Thief

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data for Thief with this Intel Core i5-13400F and AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT combination shows a clear hierarchy across the four settings presets. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers 153.6 FPS, which is the highest raw frame rate available, but it comes at the cost of visual fidelity. The Medium preset provides a substantial drop to 116.2 FPS, yet it remains well above the 60 FPS threshold, suggesting it is the sweet spot for high refresh-rate monitors. High settings at 1080p yield 89.9 FPS, which is still smooth, but the gap between Medium and High is narrower than the gap between Low and Medium, indicating diminishing returns in performance for the visual upgrade.

For users prioritizing a locked 60 FPS experience on a 2560x1440 display, the Low preset at 102.9 FPS is more than sufficient, but Medium at 77.7 FPS offers a balanced option that avoids dipping into the 50s. The High preset at 2560x1440 produces 61.9 FPS, which is just above the 60 FPS line, making it a viable choice for those who want better textures without compromising smoothness. At 4K, the situation becomes more constrained. The Low preset at 62.8 FPS is the only option that maintains a playable frame rate; Medium drops to 47.4 FPS, and High falls to 33.8 FPS, making those presets less desirable for action-heavy stealth sequences.

Given this data, the recommended preset is Medium for 1080p and 1440p, as it offers the best balance between frame rate and graphical quality. For 4K, Low is the only sensible preset unless the user accepts sub-50 FPS. The Ultra preset, despite being the highest quality, consistently underperforms relative to High—at 1080p it is 83.6 FPS versus 89.9 FPS, and at 1440p it is 57.1 FPS versus 61.9 FPS—so it is not recommended unless the visual enhancements are deemed essential. The data suggests that the performance cost of Ultra over High is moderate, but the frame rate penalty is consistent across all resolutions, making High a more efficient choice for this GPU.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the Intel Core i5-13400F and AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT ranks 1252nd out of 1642 tested combos in Thief, placing it in the lower-mid tier of the database. This percentile position is notable because the individual components have disparate standings: the CPU sits in the 82nd percentile among all CPUs, while the GPU is in the 68th percentile among all GPUs. The combination’s rank suggests that in this particular game, the pairing does not boost the overall experience to match the CPU’s strong standalone showing. The data implies that the GPU is the limiting factor in many scenarios, which is consistent with the FPS measurements at higher resolutions.

Compared to other tested combos, this rank means that a significant portion of systems—approximately 390 combos—deliver better performance in Thief. The CPU’s nearest rivals, such as the Intel Core i7-13620H (0.1% faster) and AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D (0.5% slower), have similar average benchmark scores, but those comparisons are CPU-only and do not account for the GPU pairing. The GPU’s nearest rivals, including the NVIDIA RTX A5000 Mobile (0.1% slower) and Intel Arc A350M (0.3% faster), show that the RX 5700 XT is closely matched with other mid-range GPUs in synthetic tests, yet the in-game rank suggests that Thief’s engine favors certain architectures. The low rank is not a reflection of a broken setup, but rather an indication that this combo is positioned for 1080p gaming rather than high-refresh 1440p or 4K.

The rank also implies that users with this combo should temper expectations for Ultra settings at high resolutions. The data shows that while the CPU can handle the game’s logic and physics, the GPU’s 8 GB VRAM and RDNA 1.0 architecture are not optimized for the game’s more demanding presets. This is a case where the whole is less than the sum of its parts, as the CPU’s 82nd percentile standing does not translate into a top-tier gaming experience when paired with a GPU that is only 68th percentile. The combination is functional, but it is not a high-performance outlier in the database.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT is built on the RDNA 1.0 architecture with a Navi 10 chip, featuring 2560 shading units and 64 ROPs. Its memory subsystem includes 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus, providing 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The clocks are set at a base of 1605 MHz, with a boost clock of 1905 MHz and a game clock of 1755 MHz. These specifications are directly relevant to Thief’s results, as the game’s settings presets heavily tax the GPU’s fill rate and memory bandwidth. The data shows that at 4K Ultra, the average FPS drops to 36.7, which is a 77% reduction from 1080p Low, indicating that the GPU’s compute resources are overwhelmed by the pixel count and high-detail textures.

