The Technomancer

The Technomancer is a 2016 Action RPG that stresses hardware in ways that modern titles often do not. This analysis examines the combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 5600 processor and the Intel Arc B390 integrated GPU, using measured data from a database of tested configurations. The benchmark results show a pairing where a very capable six-core CPU is held back by an entry-level graphics solution, producing frame rates that range from playable at 1080p Low to effectively unplayable at 4K Ultra. This combo ranks in the bottom percentile of tested systems for this specific game, which is a direct consequence of the GPU’s performance class rather than the CPU’s capabilities. The following sections break down the FAQ, ranking, component roles, measured performance, resolution scaling, and CPU analysis, all based strictly on the provided data.

FAQ

Q: What is the overall performance rank of this CPU and GPU combo in The Technomancer?

A: The combo ranks 2500 out of 2825 tested combinations, placing it in the bottom 11.5% of all systems tested for this game. This rank reflects the GPU’s low benchmark percentile, which dominates the gaming experience.

Q: How does the Intel Arc B390 compare to its nearest GPU rivals in the database?

A: The Arc B390 has an average benchmark score of 1482, which is 1.3% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX (1463), 1.5% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce 800M (1460), 2.5% higher than the GT 625 OEM (1446), and 2.7% higher than the GT 710 (1443). These are extremely small margins, indicating the Arc B390 sits at the very bottom of the GPU performance hierarchy.

Q: What is the best FPS result this combo achieves in The Technomancer?

A: The highest average FPS recorded is 79, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings. This is the only configuration that approaches a high-refresh experience, and it drops significantly with any increase in resolution or graphical fidelity.

Q: Is the AMD Ryzen 5 5600 CPU a bottleneck for this GPU in The Technomancer?

A: No. The data shows the CPU has a 74th percentile ranking among all CPUs, with a multi-core score of 18309 in Cinebench R23, while the GPU only has a 9th percentile ranking. The GPU is the clear limiting factor, as evidenced by the sharp FPS drops when resolution increases, which primarily loads the GPU rather than the CPU.

Q: Does the Intel Arc B390 have dedicated VRAM?

A: No. The GPU uses System Shared memory for both its memory size and type. Its memory bus width is also listed as System Shared, and its bandwidth is System Dependent, meaning it relies on the system’s main memory and can be a performance constraint in memory-heavy scenes.

Q: What are the clock speeds of the Intel Arc B390, and how do they relate to its performance?

A: The GPU has a base clock of 300 MHz and a boost clock of 2500 MHz. Despite the high boost potential, the GPU’s low shading unit count (1536) and ROP count (24) result in a pixel rate of 60.00 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 120.0 GTexel/s, which are modest figures that explain its low 9th percentile ranking and its struggles in this game.

How This Combo Ranks

The measured data places this configuration at rank 2500 out of 2825 tested combos for The Technomancer. That is a percentile position of roughly 88.5% from the top, meaning it outperforms only about 11.5% of all tested systems. This is a poor result, and the reason is clear when examining the components individually. The AMD Ryzen 5 5600 is a strong processor, scoring above 74% of all CPUs in the database, with an average benchmark score of 20468. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V (20454, 0.1% slower), the AMD Ryzen 5 8500G (20425, 0.2% slower), and the AMD EPYC 9454P (20422, 0.2% slower). The CPU is not the problem.

The Intel Arc B390, however, is an integrated GPU with a percentile ranking of just 9% among all GPUs. Its average benchmark score of 1482 places it alongside the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX (1463, 1.3% slower), the GeForce 800M (1460, 1.5% slower), the GT 625 OEM (1446, 2.5% slower), and the GT 710 (1443, 2.7% slower). These are legacy or entry-level discrete GPUs from over a decade ago, and the Arc B390 only barely outperforms them. In a game like The Technomancer, which is an action RPG with a heavy reliance on GPU rendering, this combination is severely unbalanced. The data indicates that the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU far more frames than the GPU can render, leading to the low overall rank. For any builder looking at this combo, the expectation should be that it is a low-end solution, and the measured FPS confirms that.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B390 is the defining component in this pairing, and its specifications explain the measured performance. It is built on Intel’s Xe3-LPG architecture, using a 3 nm process node, and it features 1536 shading units, 48 texture mapping units, and 24 ROPs. The base clock is 300 MHz, with a boost clock of 2500 MHz. These clocks translate to a pixel rate of 60.00 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 120.0 GTexel/s. The FP32 performance is 7.680 TFLOPS, which is modest for a modern GPU, and the FP16 performance is 15.36 TFLOPS (2:1). The GPU also includes 12 ray tracing cores, but that is irrelevant for a 2016 title like The Technomancer, which does not use ray tracing.

The most critical limitation is the memory subsystem. The Arc B390 has System Shared memory, with no dedicated VRAM. Its memory type, bus width, and bandwidth are all listed as System Shared or System Dependent. This means the GPU must share the system’s main memory (DDR4 in this case, given the Ryzen 5 5600’s memory support), which is slower and higher latency than dedicated GDDR6 or GDDR6X. In The Technomancer, this shared-memory design likely contributes to the low frame rates, especially at higher resolutions where memory bandwidth demands increase. The GPU’s TDP is 80 W, and it is an integrated graphics processor (IGP) with a slot width of IGP, meaning it does not occupy a PCIe slot and requires no power connectors. The bus interface is also IGP, so it relies on the CPU’s PCIe lanes for communication, which for the Ryzen 5 5600 is Gen 4 with 20 lanes (CPU only). However, for an IGP, the bandwidth is still limited compared to a discrete card.

