The Technomancer

The Technomancer, an Action RPG released in 2016, presents an interesting scalability challenge for the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER combination. The measured frame rates across resolutions and settings reveal a system that is heavily GPU-bound at higher fidelity presets, yet demonstrates significant headroom that shifts the bottleneck as settings are lowered. The data indicates that this pairing is exceptionally well-suited for high-refresh-rate 1440p gaming, while still delivering a smooth 4K experience at optimized settings.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1080p to 4K illustrates a classic GPU-bound scenario, though the severity of the performance drop is heavily dependent on the chosen settings preset. At the Ultra preset, the average frame rate falls from 153.4 FPS at 1920x1080 to 57.2 FPS at 3840x2160, a reduction of approximately 63%. This steep decline is characteristic of a title that places immense stress on the rendering pipeline at maximum quality, leaving the CPU with ample headroom to spare. The scaling from 1440p to 4K at Ultra shows a 43% drop (100.7 to 57.2 FPS), confirming that the GPU is the primary limiting component as pixel count increases.

However, the scaling pattern shifts dramatically when the preset is lowered to Low. At 1080p Low, the combination achieves 296.2 FPS, but this falls to 194 FPS at 1440p and further to 104.7 FPS at 4K. While the frame rates remain exceptionally high, the relative performance drop from 1080p to 4K is only about 65%, which is similar to the Ultra preset. The key difference lies in the absolute numbers: at Low settings, even 4K performance eclipses the 1080p Ultra result of 153.4 FPS. This indicates that while the GPU is still the main constraint, the reduction in shading and texture work at Low settings allows the GPU to process frames so quickly that the CPU's capabilities become more relevant, though still not the primary bottleneck.

The Medium and High presets occupy the expected middle ground. At 4K, Medium yields 79.8 FPS and High yields 70.6 FPS, while at 1080p they produce 229.6 and 195.6 FPS respectively. The consistent pattern across all presets shows that resolution scaling is smooth and predictable, with no anomalous spikes or dips that would suggest a driver or API overhead issue. This data suggests that the game engine scales resolution linearly with GPU load, and the RTX 4080 SUPER's 16 GB of GDDR6X memory is more than sufficient to handle the texture and geometry demands of 4K without any capacity-related stutters.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the benchmark database, this specific combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER achieves a combo rank of 93 out of 1656 tested combinations for The Technomancer. This places the pairing in the top 5.6% of all configurations tested, demonstrating that it is a high-performance match for this particular title. The rank reflects the synergy between the CPU's strong single-threaded performance and the GPU's raw rasterization power, which is crucial for a game of this era that may not be fully optimized for multi-threaded scaling.

The individual component benchmarks provide context for this ranking. The CPU, with a percentile ranking of 85 against all CPUs, shows it is a strong performer, but its nearest rivals—such as the Intel Core i5-13490F and AMD Ryzen 5 230—score within 0.3% of its average benchmark score. This indicates that the 9600X is not a unique outlier in CPU performance; rather, it is part of a tightly clustered group of mid-to-high-range processors. The GPU, however, sits in the 88th percentile against all GPUs, with its nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT, coming within 0.2% of its average score. This suggests that the GPU is the dominant contributor to the combo's high rank, as its performance tier is more decisive in this GPU-bound scenario.

The high combo rank of 93 is particularly notable given the game's age. A 2016 title typically does not stress modern multi-core CPUs heavily, meaning the Ryzen 5 9600X's 6 cores and 12 threads are likely underutilized. The data supports this: the performance ceiling is defined by the RTX 4080 SUPER, which can push frame rates high enough to saturate the CPU's rendering thread at lower resolutions. The fact that the combo still ranks highly suggests that the CPU's high boost clock of 5.40 GHz and robust single-thread performance are sufficient to feed the GPU without creating a significant bottleneck, even at 1080p where frame rates exceed 290 FPS on Low settings.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured data, the optimal balance between visual fidelity and performance is achieved at the High preset for most users, though the choice ultimately depends on the target resolution and refresh rate. At 4K, the High preset delivers an average of 70.6 FPS, which is comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay on standard displays. The Ultra preset, at 57.2 FPS, dips below this threshold and may introduce noticeable judder on 60 Hz panels, making it less ideal for consistent play. The Medium preset at 4K yields 79.8 FPS, which provides a smoother experience but sacrifices some visual quality that the High preset retains.

