Thief

FAQ

Q: How does the Intel Core i7-14700K + AMD Radeon RX 570 combination rank in Thief?

A: The combo ranks 1562 out of 1642 tested combinations in this game, placing it in the bottom 5% of all tested systems. This low ranking reflects a severe bottleneck, with the GPU’s performance ceiling limiting the overall experience.

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

A: The highest measured average FPS is 77.3, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings. At the same resolution, Ultra settings drop to 42.8 FPS, showing a significant performance cost for higher visual quality.

Q: How does the RX 570 compare to its closest GPU rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RX 570 scores an average benchmark of 30158, which is nearly identical to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 (30109, deltaPct 0.2) and the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT (30097, deltaPct 0.2). It sits just ahead of the NVIDIA Tesla M60 (29969, deltaPct 0.6).

Q: What is the CPU’s percentile ranking among all processors?

A: The i7-14700K ranks in the 96th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 70074. Its closest rival is the Intel Core i7-14700KF (70104, deltaPct 0), followed by the AMD EPYC 9115 (69887, deltaPct 0.3).

Q: Does the GPU have enough VRAM for Thief’s Ultra settings at 4K?

A: The RX 570 has 4 GB of GDDR5 memory, which is insufficient for the demands of Ultra settings at 3840x2160. The measured FPS at 4K Ultra is only 16.4 FPS, indicating the VRAM capacity and bandwidth (224.0 GB/s) are overwhelmed.

Q: How does the CPU’s multi-core performance compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The i7-14700K’s Cinebench R23 multi-core score is 44534, while its average benchmark score trails the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (70420, deltaPct -0.5) and leads the Intel Xeon Platinum 8270 (71056, deltaPct -1.4). The CPU is clearly not the limiting factor in Thief.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data shows a clear trade-off between visual fidelity and playability. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers 77.3 FPS, which is the only configuration in the entire dataset that approaches a smooth 60+ FPS experience. Medium at the same resolution drops to 54.5 FPS, while High falls to 44.7 FPS and Ultra to 42.8 FPS. Given that Thief is a stealth game where responsiveness matters, the Low preset at 1080p is the only setting that consistently keeps the frame rate above typical display refresh rates.

At 2560x1440, even Low settings only produce 48.3 FPS, which is borderline for playable but lacks headroom. Medium at 1440p yields 39.7 FPS, and High drops to 31.6 FPS. The Ultra preset at 1440p manages 28.5 FPS, which is below the threshold for smooth motion. For users who prioritize higher resolutions, the data suggests that 1440p Low is the maximum viable option, but 1080p Low is the recommended preset for the best overall experience.

The 4K results are uniformly poor, with Low at 29.2 FPS being the only setting that stays above 20 FPS. Medium at 4K produces 23.8 FPS, High drops to 20.6 FPS, and Ultra falls to 16.4 FPS. None of these are suitable for actual gameplay. The recommendation is clear: run Thief at 1080p with Low settings to achieve the best playable frame rate. If visual quality is non-negotiable, the user must accept sub-30 FPS performance at 1440p or lower.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS progression from 1080p to 4K reveals a dramatic performance cliff that points squarely at the GPU as the limiting component. At Low settings, the frame rate drops from 77.3 FPS at 1920x1080 to 48.3 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of 29 FPS (approximately 37.5% slower). Scaling further to 3840x2160, the Low preset yields 29.2 FPS, which is 48.1 FPS lower than the 1080p result — a 62% performance loss. This steep decline is consistent with a GPU that is heavily pixel-bound.

The High settings show a similar pattern: 44.7 FPS at 1080p, 31.6 FPS at 1440p, and 20.6 FPS at 4K. The gap between 1080p and 4K is 24.1 FPS, a 54% reduction. Ultra settings follow the same trend, with 42.8 FPS at 1080p, 28.5 FPS at 1440p, and 16.4 FPS at 4K. The scaling is nearly linear with pixel count, suggesting that the RX 570’s fill rate and memory bandwidth (224.0 GB/s) are the primary constraints.

The CPU, by contrast, has immense headroom. The i7-14700K’s 20 cores and 28 threads, with a boost clock of 5.60 GHz, are far beyond what Thief (a 2014 title) would require. The fact that FPS scales so predictably with resolution indicates that the GPU is saturated at every resolution, while the CPU sits largely idle. This is a textbook GPU-bound scenario where lowering resolution provides the only meaningful FPS gains.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average FPS values across settings are: Low 77.3, Medium 54.5, High 44.7, and Ultra 42.8. The jump from Low to Medium is a 22.8 FPS drop, while the difference between High and Ultra is only 1.9 FPS, indicating diminishing returns at the higher presets. The 1080p results are the only ones where any setting exceeds 45 FPS.

