Thief

The AMD Radeon 760M integrated graphics paired with the Intel Core Ultra 5 135H delivers a playable experience only at the lowest settings and resolution in Thief, with benchmark results showing a steep performance cliff as resolution and quality increase. The measured data indicates this combo sits at the very bottom of the database, ranking 2840 out of 2851 tested combinations, making it one of the weakest configurations for this title. The frame rates scale predictably with resolution, but the absolute numbers reveal that the iGPU is the primary bottleneck, struggling to maintain smooth gameplay even at 1080p with medium settings.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is dramatic and exposes the GPU's limited fillrate and shading capabilities. At Low settings, the average frame rate falls from 53 FPS at 1920x1080 to 36 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of 17 frames, and then further drops to 21 FPS at 3840x2160. This represents a 60% loss from 1080p to 4K, which is characteristic of a GPU that is heavily pixel-bound rather than geometry-bound. The data suggests that the Radeon 760M's 16 ROPs and 32 TMUs are simply overwhelmed when the pixel count quadruples from 1080p to 4K.

Moving from Medium to High settings at the same resolution shows a similar pattern. At 1440p, the average FPS drops from 28 at Medium to 21 at High, a 25% decrease. At 4K, the Medium preset averages 16 FPS, while High and Ultra both bottom out at 12 FPS. This plateau at the higher quality settings indicates that the GPU has hit a hard performance wall, where additional rendering features like shadows and reflections consume the remaining available bandwidth without any meaningful frame rate differentiation.

The scaling behavior between Low and Medium settings is more linear. At 1080p, Low yields 53 FPS while Medium produces 40 FPS, a 13-frame gap. At 1440p, the same settings gap narrows to 8 frames (36 vs 28 FPS), and at 4K it shrinks to 5 frames (21 vs 16 FPS). This convergence at higher resolutions suggests that the GPU becomes increasingly fill-rate limited, making the quality preset less impactful when the pixel workload dominates. The data clearly indicates that resolution scaling is the single largest factor affecting performance, with the CPU showing minimal influence on the frame rate curve.

Settings Recommendations

For the best experience per the measured rows, Low settings at 1920x1080 is the only configuration that approaches acceptable playability, averaging 53 FPS. This is the sole preset across all resolutions that exceeds the 30 FPS threshold commonly considered the minimum for playable frame rates. Medium at 1080p delivers 40 FPS, which is technically playable but leaves little headroom for demanding scenes, as the minimum observed frame rate of 34 FPS suggests occasional dips below smooth territory.

At 1440p, the Low preset averages 36 FPS, which is borderline playable but lacks the consistency needed for a stealth game where precision matters. The Medium preset at 1440p drops to 28 FPS, and while the minimum of 23 FPS is recorded, the average already falls below the playability threshold. High and Ultra at any resolution above 1080p are effectively unplayable, with frame rates ranging from 20 to 21 FPS at 1440p and 12 FPS at 4K.

The benchmark results indicate that players should prioritize resolution over graphical fidelity. Dropping from High to Low at 1080p yields a 71% frame rate increase (31 to 53 FPS), which is a far more impactful change than any single quality setting adjustment. The Medium preset at 1080p offers a reasonable middle ground at 40 FPS, but the data shows that the Low preset provides the most stable experience, particularly given that the minimum FPS for Medium (34) is close to the average for High (31). For a stealth title where reaction time matters, the Low preset at 1080p is the recommended configuration based on the measured data.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon 760M is an integrated graphics solution based on the RDNA 3.0 architecture, built on TSMC's 4 nm process with 25,390 million transistors on a 178 mm² die. The GPU operates with a base clock of 800 MHz and boosts up to 2599 MHz, providing a peak FP32 throughput of 5.323 TFLOPS. The memory subsystem is entirely system-shared, with no dedicated VRAM, meaning bandwidth and capacity are dependent on the host system's DDR5 configuration.

In Thief, the GPU's 512 shading units and 16 ROPs are the limiting factors. The measured FPS at 4K Ultra (12 FPS) versus 1080p Low (53 FPS) shows a 4.4x performance difference, which correlates with the 4x pixel count increase plus additional overhead from higher quality settings. The texture rate of 83.17 GTexel/s and pixel rate of 41.58 GPixel/s are modest figures that explain the steep drop-off at higher resolutions.

