The Technomancer

The Technomancer, a 2016 Action RPG, presents an interesting challenge for modern hardware. The data measured for the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 combination shows a wide performance envelope, from highly playable 4K High settings to extremely high refresh rate 1080p Low. The benchmark results indicate that while the RTX 5080 is clearly a dominant force, the game’s engine still exerts a significant influence on the final frame rates, particularly at lower resolutions.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution/settings combination for a smooth experience?

A: At 4K, the High preset delivers an average of 76.8 FPS, which is smooth. If targeting 60 FPS as a hard floor, the Ultra preset at 4K averages 57.8 FPS, which is below that threshold. For higher refresh rates, 1440p High averages 136.3 FPS, and 1080p High averages 162.7 FPS.

Q: How much performance is lost when moving from 1080p to 4K?

A: The data shows a significant drop. At High settings, the average FPS falls from 162.7 at 1080p to 76.8 at 4K, representing a 52.8% reduction. At Low settings, the drop is from 190.8 to 114.5 FPS, a 40.0% reduction.

Q: Is the RTX 5080 a bottleneck at 1080p?

A: The frame rates at 1080p suggest a CPU or engine limit. The difference between Low (190.8 FPS) and High (162.7 FPS) at 1080p is only 28.1 FPS, which is a smaller gap than the one seen at 1440p between Low (166.6 FPS) and High (136.3 FPS). This compression of scaling indicates the GPU is not the primary limiter.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its closest rivals in overall benchmarks?

A: The Ryzen 7 3700X’s average benchmark score of 28631 puts it in the 85th percentile of all CPUs. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core i5-12600, scores 28654, making the AMD part only 0.1% slower. It is also 0.1% slower than the Intel Core i5-12600H but 0.1% faster than the AMD Ryzen 5 5600XT.

Q: What is the difference in CPU performance between single-core and multi-core tasks?

A: The CPU shows a substantial difference in scaling. In Cinebench R23, it scores 2694 points in the single-core test and 19087 points in the multi-core test, indicating strong multi-threading scaling. Similar scaling is seen in Cinebench R20, with scores of 1131 (single-core) and 8016 (multi-core).

Q: Does the GPU’s benchmark score place it among top-tier hardware?

A: Yes. The RTX 5080’s average benchmark score is 59188, which places it in the 89th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rival, the Intel Arc Pro A60, scores 60326, against which the RTX 5080 is 1.9% slower. It is, however, 1.6% faster than the Intel Arc A570M and 2.5% faster than the Intel Arc A580.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 is the primary rendering engine in this configuration, and its specifications dictate the ceiling for visual fidelity. It is equipped with 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing a memory bandwidth of 960.0 GB/s. This large frame buffer is more than sufficient for The Technomancer’s textures and assets, even at 4K Ultra settings, preventing texture swapping or stuttering that might occur with smaller memory pools.

The GPU’s clock speeds are substantial, with a base clock of 2295 MHz and a boost clock of 2617 MHz. The architecture is Blackwell 2.0, built on a 5 nm process at TSMC, containing 45,600 million transistors on a 378 mm² die. This hardware translates into a raw compute capability of 56.28 TFLOPS for FP32 operations. The benchmark results show that this power is more than adequate for the game. At 4K High settings, the RTX 5080 produces an average of 76.8 FPS, and it only dips below the 60 FPS mark when the Ultra preset is enabled, which yields 57.8 FPS. This indicates the GPU is capable of handling the game’s highest workload, though the Ultra preset at 4K is demanding enough to challenge even this high-end card.

The GPU’s performance in standardized tests further contextualizes its capabilities. It scores 36565 in the Passmark G3D test and 8637 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12. Its percentile ranking of 89 among all GPUs confirms that it is a top-tier part, and its nearest rivals in the database—the Intel Arc A570M, Arc Pro A60, and Arc A580—are all within a 2.6% delta of its average score, showing that it sits in a competitive performance tier. For this game, the GPU is the main driver of performance at 4K, where the frame rate scales significantly with the quality preset.

