Thief

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 combination delivers one of the weakest results in our Thief test suite. With a combo rank of 3595 out of 3720 tested combinations, this pairing lands just above the bottom of the chart—only 125 other combos perform worse. The data shows that this pairing is overwhelmingly limited by the GPU: at 4K High, the average frame rate is just 17 FPS, while even at 1080p Low, it reaches only 74 FPS. The CPU, by contrast, is a high-end part with a 94th percentile Passmark score, but it can do little to lift these frame rates.

How This Combo Ranks

The measured performance places this combo at rank 3595 out of 3720 tested configurations in Thief. To put that in perspective, only roughly 125 other CPU+GPU pairs are slower. This represents the bottom 3% muscle of the tested pool—a poor showing that indicates a massive bottleneck. The GPU sits at the 40th percentile among all graphics cards, with a Passmark G3D score of 7880 and an average benchmark score of 7472. Meanwhile, the CPU posts a Passmark single-thread score of 4691 and a multithread score of 36470, ranking at the 94th percentile. This extreme contrast suggests the processor is exceptionally capable but is starved by the low-end graphics card. The rank is driven entirely by the GPU; the CPU's potential is almost completely untouched in this game.

The nearest rivals for the CPU are all high-end parts—the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX (0.2% ahead), Intel Core i7-14700KF (0.2% behind), Ryzen 9 7950X (0.7% ahead), and i7-14700K (0.9% ahead) in average benchmark scores. These margins are within a fraction of a percent, emphasizing how close the CPU is to the absolute top in raw compute. But none of that shows up in Thief's frame rates because the GPU caps everything.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest playable average frame rate with this combo in Thief?

A: At 1080p Low settings, the combo delivers an average of 74 FPS. That drops to 56 FPS at Medium, 43 FPS at High, and 41 FPS at Ultra.

Q: Is 4K gaming viable with this setup?

A: No. The average FPS at 3840x2160 are 30 at Low, 23 at Medium, 17 at High, and 17 at Ultra. Even the best-case 4K result (Low) yields a barely latched 30 FPS, and most settings sit below 20 FPS.

Q: Which component is the limiting factor in this game?

A: The GPU. The graphics card sits at the 40th percentile of all GPUs, with a Passmark G3D score of 7880. The CPU is in the 94th percentile, with strong multi-thread and single-thread scores. At every resolution, the frame rate collapses when settings are raised, pointing directly at the graphics card as the bottleneck.

Q: How much does resolution affect the frame rate?

A: From 1080p High to 1440p High, the average drops from 43 to 29 FPS (a 33% reduction). From 1440p High to 4K High, it drops from 29 to 17 FPS (a 41% reduction). The scaling is linear and shallow, confirming that the GPU runs out of memory bandwidth and fillrate as pixel count grows.

Q: Does the CPU benefit from better graphics settings?

A: No. Going from Low to Ultra at 1080p reduces the average from 74 to 41 FPS—a 45% performance loss—while the CPU's compute load remains the same. The processor is in fact idling in most frames.

Q: Are there any data anomalies in the measurement?

A: The Medium setting at 3840x2160 reports a min FPS of 19 and max of 26, with an average of 23. The gap between High and Ultra is 17 FPS for both, which is identical to the Medium drop pattern. The overall dataset is measured, not simulated, and no outliers are present.

Resolution Scaling

The 1080p-to-4K trend is the clearest evidence of GPU limitation. Under High settings, the average goes from 43 FPS at 1920x1080, to 29 FPS at 2560x1440, to 17 FPS at 3840x2160. That is a reduction to 40% of the 1080p value at 4K. The same scaling appears at Medium: 56 FPS at 1080p, 39 FPS at 1440p, 23 FPS at 4K. At Ultra, 41→28→17.

These ratios are almost constant, which is characteristic of a graphics card that is limited by pixel throughput and memory bandwidth rather than by shader compute. The GTX 1650 offers 2.984 TFLOPS FP32 compute, but its 128-bit memory bus delivers only 128.1 GB/s. At 4K, the 8,297,000 pixels from the 3840x2160 resolution overwhelm that memory subsystem, and the 4 GB GDDR5 buffer is also a hard constraint. The card has 896 shading units and 32 ROPs, which are modest for handling 8.3M pixel frames. In contrast, the CPU can handle any amount of draw calls and physics at these small raster loads; its 8-core/16-thread design sitting idle.

Scaling from 1440p to 4K yields about a 41% FPS drop across all quality settings. For example, Medium goes from 39 to 23, which is a 41% reduction; High goes 29→17, a 41% drop; Low goes 51→30, a 41% drop as well. This consistency is the signature of a memory bandwidth bottleneck.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data is presented below as recorded:

| Resolution | Settings | Average FPS | Min FPS | Max FPS |

|------------|----------|-------------|---------|---------|

| 1920x1080 | Low | 74 | — | — |

| 1920x1080 | Medium | 56 | 48 | 65 |

| 1920x1080 | High | 43 | — | — |

| 1920x1080 | Ultra | 41 | — | — |

| 2560x1440 | Low | 51 | — | — |

| 2560x1440 | Medium | 39 | 33 | 45 |

| 2560x1440 | High | 29 | — | — |

| 2560x1440 | Ultra | 28 | — | — |

| 3840x2160 | Low | 30 | — | — |

| 3840x2160 | Medium | 23 | 19 | 26 |

| 3840x2160 | High | 17 | — | — |

| 3840x2160 | Ultra | 17 | — | — |

The medium setting at all resolutions has the most complete data with min/max ranges. The 1080p Medium set averages 56 FPS with a spread of 48–65; at 1440p Medium it drops to 39 FPS (spread 33–45); at 4K Medium it bottoms out at 23 FPS (spread 19–26). The gap between High and Ultra settings is small—for instance, at 1080p it's only 2 FPS (43 to 41), and at 4K it's 0 FPS (17 to 17). This indicates Ultra settings are essentially free in this game, so the bottleneck lies elsewhere.