Moving to 2560x1440, the results are: Low 48.3, Medium 39.7, High 31.6, and Ultra 28.5. The drop from Low to Medium is 8.6 FPS, and from High to Ultra is 3.1 FPS. At this resolution, even the Low preset fails to reach 50 FPS, confirming that the GPU is struggling to fill the additional pixels.

At 3840x2160, the numbers are: Low 29.2, Medium 23.8, High 20.6, and Ultra 16.4. The Low to Medium gap is 5.4 FPS, and the High to Ultra gap is 4.2 FPS. The 4K results are uniformly below 30 FPS, making them unsuitable for any practical gameplay. Across all resolutions, the relative performance gap between Low and Ultra narrows as resolution increases, suggesting that the GPU’s fixed resources are exhausted regardless of settings at 4K.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 570 is built on the Polaris 20 chip with GCN 4.0 architecture, manufactured on a 14 nm process at GlobalFoundries. It features 2048 shading units, 128 texture mapping units, and 32 ROPs. The GPU’s base clock is 1168 MHz, boosting to 1244 MHz, with memory running at 1750 MHz (7 Gbps effective). The 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is a critical figure for understanding the 4K performance collapse.

The synthetic benchmark data shows the RX 570’s average score of 30158 places it in the 74th percentile of all GPUs, but its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 (30109, deltaPct 0.2) and the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT (30097, deltaPct 0.2). This suggests that in raw compute terms, the RX 570 is competitive with much newer cards, yet its older memory architecture and limited VRAM hold it back in real-world gaming.

In Thief, the GPU’s pixel rate of 39.81 GPixel/s and texture rate of 159.2 GTexel/s are insufficient for the demands of 4K rendering. The measured FPS at 4K Ultra (16.4) is a direct consequence of the GPU being unable to process the 8.3 million pixels per frame at a playable rate. The 4 GB VRAM is also a constraint, as Ultra settings likely exceed this capacity, causing frame drops. The GPU is unambiguously the bottleneck in this combination.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700K is a 20-core, 28-thread processor from the Core 14th Gen series, based on Raptor Lake architecture. It has a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz, with a 125 W TDP. The CPU’s cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 2 MB of L2 per core, and 33 MB of shared L3 cache. Its synthetic benchmarks are formidable: Cinebench R23 multi-core scores 44534, and single-core scores 6287. Geekbench multi-core is 18896, and single-core is 2932.

The CPU’s 96th percentile ranking among all processors underscores its capability. Its nearest rivals include the i7-14700KF (70104, deltaPct 0) and the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (70420, deltaPct -0.5), showing that the i7-14700K is at the top of the desktop heap. In Thief, however, this processing power is largely wasted. The game’s engine, released in 2014, cannot utilize 28 threads effectively. The measured FPS across all settings and resolutions is dictated by the GPU, not the CPU.

The data strongly suggests that the i7-14700K has virtually no impact on Thief’s performance. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see FPS plateaus that do not change with resolution. Instead, the FPS scales consistently with resolution, which is the hallmark of a GPU-limited workload. The CPU’s role here is to feed the GPU with draw calls, which it does with ample spare capacity. The i7-14700K is a future-proof component, but in this pairing, it is overkill for Thief.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i7-14700K and AMD Radeon RX 570 ranks 1562 out of 1642 tested combos in Thief, placing it in the bottom 5% of all systems. This low rank is entirely attributable to the GPU, as the CPU is a top-tier part. The data shows a massive mismatch: a 96th-percentile CPU paired with a 74th-percentile GPU, where the GPU’s performance ceiling defines the experience.

To contextualize the rank, consider that the RX 570’s synthetic average (30158) is statistically tied with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 (30109, deltaPct 0.2) and the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT (30097, deltaPct 0.2). Yet in Thief, this combo still lands near the bottom of the rankings. This discrepancy suggests that the game’s engine is particularly sensitive to the RX 570’s architectural limitations, such as its 4 GB VRAM and 224.0 GB/s bandwidth, rather than raw compute.

The i7-14700K’s performance is effectively neutralized in this pairing. Its nearest CPU rivals (i7-14700KF, EPYC 9115, Ryzen 9 9950X) all achieve nearly identical average scores, but none of that matters when the GPU cannot push beyond 77.3 FPS at 1080p Low. The combo rank of 1562/1642 is a stark illustration of how a weak GPU can drag down an otherwise excellent system. For Thief specifically, this pairing delivers playable performance only at 1080p Low, and even then, the experience is far from smooth by modern standards. The data implies that any upgrade path for this system should prioritize the GPU first, as the CPU has years of headroom left.