Thief

Settings Recommendations

The measured data for Thief with the Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 shows a clear hierarchy across the four available presets. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers 237 FPS average, which is the highest raw frame rate recorded in the entire dataset. Medium drops to 193 FPS, High to 147 FPS, and Ultra to 140 FPS. The gap between Medium and High is 46 FPS, while the gap between High and Ultra is only 7 FPS, suggesting diminishing returns in visual fidelity for the performance cost at the top end.

At 2560x1440, the pattern shifts slightly. Low produces 174 FPS, Medium 132 FPS, High 101 FPS, and Ultra 96 FPS. Again, the High-to-Ultra delta is modest at 5 FPS, while the Medium-to-High step costs 31 FPS. At 3840x2160, Low hits 103 FPS, Medium 78 FPS, High 59 FPS, and Ultra 56 FPS. The High-to-Ultra difference shrinks further to just 3 FPS, while Medium-to-High costs 19 FPS.

The best experience per the measured rows depends on the target display. For 1080p users, High at 147 FPS is the sweet spot — it keeps frame rates well above 144 Hz territory while avoiding the minimal visual gain of Ultra for a 7 FPS penalty. For 1440p, High at 101 FPS offers a solid balance, though Medium at 132 FPS is the better choice for those prioritizing frame rate consistency over maximum detail. At 4K, High at 59 FPS is borderline for smooth gameplay, and Ultra at 56 FPS is nearly indistinguishable in performance; Medium at 78 FPS provides the most comfortable margin for playable frame rates at that resolution.

Ultra presets consistently offer the smallest incremental gains over High across all resolutions, which implies that the Ultra tier in Thief may load settings that are disproportionately expensive relative to their visual impact. The data suggests that High is the recommended default preset for most scenarios, with Medium as the fallback for higher resolutions or refresh-rate-focused displays.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 brings 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus, yielding 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth. Its base clock sits at 1920 MHz with a boost clock of 2475 MHz, and the card's AD104 chip is built on a 5 nm process from TSMC with 35,800 million transistors. The GPU's 5888 shading units, 184 texture mapping units, and 64 ROPs deliver a pixel rate of 158.4 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 455.4 GTexel/s. FP32 throughput is rated at 29.15 TFLOPS.

In Thief, the GPU's role becomes increasingly dominant as resolution scales upward. At 1080p Low, the card produces 237 FPS, but this drops to 174 FPS at 1440p Low and 103 FPS at 4K Low — a 56.5% reduction from 1080p to 4K at the lowest settings. This scaling pattern indicates that even at Low presets, the GPU is heavily engaged. The 12 GB VRAM capacity appears sufficient for all measured configurations, as no settings combination shows signs of memory-related stalling in the average FPS data.

The RTX 4070's percentile ranking of 81 among all GPUs places it above the median, and its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA Tesla P4 (deltaPct 0.1), AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 (deltaPct 0.4), and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile (deltaPct -1.3). The very small delta percentages against these rivals — all within 1.3% — suggest that the 4070's raw compute performance is closely clustered with a broad set of accelerators, though Thief's specific workload appears well-optimized for the Ada Lovelace architecture given the consistent frame rates across presets.

The boost clock of 2475 MHz is the key lever for the GPU's performance in this game. Thief is from 2014, and its rendering pipeline likely responds more to raw rasterization throughput than to modern features like ray tracing or DLSS. The 29.15 TFLOPS FP32 figure translates into strong fill-rate capabilities that show up in the 4K Medium results, where the card still manages 78 FPS with a minimum of 66 FPS and maximum of 89 FPS — a broader spread than at lower resolutions, indicating heavier frame-time variance under GPU load.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus is a 24-core, 24-thread processor with a base clock of 3.70 GHz and a boost clock of 5.80 GHz. It belongs to the Core Ultra Series 2 with the Arrow Lake Refresh codename, fabricated on a 3 nm process from TSMC with 17,800 million transistors. The CPU's cache structure includes 192 KB L1 per core, 3 MB L2 per core, and 36 MB shared L3. Memory support is DDR5 over a dual-channel bus with 115.2 GB/s of bandwidth.

