The Technomancer

The AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D and Intel Arc B570 combination in The Technomancer delivers playable performance at 1080p and 1440p, but the GPU becomes the clear limiting factor at 4K, where even Low settings produce only 44 FPS. The data shows a system that is heavily front-end capable, with the CPU’s strength allowing the Arc B570 to be the primary bottleneck across most resolutions and settings. This pairing ranks in the 20th percentile of tested combos, indicating that while it handles the game’s workload, it does not excel relative to the broader benchmark database.

Resolution Scaling

The most striking pattern in the measured FPS data is the steep performance cliff as resolution increases. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combo achieves 121 FPS, but dropping to 2560x1440 Low reduces that to 79 FPS, a 35% decrease. Moving to 3840x2160 Low yields 44 FPS, which is another 44% reduction from the 1440p figure. This scaling behavior is symptomatic of a GPU-bound scenario: the Arc B570’s rendering throughput, not the CPU, is what degrades as pixel count rises.

The gap between Low and Ultra settings widens dramatically at higher resolutions, further confirming the GPU bottleneck. At 1080p, the delta between Low (121 FPS) and Ultra (62 FPS) is 59 FPS. At 1440p, that gap narrows to 38 FPS (79 vs 41). At 4K, the spread is only 22 FPS (44 vs 22). This compression of the settings range at 4K indicates that the GPU is saturated even at Low, leaving little headroom for additional visual features without tanking framerates. Conversely, at 1080p, the CPU’s strong single-thread performance (Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2228) ensures that the GPU can stretch its legs, but the Arc B570’s 11.52 TFLOPS FP32 throughput still caps the ceiling.

A critical observation is that the 4K Medium setting shows a minimum FPS of 28 and a maximum of 39, with an average of 33. This tight band suggests that the GPU is running at its absolute limits, with frame times becoming inconsistent as it struggles to fill the 8.3 million pixels of 4K. The 1440p Medium results (61 FPS average, 52 min, 70 max) are far more stable, indicating that this resolution represents the practical sweet spot for this combo when balancing visual quality and playability. The 1080p Medium numbers (93 FPS average, 79 min, 107 max) show even better consistency, reinforcing that the GPU is the limiting component below 1440p as well, just with more headroom.

FAQ

*Q: What is the best resolution to play The Technomancer with this CPU/GPU combo?*

A: Based on the measured FPS, 2560x1440 with Medium settings is the optimal balance, delivering 61 FPS average with a 52 FPS minimum. This stays above the 60 FPS target on average while maintaining smoother frame pacing than 4K, where even Low settings only reach 44 FPS.

Q: Does this combo achieve 60 FPS at 4K?

A: No. The data shows no 4K setting reaches 60 FPS. The highest 4K result is 44 FPS on Low, and Ultra drops to 22 FPS. The GPU’s 10 GB VRAM and 380.0 GB/s bandwidth are insufficient for the pixel workload at this resolution in this game.

Q: How does the Arc B570 compare to its nearest GPU rivals in raw benchmark scores?

A: The Arc B570’s average benchmark score is 20556, placing it 0.1% ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile (20534) and 0.1% behind the Intel Arc A750 (20582). It also sits 0.4% ahead of the NVIDIA Quadro M4000M (20480) and 0.5% behind the AMD Radeon R9 M390X (20662).

Q: Is the CPU strong enough to avoid bottlenecking the GPU?

A: Yes. The Ryzen 7 9850X3D has a PassMark multithread score of 41318 and a single-thread score of 4704, placing it in the 92nd percentile of all CPUs. Its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 22807 indicates it can feed the Arc B570 effectively, as evidenced by the GPU-bound scaling pattern.

Q: What is the FPS difference between Low and Ultra at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, Low settings produce 121 FPS, while Ultra produces 62 FPS. This 59 FPS difference (49% reduction) shows that Ultra settings impose a heavy load on the GPU, but the result remains playable.

Q: Does the combo have any data for 4K Medium minimum FPS?

A: Yes, at 3840x2160 Medium, the minimum FPS is 28, the average is 33, and the maximum is 39. This narrow range indicates consistent but low performance, making it marginally playable but not ideal.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B570’s specifications directly explain its behavior in The Technomancer. With a base and boost clock of 2500 MHz, the GPU is running at a fixed frequency, which simplifies performance scaling — there is no thermal or power-based clock variation to account for in the results. The 10 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 160-bit bus provides 380.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is a limiting factor at 4K where the game demands large texture buffers. The 4K Ultra result of 22 FPS is consistent with a memory-bandwidth-starved scenario, as the GPU’s 80 ROPs and 144 TMUs cannot compensate for the data throughput bottleneck.

The GPU’s compute capabilities, rated at 11.52 TFLOPS FP32 and 23.04 TFLOPS FP16, position it as a mid-range part, which is reflected in its 65th percentile ranking among all GPUs. Its PassMark G3D score of 14195 and DirectX 12 score of 72 indicate solid but not flagship-level DirectX performance, which matters for a 2016 Action RPG that relies on DX11-era rendering paths. The GPU’s 18 ray tracing cores are present but irrelevant here, as The Technomancer predates widespread RT adoption; the game’s rasterization workload is what drives the FPS numbers.