The 8 GB VRAM is a critical factor. At 4K High, the game uses enough memory to cause performance degradation, as evidenced by the 33.8 FPS average, which is lower than the 4K Medium result of 47.4 FPS. This suggests that the VRAM capacity is being exceeded at the higher presets, leading to texture swapping and a subsequent frame rate hit. The 448.0 GB/s bandwidth is respectable for the era, but it is insufficient for 4K Ultra settings, where the GPU’s FP32 throughput of 9.754 TFLOPS is also a limiting factor. The GPU’s pixel rate of 121.9 GPixel/s and texture rate of 304.8 GTexel/s are moderate figures that explain why the card performs best at 1080p and 1440p.

The GPU’s benchmark scores reinforce this analysis. Its PassMark G3D score of 16277 places it in the 68th percentile, and its 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 2134 is a modest result. In comparison to its nearest rivals, the RX 5700 XT is nearly identical to the NVIDIA RTX A5000 Mobile (0.1% faster) and slightly faster than the Intel Arc A350M (0.3% slower). However, in Thief, the GPU’s role is clear: it provides playable frame rates at 1080p across all settings, but it struggles to maintain 60 FPS at 1440p Ultra (57.1 FPS) and falls below 40 FPS at 4K High. The data indicates that the GPU is the primary bottleneck in this combo, as the CPU is rarely strained by the game’s requirements.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a detailed view of performance across three resolutions and four settings. At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves 153.6 FPS, which is the highest average in the entire dataset. Medium follows at 116.2 FPS, High at 89.9 FPS, and Ultra at 83.6 FPS. The gradient from Low to Ultra is steep, with a 45% drop from Low to Ultra, but all presets remain above 80 FPS, making 1080p the most comfortable resolution for this combo. The difference between High and Ultra is only 6.3 FPS, which is a small penalty for the extra visual quality, but the difference between Low and Medium is 37.4 FPS, indicating that the Low preset is significantly less demanding.

At 2560x1440, the performance scales down predictably. Low delivers 102.9 FPS, which is still excellent for a 1440p display, while Medium drops to 77.7 FPS and High falls to 61.9 FPS. Ultra is the only preset that dips below 60 FPS, averaging 57.1 FPS. The data shows that the transition from 1080p to 1440p costs approximately 33% of the frame rate at Low (from 153.6 to 102.9), but only 31% at Ultra (from 83.6 to 57.1), suggesting that the GPU is less efficient at lower settings when resolution scales. At 3840x2160, the results are more extreme. Low is the only playable preset at 62.8 FPS, while Medium drops to 47.4 FPS, High to 33.8 FPS, and Ultra to 36.7 FPS. Interestingly, Ultra is actually faster than High at 4K, which is an anomaly that could be due to driver-level optimizations or a less demanding Ultra profile in this specific game.

The breakdown reveals that the combo is best suited for 1080p gaming, where it can handle all presets with ease. For 1440p, users must choose between Medium for smoothness or High for quality, but Ultra is borderline. At 4K, only Low is viable, and even then, the 62.8 FPS average is close to the 60 FPS threshold, leaving little headroom for demanding scenes. The absence of min and max FPS data means that stutter and frame time variance cannot be assessed, but the averages suggest a stable experience at 1080p and 1440p.

Resolution Scaling

The resolution scaling from 1080p to 4K demonstrates where the bottleneck lies in this system. At Low settings, the frame rate drops from 153.6 FPS at 1080p to 102.9 FPS at 1440p and then to 62.8 FPS at 4K. This represents a 33% reduction from 1080p to 1440p and a 39% reduction from 1440p to 4K. The scaling is relatively linear, which indicates that the GPU is the limiting factor, as the CPU’s workload does not change significantly with resolution. The CPU’s 10 cores and 16 threads, with a boost clock of 4.60 GHz, are more than capable of feeding the GPU, so the frame rate drops are directly attributable to the GPU’s pixel processing capabilities.

At Ultra settings, the scaling is steeper. The frame rate goes from 83.6 FPS at 1080p to 57.1 FPS at 1440p (a 32% drop) and then to 36.7 FPS at 4K (a 36% drop from 1440p). The 4K Ultra result is particularly telling because it is nearly identical to the 4K High result (36.7 vs 33.8), which suggests that the GPU is hitting a hard performance wall. This wall is likely due to the combination of the 8 GB VRAM being exhausted and the RDNA 1.0 architecture’s limitations with high-resolution textures. The data implies that the GPU’s 448.0 GB/s bandwidth is insufficient for 4K Ultra, as the memory bus becomes saturated.

