The Technomancer

The Technomancer, a 2016 Action RPG, presents an interesting scaling challenge for the AMD Ryzen 5 5600GT and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 pairing. The measured data shows this combination is capable of very high frame rates across the board, but the relationship between resolution, settings, and the resulting FPS reveals a classic case of a powerful GPU being held back by an older game's engine and a mid-range CPU.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark results for this combo indicate that the Ultra preset is the most demanding, while Low offers the highest performance. At 1920x1080, the Ultra preset delivers 170.3 FPS, which is a significant drop from the 239 FPS seen at Low. However, the frame rate at Ultra is still exceptionally high, making it a viable option for competitive play on high-refresh-rate monitors. The Medium preset at 1080p delivers 220.4 FPS, offering a substantial increase over Ultra while likely providing a noticeable visual improvement over Low.

At 2560x1440, the Ultra preset drops to 112 FPS. This is still a very playable frame rate, but the gap between Ultra and High is considerable, with High achieving 138.4 FPS. For a smoother experience at this resolution, the High preset appears to be the sweet spot, as it maintains a high frame rate while reducing the performance cost associated with the Ultra settings. The Medium preset at 1440p also performs well at 163.9 FPS, making it a strong candidate for maximizing frame rates without sacrificing too much visual fidelity.

At 4K (3840x2160), the Ultra preset produces 58.1 FPS, which is just below the 60 FPS threshold often considered ideal for immersive single-player experiences. The High preset at 4K is markedly better, achieving 75.6 FPS. This suggests that for a 4K experience, dropping from Ultra to High is the recommended approach, as it provides a significant performance boost. The Medium preset at 89.3 FPS is also a strong option if visual fidelity can be slightly compromised. The data suggests that the Ultra preset is poorly optimized at 4K for this combination, and High offers the best balanced experience.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600GT and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 combination ranks 73rd out of 1656 tested combos in The Technomancer. This places it in the top 4.4% of all tested configurations, indicating excellent overall performance. The CPU itself has a percentile rank of 78 when compared to all CPUs, and its average benchmark score of 20740 is nearly identical to the Intel Core i7-10700, with a deltaPct of 0. The CPU is also a close match for the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X, which is only 0.3% faster in average score.

The GPU is in the 91st percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 66473. Its nearest rivals, such as the NVIDIA Tesla T4, show a deltaPct of -0.4, meaning the RTX 4090 is slightly slower in synthetic benchmarks but still within a very tight margin. This suggests that while the GPU is exceptionally powerful, the overall combo rank is likely influenced by the CPU's mid-range standing. The high rank of 73 out of 1656 reflects the raw power of the RTX 4090, but the CPU's performance is a limiting factor in achieving an even higher placement.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture and features 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus, providing a massive 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth. Its base clock is 2235 MHz, with a boost clock of 2520 MHz. In The Technomancer, the GPU's role is dominant at higher resolutions, as evidenced by the frame rates. At 4K, the performance difference between settings is pronounced, with the Ultra preset at 58.1 FPS versus 116.2 FPS at Low. This indicates that the game's Ultra settings place a heavy load on the GPU's shading units and texture processing capabilities.

The GPU's 16,384 shading units and 512 TMUs are clearly capable of handling the game's visuals, but the 176 ROPs and the game's engine seem to bottleneck at the Ultra preset, especially at 4K. The 24 GB VRAM buffer is more than sufficient for this game, so memory capacity is not a limiting factor. The data suggests that the GPU is rarely the bottleneck at 1080p, where frame rates are exceptionally high across all settings, but it becomes the primary performance driver as resolution increases. The GPU's compute capabilities, including its 82.58 TFLOPS of FP32 performance, are underutilized at lower resolutions, where the CPU's performance ceiling is reached.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured data provides a clear picture of performance across three resolutions and four settings. At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves 239 FPS, which is the highest frame rate recorded for this combo. The Medium preset delivers 220.4 FPS, while High drops to 206.6 FPS. The Ultra preset at 1080p is the most demanding, producing 170.3 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a performance cost of 68.7 FPS, or roughly 28.7% of the maximum frame rate.

Moving to 2560x1440, the Low preset still maintains a very high 210.1 FPS. The Medium preset delivers 163.9 FPS, and High achieves 138.4 FPS. The Ultra preset at 1440p falls to 112 FPS. The drop from Low to Ultra at this resolution is 98.1 FPS, indicating that the higher resolution amplifies the performance difference between settings. At 3840x2160, the Low preset produces 116.2 FPS, which is still a very playable frame rate. The Medium preset drops to 89.3 FPS, and High achieves 75.6 FPS. The Ultra preset at 4K is the most challenging, yielding 58.1 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is 58.1 FPS, showing that the Ultra preset at this resolution is not optimized for this hardware combination.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K is not linear and reveals the limiting component. At the Low preset, the FPS drops from 239 at 1080p to 210.1 at 1440p and then to 116.2 at 4K. This represents a 51.4% drop from 1080p to 4K. At the High preset, the FPS drops from 206.6 at 1080p to 138.4 at 1440p and then to 75.6 at 4K, a 63.4% drop. The Ultra preset shows the steepest decline, with 170.3 FPS at 1080p, 112 at 1440p, and 58.1 at 4K, a 65.9% drop.

The data suggests that at 1080p, the CPU is the primary limiting factor. The frame rates at Low and Medium are very close (239 vs 220.4), indicating that the CPU is unable to push more frames even when the GPU has spare capacity. This is supported by the CPU's modest multi-threaded performance, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 17272. As the resolution increases, the GPU workload becomes more demanding, and the frame rate drop becomes more pronounced. The large drop from 1440p to 4K at all settings indicates that the GPU is becoming the bottleneck at 4K, as the RTX 4090's raw power is taxed by the higher pixel count. The RTX 4090's 24 GB VRAM and 1.01 TB/s bandwidth are sufficient, but the game's engine appears to scale poorly with the Ultra preset at 4K, creating an 18.4% performance penalty compared to High. This suggests that while the GPU is capable, the game's Ultra settings are not well-optimized for this resolution, and users should consider High for the best experience.