Thief

# Thief Performance Analysis: Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090

The data presents a compelling picture of a top-tier CPU and GPU pairing running a 2014 stealth classic. With the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus delivering a 96th percentile score among all CPUs and the RTX 4090 sitting at the 88th percentile among GPUs, this combo is expected to dominate, and the measured frames per second (FPS) across resolutions and settings largely confirm that expectation. However, the performance scaling reveals nuanced bottlenecks and optimization opportunities that are worth examining closely.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K tells a clear story about where the workload shifts. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo achieves 237 FPS. Moving to 1440p Low, that figure drops to 209 FPS, a decline of 28 FPS or roughly 11.8%. At 4K Low, the average falls to 145 FPS, which is a substantial 92 FPS below the 1080p result — a 38.8% reduction. This steep curve suggests that while the CPU can feed frames rapidly at lower resolutions, the GPU begins to feel the pressure as pixel count climbs.

The pattern holds across other settings. At High settings, 1080p yields 194 FPS, 1440p produces 143 FPS (a 26.3% drop), and 4K delivers 84 FPS (a 56.7% drop from 1080p). The percentage losses are more pronounced at High than at Low, indicating that the GPU's rendering workload scales super-linearly with resolution when more graphical features are enabled. At Medium settings, the 1080p average is 214 FPS, 1440p is 187 FPS (12.6% lower), and 4K is 110 FPS (48.6% lower).

This data implies that at 1080p, the system is likely CPU-bound or at least balanced, since the GPU has headroom to push well beyond 200 FPS. At 4K, the RTX 4090 becomes the limiting component, as the frame rates drop to levels that, while still high, reflect the massive pixel throughput required. The gap between 1440p and 4K is consistently larger than the gap between 1080p and 1440p, reinforcing that 4K is where the GPU's 24 GB of memory and 1.01 TB/s bandwidth are most heavily taxed. Interestingly, the Low setting at 4K (145 FPS) still exceeds the Ultra setting at 1440p (136 FPS), suggesting that resolution alone is not the sole determinant — settings complexity plays a major role in the overall performance envelope.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is a behemoth, and the data reflects its capabilities. Built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with a 5 nm process from TSMC, the GPU packs 16,384 shading units, 512 texture mapping units, and 176 raster output units. Its boost clock of 2520 MHz and base clock of 2235 MHz provide the raw speed needed for high-refresh-rate gaming. The memory subsystem is equally impressive: 24 GB of GDDR6X on a 384-bit bus delivers 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth, which is critical for 4K texture streaming.

In Thief, the GPU's role becomes evident when examining the measured FPS across settings. At 4K Ultra, the average FPS drops to 80, the lowest figure recorded for this combo. This is just 5 FPS below the 4K High result of 84 FPS, indicating that the jump from High to Ultra at 4K costs only about 4.8% performance. However, the gap between Medium and High at 4K is larger: 110 FPS to 84 FPS, a 23.6% reduction. This suggests that High settings introduce rendering features that disproportionately load the GPU compared to Medium.

The RTX 4090's 128 ray tracing cores and 512 tensor cores are present in the spec sheet, but Thief, released in 2014, predates widespread ray tracing adoption in games. Therefore, these cores likely remain idle during gameplay, meaning the traditional rasterization pipeline — the shading units, TMUs, and ROPs — carries the entire burden. The GPU's 82.58 TFLOPS of FP32 performance is more than sufficient for this workload, and the data shows that even at 4K Ultra, the card maintains playable frame rates above 60 FPS.

The GPU's percentile ranking of 88 versus the CPU's 96 is notable. This disparity hints that the RTX 4090, while powerful, is not as far ahead of its peers as the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus is. Yet in this game, the GPU still dictates the high-end performance ceiling, particularly at 4K. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 9,223 and the Geekbench Vulkan score of 271,631 provide synthetic confirmation of the card's capabilities, but the real-world Thief results are what matter for this analysis.

Settings Recommendations

Choosing the optimal settings requires balancing visual fidelity against frame rate, and the measured data offers clear guidance. At 1080p, all settings produce average FPS above 190, with Low at 237 FPS, Medium at 214 FPS, High at 194 FPS, and Ultra at 191 FPS. The difference between High and Ultra at 1080p is a mere 3 FPS (1.6%), making Ultra the obvious choice for players with 1080p displays who want maximum quality without sacrificing smoothness. The minimum FPS recorded at 1080p Medium is 182 FPS, which is still exceptionally high, indicating no stutter risks.

For 1440p, the data shows High at 143 FPS, Medium at 187 FPS, and Ultra at 136 FPS. The Medium setting offers the best balance here, delivering 187 FPS with a minimum of 159 FPS and a maximum of 215 FPS. High and Ultra are close (143 vs 136 FPS, a 4.9% gap), so players prioritizing visual quality could justify Ultra, but Medium's 44 FPS advantage over Ultra makes it the pragmatic recommendation for high-refresh-rate 1440p monitors.

At 4K, the choices become more consequential. Low yields 145 FPS, Medium 110 FPS, High 84 FPS, and Ultra 80 FPS. The Medium setting at 110 FPS is the sweet spot — it provides a smooth experience on 120 Hz displays while maintaining a 34.5% performance margin over High. The difference between High and Ultra at 4K is negligible (4 FPS), so if a player insists on High, stepping to Ultra costs almost nothing. However, the drop from Medium to High at 4K is 26 FPS (23.6%), which is significant. Given that the game's visual improvements from Medium to High may not justify a 23.6% frame rate penalty, Medium at 4K is the recommended setting for this combo.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 achieves a rank of 17 out of 2,851 tested combos for Thief. This places it in the top 0.6% of all configurations, a dominant position that aligns with the hardware's premium status. The data being measured (rather than estimated) adds credibility to these results, confirming that the performance is real and reproducible.

