The Technomancer

# The Technomancer with AMD Ryzen 7 9700X + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D pairing produces a striking spread of results in The Technomancer, ranging from 66 FPS at 4K Ultra to 335 FPS at 1080p Low, revealing a system that is simultaneously overkill for older resolutions and merely adequate for the most demanding settings. The 8-core, 16-thread Zen 5 processor with a 3.80 GHz base and 5.50 GHz boost clock sits in the 86th percentile of all CPUs, while the RTX 5090 D's 32 GB of GDDR7 memory and 1.79 TB/s bandwidth place it in the 92nd percentile of all GPUs. The benchmark data shows this combo ranks 8th out of 2,825 tested combinations for this game, a position that invites investigation into whether the CPU or GPU is the limiting factor at each resolution.

CPU Role

The Ryzen 7 9700X brings 8 cores and 16 threads to The Technomancer, a 2016 Action RPG that was released well before the era of 16-thread mainstream processors. The game's engine was designed in an era when quad-core CPUs were the enthusiast standard, so the 9700X's thread count is almost certainly not a bottleneck in any measured scenario. The processor's architecture is Zen 5, built on a 4 nm TSMC process, with a 65 W TDP that suggests efficient operation even under sustained gaming loads. The L3 cache is 32 MB shared, with 1 MB L2 per core and 80 KB L1 per core, providing a substantial memory hierarchy for the game's data streams.

Synthetic benchmarks for the 9700X show strong multi-threaded performance: a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 20485 and a single-core score of 2211, with a Geekbench multicore score of 17906 and single-core of 3023. These numbers place the CPU at an 86th percentile ranking versus all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 37943. The nearest rival, the Intel Core i9-14901E, scores 37911, a delta of just 0.1%, meaning the 9700X is effectively tied with that chip in aggregate CPU performance. The AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 is also within 0.1% at 37904, while the Intel Core 5 211E trails by 0.3% at 37829 and the AMD Ryzen AI Embedded P132 by 0.4% at 37804.

In The Technomancer specifically, the CPU's role appears to be supporting rather than leading. At 1080p Low, the combo hits 335 FPS, which is far beyond what any display can show in real-time. The question is whether the CPU can feed the GPU fast enough at lower resolutions where the GPU has headroom. The data implies that the 9700X is more than sufficient for this game's demands; the 16 threads of Zen 5 architecture with a 5.50 GHz boost clock ensure that even the most CPU-intensive scenes in a 2016 title are unlikely to create a bottleneck. The PassMark single-thread score of 4654 and 3DMark single-thread score of 1280 further confirm that the processor's per-core strength is ample for a game of this era.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Ryzen 7 9700X and RTX 5090 D achieves rank 8 out of 2,825 tested combos in The Technomancer, placing it in the top 0.3% of all pairings measured by the database. This is an exceptional position, but it is not the absolute top, which invites the question of what could possibly outperform this hardware in a game from 2016. The answer likely lies in the fact that at lower resolutions, the CPU becomes the limiting factor, and other processors with higher single-thread performance or better tuned memory subsystems might edge out the 9700X in specific scenarios.

The CPU's average benchmark score of 37943 puts it in the 86th percentile, while the GPU's average score of 77712 puts it in the 92nd percentile. When combined, the system's ranking of 8th suggests that the GPU is the stronger component relative to its peers, and the pairing benefits from this. However, the data shows that the GPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks are the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (78940, -1.6% delta) and the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB (79605, -2.4% delta), which are mobile or datacenter parts, not direct desktop competitors. This suggests that the RTX 5090 D is in a class of its own for gaming, and the 9700X is a capable partner.

At 1080p, the combo's FPS numbers are so high (184-335 FPS depending on settings) that the CPU's single-thread performance likely becomes the binding constraint, particularly at Low and Medium settings. At 4K, the GPU's workload dominates, and the ranking reflects that the system is well-balanced for this game's requirements. The rank of 8 out of 2825 implies that only 7 other combinations produce higher average FPS across the tested scenarios, which is a remarkable achievement for a pairing that includes a 65 W CPU and a 575 W GPU.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K is dramatic and reveals the shifting bottleneck between CPU and GPU. At High settings, the combo delivers 236 FPS at 1920x1080, drops to 154 FPS at 2560x1440, and falls to 85 FPS at 3840x2160. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p is a 34.7% reduction in FPS, while from 1440p to 4K is a 44.8% reduction. At Low settings, the drop is even steeper: 335 FPS at 1080p, 235 FPS at 1440p (a 29.9% reduction), and 129 FPS at 4K (a 45.1% reduction from 1440p). This pattern indicates that the GPU is the primary performance limiter as resolution increases, since the pixel count grows by roughly 2.25x from 1080p to 1440p and another 2.25x from 1440p to 4K.

