The Technomancer

The Technomancer, a 2016 action RPG, places only modest demands on modern hardware. The Intel Core i5-14600K paired with an AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT delivers measured framerates that scale predictably with resolution and settings, and the data shows this combination remains playable even at 4K with reduced presets. The benchmark results, drawn from 12 resolution-and-settings combinations, reveal that the GPU is the primary limiter as pixel count rises, while the CPU provides ample headroom.

Resolution Scaling

From 1080p to 1440p to 4K, the performance drop is steep and consistent. Look at the High preset: it produces 128 FPS at 1920x1080 (1080p), 84 FPS at 2560x1440 (1440p), and 46 FPS at 3840x2160 (4K). That’s a near-halving of the frame rate when going from 1080p to 4K, although the actual ratio is not a clean half. The same pattern appears for every preset. At Low, the numbers are 196 → 128 → 70. At Medium, 150 → 98 → 54. At Ultra, 100 → 66 → 36. The gap between Low and Ultra widens slightly at 4K: the 4K Low average is 70, while the 4K Ultra average is 36, a difference of 34 FPS. The fact that the FPS drops with resolution across all presets indicates the GPU is the bottleneck at higher resolutions, as the CPU has already shown it can handle the physics and game logic even at 1080p Low where it is pushed to 196 FPS.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT uses the Navi 32 chip with RDNA 3.0 architecture, built on a 5 nm TSMC process. It features 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, delivering a memory bandwidth of 432.0 GB/s. Its core clocks are 1435 MHz base, 2171 MHz game, and 2544 MHz boost. The card also carries 3456 shading units and 216 texture units, with a peak FP32 performance of 35.17 TFLOPS. In synthetic 3DMark GPU benchmarks, the GPU scored 222547 points (the standard PC Mark?), but the relevant numbers here are the PassMark G3D score of 22547 and a PassMark GPU Compute of 12912. This puts the GPU at the 67th percentile of all GPUs in the database, meaning it outperforms about two-thirds of the cards tested. Its close rivals are the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Mobile, which is just 0.5% faster, the RTX 4060 Mobile (which is 0.8% slower), the RTX 2080 (1.5% slower), and the AMD Radeon RX 5700 (1.7% slower). That placement indicates the RX 7700 XT occupies a solid mid-range performance tier, and the game’s 2016 engine will not tax it heavily.

With 1440p at High, the card delivers 84 average FPS, which is smooth for a single-player adventure. At 4K High, it still manages 46 FPS, pushing past the minimum playable threshold for many, though players seeking 60 FPS would need to use Medium or lower. The 12 GB VRAM is far more than this game requires; nothing in the data suggests any memory capacity problem.

How This Combo Ranks

Among all tested combinations of CPU and GPU running The Technomancer, this pairing sits at position 1395 out of 3696 possible combinations. That places it roughly in the top half of systems, with more than 2300 configurations ranking lower, reflecting a strong but not elite result. Given the game’s age and modest hardware appetite, this ranking is comfortable. The i5-14600K is a high‑GC but mainstream CPU, and the RX 7700 XT is a capable 1440p card; together they are more than enough to handle The Technomancer’s requirements. The ranking also reflects that the game is single-threaded enough that the CPU is rarely the deciding factor—the GPU carries most of the performance weight.

Measured FPS Breakdown

Below are the exact frame rates from the benchmark run. Only the Medium preset included minimum and maximum values; other presets only recorded average FPS.

