Thief

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700X paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER delivers a compelling, high-refresh-rate experience in Thief, a 2014 stealth title that remains surprisingly demanding at higher presets. The data shows a configuration that scales predictably with resolution, though the relationship between settings and frame rate reveals where the bottlenecks lie. This analysis breaks down the measured performance across three resolutions and four quality presets, placing the combo’s results in the context of its 72nd-place rank out of 1,642 tested combinations.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1080p to 4K produces a significant, though not uniform, drop in frame rates across all settings. At Low settings, the average FPS falls from 202.9 at 1920x1080 to 129.7 at 3840x2160, a reduction of approximately 36%. This scaling is steeper at higher presets: High settings drop from 170.0 FPS at 1080p to 76.7 FPS at 4K, a 55% decrease, while Ultra falls from 165.5 FPS to 73.9 FPS, a 55% decline as well. The Medium preset shows a similar pattern, moving from 183.4 FPS to 101.6 FPS, a 45% reduction.

These numbers indicate that the RTX 4080 SUPER is the primary limiting factor as resolution increases, particularly at High and Ultra settings where the gap between 1440p and 4K is stark. At 2560x1440, High settings hold at 131.7 FPS, but 4K High collapses to 76.7 FPS, showing that the GPU’s 16 GB of GDDR6X memory and 736.3 GB/s bandwidth are being pushed hard by the higher pixel count. Conversely, the CPU’s role is more evident at 1080p, where the spread between Low and Ultra is relatively narrow — 202.9 FPS versus 165.5 FPS — suggesting that the Ryzen 7 7700X’s 8 cores and 16 threads are keeping pace with the GPU’s output, but the frame ceiling is still being set by the graphics card. The data implies that this combo is well-balanced for 1440p gaming, where the CPU can feed the GPU adequately, but 4K Ultra is a stretch for maintaining high refresh rates.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows provide a clear hierarchy for optimizing the experience. At 3840x2160, the jump from Low to Medium yields a 22% performance hit (129.7 to 101.6 FPS), but the visual improvement is likely worth it for a stealth game where shadows and textures matter. High settings at 4K are borderline at 76.7 FPS, which is playable but not ideal for fast-paced action, while Ultra drops to 73.9 FPS, a marginal gain in fidelity for a 4% performance loss compared to High. The data suggests that Medium is the sweet spot for 4K, offering 101.6 FPS while retaining a reasonable level of detail.

At 2560x1440, the picture is more forgiving. High settings deliver 131.7 FPS, which is comfortably above the 120 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, and Ultra only reduces this to 120.5 FPS. The difference between Medium (164.0 FPS) and Ultra (120.5 FPS) is a 27% performance gap, so players seeking the best visual quality without sacrificing fluidity should opt for Ultra at 1440p. For 1920x1080, even Ultra hits 165.5 FPS, meaning there is no practical reason to lower settings below High (170.0 FPS) unless targeting extremely high refresh rates; Low at 202.9 FPS is the only preset that breaks the 200 FPS barrier, but the visual trade-off is substantial. The data indicates that the optimal preset scales with resolution: Medium for 4K, Ultra for 1440p, and High or Ultra for 1080p depending on the display’s refresh rate.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER is the dominant component in this configuration, and its specifications explain the frame rate patterns. With 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, the card has ample capacity for Thief’s textures, but the 736.3 GB/s bandwidth becomes a constraint at 4K, where the memory subsystem is taxed heavily. The GPU’s boost clock of 2550 MHz and base clock of 2295 MHz provide the raw compute headroom, and the 52.22 TFLOPS FP32 performance is more than sufficient for a game from 2014. However, the benchmark results show that the card’s 112 ROPs and 320 TMUs are working hard at higher resolutions, as evidenced by the steep decline from 1440p to 4K at Ultra settings (120.5 to 73.9 FPS).

The GPU’s 88th percentile ranking among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 53,610, places it near the top of the field, but its nearest rivals — the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT (0.2% higher score) and the AMD Radeon Pro W6600M (0.4% higher) — show that the performance margin over the competition is slim in synthetic tests. In Thief, the RTX 4080 SUPER’s strengths are evident at lower resolutions, where it can push past 200 FPS on Low settings, but the card’s limitations surface at 4K, where the 16 GB VRAM pool is not the issue — the sheer pixel throughput is. The data suggests that the GPU is the limiting factor at 4K, as the CPU’s 3DMark scores (8,859 for 16 threads) indicate it has headroom to spare.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers exceptional performance across all presets. Low settings average 202.9 FPS, Medium 183.4 FPS, High 170.0 FPS, and Ultra 165.5 FPS. The spread between the lowest and highest settings is only 37.4 FPS, showing that the GPU is not heavily taxed at this resolution. The 1080p results are consistent with a GPU that can handle the game’s geometry and lighting effects without breaking a sweat.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates remain high but show more differentiation. Low settings produce 181.0 FPS, Medium 164.0 FPS, High 131.7 FPS, and Ultra 120.5 FPS. The gap between Medium and High is notable at 32.3 FPS, indicating that High introduces effects that significantly impact performance. Ultra is only 11.2 FPS behind High, making it a viable choice for users with 1440p displays that support variable refresh rates.

At 3840x2160, the performance curve steepens dramatically. Low settings still manage 129.7 FPS, which is respectable, but Medium drops to 101.6 FPS, High to 76.7 FPS, and Ultra to 73.9 FPS. The gap between Medium and High is 24.9 FPS, the largest single-setting jump in the entire dataset, highlighting the computational cost of high-detail textures and shadows at 4K. Ultra is only 2.8 FPS behind High, suggesting diminishing returns at the top preset. These numbers paint a clear picture: the combo is capable of 4K gaming, but only at Medium settings for a smooth experience, or at High/Ultra if the user accepts sub-80 FPS frame rates.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested combinations, this pairing of the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER ranks 72nd out of 1,642 combos, placing it in the top 4.4% of all configurations tested. This rank reflects the aggregate performance across multiple games, and Thief is a strong title for this combo, given its high frame rates at 1080p and 1440p. The CPU’s percentile ranking of 89% among all processors, with an average benchmark score of 34,313, places it slightly above the Intel Core i7-12800HX (0.5% higher) and the Intel Core i5-13500 (0.4% higher), but below the Intel Core Ultra 7 165H (0.8% lower) and AMD EPYC 4244P (0.8% lower). This indicates that the 7700X is a mid-to-high-tier CPU, but not a top-tier one, which is consistent with its 8-core/16-thread configuration.

The GPU’s 88th percentile ranking, with an average score of 53,610, is similarly strong, though its nearest rivals — the RX 6900 XT (0.2% higher) and the Radeon Pro W6600M (0.4% higher) — are within striking distance. In Thief, the RTX 4080 SUPER’s performance is not constrained by the CPU, as evidenced by the 1080p results where the GPU is clearly the bottleneck. The combo’s 72nd rank out of 1,642 is a strong showing, and the data from this game suggests that the pairing is well-suited for high-refresh-rate 1440p gaming, with 4K performance that is acceptable but not exceptional. The rank reflects the balance between the Ryzen 7 7700X’s single-thread performance (3DMark single-thread score of 1,090) and the RTX 4080 SUPER’s raw rasterization power, making this a reliable choice for a wide range of titles, including Thief.