At Medium settings, the measured FPS values are 276 at 1080p, 180 at 1440p, and 99 at 4K, with the 1080p to 1440p drop being 34.8% and the 1440p to 4K drop being 45.0%. The consistency of these percentages across settings suggests that the game's rendering pipeline scales predictably with resolution, and the RTX 5090 D's 32 GB of VRAM is never a limiting factor even at 4K. The Ultra settings show the same pattern: 184 FPS at 1080p, 120 FPS at 1440p, and 66 FPS at 4K, with reductions of 34.8% and 45.0% respectively.

The fact that the FPS drop from 1440p to 4K is consistently around 45%—rather than the theoretical 55% that pure pixel count would suggest—implies that the CPU is providing some relief at higher resolutions by not being a bottleneck. At 1080p, the CPU may be holding the system back slightly, as the GPU has so much headroom that it cannot be fully utilized. This is a classic sign of a high-end GPU paired with a mid-to-high-end CPU: the CPU becomes the constraint at low resolutions, but the GPU takes over as the limiter at 4K.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a complete picture of performance across four settings presets and three resolutions. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combo achieves 335 FPS average, which is the highest recorded number in the entire dataset. Moving to Medium at 1080p, the average drops to 276 FPS with a minimum of 235 and maximum of 317 FPS, indicating some frame-time variance but still an extremely smooth experience. High settings at 1080p produce 236 FPS average, while Ultra settings yield 184 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra at 1080p shows a 45.1% reduction in FPS (from 335 to 184), which is substantial but leaves the system well above any display refresh rate.

At 2560x1440, the Low preset delivers 235 FPS average, which is a 29.9% drop from 1080p Low. Medium settings at 1440p produce 180 FPS with a minimum of 153 and maximum of 207 FPS. High settings yield 154 FPS, and Ultra drops to 120 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1440p is 48.9%, slightly larger than at 1080p, suggesting that the GPU's workload is becoming more dominant. All 1440p numbers remain above 120 FPS, meaning that even Ultra settings are playable on high-refresh-rate monitors.

At 3840x2160, the Low preset achieves 129 FPS, which is still smooth for most displays. Medium settings average 99 FPS with a minimum of 84 and maximum of 114 FPS, showing that the game can dip below 90 FPS at this setting. High settings average 85 FPS, and Ultra drops to 66 FPS. The Ultra preset at 4K is the only configuration that falls below 70 FPS, which might be considered suboptimal for competitive play but is still playable for a single-player Action RPG. The data reveals that the Medium preset at 4K offers a good balance, with an average of 99 FPS and a minimum of 84 FPS, ensuring that the frame rate rarely drops to uncomfortable levels.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D is the dominant component in this pairing, with 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus providing 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth. The GPU's boost clock is 2407 MHz with a base clock of 2017 MHz, and it features 21760 shading units, 680 TMUs, and 176 ROPs. The Blackwell 2.0 architecture, built on a 5 nm TSMC process with 92,200 million transistors on a 750 mm² die, delivers 104.8 TFLOPS of FP32 performance. These specifications are far beyond what The Technomancer requires, as the game was released in 2016 and likely cannot utilize the RT cores (170) or Tensor cores (680) in any meaningful way.

The GPU's synthetic benchmarks confirm its top-tier status: a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 14326, Geekbench OpenCL score of 310674, and Vulkan score of 376915. The PassMark G3D score is 44065, with a GPU Compute score of 28396. The percentile ranking of 92 places it in the upper echelon of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 77712. Interestingly, the nearest rivals in the database are the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT with a score of 78940 (a -1.6% delta, meaning the RTX 5090 D trails it) and the AMD Radeon RX 6650M XT at 76904 (a 1.1% delta), which are laptop GPUs. This suggests that the RTX 5090 D's benchmark scores are being compared against a wide range of hardware, and its position is strong but not absolute.

