Thief

# Thief with AMD Ryzen 7 9700F + Intel Arc B390

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F paired with the Intel Arc B390 sits at rank 2534 out of 2851 tested CPU-GPU combinations in Thief, placing this combo in the bottom 11% of all tested systems. The Arc B390, an integrated graphics processor from Intel's Panther Lake generation, delivers playable frame rates only at 1080p with lower settings, while the Ryzen 7 9700F provides substantial CPU headroom that the GPU simply cannot utilize in this title. The measured data shows a system constrained almost entirely by graphics processing, with the CPU's multi-threaded prowess (PassMark multithread score of 36,470) far exceeding what Thief's 2014 engine demands.

FAQ

*Q: What is the best resolution and settings combination for playable performance in Thief?*

A: The only configuration that achieves 60+ FPS is 1920x1080 with Low settings, producing an average of 86 FPS. At 2560x1440 Low, the average drops to 59 FPS, which is borderline playable but not consistently smooth. For a more balanced visual experience, 1920x1080 Medium delivers 66 FPS average, while 1920x1080 High reaches 50 FPS.

Q: How does the Intel Arc B390 compare to its nearest GPU rivals in raw benchmark scores?

A: The Arc B390 scores 1,482 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12. This places it 1.3% ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX (1,463), 1.5% ahead of the GeForce 800M (1,460), 2.5% ahead of the GT 625 OEM (1,446), and 2.7% ahead of the GT 710 (1,443). The GPU sits at the 9th percentile of all GPUs tested.

Q: What frame rates can be expected at 4K with this combination?

A: At 3840x2160, all settings produce sub-30 FPS averages. Low settings yield 35 FPS average, Medium produces 26 FPS with a 22-30 FPS range, High delivers 20 FPS, and Ultra drops to 19 FPS. None of these are playable for a stealth action title requiring responsive controls.

Q: How does the Ryzen 7 9700F compare to its nearest CPU rivals?

A: The Ryzen 7 9700F has an average benchmark score of 69,996, placing it at the 94th percentile of all CPUs. It trails the Intel Core i7-14700KF by 0.2% (70,163), leads the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX by 0.2% (69,875), leads the Ryzen 9 7950X by 0.7% (69,515), and leads the i7-14700K by 0.9% (69,355).

Q: Does the Arc B390 have dedicated VRAM?

A: No. The Intel Arc B390 uses System Shared memory with System Shared bandwidth, meaning the GPU relies on the host system's DDR5 memory rather than dedicated graphics memory. The memory bus width is also System Shared, and bandwidth is System Dependent.

Q: Is the recordable performance consistent across settings at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the arc rises from 33 FPS at Ultra to 34 FPS at High, 45 FPS at Medium (with 38-52 FPS range), and 59 FPS at Low. The step from Medium to High costs 11 FPS, while the step from High to Ultra costs only 1 FPS, suggesting diminishing returns in the higher preset range.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data indicates that Thief with this hardware combination offers a narrow window of genuinely playable configurations. At 1920x1080, Low settings produce an 86 FPS average—the only preset across all resolutions that clears the 60 FPS threshold with substantial margin. The Medium preset at 1080p delivers 66 FPS, which remains comfortably playable while providing noticeably improved visuals over Low. The High preset at 1080p drops to 50 FPS, which is still workable for a stealth game that does not demand twitch reflexes, but the 16 FPS loss from Medium to High is significant relative to the visual uplift.

For users prioritizing visual fidelity over frame rate, 1080p Ultra yields 48 FPS—close to High but without meaningful improvement, making Ultra an inefficient choice. At 2560x1440, the situation becomes more constrained: Low produces 59 FPS, which is technically below the 60 FPS smoothness threshold but likely acceptable for many players given the resolution increase. The Medium preset at 1440p yields 45 FPS with a 38-52 FPS range, which may cause noticeable stutter in combat sequences. High and Ultra at 1440p (34 and 33 FPS respectively) are not recommended for active play.

