Thief

The Intel Core i7-14700F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti combination ranks 101st out of 1,642 tested combos in Thief, placing it firmly in the top 6% of all configurations analyzed. This is a strong result for a 2014 stealth title, indicating that the pairing delivers well above-average performance headroom. The ranking suggests that while this combo is not at the absolute apex of the database, it sits comfortably within the upper echelon, outpacing the vast majority of systems tested against this specific game's engine and rendering demands.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo's 101st place finish out of 1,642 tested configurations places it in the 94th percentile of all CPU results and the 85th percentile of all GPU results, according to the component-level benchmark data. This alignment between the processor and graphics card percentiles indicates a well-balanced pairing for Thief. The CPU's average benchmark score of 54,097 puts it just 0.6% behind the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and 1.1% behind the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D, while edging out the Intel Xeon Phi 7290 by 1.2% and the AMD EPYC 7313P by 1.7%. On the GPU side, the RTX 4070 Ti's average score of 44,900 trails the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Mobile by a marginal 0.6% and the Intel Arc A730M by 1.5%, while leading the AMD Radeon Pro 580 by 1.6%. These razor-thin margins at the component level translate into a combined system ranking that is competitive with far more expensive or newer hardware, though the measured in-game FPS reveals where the actual bottlenecks lie.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700F brings 20 cores and 28 threads to the table, running at a base clock of 2.10 GHz and boosting up to 5.40 GHz. This Raptor Lake-R architecture, built on Intel's 10 nm process, features a 33 MB shared L3 cache and 2 MB per-core L2 cache. For a game released in 2014 like Thief, the sheer thread count is largely secondary; the title was designed for quad-core processors. However, the high boost clock of 5.40 GHz is the critical factor here, as Thief's engine tends to favor raw single-thread performance over multi-core scaling. The single-core benchmark results reinforce this: a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 5,003 and a Geekbench single-core score of 2,711 indicate strong per-thread capability. The multi-core scores, such as 35,443 in Cinebench R23 and 16,571 in Geekbench, are impressive but largely underutilized in this game. The CPU's 94th percentile ranking versus all CPUs suggests it is not the limiting factor in most scenarios, particularly at lower resolutions where the GPU takes on more of the rendering load. The 65 W TDP classification also indicates this is a power-efficient part that does not require exotic cooling, though that has no direct bearing on frame rates.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is built on the AD104 chip with Ada Lovelace architecture, fabricated on TSMC's 5 nm process with 35,800 million transistors. It features 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus, delivering a bandwidth of 504.2 GB/s. The GPU operates at a base clock of 2,310 MHz and boosts to 2,610 MHz, with memory running at an effective 21 Gbps. Its 7,680 shading units, 240 TMUs, and 80 ROPs provide substantial raw compute power, rated at 40.09 TFLOPS for FP32 operations. The 60 RT cores and 240 tensor cores are largely irrelevant for Thief, which predates ray tracing and DLSS by several years, so the GPU's traditional rasterization performance is what matters. The 85th percentile ranking versus all GPUs places it slightly below the CPU's relative standing, hinting that the graphics card is more likely to be the performance ceiling in this pairing. The 12 GB VRAM is more than sufficient for a 2014 title, even at 4K Ultra, so memory capacity is not a concern. The GPU's nearest rivals show it performing within 1.6% of several other cards, including the RTX 5090 Mobile and Intel Arc A730M, which suggests the RTX 4070 Ti sits in a competitive mid-to-high tier for this workload.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data reveals a clear pattern of performance scaling across resolutions and settings. At 1080p, the combo delivers 207.4 FPS on Low, 192 FPS on Medium, 168.5 FPS on High, and 162.9 FPS on Ultra. These figures show that even at the highest settings, the system maintains well above 160 FPS, making it ideal for high-refresh-rate monitors. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1080p is approximately 44.5 FPS, indicating that the GPU has enough headroom to absorb increased graphical demands without significant frame rate collapse. Moving to 1440p, the numbers remain strong: 183 FPS on Low, 157.5 FPS on Medium, 122.1 FPS on High, and 112 FPS on Ultra. The drop from 1080p Ultra to 1440p Ultra is roughly 50.9 FPS, a 31% reduction that still leaves the system comfortably above 100 FPS. At 4K, the performance becomes more demanding: 121.2 FPS on Low, 90 FPS on Medium, 71.1 FPS on High, and 65.6 FPS on Ultra. The 4K Ultra result of 65.6 FPS is just above the 60 FPS threshold, meaning the system can handle 4K gaming but with less margin for demanding scenes. The data shows no min or max FPS values, so the analysis focuses solely on average frame rates, which are consistently smooth across all tested configurations.

Resolution Scaling

The scaling behavior across resolutions tells a clear story about which component is the limiting factor. From 1080p Ultra to 1440p Ultra, the frame rate drops from 162.9 FPS to 112 FPS, a 31% decrease. From 1440p Ultra to 4K Ultra, it further drops to 65.6 FPS, another 41% reduction. This compounding decline with increasing resolution is the classic signature of a GPU-bound scenario. At 1080p, the CPU's high boost clock and strong single-thread performance keep the frame rate elevated, but as pixel count rises, the GPU's rendering workload expands exponentially, and the RTX 4070 Ti becomes the constraining component. The 4K Low setting of 121.2 FPS versus 1080p Low of 207.4 FPS shows a 42% drop even at minimal graphical complexity, confirming that resolution alone is a heavy burden on the GPU. Conversely, the relatively small differences between settings at a fixed resolution—such as 168.5 FPS at 1080p High versus 162.9 FPS at 1080p Ultra—indicate that the CPU is not struggling with game logic or draw calls; the GPU is simply working harder as settings increase. The data suggests that for 1080p and 1440p gaming, this combo is exceptionally well-suited, delivering high frame rates even at Ultra settings. At 4K, the system is still playable but requires dropping to Medium or Low settings to maintain frame rates above 90 FPS. The limiting component is unmistakably the GPU, as the CPU's 94th percentile ranking and high clock speeds provide ample headroom that the graphics card cannot fully exploit at higher resolutions. This pairing is therefore best described as a high-refresh-rate 1440p champion that can also handle 4K with settings compromises.