The CPU's benchmark scores are substantial: Cinebench R23 multi-core hits 51,731, single-core 7,303; Cinebench R20 multi-core 21,727, single-core 3,067; PassMark multi-thread 60,860, single-thread 4,823. The processor's percentile versus all CPUs is 96, indicating it outperforms the vast majority of tested processors. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K (deltaPct 0.2), AMD EPYC 4584PX (deltaPct 1.1), AMD EPYC 9135 (deltaPct 1.2), and AMD EPYC 7F72 (deltaPct -1.3).

In Thief, the CPU's role is most visible at lower resolutions and settings where the GPU has headroom. At 1080p Low, the 237 FPS result is likely near the CPU's frame-generation ceiling for this game engine. The fact that 1080p Ultra still produces 140 FPS — only 97 FPS lower than Low — suggests that the CPU can maintain high instruction throughput even as draw calls increase. At 1440p Low, 174 FPS indicates the CPU is still keeping pace, but by 4K Low (103 FPS), the GPU becomes the primary bottleneck.

The 24 threads provide ample parallelism for Thief's AI, physics, and streaming systems, which are common in stealth games. The 5.80 GHz boost clock is particularly relevant for the game's single-threaded paths; PassMark single-thread score of 4,823 and Cinebench R23 single-core of 7,303 confirm strong per-core performance. This combination of high core count and high clock speed means the CPU is unlikely to bottleneck the RTX 4070 in any measured configuration — the data shows that FPS scales consistently with resolution and settings, which is the expected pattern when the GPU is the limiting factor at higher loads.

How This Combo Ranks

This processor and GPU pairing ranks 364th out of 2,851 tested combos in Thief, placing it in the top 12.8% of all combinations in the database. The rank of 364 is notable because the individual components are both high performers — the CPU at the 96th percentile and the GPU at the 81st percentile — yet the combo does not crack the top 300. This gap suggests that Thief's engine may not fully utilize the CPU's 24 cores or the GPU's compute capabilities in a way that maximizes the combined score.

The combo rank relative to the component percentiles implies that either the game is more GPU-bound than CPU-bound for this pairing, or that the specific architectural features of the RTX 4070 (Ada Lovelace) and the Ultra 9 290K (Arrow Lake Refresh) are not perfectly aligned with Thief's 2014-era rendering techniques. The game's release date of 2014-02-24 means it predates many modern graphics APIs and likely relies on DirectX 11-era draw calls, which can introduce CPU overhead that even a 5.80 GHz boost clock cannot fully mitigate.

Compared to the nearest rival combos, the data does not list specific combo rivals, but the component-level rivals provide context. The CPU's closest rival, the Core Ultra 9 285K, is only 0.2% ahead in average benchmark score, meaning the 290K Plus is essentially at parity with its predecessor. The GPU's closest rival, the Tesla P4, is 0.1% behind, again a near-tie. These tiny deltas suggest that the combo's rank of 364 is not due to a weak component but rather to the competitive density of combos in that range — many pairings with similar CPU and GPU performance levels produce nearly identical results in Thief.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drops from 1080p to 4K reveal the limiting component. At Low settings, the progression is 237 FPS (1080p) to 174 FPS (1440p) to 103 FPS (4K). The percentage drops are 26.6% from 1080p to 1440p and 40.8% from 1440p to 4K. At Medium, the numbers are 193 FPS to 132 FPS to 78 FPS, with drops of 31.6% and 40.9% respectively. At High, 147 FPS to 101 FPS to 59 FPS, drops of 31.3% and 41.6%. At Ultra, 140 FPS to 96 FPS to 56 FPS, drops of 31.4% and 41.7%.

The consistent pattern of roughly 31% drops from 1080p to 1440p and 41% drops from 1440p to 4K across all settings is the signature of a GPU-bound scenario. If the CPU were the limiter, the drops would be more pronounced at lower resolutions and flatten out at higher resolutions as the GPU becomes the bottleneck. Instead, the uniform scaling suggests that the RTX 4070 is the primary constraint at every resolution and setting combination measured.