The GPU's benchmark scores reinforce its position as an entry-level part. The Passmark G3D score of 5310 places it in the 35th percentile of all GPUs, and its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 6400 (0.3% faster) and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770M (0.3% faster). The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 400 and Geekbench Vulkan score of 30336 indicate that the GPU has some modern API support, but the Passmark DirectX 11 score of 52 shows that its real-world gaming performance is constrained by its limited execution resources. The GPU's TDP of 15 W is remarkably low, but this efficiency comes at the cost of raw throughput, which is evident in Thief's frame rates.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core Ultra 5 135H and AMD Radeon 760M combination ranks 2840 out of 2851 tested combos in Thief, placing it in the bottom 0.4% of all configurations. This ranking is unsurprising given the GPU's 35th percentile standing among all GPUs and the CPU's 81st percentile among all CPUs. The disparity between the CPU's relatively strong position and the GPU's weak position highlights that the integrated graphics solution is the primary constraint in this pairing.

The combo's rank is consistent with the measured frame rates, which never exceed 53 FPS even at the lowest settings and resolution. The nearest GPU rivals in the database, such as the AMD Radeon RX 6400 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770M, achieve similar average benchmark scores (6001 and 6000 respectively, versus 6019 for the 760M), suggesting that this combo's performance is typical for its GPU class. However, the fact that it ranks 11 positions from the very bottom indicates that there are even weaker configurations tested, likely with older integrated graphics or severely power-limited CPUs.

The CPU's own benchmark scores provide context for the combo's ranking. The Core Ultra 5 135H achieves a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 11875.5 and a single-core score of 1700, placing it near the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X (0.1% slower) and Intel Core i5-13500HX (0.6% faster) in average benchmark performance. This CPU performance is clearly not the bottleneck in Thief, as the frame rates are consistently GPU-limited across all settings and resolutions. The combo's rank therefore reflects the GPU's limitations rather than any deficiency in CPU processing power.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 135H features 14 cores and 18 threads based on the Meteor Lake architecture, with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and boost clock of 4.60 GHz. The CPU's 18 MB of shared L3 cache and 2 MB L2 cache per core provide adequate bandwidth for game logic, and its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 11875.5 demonstrates strong computational throughput. In Thief, however, the CPU's role is secondary to the GPU, as evidenced by the frame rate scaling patterns.

The data shows that Thief's engine is not CPU-bound at any of the tested configurations. The frame rates scale almost linearly with pixel count, which is a hallmark of GPU-limited performance. Even at 1080p Low where the GPU is least stressed, the 53 FPS average suggests that the CPU could potentially push higher frame rates if paired with a more powerful GPU. The CPU's Passmark single-thread score of 3521 and multi-thread score of 22422 indicate that it has sufficient single-thread performance for game logic, which is typically the more important metric for gaming.

The CPU's 14 cores and 18 threads are overkill for a title like Thief, which was released in 2014 and likely utilizes fewer threads. The processor's 28 W TDP and BGA 2049 socket are designed for mobile platforms, and its integrated Arc Xe-LPG 96EU graphics are not part of the tested configuration. The CPU's benchmark results place it in the 81st percentile of all CPUs, with its nearest rival being the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X (0.1% slower in average score). This confirms that the CPU is more than capable of handling the game's processing demands, and the performance ceiling in Thief is entirely dictated by the Radeon 760M's graphical capabilities.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the benchmark results show a clear tiering across quality presets. The Low preset averages 53 FPS, making it the only configuration in the entire test matrix to exceed 50 FPS. Medium averages 40 FPS with a minimum of 34 FPS and maximum of 46 FPS, providing a playable but less stable experience. High drops to 31 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 29 FPS, both of which hover at the edge of playability and would likely cause noticeable stuttering in fast-paced stealth sequences.

At 2560x1440, the frame rates fall significantly across all settings. Low averages 36 FPS, which is just above the playability threshold but lacks consistency. Medium averages 28 FPS with a recorded minimum of 23 FPS and maximum of 32 FPS, showing significant variance that would be noticeable during gameplay. High averages 21 FPS, and Ultra averages 20 FPS, both of which are firmly in unplayable territory. The difference between High and Ultra at 1440p is minimal (21 vs 20 FPS), suggesting that the Ultra preset's additional effects are not worth the performance cost at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the results are uniformly poor. Low averages 21 FPS, which is halved from the 1440p result and less than half of the 1080p result. Medium averages 16 FPS with a minimum of 14 FPS and maximum of 19 FPS, showing that even the middle preset cannot maintain a consistent frame rate. High and Ultra both average 12 FPS, identical to each other and representing the absolute floor of the GPU's performance in this game. The 4K results indicate that this resolution is completely unsuitable for the Radeon 760M in Thief, regardless of quality settings.

The measured FPS data reveals that the AMD Radeon 760M can only deliver a consistently playable experience at 1080p Low, with 1080p Medium being a marginal alternative at 40 FPS average. All other configurations fall below the 30 FPS threshold that most players consider the minimum for acceptable gameplay. The combo's ranking of 2840 out of 2851 is a direct consequence of these frame rates, which place it in the lowest percentile of all tested hardware combinations for this title.