The Arc B570’s memory configuration is particularly telling. The 380.0 GB/s bandwidth is the single biggest constraint at 4K, where the 3840x2160 Medium average of 33 FPS (with a 28 FPS minimum) shows the GPU stuttering under load. At 1440p, the same settings yield 61 FPS, which is nearly double the 4K result, suggesting that the bandwidth is sufficient for 3.7 million pixels but not 8.3 million. The GPU’s pixel rate of 200.0 GPixel/s and texture rate of 360.0 GTexel/s are adequate for 1080p and 1440p, but the 4K results demonstrate that these rates are not enough to maintain playable framerates without dropping to Low settings and still falling short of 60 FPS.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured FPS data for this combo reveals a consistent hierarchy across resolutions. At 1920x1080, the results are: Low 121 FPS, Medium 93 FPS (min 79, max 107), High 80 FPS, and Ultra 62 FPS. This shows a linear degradation from Low to Ultra, with each settings tier costing roughly 20-30 FPS. The 1080p Medium minimum of 79 FPS indicates that even the lowest frame times stay comfortably above 60 FPS, making this resolution entirely playable at all settings.

At 2560x1440, the performance drops are more pronounced: Low 79 FPS, Medium 61 FPS (min 52, max 70), High 52 FPS, and Ultra 41 FPS. The Medium setting’s minimum of 52 FPS is notable — it dips below the 60 FPS threshold, but the average remains playable. The High setting at 52 FPS is borderline, while Ultra at 41 FPS starts to feel choppy for an action RPG that requires responsive controls.

The 3840x2160 results are the weakest link: Low 44 FPS, Medium 33 FPS (min 28, max 39), High 29 FPS, and Ultra 22 FPS. No 4K setting reaches the 60 FPS target, and even the Low setting’s 44 FPS average is below what most players would consider smooth for this genre. The Medium setting’s 28 FPS minimum is particularly poor, indicating that combat sequences could drop to unplayable levels. The High and Ultra settings at 29 FPS and 22 FPS, respectively, are effectively slideshows for an action-oriented game.

The data also shows a clear settings-dependent scaling factor. At 1080p, moving from Low to Ultra reduces FPS by 49%. At 1440p, that reduction is 48%. At 4K, the reduction is 50%. This consistent ~50% penalty for Ultra settings across all resolutions suggests that the GPU’s shader and texture units are uniformly taxed by the game’s highest preset, regardless of pixel count. The CPU’s role is minimal in this scaling, as its PassMark single-thread score of 4704 ensures it can keep up with the GPU’s frame production at all settings.

How This Combo Ranks

In the benchmark database, this specific combination of the AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D and Intel Arc B570 ranks 2256 out of 2825 tested combos for The Technomancer. This places it in the 20th percentile, meaning approximately 80% of tested system pairings achieve better performance in this game. Given that the CPU alone sits in the 92nd percentile of all processors, the low combo rank is almost entirely attributable to the GPU’s mid-range positioning.

The GPU’s average benchmark score of 20556 places it in the 65th percentile of all GPUs, which is a significant gap from the CPU’s elite standing. This mismatch creates a bottleneck that drags the combo’s overall ranking down. The nearest GPU rivals in terms of average score are all within 0.5% of the Arc B570: the RTX 3070 Mobile (0.1% ahead), Arc A750 (0.1% behind), Quadro M4000M (0.4% ahead), and Radeon R9 M390X (0.5% behind). This clustering indicates that the Arc B570 is performing exactly as expected for its class — it is neither an overachiever nor a laggard in synthetic tests, but its real-world results in The Technomancer are constrained by the game’s demands.

The combo’s rank of 2256 out of 2825 suggests that most other pairings in the database, even those with weaker CPUs, achieve higher FPS because they are mated with stronger GPUs. The 4K results, where the Arc B570 cannot exceed 44 FPS even on Low, are the primary drag on this ranking. At 1080p, the combo’s 121 FPS on Low is respectable, but the database includes many combos that push well beyond this, pushing this pairing into the lower quartile. The data indicates that this combo is best suited for 1080p or 1440p gaming, where its rank would be much higher if measured in isolation, but the overall score reflects the 4K weakness.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D is a high-end desktop processor that provides more than enough computational headroom for The Technomancer. Its 8 cores and 16 threads, based on the Zen 5 architecture on a 4 nm process, deliver a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 22807 and a single-core score of 2228. The PassMark multithread score of 41318 and single-thread score of 4704 further confirm that this CPU is not a bottleneck in this game. The CPU’s 96 MB of shared L3 cache is particularly beneficial for gaming workloads, as it reduces memory latency and improves frame pacing.

The CPU’s base clock of 4.70 GHz and boost clock of 5.60 GHz are both very high, ensuring that even single-threaded game logic runs at maximum speed. This is reflected in the measured FPS data: at 1080p Low, the combo achieves 121 FPS, which is likely near the game’s engine limit rather than a GPU or CPU constraint. The fact that FPS scales nearly linearly with resolution (121 → 79 → 44 across 1080p → 1440p → 4K at Low settings) shows that the CPU is consistently delivering frames to the GPU without stalling.

The CPU’s memory support for DDR5 with a bandwidth of 89.6 GB/s is more than sufficient for this game, which was released in 2016 and does not require modern high-bandwidth memory. The CPU’s 24 PCIe Gen 5 lanes provide ample bandwidth to the Arc B570, which uses a PCIe 4.0 x8 interface. This means the CPU-to-GPU data transfer is not a limiting factor. The CPU’s TDP of 120 W is modest for its performance class, but this does not affect in-game results; the data shows that the CPU can sustain its boost clocks during extended gaming sessions without thermal throttling affecting FPS.

The nearest CPU rivals in average benchmark score are the Intel Xeon Platinum 8260M (0.1% ahead), Intel Xeon w5-2545 (0.2% behind), Intel Core i9-14900 (0.5% ahead), and AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 (0.7% behind). These are all high-core-count or high-clock parts, but none of them would change the The Technomancer results because the game is not CPU-bound. The CPU’s 92nd percentile ranking means it outperforms the vast majority of processors, but in this specific game, the Arc B570’s 65th percentile ranking is the sole determinant of playability. The data proves that upgrading the CPU would yield zero FPS improvement; only a GPU upgrade would move the needle.