For 1440p displays, the High preset at 124.7 FPS is excellent for high-refresh-rate monitors, offering a fluid experience without the need to compromise on settings. The Ultra preset at 1440p still manages 100.7 FPS, which is perfectly playable on 100 Hz or 120 Hz panels, and this is where the recommendation shifts. If a user has a 1440p monitor with a refresh rate above 100 Hz, the Ultra preset is the better choice, as it maximizes visual quality while still maintaining frame rates high enough to benefit from the display's capabilities. The 1080p results show that the Ultra preset at 153.4 FPS is the clear winner for competitive or high-refresh-rate play, as it provides a significant visual upgrade over Medium (229.6 FPS) while still delivering frame rates far beyond what most 1080p monitors can display.

The Low preset is only recommended for users seeking the absolute maximum frame rates, as the visual compromises are substantial. The data shows that the jump from Low to Medium provides a significant improvement in visual quality for a relatively modest performance hit (from 296.2 to 229.6 FPS at 1080p). Therefore, the analysis suggests that High is the default recommendation for 4K, Ultra for 1440p users with high-refresh displays, and Ultra for 1080p users seeking the best experience.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete set of measured average frame rates provides a comprehensive view of the system's capabilities. At 3840x2160, the frame rates are as follows: Low preset achieves 104.7 FPS, Medium achieves 79.8 FPS, High achieves 70.6 FPS, and Ultra achieves 57.2 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra at 4K shows a performance cost of approximately 45% for the highest quality settings, which is a substantial but not unusual penalty for a demanding preset.

At 2560x1440, the data shows: Low preset delivers 194 FPS, Medium delivers 147.1 FPS, High delivers 124.7 FPS, and Ultra delivers 100.7 FPS. The 1440p results show a similar proportional scaling to 4K, with the Ultra preset seeing a 48% reduction in frame rate compared to Low. This consistency suggests that the game's settings have a predictable impact on GPU load, with no single setting causing a disproportionate performance drop.

The 1920x1080 results are the highest of the set: Low preset reaches 296.2 FPS, Medium reaches 229.6 FPS, High reaches 195.6 FPS, and Ultra reaches 153.4 FPS. At 1080p, the system is clearly pushing beyond the refresh rate limits of most monitors, even at the Ultra preset. The data reveals that the gap between Medium and High (34 FPS) is smaller than the gap between Low and Medium (66.6 FPS), suggesting that the transition from Low to Medium introduces a significant increase in GPU workload, while the transition from High to Ultra is relatively more efficient in terms of frame rate retention per unit of visual improvement.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER is the dominant component in this benchmark, as evidenced by the performance scaling across resolutions. The GPU's 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus with a bandwidth of 736.3 GB/s ensures that texture streaming and memory allocation are never a limiting factor, even at 4K with high-quality assets. The measured frame rates at 4K Ultra, 57.2 FPS, are indicative of a GPU that is being pushed to its limits in terms of shader and pixel throughput, rather than memory capacity.

The GPU's clock speeds, with a base of 2295 MHz and a boost of 2550 MHz, contribute to its strong performance. The data shows that the GPU's average benchmark score of 53610 places it in the 88th percentile, with its nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT, scoring just 0.2% lower. This marginal difference in synthetic benchmarks translates to the measured in-game results, where the RTX 4080 SUPER's performance is sufficient to drive high frame rates at 1440p and respectable frame rates at 4K.

The GPU's architecture, Ada Lovelace, with 10240 shading units and 80 RT cores, is more than capable of handling the rasterization demands of The Technomancer. However, the game's 2016 release date means it does not utilize ray tracing, so the RT cores remain idle. The performance is thus entirely dependent on the traditional rasterization pipeline, where the GPU's FP32 throughput of 52.22 TFLOPS and texture rate of 816.0 GTexel/s are the key metrics. The data indicates that the GPU's role is clear: it is the primary determinant of frame rate at all resolutions, and its high memory bandwidth and large frame buffer ensure that there are no memory-related bottlenecks that could cause frame time spikes or stutters in this title.