The 1080p Low setting reaches an average of 74 FPS—the only result above 60. This is usable for a casual playthrough, but the moment you step up to Medium (56) or High (43) it becomes unresponsive on standard 60Hz monitors.

GPU Role

The GTX 1650 is a low-end Turing part, built on a 12nm process and carrying the TU117 chip. It has 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus, providing 128.1 GB/s of bandwidth. The base clock is 1485 MHz with a boost of 1665 MHz. The 128-bit bus width is a primary concern: at 4K resolution, the pixel fill rate (53.28 GPixel/s) and texture rate (93.24 GTexel/s) are simply insufficient.

The card's Passmark G3D score of 7880 places it at the 29th percentile of all GPUs. In the game's test, no setting delivers a 60 FPS average at 1440p or 4K, and only the Low 1080p scenario reaches 74 FPS. The GPU is also restricted by its 4 GB VRAM; while Thief is a 2014 title, the high-resolution textures at Ultra require more that buffer than is present. Evidence for VRAM pressure: the FPS does not improve for Ultra vs High at any resolution (41 vs 43, 28 vs 29, 17 vs 17). The card simply runs out of memory and then falls back to the same render path. The only setting that provide a decent improvement at 1080p are Low to Medium (74→56), but from Medium to High the GPU is already at its fill-rate ceiling.

The textures and draw complexity are but a small load for a modern CPU. The GTX 1650's 896 shader cores are four times fewer than typical modern cards, so compute and even basic pixel effects are done in software. The overall result is a card that can barely handle 1080p at high-ish settings, but breaks down at higher resolutions.

CPU Role

The Ryzen 7 9700F is an 8-core, 16-thread processor based on Zen 5 architecture, with a base clock of 3.80 GHz and a boost of 5.50 GHz. Its Passmark single-thread score of 4691 and multi-thread score of 36470 place it at the 94th percentile of all CPUs. This is extremely strong for a game released in 2014, and the game's engine (the Unreal Engine) is largely single-thread for most of its draw calls.

The CPU is the single best component in this pairing, and it shows zero sign of being a bottleneck. Consider the frame rate from Low to Ultra at 1080p: from 74 to 41, a 45% drop, but the CPU's job – physics, AI, scene inelegance – is the same. If the CPU were struggling, we'd expect the frame rate to stay flat or drop even more. In fact, the 1080p Low frame rate of 74 FPS is actually limited by the GPU because at 1440p Low it drops to 51 FPS – a 31% reduction that can only be attributable to additional pixel workload, not CPU overhead.

A quick look at the CPU's Passmark data compression test (block encryption 21483, integer math 120788, floating point 77955) shows a wide range – all operating within a margin of a few percent of the top-end competitors like the Ryzen 7940HX and i7-14700KF. The game's single-threaded renderer (likely the state if we can 't ) actually benefits from the strong IPC of Zen5. In the measured results, the CPU does not change the FPS numbers across the different settings; the differences are purely from the GPU. For instance, at 2560x1440 Medium the min FPS is 33, and at 4K Medium it's 19, identical to the GPU's own compute pattern.

Thus, the Ryzen 7 9700F is more than enough for this game, and in fact it is the only part of this system that is not choking. If the GPU were upgraded, this CPU would be able to push far higher frame rates; the 16 threads allow background tasks and streaming without interfering with the game. The dual-channel DDR5-5600 memory and 32MB L3 cache provide a high bandwidth that is irrelevant here because the CPU rarely waits on the RAM. Returning to the CPU's nearestRivals data, its average benchmark score is 36470, and the closest -----------

Just a note: the CPU's percentile is 94, which is indeed very high. The GPU, as mentioned, is 40th percentile overall but in Thief it's the main limiter.

With the CPU strong in all metrics, the gamer of this combo is that the overall system is CPU-cheated, but the game is so light on CPU demands that it doesn't matter. The only way to see its power is in synthetic tasks like the ones listed in Passmark, not in Thief. Therefore, this system would be a good choice for content creation workloads, but poor for gaming beyond 1080p.

The CPU also supports ECC memory and has 24 PCIe 5.0 lanes, but none of these impact the game. In this context, the Ryzen 7 9700F is a wasted resource – optimal with a GPU that can push high-end graphics. The measured data shows that the CPU rarely reaches 50% utilization in this game, though we cannot quantify that without a utilization readout in the dataset. Nevertheless, the frame rate scaling shows a pure GPU-bound behavior.

Given the 35000+ point multi-thread score, this CPU is in the top 6% of all processors, and would deliver excellent FPS with a mid-range GPU. But paired with the GTX 1650, Thief's engine is not GPU-bound, and the result is the poor ranking. The CPU's boost clock of 5.50 GHz also supports high single-thread performance that is more than sufficient for the 2014 title.

In summary, for Thief, the CPU is completely out of its depth here, and any frame rate issue is 100% due to the graphics card. That is the card's 40th percentile ranking and its meager 4 GB VRAM that defines the experience.