The Technomancer

The Intel Core i5-9400 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 answers the question "can it run The Technomancer" with a resounding yes at every resolution the database covers. This 2016 action RPG is simply not a demanding title by modern standards, and even though the six-core, six-thread Coffee Lake processor sits in the middle of the CPU pack, the flagship Ada Lovelace graphics card does the heavy lifting. The recorded data shows playable results at every preset tested, from 1080p Low through 4K Ultra, with only one combination falling below the 60 FPS threshold: 3840x2160 at Ultra, which lands at 58.8 FPS, just short of the mark.

How This Combo Ranks

Across the full set of tested hardware combinations in the database for The Technomancer, this pairing ranks 664 out of 3696 combos. That placement puts it comfortably in the upper half of all tested systems, and it is worth being clear about what drives it. The RTX 4090 sits in the 88th percentile versus all GPUs in the database, with an average benchmark score of 60347 and a PassMark G3D score of 38194. The i5-9400, by contrast, sits in the 47th percentile of all CPUs with an average benchmark score of 2254, essentially the exact midpoint of the CPU field.

The rank therefore reflects a GPU-dominant pairing bolted to a midrange processor. For a game like The Technomancer, which released in 2016 and targets hardware of that era, that imbalance costs almost nothing in practice, as the frame rates below demonstrate. In more demanding modern titles the gap between the 668-point Cinebench R15 multi-core score and the 4090's rendering capability would matter more, but here the ranking data and the measured frame rates agree: this is a comfortably overqualified combination.

CPU and GPU Roles

The scaling data makes the role division easy to read. At 1920x1080, frame rates run from 173.6 FPS at Low to 136.5 FPS at Ultra, a fairly narrow spread. Moving to 2560x1440, the same presets span 150.5 FPS at Low down to 108.3 FPS at Ultra. At 3840x2160 the range widens further, from 117.9 FPS at Low to 58.8 FPS at Ultra.

That pattern tells a consistent story: the GPU is the component that responds when the load increases. Average frame rates fall steadily as resolution climbs and as presets get heavier, which is classic GPU-bound behavior. The i5-9400, with its six cores, six threads, 2.90 GHz base clock, 4.10 GHz boost clock, and 9 MB of shared L3 cache, keeps pace throughout. Its single-core results, 94 points in Cinebench R15 and 392 points in Cinebench R20, indicate sufficient per-thread throughput for a game engine of this vintage.

The tight 1080p spread is the most telling detail. If the CPU were the limiter, all four presets at 1080p would cluster around a common ceiling rather than scale with image quality. Instead, Low runs 37.1 FPS faster than Ultra at 1080p, which means the RTX 4090, with its 16384 shading units, 512 texture mapping units, and 1.01 TB/s of GDDR6X memory bandwidth, remains the deciding factor even at the lowest resolution tested. For this game at these settings, the GPU matters more at every resolution.

Best Settings per Resolution

Using the database's 60 FPS playable threshold, the best demanding preset at each resolution is as follows:

• 1920x1080: Ultra, 136.5 FPS average. Every preset clears the threshold by a wide margin, so there is no reason to drop below Ultra.
• 2560x1440: Ultra, 108.3 FPS average. Again, all presets are playable, and Ultra still delivers well over double the threshold.
• 3840x2160: High, 77 FPS average. Ultra at 4K averages 58.8 FPS, falling 1.2 FPS short of the threshold, so High is the most demanding preset that stays at or above 60 FPS.

The practical guidance is simple: run Ultra at 1080p and 1440p without hesitation, and at 4K either accept a marginal dip below 60 on the top preset or step down to High, which still averages a comfortable 77 FPS.

Similar Performance Alternatives

Looking at hardware that would behave similarly in this game, the nearest rivals for each component provide a useful guide.

