for this title.

Q: How does the Ryzen 5 5500 compare to its nearest CPU rivals?

A: The Ryzen 5 5500 scores 20875 average benchmark points, which is within 0.2% of the Intel Core i5-12500 (20897), AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 4655GE (20900), and Intel Core i5-12600T (20917). It sits marginally ahead of the AMD EPYC 7J13 (20845) by 0.1%.

Q: What is the highest average FPS achieved by this combo in Thief?

A: The highest recorded average FPS is 148.5 at 1920x1080 with Low settings. The next best result is 117.3 at the same resolution with Medium settings.

Q: How does the GPU's benchmark score compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The RX 6600 XT posts an average benchmark score of 27985, placing it 0.1% ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti (27956) and 0.4% ahead of the AMD Radeon R9 M395X (27883). It trails the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 (28238) by 0.9% and the AMD FirePro S7150 (28409) by 1.5%.

Q: What is the lowest average FPS recorded for this combo?

A: The lowest average FPS is 36.8 at 3840x2160 with Ultra settings. The High setting at the same resolution produces 37.5 FPS, showing minimal difference at the top end of the quality scale.

Q: Does the CPU or GPU appear to be the limiting factor at 4K Ultra settings?

A: The data suggests the GPU is heavily constrained at 3840x2160 Ultra, with only 36.8 FPS. Since the CPU has 6 cores and 12 threads with a boost clock of 4.20 GHz, and the GPU has 8 GB of GDDR6 memory, the extreme pixel load at 4K likely saturates the GPU's 256.0 GB/s bandwidth before CPU limits are reached.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 paired with the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT achieves a combo rank of 1204 out of 1642 tested combinations in Thief. This places the pairing in the 73rd percentile of all tested combos, meaning roughly a quarter of tested systems perform worse. Given that both components are mid-range offerings from the AMD ecosystem—the CPU being a 6-core Zen 3 part and the GPU being a Navi 23-based RDNA 2.0 card—this ranking reflects a balanced but not exceptional configuration for this 2014 stealth title.

The CPU's average benchmark score of 20875 places it in the 79th percentile of all CPUs, while the GPU's average score of 27985 places it in the 71st percentile of all GPUs. The slight discrepancy suggests the CPU holds a small relative advantage over the GPU in synthetic workloads, which may translate to some headroom in CPU-bound scenarios. However, in Thief specifically, the measured FPS data indicates that GPU limitations dominate at higher resolutions and quality settings.

When compared to other combos in the database, this pairing's rank of 1204 suggests that while the hardware is capable, there are many more powerful configurations that achieve significantly higher frame rates. The nearest CPU rivals—the Intel Core i5-12500, AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 4655GE, and Intel Core i5-12600T—all post nearly identical average scores, indicating that swapping the Ryzen 5 5500 for any of these would yield minimal performance difference in CPU-bound workloads. Similarly, the GPU's closest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti, scores within 0.1%, making the RX 6600 XT essentially performance-equivalent to that older flagship card in synthetic tests.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT is built on the Navi 23 chip using RDNA 2.0 architecture, fabricated on a 7 nm process at TSMC. It features 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, delivering 256.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU's base clock is 1968 MHz, with a game clock of 2359 MHz and a boost clock of 2589 MHz. Its memory operates at 2000 MHz with 16 Gbps effective throughput.

In Thief, the GPU's role becomes increasingly critical as resolution and quality settings rise. At 1920x1080, the combo achieves 148.5 FPS on Low settings, which drops to 86.8 FPS on Ultra—a 41.5% reduction. At 2560x1440, the range narrows from 105 FPS on Low to 59.1 FPS on Ultra. At 3840x2160, the performance envelope tightens further: 65.8 FPS on Low falls to 36.8 FPS on Ultra.

