The Technomancer

The AMD Ryzen 7 3700X paired with the AMD Radeon RX 9060 delivers a playable but demanding experience in The Technomancer, with performance scaling that clearly identifies the GPU as the primary constraint at higher resolutions. The data shows a steep performance cliff between 1440p and 4K, while the CPU provides ample headroom at lower settings.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS reveals a classic GPU-bound scenario as resolution increases. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combo produces 157 FPS average. Moving to 2560x1440 Low drops that to 102 FPS, a 35% reduction. At 3840x2160 Low, the average falls to 56 FPS, which is a 45% drop from 1440p and a 64% drop from 1080p. These percentage losses far exceed what the pixel count alone would suggest, indicating the Radeon RX 9060's memory bandwidth and rasterization throughput become the limiting factor as pixel count quadruples.

The High settings preset tells a similar story with a different starting point. At 1080p High, the combo achieves 103 FPS. At 1440p High, it drops to 67 FPS (a 35% loss). At 4K High, it falls to 37 FPS (a 45% loss from 1440p and a 64% loss from 1080p). The consistency of these percentage drops across Low and High presets confirms that resolution scaling is uniform regardless of graphical complexity, which is the hallmark of a GPU bottleneck.

Ultra settings exacerbate the issue dramatically. At 1080p Ultra, the average is 80 FPS. At 1440p Ultra, it drops to 52 FPS. At 4K Ultra, the average collapses to 29 FPS. The 29 FPS result at 4K Ultra is below the 30 FPS threshold typically considered the minimum for playable frame rates, and the drop from 1440p to 4K represents a 44% reduction. This indicates that Ultra settings at 4K are simply beyond what this combination can handle, and the data suggests users should avoid that configuration entirely.

The Medium preset provides the only complete min/max data in the pack, offering insight into frame time consistency. At 1080p Medium, the average is 120 FPS with a minimum of 102 and maximum of 138. At 1440p Medium, the average is 79 FPS with a minimum of 67 and maximum of 90. At 4K Medium, the average is 43 FPS with a minimum of 37 and maximum of 50. The spread between min and max FPS stays proportionally consistent across resolutions, suggesting that the bottleneck is steady rather than spiky, which is good news for perceived smoothness even when average frame rates are low.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination ranks 1632 out of 2825 tested combos for The Technomancer, placing it in the 42nd percentile of all tested configurations. This is a mid-pack result that reflects a balanced pairing rather than an extreme one. The rank suggests that while this setup is far from the top of the leaderboard, it outperforms a substantial portion of the tested field.

To contextualize this rank, consider the individual component benchmarks. The Ryzen 7 3700X sits at the 84th percentile against all CPUs, which is a strong showing. The Radeon RX 9060 sits at the 59th percentile against all GPUs, which is closer to average. The combo rank of 42nd percentile is lower than either individual component percentile, which indicates that in this specific game, the GPU is holding the system back more than the CPU would suggest. The game appears to be more sensitive to GPU performance than CPU performance, and the RX 9060's mid-pack standing drags the overall combo rank down.

The GPU's nearest rivals provide useful context for its tier. The Radeon RX 9060's average benchmark score is 16014, which is 0.7% below the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti's score of 16129. It is 1% above the AMD Radeon R9 370X's score of 15862 and 1% above the AMD Radeon RX 7700's score of 15852. The 2.1% gap over the AMD Radeon Pro W5500 (score 15679) rounds out the picture. This places the RX 9060 in a competitive mid-range tier, trading blows with several well-known cards.

On the CPU side, the Ryzen 7 3700X's average benchmark score of 34260 places it in very close competition with several modern processors. It is 0.1% above the AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 (score 34222) and 0.1% above the AMD EPYC 4244P (score 34220). It is 0.2% below the Intel Core i5-13450HX (score 34333) and 0.5% above the Intel Core Ultra 7 165H (score 34083). These tiny deltas mean the CPU is performing exactly as expected for its tier, with no anomalous behavior in synthetic benchmarks.

FAQ

*Q: Can this combo handle 4K gaming in The Technomancer?*

A: Only at Low settings, where it averages 56 FPS. At Medium it drops to 43 FPS, at High to 37 FPS, and at Ultra it falls to 29 FPS, which is below playable thresholds for most users.

Q: What is the best resolution for this combination?

A: 1080p is clearly the sweet spot, with all presets except Ultra exceeding 100 FPS. The Low preset achieves 157 FPS, Medium 120 FPS, and High 103 FPS, providing smooth gameplay across the board.

Q: How does the GPU compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The Radeon RX 9060's average benchmark score of 16014 is 0.7% below the RTX 3060 Ti and 1% above the RX 7700. It outperforms the R9 370X by 1% and the Pro W5500 by 2.1%, placing it in a tight mid-range cluster.

Q: Is the CPU a bottleneck in this game?

A: The data suggests no. The Ryzen 7 3700X ranks at the 84th percentile among all CPUs, and the frame rate drops align with GPU-bound behavior. The CPU's 8 cores and 16 threads provide sufficient headroom for this 2016 title.

