Thief

Resolution Scaling

The measured frame rates for Thief with the Intel Core i7-12700KF and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 show a clear and consistent scaling pattern as resolution increases. At 1080p with High settings, the combination delivers an average of 160 FPS. Moving to 1440p at the same settings, the average drops to 135.5 FPS, a reduction of roughly 15%. At 4K, the average falls further to 82.4 FPS, which represents a 48.5% decrease from the 1080p figure. This substantial drop between 1440p and 4K indicates that the rendering load is scaling heavily with pixel count, which is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario at the highest resolution.

The pattern across all quality presets reinforces this interpretation. At Low settings, the frame rate goes from 197.1 FPS at 1080p to 174 FPS at 1440p, then down to 136.8 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1080p to 4K at Low settings is 30.6%, which is less severe than the High settings drop of 48.5%. This difference suggests that at lower quality presets, the CPU has more headroom to feed the GPU, and the GPU becomes the limiting factor more gradually. At High and Ultra settings, the pixel shader workload increases, and the GPU's compute resources are more fully utilized, making the resolution scaling steeper.

At Ultra settings, the progression is 155.5 FPS at 1080p, 129 FPS at 1440p, and 75.9 FPS at 4K. The 4K figure is less than half of the 1080p figure, confirming that the RTX 5080's rendering pipeline is saturated by the 4K pixel throughput combined with the Ultra preset's effects. The fact that the 1080p Ultra result (155.5 FPS) is very close to the 1080p High result (160 FPS) suggests that the CPU is beginning to impose a ceiling around 160 FPS at this resolution. The data indicates that at 1080p, the i7-12700KF's single-thread performance is a contributing factor, while at 4K, the GPU's raw fill rate and shading capacity dominate the outcome.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a 5 nm process and contains 45,600 million transistors on a 378 mm² die. Its memory subsystem consists of 16 GB of GDDR7 on a 256-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 960.0 GB/s. The GPU operates at a base clock of 2295 MHz and a boost clock of 2617 MHz, with memory running at 1875 MHz (30 Gbps effective). These specifications directly influence the measured frame rates in Thief, particularly at higher resolutions where memory bandwidth and pixel throughput become critical.

The 4K High result of 82.4 FPS is a strong indicator that the RTX 5080's pixel rate of 293.1 GPixel/s and texture rate of 879.3 GTexel/s are being exercised heavily. Thief is a 2014 title, but the Ultra preset at 4K still demands substantial fill rate, and the data shows the GPU delivering 75.9 FPS in that configuration. The difference between 4K High and 4K Ultra is 6.5 FPS, which is modest compared to the 24.5 FPS gap between 4K Low and 4K High. This suggests that the Ultra preset's additional effects are not disproportionately taxing the GPU relative to the High preset, and the RTX 5080's 56.28 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is sufficient to handle the increased shader complexity without a dramatic frame rate penalty.

The GPU's 84 RT cores and 336 tensor cores are present in the specification, though Thief does not utilize ray tracing or DLSS features, so these units are not the primary drivers of the measured performance. Instead, the 10752 shading units and 112 ROPs are the key components. The ROP count directly affects the pixel fill rate, and the 293.1 GPixel/s figure aligns with the observed 4K performance. In synthetic benchmarks, the RTX 5080 scores 36565 in Passmark G3D and 8637 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, placing it in the 89th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rivals in the database include the Intel Arc A570M, which trails by 1.6%, and the Intel Arc Pro A60, which leads by 1.9% in average score. These rival deltas are small, indicating that the RTX 5080 sits in a tightly contested performance band, but in Thief specifically, the measured FPS shows the GPU performing strongly at 4K.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700KF is a 12-core, 20-thread processor from the Alder Lake-S generation, with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz. It has a 25 MB shared L3 cache, with 1.25 MB of L2 per core and 80 KB of L1 per core. The CPU's 3DMark single-thread score is 1043, and its Passmark single-thread score is 3984, with a Cinebench R23 single-core result of 4091. These figures indicate strong single-thread performance, which is relevant for Thief's game logic and draw call submission.