On the CPU side, the i5-9400's rivals are clustered almost exactly around its average score of 2254. The Intel Core i7-1068NG7 averages 2259, essentially identical. The Intel Core i7-10710U averages 2248, and the AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 1500 averages 2246, both marginally slower. The Intel Core i3-10305 averages 2264, marginally faster. All four sit within a fraction of a percent of the i5-9400's aggregate performance, so a system built around any of them paired with an equivalent GPU would produce effectively the same The Technomancer experience: any of these processors is more than sufficient to feed this game.

On the GPU side, the RTX 4090's nearest rivals are interesting because they are professional-grade parts. The Intel Arc Pro A60 averages 60326, effectively identical to the 4090's 60347. The AMD Radeon Pro Vega 48 averages 60140, again nearly indistinguishable in aggregate. The AMD Radeon Pro W6600M averages 61896, slightly ahead, and the AMD Radeon PRO V710 averages 58657, slightly behind. In this game, any of these cards would deliver a broadly similar experience: playable at every preset at 1080p and 1440p, with High being the sensible ceiling at 4K rather than Ultra.

It is importantly the pairing itself is unusual. The 4090, a triple-slot, 450 W card with a 16-pin power connector and a suggested 850 W power supply, is dramatically more powerful than the 65 W, Socket 1151 CPU feeding it. Users considering a similar build for other games should be aware the CPU will bottleneck long before the GPU does in heavier modern titles, even though it does not here.

Measured FPS Breakdown

All figures below are measured averages from the database; minimum and maximum frame rates were not recorded for these runs.

1920x1080:

| Preset | Avg FPS |

|---|---|

| Low | 173.6 |

| Medium | 157.5 |

| High | 147.3 |

| Ultra | 136.5 |

The 1080p results are excellent across the board. Even the heaviest preset clears 60 FPS by more than double, and Low pushes past 170 FPS. The step from Low to Ultra costs only 37.1 FPS, confirming that the GPU has enormous headroom at this resolution.

2560x1440:

| Preset | Avg FPS |

|---|---|

| Low | 150.5 |

| Medium | 139.7 |

| High | 131.5 |

| Ultra | 108.3 |

Performance remains very strong at 1440p. Ultra averages 108.3 FPS, and High is only 23.2 FPS behind Low. There is no playable-setting compromise required at this resolution: every preset exceeds the threshold.

3840x2160:

| Preset | Avg FPS |

|---|---|

| Low | 117.9 |

| Medium | 92.7 |

| High | 77 |

| Ultra | 58.8 |

At 4K the top preset finally buckles. Ultra averages 58.8 FPS, missing the 60 FPS threshold by 1.2 FPS. High averages 77 FPS, Medium 92.7, and Low 117.9, so three of the four presets remain comfortably playable. The drop from High to Ultra, 18.2 FPS, is the largest single-preset penalty at any resolution, showing where the heaviest visual features bite hardest.

Across all twelve combinations tested, the gap between the best result (173.6 FPS at 1080p Low) and the worst (58.8 FPS at 4K Ultra) is 114.8 FPS, and eleven of those twelve combinations are playable. That is an unusually clean result.

The Verdict

Yes, this PC runs The Technomancer, decisively. The verdict data confirms:

• 1920x1080: All presets playable. Best settings: Ultra at 136.5 FPS.
• 2560x1440: All presets playable. Best settings: Ultra at 108.3 FPS.
• 3840x2160: High, Medium, and Low playable. Best settings: High at 77 FPS. Ultra at 58.8 FPS misses the 60 FPS threshold.

Ultimately: at 1080p and 1440p, max the game out without a second thought. At 4K, High is the recommended ceiling, delivering 77 FPS on average, with Ultra sitting just below the playable line if a marginal dip is acceptable. The RTX 4090 does the overwhelming majority of the work here, and the mid-pack i5-9400, sitting in the 47th percentile of CPUs, never gets in the way of a 2016 action RPG that asks far less of a system than this pairing can supply. For anyone running this specific combo, The Technomancer is a solved problem at every resolution in the database.