The CPU's nearest rivals provide context for its contribution. The Core Ultra 9 285K scores an average of 83,807, which is just 0.2% lower than the 290K Plus's 84,003 average. This marginal difference suggests that the 290K Plus offers little over its direct predecessor in synthetic benchmarks, yet in Thief, the combination still ranks highly. The AMD EPYC 4584PX and EPYC 9135 trail by 1.1% and 1.2% respectively, while the EPYC 7F72 leads by 1.3%. These are server-class processors, so their presence in the rivalry list reflects the 290K Plus's high multi-threaded performance rather than gaming-specific superiority.

For the GPU, the nearest rivals are surprising: the Intel Arc Pro A60 matches the RTX 4090's average benchmark score almost exactly (60,326 vs 60,347, a 0% delta), while the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 48 is 0.3% behind and the Radeon Pro W6600M is 2.5% ahead. These are professional workstation GPUs, not gaming cards, which indicates that the RTX 4090's average benchmark score is skewed by compute-heavy workloads. In Thief's gaming context, the RTX 4090's dominance is clear from the FPS data, which shows no signs of GPU-bound limitations until 4K Ultra.

FAQ

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

A: The highest recorded average FPS is 237, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings.

Q: How does performance scale from 1080p to 4K at Medium settings?

A: At Medium settings, the average FPS drops from 214 at 1080p to 187 at 1440p, then to 110 at 4K. This represents a 48.6% reduction from 1080p to 4K.

Q: Is the RTX 4090 the bottleneck at 4K Ultra?

A: The data indicates yes. At 4K Ultra, the average FPS falls to 80, the lowest recorded for this combo, suggesting the GPU is fully utilized. The CPU's 96th percentile ranking means it likely has headroom remaining.

Q: What is the minimum FPS recorded across all tested configurations?

A: The only minimum FPS values provided are for Medium settings: 94 FPS at 4K, 159 FPS at 1440p, and 182 FPS at 1080p. The lowest minimum is 94 FPS at 4K Medium.

Q: How does this combo rank compared to all other tested configurations in Thief?

A: It ranks 17th out of 2,851 combos, placing it in the top 1% of all tested systems for this game.

Q: Does the CPU's 24-core configuration benefit Thief specifically?

A: Thief, released in 2014, likely does not utilize 24 cores efficiently. However, the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus's high single-thread score of 7,303 in Cinebench R23 suggests strong per-core performance, which is more relevant for this game's engine.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a complete matrix of performance across resolutions and settings. At 1920x1080, Low settings deliver 237 FPS, Medium 214 FPS (with a minimum of 182 and maximum of 246), High 194 FPS, and Ultra 191 FPS. The range from Low to Ultra at 1080p is 46 FPS, with the step from Medium to High being the largest single drop at 20 FPS (9.3%).

Moving to 2560x1440, Low yields 209 FPS, Medium 187 FPS (minimum 159, maximum 215), High 143 FPS, and Ultra 136 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1440p is 73 FPS, and notably, the drop from Medium to High is 44 FPS (23.5%), which is the steepest decline between consecutive settings at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, Low produces 145 FPS, Medium 110 FPS (minimum 94, maximum 127), High 84 FPS, and Ultra 80 FPS. The total spread from Low to Ultra at 4K is 65 FPS. The Medium-to-High drop of 26 FPS (23.6%) mirrors the 1440p pattern, suggesting that the High preset's additional graphical features impose a consistent relative cost regardless of resolution.

Across all resolutions, Low settings show the smallest FPS drop from 1080p to 4K (92 FPS, 38.8%), while High settings show the largest relative drop (110 FPS, 56.7%). Ultra settings drop by 111 FPS (58.1%) from 1080p to 4K, but the absolute numbers remain playable. The Medium settings' minimum FPS at 4K is 94, which is above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, indicating that even the most demanding measured configuration maintains acceptable performance.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus is a 24-core, 24-thread processor based on the Arrow Lake Refresh architecture, built on a 3 nm process from TSMC. Its base clock of 3.70 GHz and boost clock of 5.80 GHz provide substantial single-thread performance, as evidenced by the Cinebench R23 single-core score of 7,303. The CPU's 36 MB of shared L3 cache and 3 MB per-core L2 cache help reduce memory latency, which is crucial for gaming workloads that depend on rapid data access.

In Thief's context, the CPU's role is less about raw core count and more about per-thread performance. The game, released in 2014, was designed for the quad-core and dual-core processors of that era, so its engine likely utilizes only a handful of threads. The 290K Plus's high boost clock of 5.80 GHz ensures that these few active threads execute as quickly as possible, minimizing CPU-side frame time bottlenecks.

The CPU's memory support for DDR5 with dual-channel configuration and 115.2 GB/s bandwidth is ample for feeding the GPU with draw calls and game state data. The PassMark single-thread score of 4,823 and multi-thread score of 60,860 both reflect the CPU's dominance, with the latter being particularly strong due to the 24 cores. However, in Thief specifically, the multi-thread advantage is likely underutilized, making the single-thread performance the more relevant metric.

The CPU's 96th percentile ranking versus the GPU's 88th percentile suggests that the processor is relatively stronger compared to its peers. This asymmetry means that in CPU-light scenarios like Thief at high resolutions, the GPU becomes the limiting factor, while in CPU-heavy scenarios at 1080p, the CPU's headroom prevents it from becoming a bottleneck. The Cinebench R20 multicore score of 21,727 and R15 multicore of 5,214 confirm the CPU's exceptional throughput, but these numbers translate to real-world gaming gains only when the game can leverage multiple cores — which Thief, given its 2014 release date, likely cannot do extensively.