Thief

# Thief on Intel Core i7-12700KF + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER

The Intel Core i7-12700KF paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER delivers a broadly playable Thief experience across most resolution and settings combinations, with the data showing a clear pattern: the 12-core Alder Lake processor provides ample headroom while the Turing-based GPU becomes the primary constraint as resolution climbs. At 1080p, the combo averages between 94 FPS on Ultra and 171 FPS on Low, while 4K Ultra drops to 38 FPS — a spread that reveals both the strengths and limits of this pairing. The combo ranks 2091st out of 3720 tested combinations, placing it in the lower-middle portion of the database, which aligns with the GPU's 65th percentile standing among all tested GPUs.

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

The Intel Core i7-12700KF is a 12-core, 20-thread processor from the Alder Lake architecture, built on Intel's 10 nm process node. It operates with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz, with a TDP of 125 W. The cache hierarchy consists of 80 KB of L1 per core, 1.25 MB of L2 per core, and 25 MB of shared L3 cache. The processor supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration, and it connects to the platform via PCIe Gen 4 with 20 CPU lanes.

Benchmark data for the i7-12700KF shows strong synthetic performance. In Cinebench R23, it scores 28838 in multicore and 4071 in singlecore. Geekbench results show 14367 multicore and 2255 singlecore. The 3DMark suite reveals scaling from 1043 single-thread to 9282 at 16 threads, 9983 at max threads — a roughly 9.6x increase from single-thread to full utilization, which is consistent with its hybrid core design. PassMark multithread score is 34092, with single-thread at 3984.

In the context of Thief, a stealth game released on 2014-02-24, the CPU's role is to feed the GPU with draw calls and game logic. The data shows that at 1080p Low, the combo reaches 171 FPS, which is the highest measured average across all configurations. This high frame rate suggests that the CPU is not a bottleneck even at lower settings where GPU load is reduced. The i7-12700KF's 85th percentile ranking among all CPUs indicates it performs well above the median processor, and its nearest rivals — the Intel Core i7-13700T (avg score 35403, delta -0.1%), Intel Core i5-13600T (avg score 35305, delta +0.2%), Intel Core 5 213PE (avg score 35428, delta -0.2%), and Intel Core i7-12700K (avg score 35287, delta +0.2%) — all sit within a 0.2% margin, showing that this CPU is competitive with newer and similarly positioned parts.

The measured FPS data supports the conclusion that the CPU is rarely the limiting factor in this pairing. At 1080p, moving from Low to Ultra reduces average FPS from 171 to 94, a 45% drop that is primarily attributable to GPU workload scaling with settings. At 4K, the same settings change produces a drop from 69 to 38 FPS, a 45% decline. The consistency of this drop percentage across resolutions suggests that the GPU is the dominant constraint, with the CPU maintaining enough throughput to avoid introducing additional bottlenecks.

FAQ — 4-6 Q&A pairs answerable from FACT PACK data

Q: What is the best average FPS this combo achieves in Thief?

A: The highest measured average FPS is 171, recorded at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This is followed by 130 FPS at 1080p Medium and 118 FPS at 2560x1440 Low.

Q: How does the combo perform at 4K Ultra settings?

A: At 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the average FPS drops to 38, which is the lowest measured value among all configurations. The 4K High setting yields 40 FPS, while 4K Medium produces 52 FPS with a minimum of 45 and maximum of 60.

Q: What is the combo's rank among tested systems?

A: The Intel Core i7-12700KF + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER ranks 2091st out of 3720 tested combinations in Thief, placing it in the 56th percentile of all tested combos.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU more likely to be the bottleneck at high resolutions?

A: The data indicates the GPU is the primary bottleneck at higher resolutions. Between 1080p and 4K at High settings, average FPS drops from 99 to 40, a 60% reduction. This scaling is consistent with GPU-bound behavior, as the CPU's performance (85th percentile) far exceeds the GPU's standing (65th percentile).

Q: What are the minimum and maximum FPS values recorded?

A: The database only includes min and max FPS for Medium settings across all three resolutions. At 1080p Medium, min is 111 and max is 150. At 1440p Medium, min is 76 and max is 103. At 4K Medium, min is 45 and max is 60.

Q: How does the RTX 2070 SUPER compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The GPU's average benchmark score is 20282, with a 65th percentile ranking. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA Quadro M4000M (avg score 20480, delta -1%), NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile (avg score 20534, delta -1.2%), Intel Arc B570 (avg score 20556, delta -1.3%), and Intel Arc A750 (avg score 20582, delta -1.5%).

