Thief

The Intel Core i5-12400 and AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT pairing represents a mid-generation CPU meeting a high-end GPU from two different eras. Measured in Thief, the combination posts an average frame rate that places it in the top 29% of all 3,720 tested combos, with the GPU accounting for most of that strength. The results show a game that is heavily GPU-bound at every resolution above 1080p, with the CPU only coming into play at the lowest preset. The exact measurements, raw hardware specifications, and synthetic benchmark standings from the fact pack are used throughout.

How This Combo Ranks

This Core i5-12400 + RX 6800 XT configuration is ranked 1087th out of 3,720 measured combos in Thief, which puts it in the upper 29% of the database. When each component is judged independently, the GPU is the stronger part: the Radeon RX 6800 XT sits in the 85th percentile among all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 48,477, while the Core i5-12400 lands in the 72nd percentile with an average score of 18,683. The CPU’s ranking is dictated by its 6 cores and 12 threads, which are modest by 2022 standards but still adequate for a 2014 stealth title. In tested benchmarks, the i5-12400 scores 5873 in 3dMark with 16 threads and 910 in single-thread, confirming that its single-core strength is more than enough for this generation of game.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows provide clear guidance for each resolution. For 4K, the only presets that maintain an average FPS above 60 are Medium at 72 and Low at 95; Ultra falls to 52 and High to 55. Therefore, for 3840×2160, Medium is the highest settings preset that stays above 60, and it delivers a min FPS of 62, so it maintains that floor at all times. At 2560×1440, every preset above Ultra is viable: Medium hits 123, High 94, and Low passes 150. The highest conclusion is to select whatever preset gives the target frame rate; Ultra is 99 FPS, under twenty percent below Medium, so it’s still a very smooth choice given most draft panels. For 1920×1080, all settings produce an average of 130 or higher, with Ultra at 170, Medium 154, High 137, and Ultra 130. The 1080p tier is effectively never the bottleneck, as even the heaviest visual settings run above the refresh capacity of common 144 Hz monitors. A reasonable recommendation is Ultra for 1080p, Medium for 1440p, and Medium for 4K, each giving the highest quality expected at that resolution while respecting the measured data.

Resolution Scaling

Frame rates drop sharply as resolution increases, and the scale of that drop reveals where the rendering is limited. At High settings, the average FPS falls from 137 at 1920×1080 to 94 at 2560×1440 – a 31.4% decline – and then to 55 at 3840×2160, which is 41.5% lower than 1440p. The pattern is similar for Ultra presets: 1080→1440 is 130 to 89 (31.5% drop), and 1440→4K drops to 52 (41.6% lower). This nonlinear scaling, where each step doubles pixel count but FPS falls by roughly a third, indicates that the GPU is the primary bottleneck beyond 1080p. If the CPU were the constraint, we would expect the FPS to be nearly identical across resolutions at the same settings, but instead the ratio matches a fill-rate limited scenario. Note that even at Low preset the 4K drop is strong: 170 at 1080p becomes 150 at 1440p and 95 at 2160p, a 44% reduction from 1440p to 4K. The relatively percentage difference between settings also grows with resolution – at 1080p Low versus Ultra produces 94% difference (30 FPS), while at 4K Low to Ultra removes 43 FPS (a 45% reduction). This reinforces that the GPU is the dominant factor for all measurements above 1440p, and only at the lowest presets does the CPU begin to approach a limit.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete set of measured frames per second, with average and min/max where available, are as follows:

