Thief

The AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX paired with the AMD Radeon 8060S delivers a playable but not exceptional experience in Thief, with performance that scales predictably from 1080p to 4K. The data indicates that this combo is firmly GPU-limited at higher resolutions, while the 16-core CPU provides ample headroom to avoid bottlenecking at lower settings. The benchmark results show a clear hierarchy: the Ultra preset is only marginally faster than High, while the jump from Medium to Low offers the most significant frame rate gains.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a consistent and expected performance drop as resolution increases from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160. At the High preset, the average frame rate falls from 99 FPS at 1080p to 68 FPS at 1440p, a reduction of 31 FPS, and then to 40 FPS at 4K, a further drop of 28 FPS. This pattern strongly indicates that the AMD Radeon 8060S is the primary limiting component at 1440p and 4K, as the pixel count increase places a heavier load on the GPU's shading units and memory bandwidth.

The scaling from 1440p to 4K at the High preset shows a 41% decrease in performance, which is a substantial hit that underscores the GPU's struggle to maintain high frame rates at Ultra HD resolutions. In contrast, the scaling from 1080p to 1440p at the same preset is a 31% reduction, showing that even at 1440p, the GPU is already being pushed hard. The data suggests that for a smooth 60 FPS experience, 1080p is the most realistic target for this combo, with 1440p requiring a drop to Medium settings to stay above 60 FPS.

At the Low preset, the performance scaling is more aggressive, with frame rates jumping from 69 FPS at 4K to 117 FPS at 1440p and 171 FPS at 1080p. This 2.5x increase in performance from 4K to 1080p at Low settings highlights that the GPU is heavily utilized when resolution is lowered, but the CPU has enough power to feed it. The gap between Low and Medium at 1080p is 41 FPS, while the gap between Medium and High is 31 FPS, reinforcing that the GPU's compute capacity is the bottleneck as settings increase.

Settings Recommendations

For the best balance between visual fidelity and playable frame rates, the Medium preset at 2560x1440 is the standout choice from the measured data. This combination yields an average of 89 FPS with a minimum of 76 FPS and a maximum of 102 FPS, providing a smooth experience that stays well above the 60 FPS threshold. The data shows that this is the highest resolution and settings combination that consistently maintains a comfortable margin above 60 FPS, making it the recommended default for this hardware.

At 1920x1080, the High preset offers an average of 99 FPS, which is a solid experience, but the Medium preset at 130 FPS provides a more significant performance buffer with only a modest visual compromise. The Ultra preset at 1080p yields 94 FPS, which is only 5 FPS slower than High, indicating that the jump from High to Ultra is not a heavy burden at this resolution. However, at 1440p, the Ultra preset drops to 65 FPS, while High is 68 FPS, a negligible difference that suggests the Ultra preset is not optimized for this GPU at higher resolutions.

The Low preset is not recommended for any resolution if visual quality is a priority, as it likely disables many of the game's ambient occlusion and shadow effects. At 4K, the High preset's 40 FPS average is below the playable threshold for most users, while the Medium preset at 52 FPS is borderline. The only viable 4K option is Low at 69 FPS, but this sacrifices too much visual detail for a marginal gain in smoothness, making 1440p Medium the clear winner in the data.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon 8060S is an integrated graphics solution based on the RDNA 3.5 architecture, fabricated on a 4 nm process. Its performance in Thief is characterized by a strong showing at lower resolutions, but it struggles to maintain high frame rates at 4K. The GPU's benchmark scores place it in the 87th percentile of all GPUs, with an average score of 55757, which is closely matched by the AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB (0.1% faster) and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 (0.6% faster), indicating that its raw compute power is competitive with mid-range discrete cards.

The GPU's memory configuration is "System Shared," meaning it relies on the CPU's DDR5 memory with bandwidth that is system-dependent. This is a critical factor in Thief, as the game's texture streaming and draw calls can be sensitive to memory bandwidth. The data shows that the GPU's performance drops significantly at 4K, likely due to the increased memory pressure from higher resolution textures, which the shared memory system struggles to keep up with.

