The Technomancer

The Technomancer, a 2016 Action RPG, presents an interesting scaling challenge for the Intel Core i5-12400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 pairing. The measured data reveals a system that is overwhelmingly GPU-bound at higher resolutions but transitions to a CPU-limited scenario at 1080p, where the combination's raw power produces exceptionally high frame rates. This analysis breaks down the optimal settings, component roles, and scaling behavior based strictly on the provided benchmark results.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data shows a clear progression of performance across the four quality presets at each resolution. At 4K (3840x2160), the Ultra preset delivers an average of 61.6 FPS, which is playable but leaves little headroom for demanding scenes. The High preset at the same resolution produces 78.5 FPS, an improvement of approximately 27% over Ultra. However, the most compelling option at 4K is the Medium preset, which achieves 91.8 FPS, representing a 49% uplift over Ultra while still maintaining a substantial visual quality increase over the Low preset's 118.1 FPS.

At 1440p (2560x1440), the situation becomes more forgiving. The High preset delivers a smooth 141.6 FPS, while Medium reaches 165 FPS. The Ultra preset still manages 107.8 FPS, which is comfortable for high-refresh-rate monitors. The Low preset's 217.3 FPS is excessive for most display hardware and indicates diminishing returns from dropping visual fidelity.

At 1080p (1920x1080), all presets produce triple-digit frame rates, with even Ultra hitting 167.2 FPS. The spread between Low (251.8 FPS) and Ultra (167.2 FPS) is relatively modest in percentage terms, suggesting the CPU is beginning to limit performance at this resolution. The data indicates that the best overall experience is achieved by selecting the High preset at 1440p, which balances the 141.6 FPS average with the visual quality that a flagship GPU like the RTX 4090 is expected to deliver. For users prioritizing maximum smoothness on 4K displays, the Medium preset at 91.8 FPS offers the best compromise, as it keeps frame rates well above 60 FPS while avoiding the steep performance penalty of Ultra.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with a 5 nm process and houses 76,300 million transistors on a 609 mm² die. Its 24 GB of GDDR6X memory across a 384-bit bus provides 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth, which is substantial for a game from 2016 that was not designed with such modern hardware in mind. The GPU's base clock is 2235 MHz with a boost clock of 2520 MHz, and it maintains a strong presence in synthetic benchmarks, scoring 38,194 in Passmark G3D and 38194 in the same test, placing it in the 91st percentile of all GPUs.

The measured frame rates reveal that the RTX 4090 is the primary performance driver at higher resolutions. At 4K, the transition from Low to Ultra settings costs 56.5 FPS, dropping from 118.1 to 61.6 FPS. This 48% reduction in frame rate across the preset range indicates that the GPU's shading units (16,384) and texture mapping units (512) are being fully exercised by the game's rendering workload at this resolution. The 82.58 TFLOPS of FP32 compute capacity allows the card to handle the game's effects-heavy combat and environment rendering with ease at lower presets.

The GPU's performance relative to its nearest rivals is notable. Its average benchmark score of 66,473 sits just 0.4% below the NVIDIA Tesla T4's 66,733 and 0.5% above the NVIDIA Tesla P40's 66,127. This places it in a performance band where small percentage differences separate top-tier hardware. The RTX 4090's percentile ranking of 91 indicates that it outperforms the vast majority of GPUs in the database, and its 24 GB frame buffer is far beyond what The Technomancer requires, meaning capacity is never a constraint in these measurements.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400 presents a 6-core, 12-thread configuration based on the Alder Lake architecture, manufactured on Intel's 10 nm process. Its base clock of 2.50 GHz boosts to 4.40 GHz, and the 18 MB of shared L3 cache provides adequate bandwidth for game logic. The CPU's benchmark results show a strong single-thread score of 2,249 in Cinebench R23, which is critical for older game engines that often rely heavily on a few primary threads.

In this game, the CPU's role becomes increasingly apparent as resolution decreases. At 1080p, the frame rate ceiling is clearly limited by the processor. The Low preset produces 251.8 FPS, but moving to Ultra only drops this to 167.2 FPS, a 34% reduction. This relatively small spread at 1080p compared to the 48% drop at 4K indicates that the CPU is holding the system back from reaching even higher frame rates. The i5-12400's maximum-thread 3DMark score of 5,890 and Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 15,935 suggest it has ample headroom for this game's threading model, which likely uses fewer than 12 threads effectively.

