The Technomancer

The Intel Core i5-10400F and AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX combination delivers measured performance in The Technomancer across three resolutions and four settings presets, with a combo rank of 6 out of 3696 tested combos. This pairing pairs a 2020 desktop processor with a 2022 flagship GPU, and the resulting frame rate data reveals a game that is heavily GPU-bound at higher loads and resolution, while the CPU provides ample headroom for a game released in 2016.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS shows a clear, monotonic drop as resolution increases, but the magnitude of that drop differs by preset. On High settings, the average frame rate goes from 242 FPS at 1920x1080, to 209 FPS at 2560x1440, and then to 140 FPS at 3840x2160. That represents a 13.6% reduction from 1080p to 1440p, a 33% reduction from 1440p to 4K, and a total 42.1% reduction from 1080p to 4K. On Low settings, the same progression is 268, 244, and 188 FPS. The drop from 1440p to 4K is 23% here, less steep than the High preset, indicating that low settings reduce the pixel-bound load enough to shift some of the bottleneck toward the CPU.

At Medium settings the pattern is similar: 252 FPS at 1080p, 229 at 1440p, and 157 at 4K. The minimum FPS for Medium, recorded at 214 at 1080p, 195 at 1440p, and 134 at 4K, show that the sustained floor also scales with resolution. The Ultra preset produces the largest resolution penalty, with averages of 232 (1080p), 185 (1440p), and 124 (4K). The step from 1440p to 4K at Ultra is worth only 33 FPS (a 32.2% loss), and the overall 1080p-to-4K drop totals 46.6%. For any setting, the move from 1440p to 4K always costs more than the move from 1080p to 1440p when expressed as a percentage. That nonlinear scaling is what would be expected when resolution becomes the dominant load factor near the top of the GPU's limits on 4K.

The data indicates that the GPU becomes the primary bottleneck at 4K, while at 1080p the processor is more than capable of delivering frame rates near the top of what this particular GPU can generate in this game. For instance, at 1080p Low the measurement reaches 268 FPS, but the 4K Low result is 188 FPS, meaning a full 80% of the resolution-based frame collapse occurs because of pixel fill and shading work scaling with 4x the pixel count. This shows the RX 7900 XTX scaling well enough to maintain triple-digit averages even at 4K, though the percent drop is consistent with a GPU that is pushing 61.39 TFLOPS FP32 and 479.6 GPixel/s.

GPU Role

The Radeon RX 7900 XTX carries 24 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 384-bit bus, achieving 960.0 GB/s bandwidth. The memory clock is listed at 2500 MHz with 20 Gbps effective speed. The base clock is 1929 MHz, and the boost clock reaches 2498 MHz, with a game-specific frequency of 2365 MHz. The GPU has 6144 shading units, 384 texture mapping units, and 192 ROPs. Its measured benchmark results include a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 6841, a Geekbench OpenCL score of 50465, and a Geekbench Vulkan score of 85612. In PassMark, the G3D score is 31238, GPU Compute is 17689, and DirectX 12 (unclear) is 131.

The GPU's nearest rivals, as given by average benchmark score, include the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3 GB (a deltaPct of 0.4%), the NVIDIA Quadro K5200 (-1%), the AMD FirePro D300 (-1.2%), and the NVIDIA TITAN Xp (1.2%). The closeness of these scores—within 1.2% of each other—places the RX 7900 XTX in a performance cluster that, in The Technomancer, is sufficient to push frame rates far beyond 60 FPS at every resolution tested, up to 4K Ultra at 124 FPS. The 24 GB VRAM is far more than a 2016 Action RPG like The Technomancer requires; the game's resource demands are low relative to modern titles, so the VRAM capacity does not appear to be a constraint in any of the measured rows. The GPU's RDNA 3 architecture and 5 nm process help explain its power and frame rates, but the game itself predates the GPU's release (the GPU launched in late 2022, the game in June 2016), so the measured data reflects the GPU's headroom on an older game.

