Thief

The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT combination was measured in Thief (released 2014-02-24) across three resolutions and four quality presets. The dataset shows the CPU, a 16-core / 32-thread Zen 3 part, together with the RX 5700 XT (8 GB GDDR6) produces average frame rates from 152 FPS at 1080p Low down to 34 FPS at 4K Ultra. The following sections break down the resolution scaling, the combo’s ranking against 3,720 other tested component pairings, and the specific roles of the CPU and GPU in this performance envelope.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS values demonstrate how the workload shifts as resolution climbs, with the most pronounced bottleneck appearing at 4K. At 1080p Low, the combo reaches 152 FPS; at 1440p Low it drops to 104 FPS (68% of the 1080p value), and at 4K Low it falls to 61 FPS (40% of 1080p). The same pattern holds for Medium: 115 FPS at 1080p, 79 at 1440p, 47 at 4K. High settings produce 88 FPS at 1080p, 60 at 1440p, and 35 at 4K. Ultra settings yield 84 FPS at 1080p, 57 at 1440p, and 34 at 4K.

The scaling suggests that at 1080p and medium-to-low settings, the frame rate is partially limited by the CPU’s ability to feed the GPU; the Ryzen 9 5950X has a 4.90 GHz boost clock and a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1614, which helps keep the pipeline fed. However, the 4K results — 61 FPS Low, 47 Medium, 35 High, 34 Ultra — indicate that the GPU becomes the primary limiter. The RX 5700 XT’s 8 GB VRAM and 448 GB/s memory bandwidth are sufficient for 1080p and 1440p, but at 4K the demand on texture fill and pixel shading rises enough that only the lowest settings exceed 60 FPS. The data shows a consistent 25–30% reduction in frame rate when moving from 1080p to 1440p, and another 20–30% from 1440p to 4K, regardless of the quality level, implying that the resolution scaling is mainly a GPU-side effect and not a CPU-side constraint.

How This Combo Ranks

Out of all 3,720 measured component combinations, this exact pairing finishes at rank 2731. That places it in the lower 37% of contributing combos (only 989 combinations are slower), meaning the Ryzen 9 5950X + RX 5700 XT does not play Thief exceptionally well compared to the broader pool of hardware tested. The CPU itself is very high-end — it sits at the 91st percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 51,947, placing it within 0.2% of the Intel Core Ultra 5 235HX and 0.4% of the Core i9-13900F. The GPU, in contrast, is at the 59th percentile of GPUs, with an average score of 16,361; it is essentially a wash against the AMD Radeon Pro 5600M (0.1% slower) and the NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell (0.3% slower). The ranking of this combination is therefore primarily dragged down by the RX 5700 XT, which, while competent at 1080p and 1440p, cannot keep up with the highest-end cards that appear in other combinations.

The 2731 / 3720 rank also means that the CPU’s 16 Zen 3 cores (with a 64 MB L3 cache) and the GPU’s RDNA 1.0 architecture (10.3 B transistors on 7 nm) are not well matched to Thief’s requirements — the game’s engine, built for the 2014 hardware era, tends to scale better with the GPUs that appear in later test combos. Users who have a Ryzen 9 5950X could achieve higher ranks by pairing it with a more capable graphics card, but for this specific pairing the FRAPS estimate is average at best.

FAQ

*Q: What is the performance rank of the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X + RX 5700 XT combo in Thief?*

A: It ranks 2731st out of 3720 measured combinations, meaning it is behind 73.4% of all tested systems (only 989 are slower).

*Q: How does the CPU alone perform in Thief?*

A: The CPU is in the 91st percentile of all CPUs, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 26017 and a single-core score of 1614. Its 16 cores, 32 threads, and 4.90 GHz boost clock avoid any significant bottleneck at 1080p, but at 4K the GPU becomes the limit.

*Q: How does the GPU’s VRAM affect Thief?*

A: The 8 GB GDDR6 memory (256-bit bus) gives 448 GB/s bandwidth. This is sufficient for the game at 1440p and 4K with high textures, as shown by the 35 FPS at 4K High and 47 FPS at 4K Medium; memory capacity is not the primary obstacle — the fill rate is.

Q: What is the single-frame low (min) at 1440p Medium?

A: The minimum FPS at 2560x1440 Medium is 67 FPS, while the average is 79 FPS and the maximum is 91 FPS, indicating a 15% spread due to scene complexity.

Q: Is the RX 5700 XT a bottleneck for a 1440p monitor?

A: At 1440p Medium the combo hits 79 FPS average, and at Ultra it drops to 57 FPS. The GPU has 9.754 TFLOPS FP32 and a 1905 MHz boost, which keeps it above 60 FPS only up to High settings; for Ultra you would need a higher-end GPU.

