The Technomancer

The Technomancer, a 2016 Action RPG, presents a unique benchmark scenario for the Intel Core i5-12400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 combination. The measured data shows a system that delivers high frame rates across the board, yet the scaling patterns reveal a complex interaction between a modern, high-end GPU and a capable mid-range CPU from an older generation. This analysis examines the resolution scaling, component roles, and overall ranking of this specific pairing.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS data from 1080p to 4K clearly illustrates the shifting bottleneck as resolution increases. At 1080p with High settings, the combo achieves an average of 211.9 FPS. Moving to 1440p High reduces this to 147.4 FPS, a drop of approximately 30%. At 4K High, the average falls to 79.4 FPS, which is another 46% reduction from the 1440p figure. This steep decline from 1440p to 4K indicates that the workload is becoming increasingly GPU-bound at higher pixel counts.

However, the low-resolution results are more revealing about the system's balance. At 1080p Low, the average FPS is 249.6, which is likely approaching the engine's or CPU's practical limit for frame generation. The scaling from 1080p Low to 1080p Ultra (178.1 FPS) shows only a 28.6% performance penalty for maxing out settings, a relatively modest cost. At 1440p, the Ultra preset yields 117 FPS, while Low nets 216.2 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra at 1440p is 45.8%, which is larger than at 1080p, suggesting the GPU is starting to become the primary limiter.

The 4K results show a clear GPU constraint. The difference between Low (122.8 FPS) and Ultra (64.9 FPS) is a massive 47.2% performance hit, demonstrating that the RTX 5090's raw processing power is being fully taxed by the higher resolution and settings. The data indicates that at 1080p, the CPU is the limiting component, as evidenced by the relatively small FPS gap between Low and Ultra settings. At 4K, the GPU becomes the definitive bottleneck, with the CPU's influence waning as the resolution increases.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is a Blackwell 2.0 architecture part with a 32 GB GDDR7 memory pool on a 512-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s. Its core clocks are listed at 2017 MHz base and 2407 MHz boost. In the context of The Technomancer, a game from 2016, this hardware is massively overprovisioned, yet the benchmark results show it is still the limiting factor at 4K.

The GPU's percentile ranking is 94, placing it in the top tier of all GPUs. Its average benchmark score of 84306 puts it slightly ahead of its nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D, by a deltaPct of 0.1%. The RTX 5090's performance in synthetic tests like Passmark G3D (39650) and Geekbench OpenCL (380114) confirms its high compute potential. In this game, the GPU's role is primarily to handle the rendering load, and the data shows that its massive memory bandwidth and compute throughput are not fully utilized until 4K resolution.

The measured FPS at 4K Ultra (64.9 FPS) is the only result that dips below the 60 FPS threshold, indicating that even this flagship GPU struggles with the most demanding settings on this older title. The fact that the RTX 5090 can produce 249.6 FPS at 1080p Low suggests that the game's engine has a hard frame limit or is severely CPU-bound at lower resolutions, as the GPU's capabilities are far beyond what is being asked of it. The data shows that the RTX 5090's role shifts from being a performance ceiling at 1080p to a necessary component for playable 4K Ultra frame rates.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400 is a 6-core, 12-thread Alder Lake processor with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. It features an 18 MB shared L3 cache and supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory. With a percentile rank of 77 among all CPUs, it sits in the upper mid-range tier. Its performance in Cinebench R23 (15935 multi-core, 2249 single-core) is respectable, but its nearest rivals, such as the Intel Core i7-9700 (deltaPct 0.1%) and the Intel Core i7-8700 (deltaPct -0.2%), show that it is closely matched with older high-end chips.

In this benchmark, the CPU's role is most evident at 1080p. The data shows that the FPS at 1080p Low (249.6) is only 18% higher than at 1080p Ultra (178.1), and the jump from 1080p High (211.9) to 1080p Low (249.6) is just 17.8%. This relatively small delta suggests that the CPU is struggling to feed the GPU more frames, creating a bottleneck that prevents the RTX 5090 from reaching its full potential at lower resolutions.

The CPU's performance ceiling appears to be around 250 FPS, regardless of GPU load. This is confirmed by the 1440p Low result of 216.2 FPS, which is still below the 1080p Low figure but shows a smaller drop than expected if the GPU were the sole limiter. At 4K, the CPU's influence diminishes, and the frame rate becomes dependent on the GPU's rendering speed. The data indicates that the i5-12400's 6 cores and 12 threads are sufficient for The Technomancer's engine, but its single-thread and multi-thread performance is not high enough to avoid being a limiting factor at high frame rates.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS achieved by this combo at any resolution and setting?

A: The highest average FPS recorded is 249.6, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings.

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

A: The average FPS drops from 211.9 at 1080p High to 79.4 at 4K High, a reduction of approximately 62.5%.

Q: At which resolution does the GPU become the primary bottleneck?

A: The data shows that at 4K, the GPU becomes the primary bottleneck, as evidenced by the significant FPS drop between Low (122.8) and Ultra (64.9) settings, indicating the GPU is fully loaded.

Q: Does this CPU hold back the GPU at lower resolutions?

A: Yes, at 1080p, the FPS difference between Low and Ultra is relatively small (249.6 vs 178.1), suggesting the CPU limits the maximum frame rate to around 250 FPS, preventing the GPU from pushing higher numbers.

Q: What is the performance difference between the RTX 5090 and its closest rival?

A: The RTX 5090 has an average benchmark score of 84306, which is 0.1% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D, based on the deltaPct of 0.1.

Q: Is the 4K Ultra setting playable with this configuration?

A: The 4K Ultra average FPS is 64.9, which is above the standard 60 FPS playability threshold, but it is the lowest result in the dataset.

How This Combo Ranks

In the comprehensive database of tested combinations for The Technomancer, the Intel Core i5-12400 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 pairing holds a rank of 38 out of 1656 tested combos. This places it firmly in the top 2.3% of all configurations tested, indicating exceptional overall performance. This high ranking is driven primarily by the GPU's immense power, which allows the system to excel at higher resolutions where the CPU's limitations are less impactful.

The ranking, however, does not tell the whole story. While the combo is ranked 38th overall, the data suggests that its position is somewhat inflated by the GPU's dominance. At lower resolutions like 1080p, the system's performance is constrained by the i5-12400's capabilities, potentially allowing other combos with faster CPUs to match or exceed its frame rates, even if they have weaker GPUs. The gap between this combo and the top-ranked systems is likely due to the CPU's mid-range standing, as the RTX 5090 is near the top of its class. The combo's rank of 38 out of 1656 reflects the RTX 5090's power, but users seeking the absolute highest frame rates at 1080p might find that a more powerful CPU paired with a slightly less potent GPU could yield better results in this specific title.