The CPU's average benchmark score of 19,850 places it in the 77th percentile of all processors. Its nearest rivals show how tightly grouped this performance tier is: it is 0.1% above the Intel Core i7-9700 (19,831) and 0.4% above the Intel Core i5-11600K (19,771), while sitting 0.2% below the Intel Core i7-8700 (19,894) and 0.4% below the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5995WX (19,928). These sub-1% differences confirm that the i5-12400 is competitively positioned for gaming workloads, though it does not dominate its peers in synthetic benchmarks.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution to play The Technomancer with this hardware?

A: The data suggests 1440p with the High preset is optimal, delivering 141.6 FPS. This provides a strong balance of visual quality and performance, well above the 107.8 FPS achieved at Ultra and the 165 FPS at Medium.

Q: Does the RTX 4090 bottleneck the i5-12400 in this game?

A: At 4K, the GPU is the primary limiting factor, as frame rates drop from 118.1 FPS at Low to 61.6 FPS at Ultra. However, at 1080p, the CPU becomes the constraint, evidenced by the smaller performance gap between presets (251.8 to 167.2 FPS).

Q: How does the i5-12400 compare to its nearest rival CPUs in overall performance?

A: The i5-12400's average benchmark score of 19,850 is 0.1% higher than the Intel Core i7-9700's 19,831 and 0.4% higher than the Intel Core i5-11600K's 19,771. It trails the Intel Core i7-8700 by 0.2% and the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5995WX by 0.4%.

Q: Is 24 GB of VRAM necessary for this game?

A: The RTX 4090's 24 GB GDDR6X memory is far beyond the requirements of The Technomancer. The measured frame rates show no indication of memory capacity limiting performance at any resolution or preset, as even the 4K Ultra preset maintains 61.6 FPS.

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

A: The Low preset at 4K delivers 118.1 FPS, while Ultra delivers 61.6 FPS. This represents a 56.5 FPS reduction, or approximately 48% lower performance, indicating the GPU's rendering workload scales significantly with preset quality.

Q: How does the RTX 4090's benchmark score compare to its listed rivals?

A: The RTX 4090's average score of 66,473 is 0.4% below the NVIDIA Tesla T4's 66,733 and 0.9% below the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56's 67,097. It is 0.5% above the NVIDIA Tesla P40's 66,127 and 1.3% above the NVIDIA Quadro P6000's 67,320.

Resolution Scaling

The measured data across 1080p, 1440p, and 4K reveals how the system's performance scales with resolution and what that indicates about the limiting component. At the High preset, frame rates decline from 213.1 FPS at 1080p to 141.6 FPS at 1440p, a 34% reduction, and then to 78.5 FPS at 4K, a further 45% reduction. This progressive decline shows that the GPU is increasingly stressed as pixel count rises, with the 4K resolution demanding roughly 2.7 times the pixel throughput of 1080p.

The Low preset tells a different story. At 1080p, the system achieves 251.8 FPS, but this only drops to 217.3 FPS at 1440p (a 14% reduction) and 118.1 FPS at 4K (a 46% reduction from 1080p). The relatively small drop from 1080p to 1440p at Low settings indicates that the CPU is limiting performance at these lower settings, as the GPU has enough headroom to handle the increased resolution without significant frame rate loss. This is consistent with the i5-12400's single-thread performance of 2,249 in Cinebench R23, which becomes the bottleneck when the GPU is underutilized.

The Ultra preset shows the most consistent scaling pattern: 167.2 FPS at 1080p, 107.8 FPS at 1440p (a 36% drop), and 61.6 FPS at 4K (a 43% drop from 1080p). This consistent decline indicates that at Ultra settings, the GPU remains the primary limiting factor across all resolutions. The RTX 4090's 443.5 GPixel/s pixel rate and 1,290.2 GTexel/s texture rate are heavily taxed by the game's Ultra preset features at higher resolutions.

The data confirms that The Technomancer is a GPU-bound title at standard resolutions and settings. The RTX 4090's performance percentile of 91 and its position 0.4% below the Tesla T4 in average score suggest it is a top-tier card, but the game's 2016-era engine does not fully utilize its modern feature set. The i5-12400, with its 77th percentile ranking and scores tightly clustered within 0.4% of its nearest rivals, provides sufficient processing power for this game, though it does cap performance at 1080p Low settings. Users seeking maximum frame rates should opt for 1440p High, while those with 4K displays will find Medium preset the best balance at 91.8 FPS.