At 3840x2160, no setting is viable for gameplay. Even Low produces only 35 FPS, and the quality-to-performance tradeoff yields nothing above 35 FPS across all four presets. The data suggests that 1920x1080 Medium represents the best overall balance: 66 FPS average, 56 FPS minimum, and 75 FPS maximum, providing smooth enough performance for the game's deliberate pacing while retaining moderate visual detail. For players who prioritize frame rate above all else, 1080p Low at 86 FPS is the optimal choice, while those with 1440p displays might accept the 59 FPS Low preset as a reasonable compromise.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F is an 8-core, 16-thread processor from the 9000 series, built on the Zen 5 architecture with the Granite Ridge codename. It operates with a 3.80 GHz base clock and a 5.50 GHz boost clock, delivering a PassMark single-thread score of 4,691 and a multithread score of 36,470. The processor's 4 nm process node from TSMC houses 8,315 million transistors on a 70.6 mm² die, with a 32 MB shared L3 cache and 1 MB L2 cache per core.

In Thief, a stealth game released in 2014, the CPU's role is primarily to feed the GPU with draw calls and handle game logic. The Ryzen 7 9700F's 16 threads are far beyond what this title requires; the game's engine was designed for processors with far fewer cores. The benchmark data confirms this imbalance: the CPU ranks at the 94th percentile among all tested processors, yet the combined system ranks at 2534 of 2851 combinations. The limiting factor is clearly not the processor.

The PassMark physics score of 2,122 and floating-point math score of 77,955 indicate strong computational throughput, but Thief's DirectX 11-era rendering pipeline does not scale with the Ryzen 7 9700F's Zen 5 advancements. The processor's 89.6 GB/s dual-channel DDR5 memory bandwidth and PCIe Gen 5 connectivity are also vastly underutilized in this older title. The CPU's nearest rivals—the Ryzen 9 7940HX at 0.2% lower score, the i7-14700KF at 0.2% higher, the Ryzen 9 7950X at 0.7% lower, and the i7-14700K at 0.9% lower—all sit within 1% of the 9700F's average benchmark score, demonstrating that processor choice makes virtually no difference in this GPU-bound scenario.

For this game specifically, the Ryzen 7 9700F's high single-thread performance (4,691 PassMark score) ensures that the game's main thread is never a bottleneck. Even at 1080p Low where the GPU produces 86 FPS, the CPU maintains frame delivery without becoming the constraint. The 65 W TDP and unlocked multiplier suggest headroom for overclocking, but additional CPU performance would not translate to higher frame rates given the Arc B390's limitations.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Ryzen 7 9700F and Intel Arc B390 achieves rank 2534 out of 2851 tested combos in Thief, placing it in the bottom 11% of all systems tested. This ranking reflects the GPU's position at the 9th percentile of all GPUs, not any deficiency in the processor. The CPU, at the 94th percentile, is among the top 6% of all processors tested, yet the combined system's rank is dragged down by the integrated graphics solution.

The ranking implies that 2,533 other CPU-GPU combinations outperform this setup in Thief, while only 317 combinations perform worse. The disparity between the CPU's percentile (94) and the combo's percentile (approximately 11) illustrates a severe bottleneck. In practical terms, this means that pairing the Ryzen 7 9700F with a dedicated graphics card would likely produce dramatically different results—the CPU has the compute headroom to support far faster GPUs, as evidenced by its benchmark scores matching or exceeding desktop flagship processors like the Ryzen 9 7950X.

The Arc B390's nearest GPU rivals—all low-end NVIDIA parts from the GT 520MX era—performed within 1.3% to 2.7% of the Arc B390 in 3DMark Steel Nomad. This comparison underscores that the Arc B390, despite being a 2026 product on a 3 nm process, delivers performance equivalent to entry-level discrete GPUs from over a decade ago. For Thief, a game with modest system requirements by modern standards, this means the integrated GPU struggles to maintain playable frame rates except at the lowest settings and resolutions. The combo rank of 2534 reflects this reality: the system is functional but far from competitive in the database of tested configurations.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B390 is an integrated graphics processor from Intel's Panther Lake generation, built on the Xe3-LPG architecture using a 3 nm process node from Intel's own foundry. It features 1,536 shading units, 48 texture mapping units, and 24 raster operation units, along with 12 ray tracing cores. The GPU operates at a 300 MHz base clock and 2,500 MHz boost clock, producing a pixel rate of 60.00 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 120.0 GTexel/s. Its FP32 performance is 7.680 TFLOPS, with FP16 at 15.36 TFLOPS via a 2:1 ratio.