Resolution Scaling

The performance scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals the balance between the CPU and GPU. At High settings, the average FPS drops from 162.7 at 1920x1080 to 136.3 at 2560x1440, a further drop to 76.8 at 3840x2160. This is a substantial 85.9 FPS difference between the lowest and highest resolutions tested. This steep decline is a classic indicator of a GPU-bound workload at higher resolutions; as the pixel count increases, the rendering load on the RTX 5080 becomes the limiting factor.

However, the data at lower resolutions suggests a different kind of bottleneck. At 1080p, the difference between Low (190.8 FPS) and Ultra (148.1 FPS) is 42.7 FPS. At 1440p, the same comparison shows a difference of 63.0 FPS (166.6 Low vs. 103.6 Ultra). The fact that the frame rate doesn't scale as much with settings at 1080p suggests that the CPU, the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, is starting to become a limiting factor, preventing the GPU from fully flexing its muscles.

This is further supported by the scaling between resolutions. Moving from 1080p High to 1440p High only costs 26.4 FPS, but moving from 1440p High to 4K High costs 59.5 FPS. The frame rate penalty more than doubles when making the jump to 4K, confirming that the GPU is the primary constraint at that resolution. The game’s engine appears to be well-optimized for high frame rates at 1080p, but the RTX 5080's raw power is best utilized when pushing pixels at 4K.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured frame rates provide a complete picture of performance across three resolutions and four quality presets.

At 1920x1080, the average FPS is consistently high. The Low preset averages 190.8 FPS, serving as the performance ceiling. Medium averages 173.3 FPS, and High averages 162.7 FPS. The Ultra preset, which is the most demanding, still averages a very high 148.1 FPS. All presets are capable of driving a 144Hz monitor with ease, and the gap between Low and Ultra is just 42.7 FPS, highlighting the CPU's role in limiting the maximum frame rate.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance remains strong. The Low preset averages 166.6 FPS, while Medium and High average 150.0 FPS and 136.3 FPS, respectively. The Ultra preset drops to 103.6 FPS, which is still highly playable for a high-refresh rate experience. The scaling here is more pronounced, showing the GPU beginning to take on more work.

At 3840x2160 (4K), the RTX 5080's workload becomes the clear bottleneck. The Low preset averages 114.5 FPS, which is still very smooth. Medium averages 88.5 FPS, and High averages 76.8 FPS. The Ultra preset falls to 57.8 FPS. This is the only configuration that falls below the 60 FPS target, indicating that 4K Ultra is a significant challenge. The performance drop from High to Ultra at 4K is 19.0 FPS, a 24.7% reduction, which is the largest penalty for a single settings change in the entire data set, showing the extreme cost of the Ultra preset at this resolution.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 3700X serves as the central processor, and its specifications are crucial for feeding the RTX 5080. It is an 8-core, 16-thread processor based on the Zen 2 architecture, with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. It has a 32 MB L3 cache and supports DDR4 memory with a bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s. In The Technomancer, this processor proves to be sufficient for maintaining high frame rates, but it does show signs of being a limiting factor at lower resolutions and settings.

Evidence for this comes from the benchmark results. At 1080p Low, the average FPS is 190.8. When the settings are increased to High, the FPS drops to 162.7. This 28.1 FPS difference is due to the increased GPU load, but the absolute FPS values suggest the CPU is reaching its limit. If the GPU were the only bottleneck at 1080p, we would expect the Low preset to achieve a much higher frame rate, given its 4K Low score of 114.5. The fact that 1080p Low is not significantly higher than 1080p High indicates that the Ryzen 7 3700X is the ceiling.

The CPU’s raw processing power is quantified by its benchmark scores. In Cinebench R23, it scores 19087 points multi-core and 2694 points single-core. In Geekbench, it scores 8083 multi-core and 1672 single-core. Its Passmark multithread score is 22458. These scores place it in the 85th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 28631. Its nearest rivals, such as the Intel Core i5-12600 (28654) and AMD Ryzen 5 5600XT (28591), are within a 0.1-0.2% delta, indicating that this CPU is competitively positioned for its generation. While it may not be the newest or fastest CPU available, its eight cores and 16 threads are well-suited for modern gaming, and it only becomes a bottleneck in this specific title when the GPU is not fully taxed at 1080p.