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

The measured FPS data provides a clear picture of how each settings preset affects performance. At 1920x1080, the Ultra preset delivers 94 FPS on average, which is smooth for most gameplay scenarios. The High preset yields 99 FPS, a modest 5 FPS improvement over Ultra. The Medium preset delivers 130 FPS, which is a 38% improvement over Ultra, while Low reaches 171 FPS — an 82% improvement over Ultra.

For players prioritizing frame rate smoothness, the Medium preset at 1080p stands out as the strongest option. It provides 130 FPS on average, with a minimum of 111 FPS and maximum of 150 FPS. The minimum FPS of 111 ensures that even during demanding scenes, the frame rate stays well above 60 FPS. The jump from Medium to High costs 31 FPS on average (130 to 99), which is a significant trade-off for visual fidelity. The jump from High to Ultra costs only 5 FPS (99 to 94), suggesting that Ultra is nearly as efficient as High at 1080p.

At 2560x1440, the pattern shifts. Ultra delivers 65 FPS, High delivers 68 FPS, and Medium delivers 89 FPS with a minimum of 76 and maximum of 103. Low reaches 118 FPS. The Medium preset at 1440p offers the best balance, with an average of 89 FPS and a minimum of 76 FPS that stays comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold. The difference between Ultra and High is just 3 FPS (65 vs 68), making High the slightly better choice of those two if visual quality is similar.

At 3840x2160, all presets struggle to maintain high frame rates. Ultra averages 38 FPS, High averages 40 FPS, Medium averages 52 FPS with a minimum of 45, and Low averages 69 FPS. For 4K gameplay, the Low preset at 69 FPS is the only option that consistently exceeds 60 FPS, while Medium at 52 FPS is borderline. Given the measured data, the Medium preset at 1440p appears to offer the best overall experience across the entire matrix: 89 FPS average, 76 FPS minimum, and a meaningful visual upgrade over Low settings.

How This Combo Ranks — use comboRankInGame vs other tested combos

The combo ranks 2091st out of 3720 tested combinations in Thief, which places it in the 56th percentile of all tested configurations. This position is notably lower than what the CPU's individual ranking might suggest — the i7-12700KF sits at the 85th percentile among all CPUs — and is much closer to the GPU's 65th percentile standing. The discrepancy between the CPU's high percentile and the combo's mid-range ranking indicates that the GPU is the limiting factor in this pairing.

To contextualize this rank: the combo sits in the upper half of all tested systems, but it is far from the top. The data shows that the RTX 2070 SUPER, with its 8 GB of GDDR6 memory and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth, is a capable but not class-leading GPU. Its average benchmark score of 20282 places it just below the NVIDIA Quadro M4000M (20480, delta -1%), the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile (20534, delta -1.2%), the Intel Arc B570 (20556, delta -1.3%), and the Intel Arc A750 (20582, delta -1.5%). These deltas are all within 1.5%, meaning the GPU is statistically comparable to these rivals.

The combo's rank of 2091 out of 3720 suggests that many other CPU+GPU pairings outperform it in Thief, which is expected given the GPU's mid-range position. However, the measured FPS data shows that the combo still delivers playable performance at 1080p and 1440p across all settings, with only 4K Ultra falling below 40 FPS. The rank should be interpreted as a holistic measure of the combo's standing, not as an indication that the system is inadequate for this game.

Resolution Scaling — how FPS drops from 1080p to 4K and what it says about the limiting component

The measured FPS data across resolutions reveals a consistent pattern: performance degrades significantly as resolution increases, and the rate of degradation points to the GPU as the limiting component. At High settings, the average FPS drops from 99 at 1080p to 68 at 1440p (a 31% decrease) and then to 40 at 4K (a 41% decrease from 1440p, 60% from 1080p). At Low settings, the drop is from 171 at 1080p to 118 at 1440p (a 31% decrease) and then to 69 at 4K (a 42% decrease from 1440p, 60% from 1080p).

The near-identical percentage drops between Low and High settings across resolutions are telling. At Low settings, the GPU is doing less per-pixel work, yet the scaling from 1080p to 4K is still a 60% reduction. At High settings, the same 60% reduction occurs. This consistency suggests that the bottleneck is not related to per-pixel shading complexity but rather to the raw pixel count and memory bandwidth demands at higher resolutions. The RTX 2070 SUPER's 448.0 GB/s bandwidth and 8 GB GDDR6 memory are sufficient for 1080p and 1440p, but at 4K, the pixel throughput requirement exceeds what the GPU can deliver.

The Medium settings data provides additional insight, as it includes min and max FPS values. At 1080p Medium, the average is 130 with a range of 111 to 150. At 1440p Medium, the average is 89 with a range of 76 to 103. At 4K Medium, the average is 52 with a range of 45 to 60. The minimum FPS values scale similarly to the averages — 111 to 76 to 45 — which indicates that even worst-case scenes follow the same resolution-dependent degradation pattern.