The most significant limitation is the memory configuration: the Arc B390 uses System Shared memory with System Shared bus width and System Dependent bandwidth. This means the GPU has no dedicated VRAM and must contend with the CPU for memory bandwidth on the system's dual-channel DDR5 bus. For Thief, which was designed with dedicated VRAM assumptions, this shared memory architecture likely contributes to the performance degradation at higher resolutions and settings.

The GPU's 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1,482 places it at the 9th percentile of all GPUs, with nearest rivals being the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX (1,463, 1.3% lower), GeForce 800M (1,460, 1.5% lower), GT 625 OEM (1,446, 2.5% lower), and GT 710 (1,443, 2.7% lower). These comparison points indicate that the Arc B390's raw compute capability is roughly equivalent to entry-level discrete GPUs from the early 2010s, despite its modern architecture and process node.

In Thief, the GPU's role is the primary determinant of frame rate. The measured FPS data shows a predictable scaling pattern: at 1080p, reducing settings from Ultra to Low increases average FPS from 48 to 86, a 79% improvement. At 1440p, the same settings change yields 33 to 59 FPS, a 79% improvement. At 4K, Low produces 35 FPS versus 19 FPS at Ultra, an 84% improvement. The consistent performance scaling across resolutions suggests the GPU is compute-limited rather than memory-bandwidth-limited in this title, since the relative improvements from settings changes remain similar regardless of resolution.

The 80 W TDP and IGP slot width indicate the Arc B390 is designed for power-constrained environments, not performance-oriented gaming. Its API support includes DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, but Thief's 2014 engine likely uses older DirectX paths, potentially leaving modern architectural features underutilized. The GPU's 12 RT cores are irrelevant for this title, which predates hardware ray tracing.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers its best performance. Low settings produce an 86 FPS average, the highest of any configuration. Medium settings yield 66 FPS average with a 56 FPS minimum and 75 FPS maximum, providing a smooth experience with only occasional dips. High settings drop to 50 FPS average, while Ultra produces 48 FPS average. The 1080p results show a clear performance hierarchy: Low to Medium costs 20 FPS (86 to 66), Medium to High costs 16 FPS (66 to 50), and High to Ultra costs only 2 FPS (50 to 48). The minimal difference between High and Ultra suggests that Ultra's additional effects are poorly optimized for this hardware.

At 2560x1440, performance drops substantially. Low settings average 59 FPS, just shy of the 60 FPS threshold. Medium settings produce 45 FPS with a 38-52 FPS range, indicating noticeable frame time variance. High settings deliver 34 FPS, and Ultra drops to 33 FPS. The 1440p results show a similar pattern to 1080p: Low to Medium costs 14 FPS (59 to 45), Medium to High costs 11 FPS (45 to 34), and High to Ultra costs only 1 FPS (34 to 33). The 1440p Medium's minimum FPS of 38 suggests that busy scenes with multiple guards or complex geometry could cause visible stuttering.

At 3840x2160, the system cannot maintain playable performance. Low settings average 35 FPS, Medium produces 26 FPS with a 22-30 FPS range, High delivers 20 FPS, and Ultra yields 19 FPS. The 4K results demonstrate that this resolution is entirely unsuitable for the Arc B390, even at the lowest settings. The step from Low to Medium costs 9 FPS (35 to 26), Medium to High costs 6 FPS (26 to 20), and High to Ultra costs 1 FPS (20 to 19). The diminishing returns at higher settings mirror the 1080p and 1440p patterns, confirming that Ultra presets offer negligible visual benefit over High for this hardware.

Comparing across resolutions at identical settings reveals the GPU's scaling behavior. At Low settings, 1080p yields 86 FPS, 1440p yields 59 FPS (31% less), and 4K yields 35 FPS (59% less than 1080p). At Medium, 1080p yields 66 FPS, 1440p yields 45 FPS (32% less), and 4K yields 26 FPS (61% less than 1080p). At High, 1080p yields 50 FPS, 1440p yields 34 FPS (32% less), and 4K yields 20 FPS (60% less than 1080p). The consistent 31-32% penalty from 1080p to 1440p and 59-61% penalty from 1080p to 4K indicates that the GPU's pixel throughput scales predictably with resolution, with no unexpected bottlenecks emerging at higher pixel counts.