Thief

All four presets are measured on this combination: the Intel Core i5-12400 (a 6-core, 12-thread Alder Lake part, released January 2022, launch MSRP $199) and the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT (a 16GB Navi 48 GPU, launched March 2025, launch MSRP 599 USD). In Thief, the data covers 1080p, 1440p, and 2160p (4K) at Low, Medium, High, and Ultra settings. This specific combo ranks 948th out of 3,720 tested combinations for the game, meaning it sits in the upper third of tested systems, and every SPS figure quoted below is measured, not theoretical.

CPU Role

The Core i5-12400 is an Alder Lake desktop chip built on Intel's 10nm process and housed on Socket 1700. It provides 6 physical cores and 12 threads, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. The L3 cache is an 18 MB shared block, per-core L2 is 1.25 MB, and L1 is 80 KB per core. For a game released in February 2014, such as Thief, the engine is largely single-threaded, so the CPU's strength in lightly threaded workloads matters more than raw multi-core throughput.

That does mean you can't judge Thief performance from the i5-12400's larger multi-core numbers. The 20,523 total CPU benchmark average places it at the 72nd percentile among all CPUs, but the relevant marker here is the single-thread score. In Cinebench R23 single-core is 2,257, Geekbench single-core is 1,848, 3DMark single-thread is 910, and PassMark single-thread is 3,456. These are respectable figures for a modern desktop part. Indeed, at 1080p Ultra we see 137 FPS, and at 1080p Low 170 FPS, which indicates the CPU is feeding the GPU fast enough even at the lowest setting where the GPU has less to do.

However, this roll or the CPU becomes distinctly less critical as resolution rises. Consider the 4K Low row: 102 FPS, while the same setting at 1080p gives 170. That's a 40% performance drop when pixel count quadruples. That scaling is a GPU matter, not a CPU bottleneck because the CPU work per frame is constant. The data shows the i5-12400 with a 3DMark 16-thread score of 5,873 and multi-core Cinebench ratings of 15,989 (R23), but none of those numbers translate to Thief because the game uses only a handful of threads. The practical takeaway: the i5-12400 provides ample raw single-thread speed for this game at 4K, and the biggest bottlenecks that appear when lowering resolution from 4K to 1080p are GPU, not CPU.

A quick look at the nearest competitor scores on the CPU benchmark database puts this in context: the i5-12400 averages 18,683, which is 0.1% lower than the AMD EPYC 7643's average of 18,697, and 0.3% lower than Intel's Core i7-13560U. It does beat the Core i3-14100F by 0.9% (i3 average 18,337). These are minor differences. For Thief, the number that matters is the 1080p numbers, and the i5-12400 delivers enough per-thread performance to not hold back any of the presets here.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT is a 4nm GPU (TSMC) with the Navi 48 die, 16GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, and 644 GB/s of bandwidth. The chip's base clock is 1660 MHz, the boost clock is 2970 MHz, and the "game" clock is listed at 2400 MHz. It contains 4,096 shading units, 256 texture units, 128 ROPs, and 64 ray accelerators. Peak FP32 compute is 48.66 TFLOPS, and the pixel rate is 380.2 GPixel/s with a texture rate of 760.3 GTexel/s. This is an extremely fast GPU for a 2014 title, but Thief's engine puts surprisingly large demands on the GPU at high and ultra presets.

The measured FPS kill this off: at 4K Ultra the card only averages 56 FPS, at 4K High it's 59, and at 4K Medium 78. Even at 4K Low it reaches 102 FPS. The GPU benchmark says the RX 9070 XT averages 13,543 under the database's full pass, which places it only at the 55th percentile of all tested GPUs. But those average numbers includes older, low-end parts like the AMD Radeon HD 7770M (ro 13,536) or NVIDIA GTX 570 (13,515). The relative ranking is not representative of modern gaming capability. The GPU's real-world raw power appears in the 3DMark Steel Nomad test, which scores 7,260, and that's enough to push the FPS figures in Thief. However, the memory 16 GB may be irrelevant here; the game does not require that much, but it still affects the available bandwidth for the core.

The boss pattern across settings helps identify GPU-bound behavior. At 1080p the FPS fluctuates from 137 (Ultra) to 170 (Low). At 1440p, Ultra gives 96 FPS and Low gives 150. At 4K, Ultra is 56 and Low is 102. The fact that going from 1440p to 4K at High settings costs a 42% FPS drop (101 to 59) while an exactly same drop at Low is 33% (150 to 102) means the GPU's compute and memory subsystems are the limiting component at all resolutions above 1080p. The GPU has enough VRAM (16GB) and a modern API (DirectX 12 Ultimate), but Thief is a DirectX 11-era game at heart, so it cannot exploit modern features like ray tracing or VRAM-gurgling effects; it's simply a raw load test.

FAQ

Q: Can this combo hold 60 FPS on a high setting at 1440p?

A: Yes, at 1440p High the average is 101 FPS, and at 1440p Ultra it's 96 FPS. So you have a large margin on any single player stealth title.

Q: Is 4K Ultra playable?

A: Not really. 4K Ultra averages 56 FPS, and there's no frame-time column to indicate minimum FPS in the data for Ultra. But it's below 60; content will stutter when occasional drops happen. 4K Medium gives 78 FPS with a recorded minimum of 66 FPS, which is a much safer target.

Q: Which setting gives the best frame consistency for 1080p?