This scaling behavior confirms that the CPU is not the primary constraint at higher resolutions. The i7-12700KF's strong synthetic scores (28838 in Cinebench R23 multicore, 9983 in 3DMark max threads) suggest it has ample headroom to feed the GPU at any resolution. If the CPU were the bottleneck, the FPS would plateau at higher resolutions rather than continue dropping. The data shows no such plateau; instead, FPS scales inversely with pixel count, which is the signature of a GPU-bound scenario.

Measured FPS Breakdown — resolution by resolution, settings by settings, exact numbers

At 1920x1080, the full range of settings produces the following average frame rates: Low delivers 171 FPS, Medium delivers 130 FPS with a minimum of 111 and maximum of 150, High delivers 99 FPS, and Ultra delivers 94 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium is 41 FPS, between Medium and High is 31 FPS, and between High and Ultra is just 5 FPS. This suggests that the visual quality difference between High and Ultra is relatively inexpensive in terms of performance at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the average FPS values are: Low at 118, Medium at 89 with a minimum of 76 and maximum of 103, High at 68, and Ultra at 65. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p reduces performance by 31% at Low, 32% at Medium, 31% at High, and 31% at Ultra. The consistency of this ~31% reduction across all settings reinforces that resolution is the dominant factor, not settings complexity.

At 3840x2160, the average FPS values are: Low at 69, Medium at 52 with a minimum of 45 and maximum of 60, High at 40, and Ultra at 38. The scaling from 1440p to 4K is more severe: 42% reduction at Low, 42% at Medium, 41% at High, and 42% at Ultra. This steeper drop (from ~31% to ~42%) indicates that the GPU hits a harder wall when moving from 1440p to 4K, likely due to the 4x increase in pixel count relative to 1080p.

The data also shows that at 4K, the difference between High and Ultra shrinks to just 2 FPS (40 vs 38), while the difference between Medium and High is 12 FPS (52 vs 40). This compressed range at 4K reflects the GPU's diminishing ability to differentiate between settings when it is already heavily loaded.

GPU Role — VRAM, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER is built on the Turing architecture using the TU104 chip, fabricated on TSMC's 12 nm process. It features 2560 shading units, 160 texture mapping units, and 64 raster output units, along with 40 ray tracing cores and 320 tensor cores. The GPU operates at a base clock of 1605 MHz and a boost clock of 1770 MHz, with memory running at 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective). The 8 GB of GDDR6 memory is connected via a 256-bit bus, providing 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU's pixel rate is 113.3 GPixel/s, texture rate is 283.2 GTexel/s, and FP32 performance is 9.062 TFLOPS.

In Thief, the GPU's role is paramount. The measured FPS data shows that at 1080p, the GPU can deliver between 94 and 171 FPS depending on settings, which indicates that the 8 GB VRAM and 448 GB/s bandwidth are sufficient for this game's demands at that resolution. However, at 4K, the GPU's limitations become apparent: even at Low settings, the average FPS drops to 69, and at Ultra it falls to 38. This degradation aligns with the GPU's 65th percentile ranking among all GPUs, which places it in the middle of the performance distribution.

The RTX 2070 SUPER's benchmark scores provide context for its gaming performance. In 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, it scores 1651. Geekbench results show 83358 in OpenCL and 90637 in Vulkan. PassMark scores include 18169 in G3D, 7557 in GPU compute, and DirectX-specific scores of 132 (DX10), 151 (DX11), 67 (DX12), and 223 (DX9). These scores, particularly the G3D score of 18169, position the GPU as a solid mid-range part.

The GPU's nearest rivals — NVIDIA Quadro M4000M (avg score 20480, delta -1%), NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile (avg score 20534, delta -1.2%), Intel Arc B570 (avg score 20556, delta -1.3%), and Intel Arc A750 (avg score 20582, delta -1.5%) — all have average scores within 1.5% of the RTX 2070 SUPER. This tight clustering suggests that in Thief, the GPU's performance is comparable to these alternatives, and the measured FPS differences between configurations are more likely attributable to other system components or driver behavior than to inherent GPU capability differences.

The GPU's TDP is 215 W, with a suggested PSU of 550 W, and it uses a dual-slot cooler. In the context of Thief, the GPU's power characteristics are not directly reflected in the FPS data, but they contribute to the overall system profile. The fact that the combo achieves playable frame rates across most settings and resolutions — with the notable exception of 4K Ultra at 38 FPS — indicates that the RTX 2070 SUPER is well-matched to this game's requirements at 1080p and 1440p, while 4K remains a challenge that requires reduced settings to maintain smooth gameplay.