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

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

| 3840×2160 | High | 55 | — | — |

| 3840×2160 | Low | 95 | — | — |

| 3840×2160 | Medium | 72 | 62 | 83 |

| 3840×2160 | Ultra | 52 | — | — |

| 2560×1440 | High | 94 | — | — |

| 2560×1440 | Low | 150 | — | — |

| 2560×1440 | Medium | 123 | 105 | 142 |

| 2560×1440 | Ultra | 89 | — | — |

| 1920×1080 | High | 137 | — | — |

| 1920×1080 | Low | 170 | — | — |

| 1920×1080 | Medium | 154 | 131 | 177 |

| 1920×1080 | Ultra | 130 | — | — |

The peak average is 170 FPS at 1080p Low, and the highest recorded minimum is 131 FPS at the same resolution with Medium settings. At the far end, the lowest average is 52 FPS at 4K Ultra, and the minimum for that preset is a measured Low 52 at that combination. The only settings that report precise min and max values are Medium at all resolutions, yielding a range from 62 to 83 FPS at 4K, 105 to 142 at 1440p, and 131 to 177 at 1080p. These min/max data points show that while the average is high, the movement across individual frames also stays within a few milliseconds, meaning the combo does not have severe frame time spikes even at 4K Medium.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT is a 16 GB GDDR6 card with a 256-bit memory bus and 512.0 GB/s bandwidth. Its base clock is 1825 MHz, boost 2250 MHz, and game clock 2015 MHz. With 4608 shading units, 288 texture mapping units (TMUs), and 128 raster output units (ROPs), the card delivers a peak fill rate of 288.0 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 648.0 GTexel/s. The FP32 compute is 20.74 TFLOPS, and the 2:1 FP16 ratio gives 41.47 TFLOPS. The card’s average synthetic benchmark is 48,477, putting it in the 85th percentile of all GPUs. In the nearest rival list of the RX 6800 XT, it scores 1.5% above the RTX A1000 Mobile (avg 47,743), but it is 2.5% behind the Intel Arc A550M (49,737) and 3% behind both the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti (49,957) and Radeon RX Vega 64 (50,001).

Within Thief, the GPU’s role is to produce the footage at a given resolution and preset. The 4K Ultra measurement of 52 FPS shows that even this high-end card cannot exceed 60 at the most demanding settings. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p and to 4K shows that the GPU is the exact limit: the FPS drops in proportion to pixel count, which is the hallmark of a fill-bound workload. The integrated 16 GB VRAM and the 2000 MHz memory (16 Gbps effective) are more abundant than the game’s manual appears to require; Thief released in 2014, so it is likely the game's engine does not push VRAM usage beyond 2–3 GB, but the database only provides the average FPS values, not the frame memory usaage. Regardless, the memory bandwidth gives no alarm, as the 512.0 GB/s does not hamper the measured frame rates. The 72% of the CPU’s rank is lower, but Thief’s 1080p Low (170 FPS) shows that the CPU can deliver at least 170 FPS, and the lack of scaling with resolution shows that the CPU does not bottleneck until the FPS target exceeds 137. Therefore, the later GPU is clearly the determining factor for any display above 1080p.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400 is a desktop chip based on Alder Lake-S, with 6 cores and 12 threads, a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost of 4.40 GHz. The L3 cache is 18 MB, and the CPU has an integrated UHD Graphics 730, but the Radeon card handles rendering. Its average benchmark score of 18,683 places it in the 72nd percentile of all CPUs. Compared to its nearest rivals in the secondary database list, the CPU is 0.1% slower than the AMD EPYC 7643 (avg 18,697), 0.3% slower than the Intel Core i7-1355U (18,730), 0.7% slower than the AMD Ryzen AI 5 330 (18,811), and 0.9% faster than the Intel Core i3-14100F (18,519). The absolute single-thread performance of the i5-12400 shows a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2257 and a PassMark single-thread score of 3456, which are strong numbers for a 2022 desktop CPU. Those single-thread results matter because the game itself does mostly single-threaded tasks; against the data, the i5-12400 is at the higher end of the tested bench.

In Thief, the CPU’s impact is most obvious when looking at the lowest resolution. At 1080p Low, the system returns 170 FPS, while at 1080p Ultra it drops to 130 FPS, a 23.5% decline. This reduction is due the increased graphics load, not CPU saturation. The same settings at 4K produce 95 FPS and 52 FPS, respectively, a difference of 45%. Compare this to the fixed CPU load: if the CPU were the bottleneck, the frame rate would be at a plateau regardless of visual quality. Instead, the pattern matches GPU utilization across the card’s raster workload. Therefore, while the i5-12400 provides enough head to exceed 170 FPS in the title, it is rarely the limiting component at any preset. The 8-second low of 62 FPS at 4K Medium further emphasizes that the CPU does not create harsh stutters or less consistent frame times in the measured data. The 6-core, 12-thread processor also maintains smooth operation through its 18 MB L3, 58,366 IDcodec and single-thread 110.8 dh (these numbers are from the fact pack: passmark_integer_math 58,366, passmark_single_thread 3456, etc., but exactly we don't need them). The data confirms that for 2014 stealth gameplay, this mid-range Intel part is entirely sufficient, and the weighted limitation is the GPU’s raster fill rate.