The Technomancer

The Technomancer pairs the AMD Ryzen 5 5600 with the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT, a combination that delivers a wide spread of frame rates depending on how you balance resolution and quality. The measured data shows a system that is clearly capable of smooth playable performance at standard resolutions, but which struggles to maintain that smoothness when pushed to 4K with maximum settings. The results indicate a pairing where the GPU becomes the primary limiting factor at higher resolutions, while the CPU’s six cores and twelve threads provide ample headroom for the game’s demands.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data suggests that the most balanced experience is found at 2560x1440 with High settings, where the average frame rate reaches 61.6 FPS. This is the only configuration at that resolution that stays comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold while still providing a visually rich experience. Dropping to Medium at 1440p yields 70.4 FPS, which offers a slight performance buffer, but the jump from Medium to High costs only about 8.8 FPS, making High the better visual investment for the performance hit.

At 1920x1080, the story is different. The Ultra preset still manages 72.1 FPS, which is playable, but the High preset at 90.6 FPS is a far more comfortable target for consistent frame pacing. The data shows that Low at 1080p hits 142.4 FPS, which is beyond what most displays can show, so that setting is only useful for extreme competitive scenarios. For a single-player Action RPG, the High preset at 1080p is the sweet spot, providing nearly double the frame rate of the 4K Ultra result while looking significantly better than Low or Medium.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT is built on the RDNA 1.0 architecture with a Navi 10 chip, operating at a base clock of 1605 MHz and a boost clock of 1905 MHz. Its 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is a substantial amount for a card of this generation. The GPU’s compute power is rated at 9.754 TFLOPS for FP32 operations, and its pixel rate is 121.9 GPixel/s.

In The Technomancer, the GPU’s role is clearly dominant. The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K shows that the card is the bottleneck, as the CPU does not change its workload based on resolution. The Ultra preset at 4K produces only 24.3 FPS, which is a demanding load that the RX 5700 XT cannot handle smoothly. The card’s 64 ROPs and 2560 shading units are being pushed to their limits, and the data suggests that the 8 GB VRAM is sufficient for this game, as there is no indication of a memory-related stall in the measured results.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and consistent across all settings. At High settings, the average frame rate falls from 90.6 FPS at 1920x1080 to 61.6 FPS at 2560x1440, and then to 32.3 FPS at 3840x2160. That represents a 64% reduction in performance from 1080p to 4K. For the Ultra preset, the drop is even more severe: 72.1 FPS at 1080p becomes 46.5 FPS at 1440p and then 24.3 FPS at 4K, a 66% loss.

This scaling pattern is typical of a GPU-bound scenario. The CPU’s performance is constant, so the frame rate drop is directly proportional to the increase in pixel count. The fact that Low settings at 4K (48.8 FPS) are still slower than Ultra at 1080p (72.1 FPS) reinforces that the RX 5700 XT simply cannot fill the 8.3 million pixels of 4K at high quality. The data implies that 1440p is the practical ceiling for this card in this title, with 4K being reserved for Low presets or less demanding scenes.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured averages are: Low at 142.4 FPS, Medium at 109.5 FPS, High at 90.6 FPS, and Ultra at 72.1 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium is 32.9 FPS, while the gap between Medium and High is 18.9 FPS, and between High and Ultra it is 18.5 FPS. This shows diminishing returns as settings increase, but every preset remains above 70 FPS.

At 2560x1440, the averages drop to: Low at 89.8 FPS, Medium at 70.4 FPS, High at 61.6 FPS, and Ultra at 46.5 FPS. The 1440p results are more sensitive to settings changes, with the difference between Low and Ultra being 43.3 FPS. The High preset is the only one that stays above 60 FPS, while Ultra falls to a level that may cause noticeable stutter.

At 3840x2160, the averages are: Low at 48.8 FPS, Medium at 41.5 FPS, High at 32.3 FPS, and Ultra at 24.3 FPS. None of these are ideal for smooth gameplay, but Low is the only preset that approaches a playable 50 FPS. The data shows that 4K is not a viable option for this combination unless the player is willing to accept Low settings and still deal with occasional drops.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo to maintain 60 FPS?

A: At 2560x1440, the High preset achieves 61.6 FPS, which is just above the 60 FPS mark. The Medium preset at 70.4 FPS offers a more comfortable margin, but High is the highest quality setting that still reaches the target.

Q: How does the Ultra preset perform at 1080p?

A: The Ultra preset at 1920x1080 produces an average of 72.1 FPS, which is playable but not as smooth as High. The difference between High and Ultra is 18.5 FPS, making High a better choice for consistent frame times.

Q: Is 4K gaming possible with this hardware?

A: The data shows that 4K is only viable at Low settings, where the average is 48.8 FPS. Medium drops to 41.5 FPS, and Ultra falls to 24.3 FPS, which is below the threshold for smooth gameplay.

Q: How much performance is lost going from 1080p to 1440p?

A: At High settings, the frame rate drops from 90.6 FPS to 61.6 FPS, a loss of 29 FPS. At Ultra, the drop is from 72.1 FPS to 46.5 FPS, a loss of 25.6 FPS.

Q: Which preset offers the best balance at 1440p?

A: The High preset at 2560x1440 with 61.6 FPS is the best balance. It is the only preset at that resolution that stays above 60 FPS while still offering higher visual quality than Medium.

Q: Does the CPU limit performance in this game?

A: The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K indicates the GPU is the limiting factor. The Ryzen 5 5600’s performance is consistent across resolutions, so the frame rate drops are entirely due to the RX 5700 XT’s workload.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 5600 and the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT holds a rank of 1270 out of 1656 tested combos in The Technomancer. This places it in the lower half of tested systems, which is expected given that the GPU is from the RX 5000 series and the game is from 2016. The rank suggests that while this pairing is functional, there are many other combinations that deliver higher frame rates in this title.

The GPU’s average benchmark score of 24731 puts it in the 68th percentile of all GPUs, with its nearest rivals being the NVIDIA RTX A5000 Mobile (0.1% faster), the Intel Arc A350M (0.3% slower), the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Mobile (0.6% slower), and the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000 (0.9% slower). This indicates that the RX 5700 XT is a mid-to-upper tier card, but the game’s specific demands appear to weigh on it heavily, as evidenced by the low combo rank.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600 is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture, with a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. Its 32 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel DDR4 memory support provide strong single-thread and multi-thread performance. In synthetic benchmarks, it scores 882 in 3DMark single-thread and 5659 in 3DMark max threads, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 18309.

In The Technomancer, the CPU’s role is to feed the GPU with enough data to keep it busy. The measured FPS data shows that at 1080p Low, the system hits 142.4 FPS, which is a high enough frame rate that the CPU could become a factor if it were weak. However, the Ryzen 5 5600’s 6 cores and 12 threads are more than sufficient for a game from 2016, which was designed for the quad-core era. The fact that frame rates scale smoothly with GPU load, and that the CPU’s benchmark scores are in the 79th percentile of all CPUs, suggests that the processor is not holding back the RX 5700 XT in this scenario. The CPU’s nearest rivals include the Intel Xeon D-1746TER (0.6% faster) and the AMD EPYC 9554P (0.6% slower), showing it sits in a competitive middle ground.