Thief

The Intel Core i5-12600KF paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 is a tested configuration in Thief, a 2014 stealth title. The measured frame rates span three resolutions and four quality presets, representing a full performance envelope. The CPU's synthetic scores and the GPU's raw throughput, when combined with the measured FPS data, show a system that delivers extremely high performance at 1080p and 1440p, yet only maintains a 60+ FPS plateau at 4K when quality settings are reduced. This analysis uses only the provided fact pack values to dissect the CPU and GPU contributions, recommend settings, and place the combo within its ranking for a broader benchmark database.

CPU Role — cores, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The Intel Core i5‑12600KF is built on the Alder Lake architecture using a 10 nm Intel process. It carries 10 physical cores and 16 threads, with a base clock of 3.70 GHz and a boost clock of 4.90 GHz. The L3 cache is 20 MB shared across the cores, and the CPU memory interface supports both DDR4 and DDR5 through a dual-channel bus. The CPU’s single‑thread performance scales heavily: in Cinebench R23 it records a single‑core score of 3302 and a multi‑core score of 23391, while PassMark shows a single‑thread score of 3925 and a multi‑thread score of 27575. These benchmark scores place the chip in the 79th percentile among all CPUs tested, with an average benchmark score of 27799.

Nearest rival analyses (from the fact pack) show that the i5‑12600KF’s overall average is within 0.3% of the Intel Core i9‑10900K and the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, with the CPU just the i9 by a tiny margin (the i9’s avgScore is 27872, –0.3% difference) and a hair ahead of the Ryzen 5 8500GE (27712, +0.3%). For a game like Thief, released in 2014, single‑thread performance is more indicative of the governor of frame rates at lower resolutions. At 1080p and medium preset, the measured maximum frame rate reaches 200 FPS, suggesting that the 12600KF’s per‑core strength is sufficient to keep the CPU out of the way at all but the highest refresh rates. The 10 cores and 16 threads provide some, but not the sole, margin for modern operating system background tasks, while the 4.90 GHz boost will sustain the game’s logic on a single thread.

When moving from 1080p to 1440p to a 2160p the average FPS at High preset drops from 157 to 129 to 76, a clear sign that the CPU is not the primary limiter at higher pixel counts. Yet at 1080p, the gap between Low and Ultra is only 39 FPS (192 vs 155). That relatively small the difference suggests that the CPU, with its high single‑core score of 3302, provides a stable floor even when the graphical workload changes.

Settings Recommendations — which preset gives the best experience per the measured rows

The measured data in Thief for this combo are uniform across three resolutions. On the 1080p (1920×1080) measurement set, the average FPS values are: Low 192, Medium 174 (min 148, max 208), High 157, and Ultra 155. It is notable that Medium column for 1080p is the only setting that carries a minima and maxima, with a min of 148 and a max of 208. At 1440p (2560×1440) the figures are: Low 169, Medium 153 (min 130, max 176), High 129, and Ultra 123. At 4K (3840×2160) the numbers drop substantially: Low 131, Medium 100 (min 85, max 114), High 76, and Ultra 72. The data set explicit min‑max is present only for the “Medium” quality class, which gives a unique objective bound.

If “best experience” is interpreted as the highest average FPS with measured stability, the Medium preset stands out because its min values are concrete: at 4K the min is 85 (max 114) – meaning even the worst frame in the measured sample stays well above 60; at 1440p the min is 130 and at 1080p it is 148. Low offers slightly higher averages, but its min/max not listed, so stability cannot be evaluated from the same source. High and Ultra likewise have no minima, making a preset recommendation based purely on the data more ambiguous. Given that the package point the one with both an above 144 FPS threshold at 1080p/1440p and a 60+ FPS floor at 4K, the Medium default offers the widest performance cushion across the three resolutions. For the high‑end of the range, a 1080p user could achieve a high frame rate of 155 FPS at Ultra, which is still a comfortable white, but the combination of average FPS and guaranteed stability puts Medium forward as the preferred slot when visual complexity goes up.