*Q: How does the CPU’s core count scale in Thief?*

A: Thief is a 2014 title that does not scale well across 16 cores; the data shows that the 32-thread CPU does not give an advantage over a more mainstream quad-core for this game. The higher impact comes from single-thread performance, as evidenced by the 1080p Low result of 152 FPS.

Measured FPS Breakdown

All figure are from the defined benchmark run, using an average across the scene if present.

| Resolution | Settings | Avg FPS | Min FPS | Max FPS |

|------------|----------|--------:|--------:|--------:|

| 3840x2160 | High | 35 | – | – |

| 3840x2160 | Low | 704 | – | – |

| 3840x2160 | Medium | 47 | 40 | 54 |

| 3840x2160 | Ultra | 34 | – | – |

| 2560x1440 | High | 70 | – | – |

| 2560x1440 | Low | 100 | – | – |

| 2560x1440 | Medium | 79 | 67 | 91 |

| 2560x1440 | Ultra | 57 | – | – |

| 1920x1080 | High | 88 | – | – |

| 1920x1080 | Low | 152 | – | – |

| 1920x1080| Medium | 115 | 98 | 133 |

| 1920x1080| Ultra | 84 | – | – |

The minimum and maximum values are only provided for the Medium preset in each resolution, where the frame time variance is measurable. At 1080p Medium the minimum was 98 and maximum 133, a spread of 35 FPS; at 1440p Medium the minimum was 67 and maximum 91 (24 FPS spread); at 4K Medium the minimum was 40 and maximum 54 (14 FPS spread). These spreads suggest that the game’s most intensive sequences tax the GPU more at higher resolutions.

GPU Role

The Radeon RX 5700 XT is a 7 nm Navi 10 part with 10.3 B transistors on a 251 mm² die. It has 2,560 shading units, 160 texture mapping units, and 64 ROPs, and its effective pixel rate is 121.9 GPixel/s with a texture rate of 304.8 GTexel/s. Its 8 GB of GDDR6 runs at 1750 MHz (1.4 Gbps) over a 256-bit bus, yielding 448 GB/s bandwidth — a figure that comfortably matches Thief’s resolution demands up to 1440p. In terms of compute, the card offers 9.754 TFLOPS FP32.

The GPU’s peak clock is 1905 MHz, with a game process of 1755 MHz. In the metric "GPU percentile" of all video cards, it is at the 59.7 percentile; its benchmark average of 16,303 sits within 0.1% of the AMD Radeon Pro 5600M and 0.3% less than the NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell. For the run, the 1080p Ultra average is 84 FPS, which is playable but far from the 152 FPS at Low. The 8 GB VRAM is never a constraining factor for the texture sizes in the game settings; it is the raw shader and pixel output that determines the frame rate. The 4K Ultra result of 34 FPS is below that but not due to VRAM exhaustion — it is the primitive through the 7.7 ns? The ROP count of 64 is the likely limiter at high granularity.

CPU Role

The Ryzen 9 5950X is a 16-core, 32-thread Zen 3 processor (Vermeer codename) built on TSMC's 7 nm node, with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 4.90 GHz. It contains 8.3 million transistors across two 74 mm² dies, and has 16 MB of L3 cache (split into 8×2), plus 512 KB L2 and 64 KB L1 per core. The CPU is designed for heavy multi-threading, and its memory bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s (DDR4-3200 dual channel) is sufficient for a 2014 game. In synthetic GPBenchmarks, the Cinebench R23 multi-core score is 26017, single-core 1614, and the PassMark single-thread score is 3470.

In this game, the CPU’s single-thread capability is the most relevant, and the 3DMark single-thread score of 944, paired with a 4.90 GHz boost, makes sure that at 1080p the CPU is never the limiting resource — the 152 FPS at Low settings confirms the headroom. However, the 16 cores are effectively idle; the game’s engine (launched 2014-02-24) scales only by a few threads. The CPU’s 91st percentile rank indicates almost all rival processors performing the same. For comparison, the 5950X’s average score 51947 rivals the Intel Core Ultra 5 235HX and 100%-style CPUs within 0.2%, meaning any difference in Thief frame rates comes from the GPU.

The CPU is also a strong performer in 16 vignette (3DMark 16-thread 10810) and 8-thread (6598) workloads, but the measurable drop from 115 FPS (1080p Medium) to 47 FPS (4K Medium) is clearly GPU-bound, as evidenced by the CPU not running out at any resolution. Users seeking higher frame rates in Thief should focus upgrade dollars on the GPU, though the Ryzen 9 5950X can already push the frame rate beyond the GPU’s capacity at 1440p and above.

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Note on MSRP: The launch MSRP for the CPU is $799 (as listed for the Ryzen 5000 series) and the GPU’s launch MSRP is 399 USD. These are the only price references in this report; all performance data is purely from the measured benchmark.