The GPU’s benchmark results are sparse, with only one test recorded: 3dmark_steel_nomad_dx12, scoring 1482. This single score places it in the 9th percentile of all GPUs. The nearest rivals are all ancient or very low-end NVIDIA parts, which tells a clear story: the Arc B390 is not designed for gaming at any meaningful level of quality. In The Technomancer, this translates to an average FPS of 19 at 4K High, 34 at 1440p High, and 52 at 1080p High. The GPU is the bottleneck, and no amount of CPU power can overcome its rendering limits.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data for The Technomancer with this combo is consistent and reveals a clear pattern of performance degradation as resolution and settings increase. At 1920x1080, the lowest resolution tested, the results are as follows: Low settings yield an average of 79 FPS. Medium settings drop the average to 61 FPS, with a minimum of 52 and a maximum of 70. High settings reduce the average to 52 FPS, and Ultra settings bring it down to 40 FPS. These numbers show that even at 1080p, the GPU struggles to maintain high frame rates at higher quality presets, but Low and Medium are playable.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance falls off significantly. Low settings produce an average of 52 FPS, which is the same as 1080p High, indicating the resolution increase has a major impact. Medium settings average 40 FPS, with a minimum of 34 and a maximum of 46. High settings average 34 FPS, and Ultra settings drop to 26 FPS. At 1440p, only Low settings are consistently above 50 FPS, and Medium is borderline at 40 FPS.

At 3840x2160, the results are poor. Low settings average 28 FPS. Medium settings average 22 FPS, with a minimum of 19 and a maximum of 25. High settings average 19 FPS, and Ultra settings average 15 FPS. None of these are playable for a smooth experience, and even Low settings at 4K are below the 30 FPS threshold that many consider the minimum for playability. The data shows a clear hierarchy: 1080p Low is the only setup that approaches a high refresh rate, while 4K Ultra is a slideshow. The min and max FPS values are only provided for Medium settings at each resolution, but they show a consistent pattern of frame time variance, with the 1080p Medium range being 52-70 FPS, 1440p Medium being 34-46 FPS, and 4K Medium being 19-25 FPS.

Resolution Scaling

The scaling from 1080p to 4K is steep and tells a clear story about the limiting component. At Medium settings, the average FPS at 1080p is 61. At 1440p, it drops to 40, which is a 34.4% reduction. At 4K, it drops to 22, which is a 63.9% reduction from 1080p. This is a classic GPU-bound scaling pattern. When the resolution increases, the number of pixels to render grows geometrically, and the GPU’s fill rate and memory bandwidth become the primary constraints. The CPU’s role in this process is to prepare frames, but at higher resolutions, the GPU cannot keep up, so the CPU’s potential is wasted.

For High settings, the pattern is similar: 1080p averages 52 FPS, 1440p drops to 34 FPS (a 34.6% reduction), and 4K drops to 19 FPS (a 63.5% reduction). For Low settings, the 1080p average is 79 FPS, 1440p is 52 FPS (a 34.2% reduction), and 4K is 28 FPS (a 64.6% reduction). The consistency of these percentage reductions across settings is telling. It indicates that the GPU’s performance is scaling predictably with pixel count, which is a hallmark of a GPU that is saturated. If the CPU were the bottleneck, the FPS would remain relatively flat as resolution increases, because the CPU would limit the frame rate regardless of pixel count. That is not the case here. The FPS drops by roughly one-third when going from 1080p to 1440p, and then by another half when going from 1440p to 4K. The data demonstrates that the Intel Arc B390 is the limiting factor, and its shared memory architecture likely exacerbates the issue at higher resolutions, as the system’s memory bandwidth is shared between the CPU and GPU.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600 is a six-core, twelve-thread processor from the 5000 series, based on the Zen 3 architecture with the Vermeer codename. It is built on a 7 nm process node at TSMC, with 4,150 million transistors on a 74 mm² die. The base clock is 3.50 GHz, and the boost clock is 4.40 GHz. It has a 65 W TDP and uses the AMD Socket AM4. The cache hierarchy includes 64 KB of L1 per core, 512 KB of L2 per core, and 32 MB of shared L3 cache. It supports DDR4 memory in a dual-channel configuration, with a memory bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s. The CPU is unlocked, meaning it can be overclocked, and its production status is Active.

In terms of benchmark scores, the Ryzen 5 5600 is a strong performer. Its Cinebench R23 multi-core score is 18309, and its single-core score is 2584. In Geekbench, it scores 9158 multi-core and 1936 single-core. The PassMark multi-thread score is 21541, and the single-thread score is 3256. These scores place the CPU in the 74th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 20468. Its nearest rivals are all within 0.5% of its score: the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V (20454, 0.1% slower), the AMD Ryzen 5 8500G (20425, 0.2% slower), and the AMD EPYC 9454P (20422, 0.2% slower). This indicates that the CPU is not a weak link in the system.

For The Technomancer, the CPU’s role is to handle game logic, physics, and draw calls, while the GPU renders the frames. Given the CPU’s high multithreaded and single-threaded scores, it is more than capable of feeding the Intel Arc B390 with enough data. The evidence is in the resolution scaling: if the CPU were the bottleneck, the FPS would not drop as dramatically as it does when moving from 1080p to 4K. The CPU can process the game’s instructions quickly, but the GPU cannot render the frames fast enough. The data shows that the CPU is not the limiting factor, and in fact, the CPU is likely idle for a significant portion of the time, waiting for the GPU to catch up. For a builder, this means that upgrading the GPU would yield a massive performance improvement, while upgrading the CPU would provide no benefit in this game. The Ryzen 5 5600 is a capable gaming CPU, but it is wasted on this integrated GPU. The measured FPS at 1080p Low (79 FPS) suggests that the CPU can handle the game’s demands, but the GPU’s limits cap the experience at every resolution and setting combination.