Thief

Resolution Scaling

The measured frame rates for Thief across the three tested resolutions reveal a predictable but informative scaling pattern. At 1920x1080 with High settings, the Intel Core i7-14700KF paired with the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX delivers 173.2 FPS. Moving to 2560x1440 at the same quality preset drops the average to 117.6 FPS, a reduction of roughly 32%. The jump to 3840x2160 is even more punishing, with the average falling to 68 FPS — a further 42% decline from the 1440p result. This steep drop-off indicates that at 4K, the GPU is becoming the primary bottleneck, whereas at 1080p, the processor still has headroom to push higher frame rates.

The scaling from Low to Ultra settings at each resolution reinforces this interpretation. At 1080p, the difference between Low (221.8 FPS) and Ultra (160.5 FPS) is a 27.6% performance penalty, suggesting the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU even at high frame rates. At 1440p, the spread widens: Low produces 193.7 FPS while Ultra drops to 109.3 FPS, a 43.6% reduction. At 4K, the gap between Low (117.5 FPS) and Ultra (63.3 FPS) reaches 46.1%, demonstrating that the GPU's rendering workload dominates the equation as resolution climbs.

The 4K data is particularly telling. The RX 7900 XTX manages 68 FPS at High and 63.3 FPS at Ultra, which are playable but far from the lofty numbers seen at lower resolutions. The fact that Low settings at 4K (117.5 FPS) still cannot match the 1080p High result (173.2 FPS) shows that pixel count alone is a substantial load. This is a 2014 title, so the engine's draw calls and geometry are less demanding than modern games, yet the sheer fill-rate requirements at 4K still strain the GPU.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX is built on the RDNA 3.0 architecture with the Navi 31 chip, fabricated on a 5 nm process at TSMC. Its 24 GB of GDDR6 memory runs across a 384-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 960.0 GB/s. The base clock sits at 1929 MHz, with a game clock of 2365 MHz and a boost clock of 2498 MHz. These specifications place the card in the 85th percentile of all GPUs according to aggregated benchmark data, with an average benchmark score of 44019.

The GPU's measured performance in Thief aligns with its raw compute capabilities. The card's pixel rate of 479.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 959.2 GTexel/s are more than sufficient for a stealth title from 2014, but the 4K results show that even this hardware has limits. The 68 FPS at 4K High is respectable, yet the 63.3 FPS at Ultra suggests that the game's highest preset includes effects that tax the render output units. With 192 ROPs and 6144 shading units, the card has ample geometry throughput, but the bandwidth demands of 4K textures appear to be the limiting factor.

Comparing the RX 7900 XTX to its nearest rivals in the benchmark database, it sits within a tight band: the AMD Radeon Pro 580 scores 44195 (0.4% higher), while the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti scores 44900 (2% higher). The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile scores 43667 (0.8% lower), and the NVIDIA Quadro M6000 scores 43313 (1.6% lower). This clustering indicates that the RX 7900 XTX's overall compute profile is competitive with those cards, but in Thief specifically, the measured FPS numbers reflect the game's preference for raw fill rate over ray tracing or tensor core features, which the RDNA 3.0 architecture does not emphasize.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS recorded for this combo in Thief?

A: The highest average FPS is 221.8, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings.

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

A: At 3840x2160 Ultra, the average FPS is 63.3, while at 1920x1080 Ultra it is 160.5. The 4K result is 60.6% lower, indicating a significant resolution penalty.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor at 1440p?

A: The data suggests the GPU becomes more influential at 1440p. The spread between Low (193.7 FPS) and Ultra (109.3 FPS) is 43.6%, which is wider than the 27.6% spread at 1080p, implying that the GPU workload is scaling faster than CPU overhead.

Q: What is the rank of this combo among all tested configurations in Thief?

A: This combo ranks 90 out of 1642 total combinations, placing it in the top 5.5% of all tested systems.

Q: Does the RX 7900 XTX's 24 GB VRAM matter for Thief?

A: Thief is a 2014 title, so 24 GB is far beyond the game's requirements. The 960.0 GB/s memory bandwidth is more relevant to the 4K results, as the game's texture streaming at high resolutions benefits from that throughput.

Q: How does the RX 7900 XTX compare to the RTX 4070 Ti in overall benchmark scores?

A: The RX 7900 XTX has an average benchmark score of 44019, while the RTX 4070 Ti scores 44900. That places the RTX 4070 Ti 2% higher, a marginal difference in aggregate terms.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data covers three resolutions and four settings presets, all with average FPS values. At 1920x1080, the results are 221.8 FPS on Low, 200.7 FPS on Medium, 173.2 FPS on High, and 160.5 FPS on Ultra. This represents a 27.6% performance drop from Low to Ultra, which is modest and typical of a CPU-bound scenario at lower resolutions.

At 2560x1440, the numbers step down to 193.7 FPS on Low, 156.2 FPS on Medium, 117.6 FPS on High, and 109.3 FPS on Ultra. The gap from Low to Ultra is 43.6%, indicating that the GPU is taking on a greater share of the workload. The jump from Medium to High at 1440p is particularly steep, dropping from 156.2 to 117.6 FPS, a 24.7% decline that suggests High settings enable more demanding effects.

At 3840x2160, the results are 117.5 FPS on Low, 88.5 FPS on Medium, 68 FPS on High, and 63.3 FPS on Ultra. The Low-to-Ultra penalty is 46.1%, and the Medium-to-High drop is 23.2% (from 88.5 to 68 FPS). The 4K Ultra result of 63.3 FPS is the lowest value recorded, while 4K Low at 117.5 FPS is still higher than 1440p Ultra at 109.3 FPS, showing that resolution has a greater impact than settings at these extremes.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700KF provides the processing backbone for this combo. With 20 cores and 28 threads, it runs at a base clock of 3.40 GHz and boosts to 5.60 GHz. The cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 2 MB of L2 per core, and 33 MB of shared L3. This processor sits in the 96th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 70104.

In Thief, the CPU's role is most evident at 1080p, where the frame rates exceed 200 FPS on Low and Medium settings. The 221.8 FPS at 1080p Low is likely near the engine's simulation limit, as the GPU has plenty of headroom at that resolution. The single-thread performance, reflected in a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 6290, is strong enough to handle the game's AI and physics routines without becoming a bottleneck. The multi-core score of 44557 in the same test shows that the 14th Gen architecture can also handle any background tasks without interfering with frame pacing.

Comparing the i7-14700KF to its nearest rivals, it trades blows within a narrow margin. The i7-14700K scores 70074 (0% delta), the AMD EPYC 9115 scores 69887 (0.3% higher), the Ryzen 9 9950X scores 70420 (0.4% lower), and the Xeon Platinum 8270 scores 71056 (1.3% lower). These differences are negligible in real-world gaming, and the measured FPS in Thief corroborates that the CPU is not the limiting factor at 4K, where the GPU's fill rate dictates performance. At 1080p, the CPU's high boost clock and large L3 cache help maintain frame rates above 160 FPS even on Ultra, which is a solid result for a game from 2014.