The measured FPS at 4K Ultra drops to 124 FPS average, which is still well above the gameplay floor for most displays. The lack of min and max FPS entries for most rows limits visibility into frame-time stability, but the Medium preset did record a min of 134 FPS at 4K, which is still above 60 FPS, and max of 181. That min/max spread of 47 points shows a normal variance. At 1080p Medium the min was 214 and max 290, and at 1440p the min 195 and max 264.

How This Combo Ranks

This CPU+GPU pairing sits at rank 6 out of a pool of 3696 combos tested in The Technomancer. The rank is overall in the game data. Top rank means it outperforms the vast majority of other tested combinations. The complete frame data indicates that the 6th-place position in a 3696 combo set is achieved primarily through the GPU's ability to sustain high FPS even at 4K, with a thoroughly adequate CPU keeping up even at 1080p Low where the CPU can still introduce its own limits. The exact rank in this game—6th—puts this pairing in a select group, likely dominated by stronger CPUs paired with the same or higher-end GPUs. The gap between the overall benchmark scores for the CPU and GPU implies that the weakest component in this combo is the processor, but the data shows that even the CPU's nearest rivals with similar average scores are already in the same tier.

In this context, the 6th-rank result is not surprising given the CPU is an active processor with an architectural baseline of 14 nm while the GPU is a cutting‑edge 5 nm part. Still, the combo beats the vast majority of tested options, even those with different CPU generations and GPUs.

Settings Recommendations

Based purely on the measured output, each resolution has a different set of playable settings. At 1920x1080, even Ultra is highly playable at 232 FPS average, while Low hits 268 and Medium yields 252. There is no preset that results in less than 232 FPS at 1080p, so any setting is excellent. The gap between Medium (252) and Ultra (232) is only 20 FPS, so people can run Ultra without much penalty. At 2560x1440, Ultra still gives 185 FPS, Medium 229, High 209, and Low 244. All of these are still fluid. The biggest gap at 1440p is Ultra to Low, a 59 FPS spread, but every preset is clearly above 144Hz threshold.

The most practical outcome for the "best experience per the measured rows" is to take Ultra at 4K. It delivers 124 FPS average, which is above 120, while High produces 140, a difference of 28 FPS—a meaningful drop but not catastrophic. The Low setting at 4K gives 188, so there's a delta of 48 FPS between the Low and Ultra presets at this resolution. If wanting to target the best frame rate without caring about visual quality, Low at 4K gives the most headroom. If precise target is 120 FPS, Medium at 4K (157 FPS) also fits within a comfortable headroom. For consistency, the Medium preset provides the most documented stability, with min/max values locked for all three resolutions—134/181 at 4K, 195/264 at 1440p, and 214/290 at 1080p. That is the only preset that provides a measured minimum in the dataset, so it offers the smallest stability unknown. Therefore, Medium is the strongest recommendation for 4K gaming, as it provides 157 FPS and a min of 134.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The data collects averages, with minima and maxima only for the Medium preset. For 1920x1080:

• Low: 268 FPS avg
• Medium: 252 FPS avg (min 214, max 290)
• High: 242 FPS avg
• Ultra: 232 FPS avg

At 2560x1440:

• Low: 244
• Medium: 229 (min 195, max 264)
• High: 209
• Ultra: 185

At 3840x2160:

• Low: 188
• Medium: 157 (min 134, max 181)
• High: 140
• Ultra: 124

The absolute maximum measured is 290 FPS (1080p Medium max), and the absolute lowest is 124 FPS (4K Ultra). The difference between the highest and lowest measured average across the 12 rows is 144 FPS. In each resolution, the Low setting is always above Medium, High, and Ultra. The order is consistent: Low > Medium > High > Ultra in all three resolutions. This is the classic progression of preset pulls, with the differences growing as resolution increases—at 1080p the spread between Low and Ultra is 268 - 232 = 36 FPS; the 1440p spread is 244-185 = 59 FPS; the 4K spread is 188 - 124 = 64 FPS. The increasing spread indicates that the higher settings demand more of the GPU as the fill-rate load rises, which is precisely why 4K Ultra shows the biggest cost.

FAQ

Q: Which resolution gives the best average FPS for high settings?

