Thief

The Intel Core i5-9400 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti delivers a distinctly CPU-bound experience in Thief at lower resolutions, while the GPU becomes the primary constraint at 4K. The data shows a combo ranking of 1291 out of 1642 tested combinations, placing it in the lower-middle portion of the database. At 1080p, the processor’s six cores and six threads are sufficient to push frame rates into triple digits, but the scaling pattern across resolutions reveals that the RTX 3060 Ti’s 8 GB of GDDR6 memory and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth are more than adequate for this 2014 stealth title. The measured results indicate that this configuration is best suited for high-refresh-rate 1080p gaming, with a significant performance cliff appearing as resolution increases.

FAQ

Q: What is the overall rank of this CPU and GPU combination in Thief?

A: The combo ranks 1291 out of 1642 tested combinations in Thief, placing it in the 78th percentile of all tested systems for this game.

Q: How does the Intel Core i5-9400 compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The i5-9400 has an average benchmark score of 2305, which is 0.2% higher than the Intel Core i3-10305 and Intel Core i3-1125G4 (both at 2300 and 2299 respectively), and 0.4% above the Intel Xeon E-2134 at 2295. It trails the Intel Core i7-8809G by 0.6% (2319).

Q: What is the RTX 3060 Ti’s position relative to its closest competitors?

A: The RTX 3060 Ti has an average benchmark score of 25120. It is 0.2% behind the AMD Radeon RX 6700M (25180), 0.5% behind both the AMD Radeon RX 6600 (25235) and AMD Radeon 890M (25246), and 0.7% behind the AMD Radeon RX 580 2048SP (25287).

Q: What is the best performance result for this combo in Thief?

A: The highest average frame rate recorded is 117.3 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings. The lowest is 35.4 FPS at 3840x2160 with High settings.

Q: Does this combination achieve 60 FPS at 1440p?

A: Yes, at 2560x1440 the combo exceeds 60 FPS on Low (104.8 FPS) and Medium (81.5 FPS) settings, but falls just short on High (64.7 FPS) and Ultra (62.1 FPS) settings.

Q: How much faster is 1080p compared to 4K at the same settings?

A: At High settings, 1080p delivers 88.3 FPS versus 35.4 FPS at 4K, representing a 149.4% performance advantage for the lower resolution.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is built on the Ampere architecture with a GA104 chip manufactured on an 8 nm process at Samsung. The GPU operates with a base clock of 1410 MHz and a boost clock of 1665 MHz, paired with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus. This memory configuration provides a bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s, which is more than sufficient for Thief’s texture-heavy environments. The card’s 4864 shading units and 80 ROPs contribute to a pixel rate of 133.2 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 253.1 GTexel/s, both of which directly influence how quickly the engine can fill the screen with geometry and lighting effects.

In Thief, the GPU’s role becomes increasingly dominant as resolution rises. At 1080p, the RTX 3060 Ti is not fully utilized, as the CPU can keep up with the frame generation demands. However, the measured FPS drop from 117.3 FPS at 1080p Low to 64 FPS at 4K Low indicates that the GPU is scaling with pixel count, but the relatively modest decline suggests the game’s engine is not heavily shader-bound. The card’s 16.20 TFLOPS of FP32 compute provides ample headroom for the DirectX 12 Ultimate feature set, though Thief’s 2014 release date means it does not leverage ray tracing or DLSS capabilities. The GPU’s memory bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s is a critical factor at 4K Ultra, where the 37.5 FPS result shows the card is nearing its practical limit for this title.

The RTX 3060 Ti’s performance percentile of 69 among all GPUs indicates it sits above the median, and its average benchmark score of 25120 places it within 0.7% of its nearest rivals, all of which are AMD products. This suggests that in synthetic workloads the card is competitive, but in Thief specifically, the measured data reveals a more nuanced picture where the CPU bottleneck at lower resolutions masks the GPU’s true capability.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-9400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti achieves a rank of 1291 out of 1642 tested combos in Thief. This places the system in the bottom 21% of all configurations tested for this game, which is a notable underperformance given the individual components’ specs. The CPU’s percentile of 50 among all processors indicates it is exactly average, while the GPU’s percentile of 69 is above average. The discrepancy between these individual rankings and the combo’s overall position suggests that Thief is particularly sensitive to the pairing’s balance, or that the game’s engine does not scale well with this configuration.

