Thief

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700X paired with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 delivers a thoroughly GPU‑limited experience in Thief, with measured frame rates that drop steeply as resolution climbs. The Ryzen 7 9700X is a powerful 8‑core / 16‑thread desktop CPU based on the Zen 5 architecture, running at a base clock of 3.80 GHz and a boost of 5.50 GHz. The GTX 1650, by contrast, is an entry‑level Turing card with 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128‑bit bus. The data shows a combination where CPU headroom is large but the graphics subsystem is the definitive bottleneck. At each preset density, the average FPS at 1080p is roughly double the 4K figure, and the gap narrows as settings drop – classic evidence that resolution scaling is dictated almost entirely by the GPU.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate progression across resolutions is stark and consistent. At High settings, the average FPS is 43 at 1920×1080, falls to 29 at 2560×1440, and bottoms out at 17 at 3840×2160. The drop from 1080p to 4K is 43 → 17, a reduction of 26 frames per second – that is, the 4K result is barely 40 % of the 1080p score (though neither percentage appears in the fact pack, the numbers clearly indicate a severe scaling penalty). Moving to Medium settings, the pattern repeats: 56 FPS at 1080p, 39 FPS at 1440p, and 23 FPS at 4K. Even at Low, where pixel workload is smallest, the GPU still can’t hold 60 FPS at 4K – it produces only 30 FPS. The Ultra preset sees 41 FPS at 1080p, 28 at 1440p, and 17 at 4K.

This scaling signature is characteristic of a card that is memory‑bandwidth and rasterization‑limited. The GTX 1650 offers 128.1 GB/s of throughput and 32 ROPs. At 4K, the required fill rate and pixel work outstrip the TU117 chip’s ability. The CPU, however, is far from a limiting factor. The 9700X has 32 MB of shared L3 cache, a large core count, and a maximum boost of 5.50 GHz. In synthetic tests it scores 20 485 in Cinebench R23 multi‑core and 3 023 in Geekbench single‑core – numbers that put it in the 86th percentile among all CPUs. Given that the GPU’s own benchmark percentile is just the 40th, the frame rate decline across resolutions is almost entirely attributed to the GPU’s capabilities, not the processor.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured rows, the only presets that deliver a frame rate above the comfortable 50–60 mark are those at 1080p. At 1920×1080, Low gives 74 FPS, Medium 56 FPS, High 43 FPS, and Ultra 41 FPS. Since the Medium preset includes a minimum frame rate (the only preset with recorded min/max values across all resolutions), we can specify that Medium averages 56 FPS with a 48 FPS minimum. This suggests that Medium at 1080p offers a smooth, playable experience with good intelligence on the environment. Yet High and Ultra sacrifice only 13 and 15 FPS respectively from Medium (43 vs 56, 41 vs 56), but the gap between High and Ultra is just 2 FPS (43 and 41). Notably, High and Ultra perform nearly identically, likely because the game scales only certain effects beyond the card’s capabilities.

At 1440p, only Low hits a playable average at 51 FPS; Medium drops to 39 FPS, High to 29 FPS, and Ultra to 28 FPS. At 4K resolution, no setting produces a truly playable average – Low reaches 30 FPS, Medium 23 FPS, High 17 FPS, and Ultra 17 FPS. Thus, the given rows indicate that the best experience is to run at Medium settings at 1080p. Alternatively, Low at 1440p gives 51 FPS, which is still above the minimum frame rate of Medium 1080p (48 FPS), allowing resolution to be traded for quality. But the “best” according to the measurements is likely Medium at 1080p – it provides a stable 56 FPS average with a minimum of 48 FPS, and the visual step down to Low is not justified given the extra performance headroom.

If one wants to maintain a consistent 60 FPS baseline, only Low at 1080p (74 FPS) achieves that absolute threshold. However, for every other preset/resolution combination, the average is far below 60. Ultra at 1080p is essentially the same as High (41 vs 43), so it is always better to use High if you want the “Ultra” label without incurring a measurable cost. In summary, the data points to Medium as the sweet spot for 1080p, while 1440p only works with Low, and 4K is only usable at Low, and even then barely.

GPU Role

The GTX 1650 is the decisive limiting component in this combination. Its memory configuration – 4 GB of GDDR5 on a 128‑bit interface with 128.1 GB/s bandwidth – is modest for a 2014 game that runs best at lower resolutions. At 1080p, the card's 2.984 TFLOPS of FP32 throughput and 56 TMUs are enough to achieve playable frame rates, but they fall short of delivering high preset at all resolutions. The 32 ROPs and 93.24 GTexel/s texture fill rate appear to be the main constraints during 4K scaling, where the 4K pixel count multiplies the workload by four relative to 1080p.

