The Technomancer

The Technomancer, a 2016 Action RPG, places unusual demands on modern hardware due to its engine and rendering characteristics. When pairing the Intel Core i5-11400F with the AMD Radeon RX 9070, the benchmark data reveals a configuration that scales predictably with resolution, but the underlying balance between CPU and GPU shifts dramatically as settings change. This analysis examines the measured frame rates and component roles based on the available data.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is substantial, indicating that the RX 9070 becomes the primary limiting factor at higher resolutions. At High settings, the average frame rate falls from 141.6 FPS at 1920x1080 to 94.4 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of 47.2 FPS. Moving to 3840x2160, the average drops further to 51.1 FPS, which represents a 64% decrease from the 1080p result. This steep curve suggests that pixel throughput and memory bandwidth are heavily taxed at 4K, with the GPU's 644.6 GB/s bandwidth and 322.6 GPixel/s pixel rate struggling to maintain high frame rates.

The scaling pattern changes with lower settings, which reveals the CPU's role. At Low settings, the 1080p average is 212.7 FPS, dropping to 145.7 FPS at 1440p and 78.7 FPS at 4K. The percentage drop from 1080p to 1440p is smaller (31.5%) than at High settings (33.3%), but the absolute difference is larger. Interestingly, the jump from 1440p to 4K at Low settings (a 46% reduction) is less severe than at High settings (a 45.9% reduction), suggesting that the CPU can still feed frames efficiently at lower graphical loads.

At Ultra settings, the curve steepens considerably. The 1080p average of 115.1 FPS drops to 75.2 FPS at 1440p and only 39.9 FPS at 4K. This 65.3% reduction from 1080p to 4K indicates that the most demanding settings create a bottleneck that neither component can fully overcome, though the GPU's compute resources (36.13 TFLOPS FP32) are clearly saturated. The data suggests that at 1080p and 1440p, the i5-11400F can keep pace, but at 4K, the RX 9070 is the sole constraint.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the benchmark database, this combination ranks 553 out of 1656 tested combos for The Technomancer. This places it in the upper third of all configurations, indicating a competent pairing that outperforms the majority of systems tested. The percentile positioning is not explicitly stated for the combo, but the rank relative to the total suggests that roughly two-thirds of tested combinations deliver lower performance in this specific title.

The CPU itself sits at the 75th percentile among all processors, while the GPU is at the 79th percentile among all graphics cards. Both components are above average, but the GPU's slightly higher percentile suggests that the RX 9070 is relatively stronger than the i5-11400F when compared to their respective peers. This asymmetry likely explains why the combo performs better at higher resolutions where the GPU matters more, and relatively worse at 1080p where the CPU's 75th percentile standing becomes more relevant.

The nearest rivals for the CPU include the AMD Ryzen 7 5700U with a delta of 0%, the Intel Core i7-1260P at -0.2%, the Intel Core Ultra 7 164U at -0.2%, and the Intel Core i5-1240U at 0.2%. These negligible differences (all within 0.2%) indicate that the i5-11400F's processing power is essentially equivalent to these mobile and low-power alternatives in synthetic benchmarks, though their real-world gaming performance may differ. For the GPU, the nearest rivals are the NVIDIA A2 (-0.2%), NVIDIA Quadro GV100 (0.3%), AMD Radeon HD 7970 (0.7%), and AMD Radeon PRO W6400 (0.8%), all showing minimal score deltas that suggest the RX 9070's raw compute is comparable to these professional and older cards.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-11400F provides 6 cores and 12 threads, with a base clock of 2.60 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. This Rocket Lake architecture processor has a 12 MB shared L3 cache and supports DDR4 memory with a 51.2 GB/s bandwidth. In The Technomancer, the measured FPS at 1080p Low settings (212.7 FPS) demonstrates that the CPU can deliver frame rates well above typical display refresh rates, suggesting that the game's logic and draw call processing are not severely limiting at lower resolutions.