The 8 GB VRAM capacity is sufficient for Thief's 2014-era textures and geometry, even at 4K Ultra, since the game's memory requirements are modest by modern standards. The GPU's 2048 shading units and 64 ROPs, combined with a pixel rate of 165.7 GPixel/s, handle the game's rendering demands efficiently at lower resolutions. However, at 4K Ultra, the texture fill rate of 331.4 GTexel/s becomes a limiting factor, as evidenced by the 36.8 FPS result.

The GPU's benchmark scores align with its measured performance in Thief. Its PassMark G3D score of 16461 and 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1804 indicate solid DirectX 12 capability, which is relevant given Thief's support for modern APIs. The GPU's percentile rank of 71 among all GPUs places it slightly below the CPU's 79th percentile, confirming that the GPU is the performance bottleneck in this pairing.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its strongest results. Low settings produce 148.5 FPS, Medium achieves 117.3 FPS, High reaches 90.1 FPS, and Ultra settles at 86.8 FPS. The gap between High and Ultra is just 3.3 FPS, suggesting diminishing returns from the highest quality preset at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, performance scales predictably. Low settings yield 105 FPS, Medium produces 79.8 FPS, High drops to 63.9 FPS, and Ultra falls to 59.1 FPS. The step from High to Ultra represents a 4.8 FPS reduction, again indicating that the Ultra preset adds minimal visual benefit relative to its performance cost.

At 3840x2160, the GPU becomes heavily constrained. Low settings manage 65.8 FPS, Medium drops to 46.4 FPS, High falls to 37.5 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 36.8 FPS. The transition from High to Ultra at 4K yields only 0.7 FPS difference, showing that the GPU is saturated and quality settings have negligible impact at this extreme resolution.

The scaling patterns reveal that resolution has a larger impact than quality settings. Moving from 1080p Ultra to 1440p Ultra reduces FPS by 27.7 FPS, while moving from 1440p Ultra to 4K Ultra reduces it by 22.3 FPS. Across all resolutions, the Low-to-Ultra transition costs 61.7 FPS at 1080p, 45.9 FPS at 1440p, and 29 FPS at 4K. This indicates that at 4K, the GPU is so bottlenecked that quality presets have diminishing influence on frame rate.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on Zen 3 architecture with the Cezanne codename. It operates at a base clock of 3.60 GHz and boosts to 4.20 GHz, with a 65 W TDP. The CPU features 64 KB L1 cache per core, 512 KB L2 per core, and 16 MB L3 cache. Its memory bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s via dual-channel DDR4 support is adequate for gaming workloads.

In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU achieves a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 16429 and a single-core score of 2319. Its 3DMark single-thread score of 836 and 16-thread score of 5386 indicate balanced multi-threaded performance. The PassMark multithread score of 19330 and single-thread score of 3058 further confirm its mid-range positioning.

For Thief, a stealth game from 2014, the CPU's role is primarily to maintain consistent frame pacing and avoid bottlenecks at lower resolutions where the GPU is less taxed. At 1080p Low settings, where the combo reaches 148.5 FPS, the CPU's 12 threads ensure that game logic and physics calculations don't introduce stutter. The 4.20 GHz boost clock provides responsive single-thread performance, which is crucial for games that rely heavily on primary game thread execution.

The CPU's 16 MB L3 cache is sufficient for Thief's data set, reducing memory latency and improving frame time consistency. The 7 nm process node and 10,700 million transistors contribute to efficient power consumption, though the 65 W TDP means thermal headroom is modest. The CPU's percentile rank of 79 among all CPUs indicates it outperforms most installed processors, making it a capable partner for the RX 6600 XT in this game.

At higher resolutions like 4K, the CPU's influence diminishes as the GPU becomes the primary bottleneck. However, the CPU's strong single-thread performance ensures that even at 36.8 FPS (4K Ultra), frame times remain stable without CPU-induced hitches. The Ryzen 5 5500's performance is nearly identical to its closest rivals—the Intel Core i5-12500 and AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 4655GE differ by only 0.1% in average benchmark score—meaning any of these CPUs would produce similar results in Thief when paired with the RX 6600 XT.