The scaling pattern also shows that the CPU is not the limiting component. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see smaller frame rate differences between resolutions at higher settings, but the opposite is true. The 4K Low result of 62.8 FPS is still well below the 1080p Low result of 153.6 FPS, indicating that the GPU is doing the heavy lifting. The i5-13400F’s L3 cache of 20 MB shared and its 80 KB L1 per core are more than sufficient for game logic, and its single-thread performance (3dmark single-thread score of 960) ensures that it does not hold back the GPU. This is a GPU-bound scenario across all settings, with the CPU having ample headroom to spare.

FAQ

*Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in Thief?*

A: The data shows that 1920x1080 is the most comfortable resolution, with all presets averaging above 83 FPS. At 2560x1440, only Low and Medium presets stay above 77 FPS, while Ultra dips to 57.1 FPS. At 3840x2160, only Low achieves a playable 62.8 FPS.

Q: How does the CPU’s performance compare to its rivals?

A: The Intel Core i5-13400F has an average benchmark score of 25236, which is 0.1% faster than the Intel Core i7-13620H and 0.5% slower than the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D. It also outperforms the AMD EPYC 9474F and AMD Ryzen AI 5 PRO 340 by 0.5% each.

Q: Is the GPU the limiting factor in this setup?

A: Yes. The resolution scaling shows a consistent frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K at all settings, which is characteristic of GPU-bound performance. The GPU’s 8 GB VRAM and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth are insufficient for 4K Ultra, as evidenced by the 36.7 FPS result.

Q: What is the GPU’s standing among all tested GPUs?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT is in the 68th percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 24731. It is 0.1% slower than the NVIDIA RTX A5000 Mobile and 0.3% faster than the Intel Arc A350M.

*Q: How does the combo rank overall in Thief?*

A: It ranks 1252nd out of 1642 tested combos, placing it in the lower half of the database. This rank is lower than what the CPU’s 82nd percentile would suggest, indicating that the GPU drags down the overall performance.

Q: Which settings preset offers the best experience at 1440p?

A: The Medium preset at 77.7 FPS is the best balance, as it stays well above 60 FPS. High at 61.9 FPS is also viable, but Ultra at 57.1 FPS falls below the smoothness threshold.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-13400F is a 10-core, 16-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake architecture, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.60 GHz. Its cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 1.25 MB of L2 per core, and 20 MB of shared L3 cache. These specifications are relevant to Thief because the game’s AI and physics calculations can leverage multiple cores, and the CPU’s single-thread performance is strong, as shown by its 3dmark single-thread score of 960 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 3004. The CPU’s percentile rank of 82nd among all CPUs indicates that it is a high-performing processor, but in this combo, its role is to feed the GPU without becoming a bottleneck.

The benchmark results show that the CPU excels in multi-threaded workloads, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 21279 and a Geekbench multi-core score of 10971. These scores are significantly higher than what Thief likely requires, given its 2014 release date. The game’s engine is not known for scaling across many cores, so the CPU’s 10 cores are more than adequate. The nearest rivals, such as the Intel Core i7-13620H (0.1% faster) and AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D (0.5% slower), are similarly capable, which means that swapping the CPU would not materially change the game’s performance. The data implies that the CPU is not the limiting factor in any of the measured scenarios.

The CPU’s memory support for DDR4 and DDR5, along with its dual-channel memory bus, ensures that memory bandwidth is not a constraint. The lack of integrated graphics means that all rendering is handled by the discrete GPU, which is expected in a gaming setup. The CPU’s 65W TDP and Intel Socket 1700 compatibility make it a mainstream choice, but its performance in Thief is secondary to the GPU’s capabilities. The measured FPS data shows that even at 1080p Low, where the CPU would be most likely to bottleneck due to high frame rates, the system achieves 153.6 FPS, which is far from the CPU’s limits. This confirms that the CPU is providing ample headroom, and any performance issues in the game are directly attributable to the GPU’s processing power.