Resolution Scaling — 1080p to 4K, component limiting

The measured FPS form a clear pattern when we move from 1920×1080 to 2560×1440 to 3840×2160. On the High preset, 1080p averages 157 FPS, 1440p 129 FPS, and 4K 76 FPS. This is a reduction of 49% from 1080p to 4K High (157 to 129 to 76, where 76 is 48.4% of 157). For Low, the trend is 192 → 169 → 131, meaning 131 is 68.2% of 192. For Medium setting, 174 → 153 → 100 (at 1080, 1440, 4K), with a 57.5% survival at 4K. The key effect is that at Medium the 4K frame is 100 FPS, while the High and Ultra frames are 72 and 72 respectively, with one 76 average. Restating precisely: at 1080p High, 1920×1080 High yields 157; at 4K same preset yields 76 – a 46% drop. The wide divergence (1440 frames) contradicts that the GPU’s memory bandwidth of 7168 MB/s and its 16 GB capacity are not the limiting factor, but rather that pixel fill rate scales with resolution. At lower presets, the CPU‑bound scaling appears: the 1080p → 1440p drop for Low is 23 FPS (2.2% from 7.6%?) Actually 192→169 is a reduction of 23 FPS, and 169→131 is a 1439% reduction across the latter transition. The cache and boost clock of the i5-12600KF appear to be enough to maintain high, but the pixel count drives the GPU workload.

The trend suggests the GPU is the dominant frame limiter at high resolution, because the difference between 1440p and 4K is larger in all presets relative to the bet from 1080 to 1440, and for the High/Ultra presets the ratio falls below 0.6. This is an expected signature of the Ada – it is a measurement of the situation’s effect.

How This Combo Ranks

The specific combination of Intel Core i5‑12600KF and the NVIDIA RTX 4080 reaches rank 304 out of 3720 tested combos in Thief. This places this pairing in the top 9.0% of all reviewed configurations (300/3720 = 0.0817, so top 8.2%). Conversely, it outperforms  nearly 3420 other CPU/GPU entries for this game. The low ranking is consistent with the high-end class of both hardware. The CPU ranks in the 79th percentile of all CPUs, with an average score sun of 27799, and the GPU holds in the 86th percentile among all GPUs, at a average of 54247. The GPU’s nearest equivalents (the RTX 4080 SUPER with a score of 54209, and Radeon Pro W5700X, 54828) show they differ by less than – 1.1%, while the relative position of the CPU (against the i9‑10900K) is a −0.3 % offset. The game’s generated result of rank 304 proves the pair is sufficiently high‑torque to grace a top‑tier subsystem.

GPU Strength — memory and clocks related to Thief

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 is based on the Ada Lovelace architecture, fabricated on 5 nm TSMC technology, with 45,900 million transistors on a 379 mm² die. Its core clock spans 2205 MHz (base) to 2505 MHz (boost). Memory coordination: 16 GB of GDDR6X connected over a 256 bit bus gives 716.8 GB/s of bandwidth. On paper, its FP32 mathematics rates 48.74 TFLOPS. It also houses 76 RT (Ray Tracing) cores, 304 Tensor cores, and 112 ROPs.

In the game Thief, the GPU’s role is most visible when the resolution rise. The highest 4K average is at High with 76 FPS; Ultra 72; Medium 100; Low 131. The 16 GB buffer ensures no texture streaming stutter at 4K, as the frame average (e.g. 100 Medium) is achieved without min–max dips? – the min for Medium is 85. The effective memory band written 716.8 GB/s is sufficient for a 2014 title. The GPU’s 1.1/1.1 TFLOps effectively runs the pixel shading. Compared to the nearest GPU in the fact‑set (RTX 4080 SUPER), the 4080’s delta is +0.1% in average of benchmark score, yet in Thief the measured frames are at medium showing a minimum of 85 which is above 60. The data measured this platform in a number of presets, and the Ultra is 72 on 4K, being a decent car.

Measured FPS Breakdown

All measured data is aggregate from the fact pack. There are four settings (Low, Medium, High, Ultra) at each of the three resolutions (1920×1080, 2560×1440, 3840×2160). The 12 data points are:

| Resolution | Low | Medium (min–max) | High | Ultra |

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

| 1920×1080 | 192 | 174 (148–208) | 157 | 155 |

| 2560×1440 | 169 | 153 (130–176) | 129 | 123 |

| 3840×2160 | 131 | 100 (85–114) | 76 | 72 |

The Medium column in the table has exclusive min and max data from the core pack: 148–208 at 1080, 130–176 at 1440, and 85–114 at 4K. For all other settings, only the average is present. The measured FPS shows that at every resolution, the Low preset yields the highest average, Ultra the lowest. Specifically at 1920×1080, the Ultra average is 155 FPS while Ultra is 123 FPS at 1440, and 72 at 2160. The difference between High and Ultra is very small at 4K — 76 vs 72 — as the GPU becomes increasingly polygon and −. In 1080, the Low to Medium gap is 18 FPS, while the Medium vs Ultra gap is 19 FPS.

From the view of the hardware, these numbers demonstrate that the i5‑12600KF + RTX 4080 can drive a 144‑Hz