The 1440p-to-4K drop being larger than the 1080p-to-1440p drop is expected because 4K has 2.25 times the pixels of 1440p, whereas 1440p has 1.78 times the pixels of 1080p. The FPS drops track this pixel-count scaling, reinforcing that the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth (504.2 GB/s) are the determining factors. The CPU's 115.2 GB/s memory bandwidth and 24 threads are sufficient to feed the GPU at all resolutions, as evidenced by the lack of any anomalous plateau in the FPS curve.

Measured FPS Breakdown

1920x1080:

• Low: 237 FPS average, no min/max reported
• Medium: 193 FPS average, 164 FPS minimum, 222 FPS maximum
• High: 147 FPS average, no min/max reported
• Ultra: 140 FPS average, no min/max reported

The 1080p data shows a 97 FPS spread between Low and Ultra, with the Medium preset's min-max range (164-222) indicating a 58 FPS variance during gameplay. The High-to-Ultra gap of 7 FPS is the smallest step, making Ultra a marginal upgrade over High at this resolution.

2560x1440:

• Low: 174 FPS average, no min/max reported
• Medium: 132 FPS average, 113 FPS minimum, 152 FPS maximum
• High: 101 FPS average, no min/max reported
• Ultra: 96 FPS average, no min/max reported

At 1440p, the Low-to-Ultra spread narrows to 78 FPS. Medium's min-max range (113-152) has a 39 FPS variance. The High-to-Ultra delta is 5 FPS, and the Low-to-Medium drop of 42 FPS is the largest step, indicating that Medium settings incur a significant cost over Low.

3840x2160:

• Low: 103 FPS average, no min/max reported
• Medium: 78 FPS average, 66 FPS minimum, 89 FPS maximum
• High: 59 FPS average, no min/max reported
• Ultra: 56 FPS average, no min/max reported

At 4K, the spread between Low and Ultra is 47 FPS, the narrowest of all resolutions. Medium's min-max range (66-89) shows a 23 FPS variance. The High-to-Ultra gap shrinks to 3 FPS, making Ultra nearly indistinguishable from High in performance terms. The 4K Low result of 103 FPS is the only 4K configuration that clears 100 FPS, while High and Ultra fall below 60 FPS, which may be a concern for smooth gameplay on 60 Hz displays.

FAQ

Q: What is the best preset for 1440p gaming with this combo?

A: The data shows High at 101 FPS average for 2560x1440, while Medium delivers 132 FPS. If frame rate is the priority, Medium offers 31 FPS more than High; if visual fidelity matters more, High remains above 100 FPS and provides the best balance in the measured rows.

Q: Does the RTX 4070 bottleneck the Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus in Thief?

A: Benchmark results indicate the GPU is the limiting component at all resolutions. The consistent FPS drop pattern from 1080p to 4K — roughly 31% from 1080p to 1440p and 41% from 1440p to 4K across all settings — is characteristic of a GPU-bound workload, not a CPU-bound one.

Q: How does the Ultra 9 290K Plus compare to its closest CPU rival in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The nearest rival, the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, has an average benchmark score of 83,807 versus 84,003 for the 290K Plus, a delta of 0.2%. This places the two processors at near-parity in overall CPU performance.

Q: Is 12 GB of VRAM sufficient for Thief at 4K Ultra settings?

A: The measured data shows 4K Ultra producing 56 FPS average with no min/max reported, and no indications of VRAM-related performance issues. The 12 GB GDDR6X configuration on a 192-bit bus with 504.2 GB/s bandwidth appears adequate for all tested settings.

Q: What is the FPS difference between High and Ultra presets at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, High produces 147 FPS and Ultra produces 140 FPS, a difference of 7 FPS. This is the smallest gap between consecutive presets at 1080p, suggesting Ultra offers minimal performance benefit over High.

Q: How does this combo's rank in Thief compare to its component percentiles?

A: The combo ranks 364th out of 2,851 tested combinations, placing it in the top 12.8%. The CPU is at the 96th percentile and the GPU at the 81st percentile among their respective categories, but the combined rank is lower than those percentiles might imply, likely due to the game's engine characteristics.