The Technomancer

The Intel Core i5-11400F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is an unusual combination: a mid-range, six-core Rocket Lake CPU feeding a flagship Blackwell GPU. Against The Technomancer, a 2016 action RPG, this pairing has enormous headroom. The database shows every preset at every tested resolution clearing the 60 FPS playability threshold, including Ultra at 4K. The interesting story is not whether the game runs, but where the CPU becomes the limiting factor.

Measured FPS Breakdown

Starting at 1920x1080, the recorded averages are remarkably flat across presets. Low delivers 212.5 FPS, Medium 197.7 FPS, High 184.6 FPS, and Ultra 170.1 FPS. The spread from lowest to highest preset is only about 42 FPS, a narrow band that immediately signals a CPU bottleneck: the RTX 5090 is barely being asked to work at this resolution, and the i5-11400F's frame delivery is what sets the ceiling.

At 2560x1440, the numbers are: Low 185.6 FPS, Medium 171.5 FPS, High 143.9 FPS, and Ultra 112.6 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra widens to roughly 73 FPS, indicating the GPU is starting to carry real pixel-pushing load, but even Ultra sits at nearly double the 60 FPS threshold.

At 3840x2160 the pattern completes the picture. Low averages 123.1 FPS, Medium 93.8 FPS, High 78.6 FPS, and Ultra 64.6 FPS. That is a spread of about 58 FPS from Low to Ultra, and Ultra still clears 60 FPS, though with less margin than at lower resolutions. Minimum and maximum frame rates were not captured in this dataset, so the averages are the basis for all conclusions here; a 64.6 FPS average typically implies dips below that figure, which is worth noting for players sensitive to frame-time variance at 4K Ultra.

CPU and GPU Roles

The scaling data tells a clear story about which component matters at each resolution. From 1080p to 1440p at Ultra, the average drops from 170.1 to 112.6 FPS, a loss of about one third of the frame rate. From 1440p to 4K at Ultra, it drops further to 64.6 FPS, a steeper decline of roughly 43 percent. This progressive, resolution-driven loss is the signature of GPU-bound behavior: the RTX 5090 is doing progressively more work per frame as pixel count quadruples from 1080p to 4K.

At 1080p, however, the roles flip. The difference between Low (212.5 FPS) and Ultra (170.1 FPS) is small in relative terms, and the fact that even the least demanding preset cannot exceed the low 200s points to the i5-11400F as the limiter. Its single-thread result of 2024 in Cinebench R23 and 868 in 3DMark single-thread place it at the 71st percentile of all CPUs in the database, respectable but nowhere near flagship territory. An action RPG from 2016 does not demand heavy multi-core throughput, so the game leans on per-core performance, and that is where this six-core, twelve-thread chip sets the pace.

The practical takeaway: at 1080p and to a lesser degree 1440p, upgrading the GPU further would yield nothing in this title. The RTX 5090 sits at the 92nd percentile of all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 79842, and it is demonstrably underutilized here. At 4K, the GPU finally takes over, and the i5-11400F has enough thread throughput (3DMark max threads score of 5652, PassMark multithread score of 16908) to keep feeding it.

Best Settings per Resolution

Using the 60 FPS average-frame-rate threshold from the database:

• 1920x1080: Ultra, at 170.1 FPS average. There is no reason to drop settings. Even the most demanding preset nearly triples the threshold.
• 2560x1440: Ultra, at 112.6 FPS average. Again, Ultra is the most demanding preset that stays above 60 FPS, and it does so with an 87 percent cushion over the threshold.
• 3840x2160: Ultra, at 64.6 FPS average. Ultra still qualifies, clearing 60 FPS by 4.6 frames. For players wanting a larger safety margin, High at 78.6 FPS is the sensible fallback, but by the strict playability criterion, Ultra is valid at all three resolutions.

Note that Medium and High do not offer meaningful frame-rate advantages at 1080p and 1440p because the CPU, not the graphics load, is in control there. Dropping from Ultra to Low at 1080p buys only about 42 FPS, most of which the monitor likely cannot display anyway.

The Verdict

Yes, this PC runs The Technomancer without compromise. The verdict data confirms that all four tested presets (Low, Medium, High, Ultra) are playable at all three resolutions: 1920x1080, 2560x1440, and 3840x2160. Best playable settings are Ultra at every resolution, with averages of 170.1, 112.6, and 64.6 FPS respectively.

The one caveat is 4K Ultra at 64.6 FPS. The margin over 60 FPS is thin, and without minimum-frame data in the database it is impossible to guarantee that the worst moments stay above the threshold. Anyone who wants robust frame consistency at 4K should use High, which averages 78.6 FPS and still looks excellent in a game of this vintage. Everywhere else, the question is settled: turn everything up.

Similar Performance Alternatives

For the CPU side, the database lists the nearest rivals to the i5-11400F by aggregate score. The AMD EPYC 7H12 scores within 0.3 percent, the Intel Core i5-12450H is 0.4 percent ahead, the AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 8300G is 0.6 percent ahead, and the Intel Core Ultra 7 164U sits 0.6 percent behind. In a lightly threaded, older title like this, any of those chips would deliver a near-identical experience, since the game's frame delivery depends on per-core throughput rather than core count.

On the GPU side, the RTX 5090's nearest rivals by average score are the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB (0.3 percent behind), the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB (0.6 percent behind), the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (1.1 percent behind), and the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X (1.4 percent ahead). The important caveat for gaming is that several of these are compute or professional parts; raw score proximity does not always translate to identical game behavior. Still, in a game this old, virtually any GPU in this performance neighborhood will be limited by the processor at 1080p and 1440p, just as the RTX 5090 is here. The database results indicate that the pairing's 64.6 FPS at 4K Ultra is the only scenario where GPU-class differences would be visible at all.

How This Combo Ranks

Within The Technomancer specifically, this pairing ranks 279th out of 3696 tested combinations in the database, putting it in roughly the top 8 percent. That placement fits the hardware split: a flagship GPU drags the combo well up the table, while a mid-tier CPU keeps it out of the absolute elite tier, especially in a title where processor performance caps low-resolution frame rates.

For a game released in mid-2016, that ranking translates to practical overkill. The recorded data shows the combination maxing out the game's settings at 4K while remaining above the playability threshold. Players running this hardware should simply set Ultra at whatever resolution their display supports, step down to High at 4K if frame-time consistency matters more than the last bit of image quality, and rest easy. The bottleneck in this pairing, where one exists at all, is the processor at lower resolutions, and no in-game setting will change that.