In addition to raw compute, the VRAM capacity of 4 GB is a concern. Even though the measured data does not include VRAM usage, at 3840×2160 and with High or Ultra settings, the game’s asset stream may exceed that amount, causing texture swapping and frame drops. The only other direct representation of the GPU's capability is its overall benchmark percentile – currently the 40th percentile among all GPUs – which brackets it as a low‑to‑mid-range part. The fact that the highest frame rate recorded for any setting (74 FPS) occurs at 1080p Low, while the CPU is technically capable of much higher numbers, strongly indicates the graphics card is the bottleneck. The card’s 75 W TDP and dual‑slot format confirm its modest design; it has no auxiliary power connectors and draws simply off the PCIe slot.

Measured Average FPS Breakdown

The full measured data set is as follows:

3840×2160 (Average FPS, unless noted):

• High: 17
• Low: 30
• Medium: 23 (Min 19, Max 26)
• Ultra: 17

2560×1440:

• High: 29
• Low: 51
• Medium: 39 (Min 33, Max 45)
• Ultra: 28

1920×1080:

• High: 43
• Low: 74
• Medium: 56 (Min 48, Max 65)
• Ultra: 41

These numbers follow a consistent pattern: for every preset, the 1440p average is roughly half of the 1080p average, and the 4K average is roughly half of the 1440p average. For example, on Low, 74 → 51 → 30. The only setting with full min/max information, Medium, also preserves the gap: the min FPS drops from 48 at 1080p to 19 at 4K, while the max falls from 65 to 26. The GPU’s raw pixel rate of 53.28 GPixel/s explains this: 4K contains 8.29 million pixels, and the card's inability to fill them quickly is the reason 17 FPS is the ceiling for High/Ultra.

How This Combo Ranks

In the global database of 3,720 comparable CPU+GPU combinations tested in Thief, this setup ranks at position 3595. That places it among the very low portion of the list – only 125 combinations perform worse, which is an extremely narrow end of the spectrum. The rank does not change based on settings, as it is a single metric. The Ryzen 7 9700X alone is in the 86th percentile of all CPUs, while the GTX 1650 is in the 40th percentile, which already explains the natural gap. The measured frame rate results confirm the ranking: even at 1080p Low, it barely breaks 74 FPS, while the true performance tier of the CPU would expect far higher if the GPU could drive it. The fact that this combo sits at 3595 of 3720 positions reflects the GPU’s severe handicap, not the CPU. The average CPU score of the Ryzen 7 9700X (1,280 in Cinebench R15 single‑core, 20,485 in R23 multi‑core) is within 0.1‑0.4 % of several other processors (e.g., Intel Core i9‑14901E, AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, Intel Core 5 211E), but the GPU’s own average benchmark of 8, just south of the- he 4, evan a marginal score. The combination complement is thus severely imbalanced, relegating this system to the bottom tier for high‑load gaming workloads.

FAQ

Q: How does the Ryzen 7 9700X perform in this game?

A: The CPU is strong in synthetic tests, sitting in the 86th percentile overall. In practice its performance is sufficient, since the measured average frame rates are consistently GPU‑limited – the lowest any setting at 1080p is 41 FPS, which the CPU could easily exceed if the GPU allowed.

Q: What is the highest achievable frame rate at 1920×1080?

The maximum recorded average is 74 FPS, obtained at Low settings. No other preset reaches above 60 FPS at this resolution (Medium 56, High 43, Ultra 41).

Q: Is 4K playable with this graphics card?

No. At 3840×2160 the average FPS ranges from 17 to 30 across the four quality settings. Even at Low, the game dips to 30 FPS, which is below a smooth 60–frame target, and Ultra and High both bottom out at 17.

Q: At which resolution and settings does the game stay above 50 FPS?

Only three combos do: 1920×1080 Low (74 FPS), 1920×1080 Medium (74 FPS’s close, but 56 FPS), and 2560×1440 Low (51 FPS). All others fall below 50.

Q: Does the card’s 4 GB VRAM cause issues?

The data doesn’t measure VRAM usage directly, but the frame rate collapses at 4K to between 17 – 30 FPS across settings. The combination of the 4 GB capacity, 128‑bit bus, and 128.1 GB/s bandwidth suggests that memory bandwidth and capacity are likely contributing to the sudden low‑res performance, but the measured numbers are already consistent with GPU‑bound limits.

Q: What is the GPU’s bottleneck in relation to the CPU?

The CPU’s benchmark percentile is 86, while the GPU’s is 40. Given the GPU’s limited rasterization capabilities and lower bandwidth, the frame rate scale is dominated by the GPU’s fillrate and memory performance. The CPU’s high core count and boost clock provide no performance compensation when the GPU cannot feed more frames.