A: The Low preset reaches 170 FPS, but the FPS counters show that High 139 and Ultra 137 are both smooth. Medium has a lower variance more (min 131, max 177). So that's also fine. The only difference between Low and Ultra is a wide 155 FPS spread, but all settings stay above the refresh rate of common 144Hz monitors.

Q: Is the CPU bottleneck at 1080p Low?

A: The data cannot directly testify whether the CPU is fully loading. When the GPU is given less work (Low settings), the FPS hits 170 FPS at 1080p and 102 FPS at 4K. That's a 68-FPS gap across four times the pixels, which is consistent with a GPU-limited scenario rather than CPU contention.

Q: How does this combo rank among all CPUs?

A: The Core i5-12400 sits at the 72nd percentile across all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 18,683. That’s a modest level that matches the AMD EPYC 7643 (difference -0.1%) and slightly above the Core i3-14100F (+0.9%).

Q: Does the RX 9070 XT use its full 16GB in Thief?

A: There's no memory utilization data in the measurement for this game. Based on the 2014 release date and the game's modest storage, it's unlikely to allocate 16 GB, but the width of the 256-bit bus (644 GB/s) still helps when 4K textures are on.

Measured FPS Breakdown

Here is every measured average FPS in the data set. The Medium preset includes min/max values; the others are only averages.

| Settings | 1080p | 1440p | (2160p) |

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

| Low | 170 | 150 | 102 |

| Medium | 154 (min 131, max 177) | 132 (min 112, max 152) | 78 (min 66, max 89) |

| High | 139 | 101 | 59 |

| Ultra | 137 | 96 | 56 |

The numbers show a predictable hierarchy. At 1080p, all presets are above 135 FPS; the difference between Low and Ultra is only 33 FPS (170 vs 1284). Moving to 1440p, the spread is 150 to 96, a 54 FPS gap. At 4K the gap narrows from 102 to 56, so at high resolutions the CPU matters less. The Medium setting's min/max are also useful: at 1440p Medium, the game drops to 112 FPS even though the average is 132, so there are occasional hitches. At 4K Medium, the minimum is 66 FPS, which is still above the 60Hz threshold.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is not linear. For the High preset, going from 1080p to 1440p cuts FPS from 139 to 101 (a 27% reduction), while 1440p to 4K cuts it to 59 (a 42% reduction). For Low, 1080p to 1440p goes 170 to 150 (12% drop), and 1440p to 4K to 102 (32% drop). So the pixel-density increase does not scale proportionally; the bigger cliff is at the last jump, from 1440p to 4K. This is typical of GPU-limited behavior, because at 4K the GPU fills 8.3 million pixels, whereas a 1080p frame is only a quarter that. The CPU's work is mostly constant, so the card bus becomes the bottleneck.

The same pattern holds for Medium and Ultra. At 1080p Medium, 154 FPS; at 1440p it's 132 (-15%); at 4K 78 (-41% vs 1440p). Ultra: 1440p Medium 137, 1440p 96, 4K 56. Since all the presets show the same scaling ratio, it's safe to label this as a GPU-bound system at 4K. The card tops out around 170 FPS at 1080p Low, but it should be around 80-100 FPS at 4K High, which is the card's practical limit.

Settings Recommendations

The best preset per resolution depends on the recovery between average FPS and the micro-fluctuations shown in the Medium min/max data.

• 4K UV = any preset except High or Ultra. At 4K Medium the system records an average of 78 FPS with a 66 FPS minimum, which comfortably exceeds 60. 4K Low reaches 102 FPS but sacrifices some shadows and texture sampling. High at 59 FPS is technically just below 60, and entry will feel problematic on a 60Hz display. So Medium is the 4K default here.

• 1440p: All presets are above 96 FPS. If you want maximum fidelity, Ultra at 96 FPS is perfectly playable; High at 101 only adds 5%. Medium has a minimum of 112 FPS, so if you prefer more headroom, Medium is a great pick. If the game is CPU-limited at your monitor's refresh rate (e.g., 144Hz), going from Low to High doesn't change the picture much, so select Ultra or High based on comfort.

• 1080p: Every preset runs above 137 FPS, effectively in the 170 FPS range. The difference between Low and Ultra is just 33 FPS by average. The FPS scores for this config are so high that the game will be fluid on almost any setup. To get the best visual quality without meaningfully changing the feel, choose High (139 FPS) or even Ultra (137 FPS). The Low and Medium presets produce marginal and are more like placeholders for the measurement.

The practical advice is to target these three rows:

Strong: 4K with Medium preset → ~78 FPS average, 66 FPS minimum

Strong: 1440p with High or Ultra → ~101 FPS or 96 FPS

Strong: 1080p with High or Ultra → 139 FPS / 137 FPS

Thief is an old game, but this i5 + RX 9070 XT combo has huge allowance. The i5-12400 provides a solid foundation for 1080p and above, and the RX 9070 XT breaks at 4K Medium if you want a stable 60+ FPS, but the Ultra setting remains around 56 FPS, which will introduce frames above budget when action spikes. If you prioritize smoothness over pixel count, drop the 4K preset to Medium; if you want maximum details, stick to 1440p Ultra.

This combination is unequivocally capable for a 2014 single-player title. The 12, 4K, 3 but still less than 10 in the game, so the system is overqualified for the game's demands. Realistically, the CPU will never be the bottleneck in this scenario; the card dominates the GPU load. The important takeaway is to avoid the Ultra preset at 4K because the 56 FPS average is below the typical refresh rate of today's displays and the 66 FPS floor for Medium is much more comfortable.