A: At High settings, the 1920x1080 preset yields 242 FPS, 2560x1440 gives 209 FPS, and 3840x2160 yields 140 FPS. So 1080p High delivers the highest average frame rate in that preset.

Q: Is Ultra playable at 4K?

A: Yes, the measured average at 3840x2160 with Ultra is 124 FPS, which is above 60 FPS and even above 114 FPS. There are no min or max values given for Ultra, but the average alone indicates a positive margin over standard 60 Hz displays.

Q: Which setting provides minimum frame rate data?

A: The Medium preset is the only one with min and max values. At 1080p, the minimum is 214 FPS and maximum 290; at 1440p min is 195 and max 264; and at 4K, min is 134 and max 181.

Q: How much frame rate does lowering resolution from 1440p to 4K cost at Medium?

A: At Medium settings, moving from 2560x1440 (229 FPS) to 3840x2160 (157 FPS) results in a reduction of 72 FPS. The 1080p Medium value is 252 FPS, so the collective 1080p-to-4K drop on Medium is 95 FPS.

Q: What is the strongest difference between Low and Ultra at 4K?

A: The Ultra preset at 4K gives 124 FPS, while Low gives 188, a difference of 64 FPS. That's the largest low-to-ultra gap of any resolution.

Q: Does the game maintain over 60 FPS in any configuration?

A: Yes, every single measured setting and resolution yields an average FPS at or above 124, which is over twice the standard 60 FPS performance target.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-10400F uses 6 cores and 12 threads on the 14 nm Comet Lake architecture, with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost frequency of 4.30 GHz. It has a 65W TDP, 12 MB shared L3 cache, and 64 KB of L1 and 256 KB of L2 per core. Its memory system is dual-channel DDR4 with a 42.7 GB/s bandwidth, and it uses PCIe Gen 3. The CPU's release date is April 2020.

At a general benchmark level, the CPU's percentil of percentileVsAllCpus is 68 places, meaning it is over the median of all processors. In 3DMark, the single-thread score is 688, and 16-thread score 4748. In Cinebench R23, multi-core is 10283, single-core 1451. In Geekbench multi and single are 6257 and 1420, respectively. In PassMark, its multi-thread is 12115, and single-thread is 2541 for both variants. The nearest rival CPUs by average benchmark score include the Intel Xeon 6756E (deltaPct 0.2%), the Intel Core 7 160UL (-0.3), the AMD EPYC 7552 (0.5), and the AMD Ryzen 3 7320C (-0.6). These show that the i5-10400F's ranking in synthetic CPU benchmarks is just about the same as these server or low-power processors, but all of them fall very close within 1%.

In The Technomancer, the CPU's role is to keep the GPU fed. The highest measured 1080p result is 268 FPS, which is higher than any 4K result. This suggests that at lower resolutions the CPU is capable of driving such rates because the game from 2016 does not exert heavy CPU stress; the 6 cores and 12 threads are more than enough. At 4K, the average FPS drop to 124-188 means the CPU is not the thorn. The cpu has a memory bandwidth of 42.7 GB/s, but this game came out in 2016 and likely does not saturate that. So the CPU is stable controlling factor for this action.

Thus, the CPU is not the limiting factor in this title. The largest evidence is that 1080p Low yields 268 FPS, which is the same category as the highest 270 range. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see very low FPS or a plateau, but the game reaches near the top of the GPU's capability at 1080. The CPU only matters for total frame consistency, but the min/max lack of data for many presets means we cannot analyze CPU clock effect of frame time. Still, its benchmark scores show it is an average 10th generation desktop part.

Given the game's age and the CPU's strong single-thread performance (Cinebench R23 single-core 1451) and moderate multi-core (Cinebench R23 multi 10283), it does not hold back the RX 7900 XTX in any row. The 4K Ultra at 124 FPS is a solid proof that the pairing has excellent balance. And the same CPU in a 4k low setting produces 188 FPS, which fewer processors could achieve when paired with this GPU. The conclusion from the frame data is that the i5-10400F is sufficient to saturate their GPU in this game, and the only way to get more FPS would be to case the resolution limit synchronized.