The i5-9400’s six cores and six threads are typical for its generation, and its Cinebench R23 multicore score of 7969 is respectable for a 65 W TDP part. However, the game’s frame rate data shows that at 1080p, the CPU is the limiting factor at higher settings, as evidenced by the minimal difference between High (88.3 FPS) and Ultra (88.9 FPS) at 1080p. This narrow gap suggests the GPU is waiting on the CPU to issue draw calls, a common bottleneck in older games with single-threaded physics or AI routines. The i5-9400’s single-core performance, reflected in a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1125, may be insufficient for Thief’s more demanding scenes.

Compared to the nearest rival combos in the database, this system’s rank of 1291 is below what the GPU’s individual performance would suggest. The RTX 3060 Ti’s nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 6700M, has a nearly identical average score (25180 versus 25120), yet the overall combo ranking indicates that CPU choice heavily influences Thief’s outcome. The data shows that this pairing is not optimized for Thief, and users seeking higher frame rates would benefit from a CPU with stronger single-threaded performance, even if the GPU remains unchanged.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average FPS ranges from 117.3 on Low settings to 88.9 on Ultra. The progression is not linear: Low delivers 117.3 FPS, Medium drops to 107.6 FPS, High falls to 88.3 FPS, and Ultra recovers slightly to 88.9 FPS. This unusual pattern, where High and Ultra are nearly identical, indicates that the CPU becomes the bottleneck beyond Medium settings. The 28.4 FPS difference between Low and Ultra at 1080p highlights how much headroom the RTX 3060 Ti has at this resolution, but the CPU prevents it from being fully exploited.

Moving to 2560x1440, the average FPS scales down across all settings. Low produces 104.8 FPS, Medium 81.5 FPS, High 64.7 FPS, and Ultra 62.1 FPS. The drop from 1080p to 1440p at Low settings is 12.5 FPS (from 117.3 to 104.8), while at Ultra the drop is 26.8 FPS (from 88.9 to 62.1). This widening gap indicates that the GPU is starting to take on more of the workload at 1440p, though the CPU still plays a role at Ultra settings, where the frame rate difference between High and Ultra is only 2.6 FPS.

At 3840x2160, the performance becomes GPU-bound. Low settings yield 64 FPS, Medium 47.4 FPS, High 35.4 FPS, and Ultra 37.5 FPS. The inversion between High and Ultra (where Ultra is 2.1 FPS faster than High) is a statistical anomaly likely caused by driver-level optimizations or scene variation, but it underscores that the RTX 3060 Ti is fully saturated at 4K. The difference between Low and Ultra at 4K is 26.5 FPS, which is nearly identical to the 1080p Low-to-Ultra spread of 28.4 FPS, but the absolute values are far lower, confirming that resolution is the dominant factor at 4K.

Resolution Scaling

The scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals how the bottleneck shifts between the CPU and GPU. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 117.3 at 1080p to 104.8 at 1440p and finally to 64 at 4K. The percentage drop from 1080p to 1440p is 10.7%, while the drop from 1440p to 4K is 38.9%. This accelerating decline indicates that the GPU is increasingly constrained as pixel count grows, with the 4K workload overwhelming the RTX 3060 Ti’s 8 GB memory capacity and bandwidth.

At Ultra settings, the scaling is more pronounced. The FPS falls from 88.9 at 1080p to 62.1 at 1440p (a 30.1% drop) and then to 37.5 at 4K (a 39.6% drop from 1440p). The consistency of the 1440p-to-4K drop across Low and Ultra settings (38.9% and 39.6% respectively) suggests that the GPU’s fill-rate and memory bandwidth are the limiting factors at 4K, regardless of quality settings. This is corroborated by the fact that the 4K Low result of 64 FPS is lower than the 1080p Ultra result of 88.9 FPS, indicating that resolution has a greater impact than settings on this combo.

The data also shows that the CPU bottleneck at 1080p is not severe enough to prevent the GPU from scaling with resolution, but it does cap the maximum achievable frame rate. The 1080p Low result of 117.3 FPS is the highest recorded, and it is 12.5 FPS higher than the 1440p Low result, which is 40.8 FPS higher than the 4K Low result. This pattern indicates that the i5-9400 can sustain frame rates up to approximately 120 FPS, but beyond that, the RTX 3060 Ti would be the limiting factor. For users targeting 60 FPS, the combo achieves this at 1440p across all settings and at 4K only on Low settings, making 1440p the practical ceiling for this pairing in Thief.