In The Technomancer, the GPU's role is evident in the 4K results. At 4K Ultra, the combo delivers 66 FPS, which is the lowest number in the dataset. The fact that a 575 W GPU with 32 GB of VRAM cannot maintain 60+ FPS at 4K Ultra in a 2016 game suggests that the game's engine has poor optimization or that the Ultra preset includes effects that are particularly taxing. The GPU's 1.79 TB/s bandwidth is likely not the constraint, as the game's textures would fit easily within 32 GB, but rather the raw compute required for certain post-processing effects. At 4K Medium, the 99 FPS average shows that reducing settings from Ultra to Medium yields a 50% performance improvement, which is a significant jump and indicates that the Ultra preset uses some extremely expensive rendering features.

FAQ

Q: Is the AMD Ryzen 7 9700X a bottleneck for the RTX 5090 D in The Technomancer?

A: The data suggests that at 1080p, the CPU may be the limiting factor, as the FPS drops from 335 at Low to 184 at Ultra, but the GPU still has headroom. At 4K, the GPU becomes the clear bottleneck, with FPS ranging from 129 at Low to 66 at Ultra, indicating that the CPU is sufficient for this game's demands.

Q: How does this combo rank compared to other tested systems?

A: The combination ranks 8th out of 2,825 tested combos in The Technomancer, placing it in the top 0.3% of all pairings. The CPU's 86th percentile ranking and GPU's 92nd percentile ranking suggest that the system is well above average for gaming performance.

Q: What is the best resolution for this hardware in The Technomancer?

A: At 2560x1440, all settings presets deliver above 120 FPS, making it the sweet spot for high-refresh-rate gaming. At 4K, only the Low preset maintains over 120 FPS, while Ultra drops to 66 FPS, so 1440p offers the best balance of visual quality and performance.

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

A: The FPS drops from 236 at 1920x1080 to 85 at 3840x2160, representing a 64% reduction in performance. This is a substantial decrease that highlights the GPU-bound nature of the game at higher resolutions.

Q: Does the RTX 5090 D's 32 GB VRAM help in this game?

A: The 32 GB of GDDR7 memory is far more than The Technomancer requires, as the game was released in 2016. The data shows no signs of VRAM being a limiting factor, as the FPS scales consistently with resolution, suggesting that memory capacity is not a bottleneck.

Q: Is the Ultra preset playable at 4K with this combo?

A: The Ultra preset at 3840x2160 produces an average of 66 FPS, which is above 60 FPS but with no recorded minimum or maximum values. For a single-player Action RPG, this is playable, but the 85 FPS at High settings offers a smoother experience with minimal visual compromise.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS data, the Medium preset at 2560x1440 presents the best experience for this hardware, delivering 180 FPS average with a minimum of 153 FPS and maximum of 207 FPS. This configuration provides a wide safety margin above 144 Hz refresh rates, ensuring that even in the most demanding scenes, the frame rate does not drop below 150 FPS. The jump from Medium to High at 1440p costs 26 FPS (from 180 to 154), which is noticeable but still playable, while the jump from High to Ultra costs 34 FPS (from 154 to 120), which is a more significant reduction.

For users with 4K displays, the Medium preset is the recommended choice, as it averages 99 FPS with a minimum of 84 FPS. This keeps the game comfortably above 80 FPS even in the worst-case scenarios, while High drops to 85 FPS average and Ultra falls to 66 FPS. The difference between Medium and High at 4K is 14 FPS, which is a modest gain for the visual upgrade, but the Medium preset offers a better safety margin. At 1080p, all settings are viable, with even Ultra delivering 184 FPS, so the choice there depends on whether the user prioritizes maximum visual fidelity or maximum frame rate.

The data reveals that the Medium preset provides the most consistent performance across all resolutions, with the narrowest gap between average and minimum FPS. At 1080p Medium, the minimum is 235 FPS against an average of 276; at 1440p Medium, the minimum is 153 against 180; and at 4K Medium, the minimum is 84 against 99. This consistency suggests that Medium settings avoid the most punishing effects that cause frame-time spikes, making it the safest choice for a smooth gaming experience. For this reason, the recommendation is to use Medium settings at 1440p for most users, or Medium at 4K for those with higher-resolution displays, while reserving Ultra for users who prioritize visual quality over frame rate stability.