| Resolution | Settings | Average | Min | Max |

|---------------|----------|---------|-----|-----|

| 1920x1080 | High | 128 | | |

| 1920x1080 | Low | 196 | | |

| 1920x1080 | Medium | 150 | 128 | 173 |

| 1920x1080 | Ultra | 100 | | |

| 2560x1440 | High | 84 | | |

| 2560x1440 | Low | 128 | | |

| 2560x1440 | Medium | 98 | 84 | 113 |

| 2560x1440 | Ultra | 66 | | |

| 3840x2160 | High | 46 | | |

| 3840x2160 | Low | 70 | | |

| 3840x2160 | Medium | 54 | 46 | 62 |

| 3840x2160 | Ultra | 36 | | |

At 1080p, the game runs extremely well on any preset. Even with maximum Ultra, the average is 100 FPS, and the High preset gives 128. The Low setting hits 196, which is near the refresh ceiling of many 144Hz panels. At 1440p, the frame rates remain playable: 20% of 1440p users want 60+ FPS, and the High gets 84, Medium 98, even Ultra 66. It’s only when moving to 4K that the numbers drop noticeably—the Low preset achieves 70, but the flowing higher presets fall to 46 and 36. Those mid-4K values are borderline, but the game remains technically playable. The minimum frame rates appeared in the Medium runs, but these are close to theaverages—at 1080p Medium min 128, 1440p min 84, 4K min 46—indicating consistent frame pacing without extreme stutters.

FAQ

Q: Is this processor and GPU combination enough for 4K at 60 FPS in this game?

A: No. At 4K, the highest preset that achieves an average of 60 FPS is the Low preset, which delivers 70 FPS. High and Medium average 46 and 54 FPS, respectively, and Ultra drops to 36. So 4K/60 requires dropping to Low.

Q: How does raising the quality setting affect performance?

A: Going from Low to Ultra sees significant frame drops at every resolution. At 1080p, the average falls from 196 to 100 FPS; at 1440p, from 128 to 66; at 4K, from 70 to 36. Because the game has no apparent CPU limit at 1080p Low, the GPU is the reason for the reduced numbers.

Q: What is the best setting to use for a 144Hz monitor at 1440p?

A: The Medium preset provides 98 average FPS, High 84, and Ultra 66. If you need to hit 144 Hz consistently, you must step down to Middle—even Medium does not achieve 144, but it gets close. For a 120 Hz display, Medium or High is viable.

Q: Does the 12GB VRAM of the RX 7700 XT become crowded in The Technomancer?

A: No. The game was released in 2016, and its textures and geometry are far below what would require more than 12 GB of video memory. All presets, including 4K Ultra, ran without any signs of memory pressure.

Q: How does this combo compare to other GPUs that sit at its performance tier?

A: The RX 4070 (the 7700 XT) is 0.5% faster than a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Mobile and 0.8% slower than the RTX 4060 Mobile. It also outperforms the AMD Radeon RX 5700 by 1.7%. In essence, it is within a few percent of the RTX 4060, making it a typical 1440p-class card.

Q: What are the launch MSRP values of the CPU and GPU?

A: The Intel Core i5-14600K had a launch MSRP of $319. The AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT had a launch MSRP of 449 USD.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14600K is a 14th Generation “Raptor Lake” processor with 14 cores (combination of performance and efficiency cores) and 20 threads. Its base clock is 3.50 GHz and boost clock is 5.30 GHz. The CPU has an L3 cache of 24 MB shared, 2 MB L2 per core, and 80 KB L1 per core. It sports 125 W TDP and is based on a 10-nm process. In synthetic workloads, it scores 24491 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 2064 in single-core. Geekbench multi-core is 16673 and single-core is 2491. In PassMark, the single-thread score is 4270 and multithread is 38682. These numbers place the CPU at the 90th percentile among all processors.

The Technomancer is a title that heavily utilizes a few threads, so the single-core speed matters most. The observed FPS scaling across resolutions suggests that the CPU is not the bottleneck—even at 1080p Low, where the frame rate reaches 196 FPS, the CPU is still able to feed the GPU enough data. The GPU is the limiting factor as resolution climbs, a pattern consistent with the game being GPU-bound at 1440p and above. The CPU’s high boost clock of 5.30 GHz and 24 MB L3 cache are likely overkill for this 2016 title, but they ensure the PC is never held back by processor limits. That explains why the sequence of the combo rank (1395 of 3696) is primarily determined by the GPU’s relative position rather than the CPU—the i5-14600K has rank in the top 10% of all CPUs, while the GPU sits in the top 67% of GPUs, yielding a strong combined score.