The Radeon 8060S has a base clock of 1295 MHz and a boost clock of 2900 MHz, with 2560 shading units and 64 ROPs. These specifications translate to a pixel rate of 185.6 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 464.0 GTexel/s, which are adequate for 1080p and 1440p gaming. The FP32 performance of 14.85 TFLOPS is a solid figure, but the data reveals that this compute power is not enough to maintain 60 FPS at 4K High settings, where the average is only 40 FPS.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested combos for Thief, this pairing of AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX and AMD Radeon 8060S ranks 1586th out of 2851 total combinations. This places it in the middle of the pack, indicating that while it is not a top-tier performer, it is also far from the bottom. The rank reflects the GPU's limitations at higher resolutions, as the CPU is more than capable of handling the game's logic and physics.

The combo's rank is influenced by the fact that Thief is a 2014 title with a relatively modest CPU requirement, meaning that the 16-core Ryzen 9 8945HX is vastly overqualified for this workload. The GPU, on the other hand, is a newer integrated solution that, while efficient, does not match the raw performance of high-end discrete GPUs. This imbalance is evident in the benchmark results, where the CPU's power is only fully utilized at Low settings and low resolutions.

Compared to other combos in the database, this pairing sits in the 55.6th percentile of performance, meaning that roughly 44% of tested systems deliver better frame rates in Thief. The rank is not a reflection of poor hardware, but rather a consequence of the GPU being the limiting factor. For a system with an integrated GPU, the performance is respectable, but it cannot compete with dedicated graphics solutions that have access to dedicated VRAM and higher bandwidth.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX is a 16-core, 32-thread processor based on the Zen 4 architecture, codenamed Dragon Range, and built on a 5 nm process. With a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.40 GHz, it is a high-performance mobile CPU that ranks in the 95th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 76212. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX (0.1% faster) and the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D (0.6% faster), showing that it is a top-tier mobile processor.

In Thief, the CPU's role is minimal due to the game's age and the GPU's bottleneck at higher settings. The data shows that at 1080p Low, the combo achieves 171 FPS, which is a strong indicator that the CPU can handle the game's single-threaded and multi-threaded tasks without issue. The PassMark single-thread score of 3907 and multi-thread score of 51405 suggest that the CPU has more than enough headroom for this game, which likely uses fewer than 8 cores.

The CPU's 64 MB of L3 cache and 83.2 GB/s of dual-channel DDR5 memory bandwidth provide ample data throughput for the game's assets. However, the shared memory architecture with the GPU means that the CPU and GPU compete for the same memory bandwidth, which could explain the performance drop at 4K. The CPU's high boost clock of 5.40 GHz is particularly beneficial for Thief's frame pacing, as the game's engine may have single-threaded dependencies that benefit from higher clock speeds.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured FPS across settings shows a clear progression: Low averages 171 FPS, Medium averages 130 FPS with a minimum of 110 FPS and a maximum of 149 FPS, High averages 99 FPS, and Ultra averages 94 FPS. The step from Low to Medium is a 41 FPS drop, while Medium to High is a 31 FPS drop, and High to Ultra is only a 5 FPS drop. This indicates that the Ultra preset offers minimal gains over High while demanding more from the GPU, making High the more efficient choice at 1080p.

At 2560x1440, the performance is significantly lower: Low averages 117 FPS, Medium averages 89 FPS with a minimum of 76 FPS and a maximum of 102 FPS, High averages 68 FPS, and Ultra averages 65 FPS. The drop from Low to Medium is 28 FPS, Medium to High is 21 FPS, and High to Ultra is only 3 FPS. The Medium preset at 1440p is the sweet spot, as it maintains a minimum FPS above 75, ensuring smooth gameplay, while High and Ultra both dip below 70 FPS.

At 3840x2160, the frame rates are the lowest: Low averages 69 FPS, Medium averages 52 FPS with a minimum of 45 FPS and a maximum of 60 FPS, High averages 40 FPS, and Ultra averages 38 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium is 17 FPS, Medium to High is 12 FPS, and High to Ultra is only 2 FPS. The 4K Medium preset is the only one that comes close to 60 FPS on average, but its minimum of 45 FPS suggests that there are noticeable frame dips, making 4K gaming a challenging proposition for this combo.

The data shows that the largest performance gains are achieved by reducing resolution from 4K to 1440p, with an average increase of 26 FPS across all settings. Reducing from 1440p to 1080p yields a further 27 FPS increase on average. This underscores that the GPU is the primary limiter, and users seeking higher frame rates should prioritize lowering resolution over reducing settings, as the impact of resolution scaling is more pronounced than the impact of preset changes.