At 1080p Low settings, the combination achieves 197.1 FPS, which is the highest measured result across all configurations. The fact that this is below 200 FPS suggests that the CPU's single-thread performance is the limiting factor at this resolution and quality level. The 1080p High result of 160 FPS is only 2.9% lower than the 1080p Ultra result of 155.5 FPS, which further supports the notion that the CPU is capping performance around the 155-160 FPS range when the GPU is not fully loaded. At 1440p, the CPU constraint is less pronounced, as the GPU begins to take over as the bottleneck, evidenced by the larger spread between Low (174 FPS) and Ultra (129 FPS).

The CPU's multi-threaded capabilities, while not directly relevant to Thief's single-threaded engine, contribute to overall system responsiveness. The i7-12700KF scores 28979 in Cinebench R23 multicore and 9282 in 3DMark 16-thread tests, placing it in the 89th percentile of all CPUs. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core i5-14400, has an average benchmark score that is 0.1% higher, while the Intel Core i7-13800H trails by 0.2%. These negligible deltas mean that the i7-12700KF's overall CPU performance is essentially interchangeable with its closest competitors in aggregate benchmarks. However, in Thief, the single-thread score of 4091 in Cinebench R23 is the more relevant metric, and the data indicates that this level of single-thread performance is sufficient to drive frame rates above 150 FPS at 1080p but not beyond 200 FPS.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average frame rate achieved by this combo in Thief?

A: The highest average frame rate is 197.1 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings.

Q: How does the 4K Ultra performance compare to the 1080p Ultra performance?

A: At 4K Ultra, the average frame rate is 75.9 FPS, which is 79.6 FPS lower than the 155.5 FPS achieved at 1080p Ultra, representing a 51.1% reduction.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor at 1080p High settings?

A: The data suggests the CPU is the primary limiter at 1080p High, as the frame rate of 160 FPS is close to the 155.5 FPS at Ultra, indicating that additional GPU workload does not significantly reduce performance.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Low and Ultra settings at 1440p?

A: At 1440p, Low settings produce 174 FPS, while Ultra settings produce 129 FPS, a difference of 45 FPS.

Q: How does the RTX 5080's memory bandwidth relate to Thief's 4K performance?

A: The 960.0 GB/s memory bandwidth is sufficient to support the pixel throughput demands at 4K, as evidenced by the 82.4 FPS average at High settings, which is a playable frame rate for a stealth game.

Q: What percentile does this CPU rank in among all tested CPUs?

A: The Intel Core i7-12700KF ranks in the 89th percentile of all CPUs, based on its average benchmark score of 35355.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i7-12700KF and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 combination ranks 84th out of 1642 tested combos in Thief. This places the pairing in the top 5.1% of all tested systems, which is a strong result given the game's age and the hardware's modern characteristics. The rank reflects the measured average FPS across all resolution and quality settings, and the data shows that the combo is particularly competitive at 1440p and 4K, where the GPU's capabilities are fully utilized.

The rank of 84 out of 1642 is notable because it indicates that only 83 other combinations produce higher average frame rates in Thief. Given the RTX 5080's position in the 89th percentile of GPUs and the i7-12700KF's 89th percentile ranking among CPUs, the combined system is performing slightly above what the individual percentiles might suggest. This is likely due to the balanced nature of the pairing: the CPU's strong single-thread performance prevents it from bottlenecking the GPU at lower resolutions, while the GPU's substantial compute resources ensure high frame rates at 4K.

The 1080p results show that the combo is not CPU-limited to the point of harming the overall rank, as the 160 FPS High result is competitive. The 4K Ultra result of 75.9 FPS is also a positive contributor, as it demonstrates that the system can handle the most demanding configuration without dropping below the playable threshold. The rank of 84th out of 1642 confirms that this is a high-performing combination for Thief, with the data showing consistent frame rates above 75 FPS across all tested settings and resolutions.