However, the CPU's 12-thread capability appears sufficient for this title, as evidenced by the 3DMark scores: 5619 for 16 threads and 5652 for max threads. The single-thread score of 868 and the Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2029 indicate that per-core performance is modest, but the game does not seem to be heavily dependent on single-threaded performance. The 8-thread score of 4691 is notably lower than the 16-thread score, suggesting that scaling beyond 8 threads provides diminishing returns, which aligns with a 6-core/12-thread design.

The data shows that at 1080p Medium settings, the average FPS is 170.3, which is still high but lower than Low settings. This 42.4 FPS drop from Low to Medium indicates that the GPU is beginning to take on more work, but the CPU can still maintain high throughput. At Ultra settings, the 1080p average drops to 115.1 FPS, which is a 44.8% reduction from Low. The CPU's boost clock of 4.40 GHz likely helps maintain these frame rates, but the architecture's 14 nm process and 65W TDP suggest that thermal constraints could limit sustained performance in prolonged gaming sessions, though this is not directly measured in the FPS data.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the average frame rates across settings are as follows: Low delivers 212.7 FPS, Medium delivers 170.3 FPS, High delivers 141.6 FPS, and Ultra delivers 115.1 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a consistent reduction, with each settings tier costing approximately 40-30 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium (42.4 FPS) is the largest single-step drop, indicating that the Medium preset introduces significant graphical effects that impact performance.

Moving to 2560x1440, the averages are 145.7 FPS at Low, 110.3 FPS at Medium, 94.4 FPS at High, and 75.2 FPS at Ultra. The reduction from 1080p to 1440p ranges from 31.5% at Low to 34.6% at Ultra, showing a relatively uniform scaling across settings. The absolute differences between settings at 1440p are smaller than at 1080p, with Low to Medium costing 35.4 FPS, Medium to High costing 15.9 FPS, and High to Ultra costing 19.2 FPS.

At 3840x2160, the averages drop significantly: 78.7 FPS at Low, 61.5 FPS at Medium, 51.1 FPS at High, and 39.9 FPS at Ultra. The Low to Medium drop is 17.2 FPS, Medium to High is 10.4 FPS, and High to Ultra is 11.2 FPS. The 4K results show that even at Low settings, the frame rate is below 80 FPS, indicating that the GPU's 16 GB of GDDR6 memory and 256-bit bus are saturated at this resolution. The Ultra preset at 4K, at 39.9 FPS, is barely playable for smooth action, confirming that this resolution is too demanding for the highest settings.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 is built on the RDNA 4.0 architecture with a Navi 48 chip, manufactured on a 4 nm process by TSMC. It features 3584 shading units, 224 texture mapping units, and 128 raster output units, with a boost clock of 2520 MHz and a game clock of 2070 MHz. The 16 GB of GDDR6 memory operates at 20.1 Gbps effective, providing a bandwidth of 644.6 GB/s across a 256-bit bus. These specifications position the card well above average, as indicated by its 79th percentile standing.

The GPU's compute capabilities are substantial, with 36.13 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and a texture rate of 564.5 GTexel/s. In The Technomancer, the measured FPS at 1080p Ultra (115.1 FPS) suggests that the GPU is not the bottleneck at this resolution, as the i5-11400F can likely deliver frames faster than this. However, at 4K Ultra, the 39.9 FPS result indicates that the GPU's pixel rate of 322.6 GPixel/s is insufficient for the demands of 2160p with maximum settings.

The memory configuration plays a critical role at higher resolutions. The 16 GB capacity is more than sufficient for this 2016 title, but the 644.6 GB/s bandwidth is strained at 4K, particularly at Ultra settings where the average FPS drops below 40. The passmark G3D score of 25381 and the 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 6290 confirm that the GPU is capable of modern workloads, but The Technomancer's specific rendering paths—likely involving deferred shading and heavy post-processing—tax the memory subsystem more than raw compute. The direct comparison with rivals shows the RX 9070's performance is within 0.8% of the AMD Radeon PRO W6400 and 0.7% of the HD 7970, indicating that the card's architecture does not provide a dramatic advantage in this title's specific workload.