Q: What settings should I use for 1440p?

A: Medium settings average 79 FPS, which is a good balance. High settings average 67 FPS, still playable, while Ultra drops to 52 FPS. Low settings reach 102 FPS but sacrifice visual quality unnecessarily.

Q: How does this combo rank overall?

A: It ranks 1632 out of 2825 tested combos, placing it in the 42nd percentile. This is a middle-of-the-pack result driven primarily by the GPU's mid-range standing.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its best results. The Low preset averages 157 FPS, the Medium preset averages 120 FPS with a minimum of 102 and maximum of 138, the High preset averages 103 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 80 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 77 FPS, or a 49% reduction, which shows the game's scaling with graphical complexity at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, performance remains respectable but drops noticeably. The Low preset averages 102 FPS, the Medium preset averages 79 FPS with a minimum of 67 and maximum of 90, the High preset averages 67 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 52 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 50 FPS, or a 49% reduction, mirroring the percentage loss seen at 1080p.

At 3840x2160, the combo struggles to maintain playable frame rates at higher presets. The Low preset averages 56 FPS, the Medium preset averages 43 FPS with a minimum of 37 and maximum of 50, the High preset averages 37 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 29 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 27 FPS, or a 48% reduction, again consistent with the pattern at lower resolutions.

The Medium preset is the only one with complete min/max data across all three resolutions. At 1080p, the spread from min to max is 36 FPS. At 1440p, the spread is 23 FPS. At 4K, the spread is 13 FPS. This narrowing spread at higher resolutions further confirms the GPU bottleneck, as frame times become more constrained when the GPU is fully saturated.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 9060 is built on the RDNA 4.0 architecture with the Navi 44 chip, manufactured on a 4 nm process at TSMC. It features 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, providing 288.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This memory configuration is a key factor in the 4K performance drop, as the modest bandwidth struggles to feed the GPU at higher pixel counts.

The GPU's clock speeds are notable. The base clock is 1700 MHz, the game clock is 2400 MHz, and the boost clock reaches 2990 MHz. The boost behavior explains why the GPU can maintain reasonable performance at 1080p and 1440p, where the higher clocks compensate for the limited bandwidth. The pixel rate of 191.4 GPixel/s and texture rate of 334.9 GTexel/s are solid mid-range figures, but they are not sufficient to sustain high frame rates at 4K Ultra in this title.

The GPU's benchmark profile shows a mixed picture. Its 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score is 3322, and its Geekbench Vulkan score is 39476. The Passmark G3D score is 17631, with a G2D score of 1002. The GPU compute score is 9919. In DirectX API benchmarks, the scores are 280 for DX9, 104 for DX10, 182 for DX11, and 44 for DX12. The low DX12 score relative to DX11 suggests this architecture may not be fully optimized for older titles that rely on different rendering paths, which could explain some of the performance characteristics seen in The Technomancer.

The GPU's 59th percentile ranking among all GPUs reinforces its mid-range positioning. With 1792 shading units, 112 TMUs, and 64 ROPs, it has enough raw compute for 1080p and 1440p gaming, but the 128-bit memory bus and 8 GB capacity limit its high-resolution potential. The 28 ray tracing cores are present but unlikely to matter for a 2016 title that predates widespread ray tracing adoption.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 3700X provides a strong foundation for this gaming combo. With 8 cores and 16 threads, it offers substantial parallel processing capability that benefits modern games and background tasks. The base clock of 3.60 GHz and boost clock of 4.40 GHz, combined with the Zen 2 architecture on a 7 nm TSMC process, deliver solid single-thread and multi-thread performance.

The CPU's cache hierarchy is substantial: 64 KB of L1 per core, 512 KB of L2 per core, and 32 MB of shared L3 cache. This large L3 cache is particularly beneficial for gaming, where repeated data access patterns can be served from cache rather than system memory. The dual-channel DDR4 memory support with 51.2 GB/s bandwidth is adequate for this game's requirements.

Benchmark results show the CPU's strengths. The Cinebench R15 multicore score is 2092, with a single-core score of 204. The Geekbench multicore score is 8899, and the single-core score is 1593. Passmark results are comprehensive: multithread score of 22458, single-thread score of 2656, integer math at 66399, floating point math at 39005, and extended instructions at 19241. The physics score is 1181, which is relevant for game physics calculations.

The CPU's 84th percentile ranking against all CPUs confirms it is well above average. Its average benchmark score of 34260 puts it within 0.5% of several modern processors, including the AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 and Intel Core Ultra 7 165H. This level of performance means the CPU is not the limiting factor in The Technomancer, as evidenced by the frame rate behavior being consistent with GPU-bound scenarios.

The data indicates that in this game, the CPU's 8 cores and 16 threads provide more than enough processing power. At 1080p Low, the 157 FPS average suggests the CPU can feed the GPU well beyond typical display refresh rates. Even at 4K, where the GPU is clearly struggling, the CPU maintains frame delivery without introducing additional bottlenecks, as shown by the consistent percentage drops across resolutions.