Thief

The AMD Ryzen 5 8400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti combination lands at rank 199 out of 1642 tested combos in Thief, placing it in the top 12% of all configurations. This is a strong position for a game from 2014, showing that this pairing has ample headroom for the title's engine. The data indicates this combo is not struggling to maintain playability; instead, it is positioned to deliver high refresh rate experiences at most settings, with only the most demanding presets at 4K requiring any compromise.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo's rank of 199 out of 1642 tested configurations places it firmly in the upper echelon of systems tested for Thief. This is a significant achievement, given that the database includes a wide array of hardware pairings, from entry-level to enthusiast-grade. The percentile position suggests that roughly 88% of all tested combos perform worse in this specific title. The data shows that the limiting factor in this pairing is rarely the CPU, which is a strong performer in its own right, but rather the GPU's ability to push frames at higher resolutions. The rank reflects a system that can easily handle the game's mechanics, providing a smooth experience on high-refresh-rate monitors at 1080p and 1440p. The fact that this rank is achieved with a 6-core, 12-thread CPU suggests that Thief's engine is well-optimized for multi-threaded workloads, but also that the GPU is doing the heavy lifting at higher graphical presets.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is the dominant component in this pairing for Thief. It comes equipped with 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus, providing a memory bandwidth of 504.2 GB/s. This amount of VRAM is more than sufficient for Thief, even at 4K with High settings, as the game's textures and assets are from an era before VRAM-heavy 4K texture packs were standard. The GPU's boost clock of 2610 MHz, backed by its Ada Lovelace architecture, allows it to maintain high frame rates. The benchmark results show a clear trend: at 1080p, the GPU is not fully utilized, as frame rates are likely capped by the CPU or the game engine's limits. However, as resolution increases to 1440p and 4K, the GPU's role becomes more pronounced, with frame rates scaling down in a way that reflects the increased pixel count. The RTX 4070 Ti's 40.09 TFLOPS of FP32 compute power is more than adequate to handle Thief's DirectX 11-era rendering, making it the clear performance driver at higher resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS data, the optimal experience depends heavily on the target resolution. At 1080p, the Ultra preset yields an average of 147.9 FPS, which is excellent for high-refresh-rate displays. The difference between Ultra and High at 1080p is minimal (147.9 vs 150.1 FPS), suggesting that the Ultra preset is the best choice for visual fidelity without a meaningful performance penalty. At 1440p, the Ultra preset still delivers a very playable 110.5 FPS, but the High preset offers a significant boost to 119.6 FPS. For most users at 1440p, the High preset is the sweet spot, as it provides a noticeable frame rate increase while retaining most of the visual quality. At 4K, the situation changes. The Ultra preset drops to 70 FPS, which is playable but not ideal for competitive or fast-paced gameplay. The High preset at 4K provides 68.5 FPS, a negligible difference from Ultra. In this case, the Medium preset at 90.6 FPS offers a much better balance, delivering a smoother experience with only a modest reduction in visual quality. Therefore, the recommendation is to use Ultra for 1080p and 1440p, and switch to Medium for the best experience at 4K.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a clear picture of performance scaling. At 1080p, the frame rates are consistently high across all settings: Low averages 183.8 FPS, Medium 162 FPS, High 150.1 FPS, and Ultra 147.9 FPS. The spread between Low and Ultra is about 36 FPS, indicating that the game is CPU-bound at this resolution, as the GPU can easily render frames faster than the CPU can feed it. Moving to 1440p, the frame rates remain high but show a wider spread: Low averages 157.5 FPS, Medium 145.4 FPS, High 119.6 FPS, and Ultra 110.5 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra expands to 47 FPS, showing the GPU starting to take on more load. At 4K, the GPU becomes the clear bottleneck. Low averages 120.6 FPS, Medium 90.6 FPS, High 68.5 FPS, and Ultra 70 FPS. The data shows that the High and Ultra presets at 4K are nearly identical in performance, which is unusual and suggests that the Ultra preset may not be adding a significant amount of extra work in this scene, or that the GPU is hitting a memory bandwidth limit. The 4K Low preset is the only one that keeps frame rates above 120 FPS, highlighting how demanding this resolution is on the RTX 4070 Ti.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is substantial and reveals the bottleneck. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 183.8 FPS, which drops to 157.5 FPS at 1440p (a 14% reduction) and then to 120.6 FPS at 4K (a 34% reduction from 1080p). This scaling pattern is typical of a GPU-bound scenario at higher resolutions. The CPU's role is minimal here, as the Ryzen 5 8400F's 6 cores and 12 threads are sufficient to keep up with the GPU at all settings. The data shows that the transition from 1440p to 4K is the most punishing, with a 23% drop in FPS at Low settings. This indicates that the RTX 4070 Ti's 12 GB of VRAM and 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth are being taxed heavily at 4K, especially with higher quality textures. The fact that the 1080p to 1440p drop is smaller than the 1440p to 4K drop suggests that the GPU has enough headroom at 1440p, but becomes the limiting factor at 4K. For users with 4K monitors, the data suggests that sticking to Medium settings is the best way to avoid the steep performance cliff seen at High and Ultra.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 8400F plays a supporting role in this combo for Thief. With 6 cores and 12 threads, it offers a solid foundation for the game's multi-threaded engine. Its base clock of 4.20 GHz and boost clock of 4.70 GHz ensure that single-threaded performance is strong, which is important for game logic and AI. The benchmark data shows that the CPU is not a bottleneck at 1080p, as frame rates exceed 180 FPS on Low settings, which is well beyond what most monitors can display. In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU scores 20,851 points in Cinebench R23 multicore and 2,943 points in single-core, which places it in the 82nd percentile of all CPUs. Its nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, has a nearly identical average benchmark score (25,057 vs 25,064), but the 8400F is a much newer architecture. The CPU's performance in Thief is more than adequate; the data shows that frame rates are primarily dictated by GPU load at 1440p and 4K. At 1080p, the CPU's 12 threads are enough to keep the GPU fed, but the engine itself may be the limiting factor, as the frame rate differences between Medium, High, and Ultra are relatively small. This suggests that for the highest possible frame rates at 1080p, the CPU is not a hindrance, but the game's engine might be.