The Technomancer

The Intel Core i5-14600K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER delivers a mid-pack performance profile in The Technomancer, securing a combo rank of 1039 out of 1656 tested configurations. This places the pairing in the 37th percentile of all tested combos, indicating that while it is not a top-tier performer, it occupies a solidly mainstream position. The ranking reflects a balance where neither component is severely bottlenecking the other, but the overall result is constrained by the GPU's age relative to the CPU's modern architecture. Benchmark data from the combined system shows that the CPU, which ranks in the 93rd percentile among all processors, has substantial headroom, while the GPU sits in the 65th percentile among all graphics cards, suggesting the latter is the limiting factor in most scenarios.

How This Combo Ranks

With a rank of 1039 out of 1656 tested combos, this configuration lands in the lower-middle portion of the database's performance distribution. The position implies that roughly 62% of tested pairings outperform it, which is expected given the RTX 2070 SUPER's status as an end-of-life product from the GeForce 20-series. The i5-14600K, conversely, is an active product from Intel's Core 14th Gen lineup, and its individual benchmark scores—such as a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 32881 and a single-core score of 4642—demonstrate a processor that can drive far more powerful graphics solutions. The discrepancy between the CPU's high percentile ranking and the combo's modest overall rank highlights a classic imbalance: the GPU cannot fully utilize the CPU's capabilities in this title. Compared to other combos in the database, this pairing is neither a bottleneck-free high-end setup nor a severely mismatched budget build; it sits in a zone where the GPU dictates the ceiling, and the CPU ensures that the floor remains reasonably high.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER is the primary performance arbiter in this pairing, and its specifications clarify why it limits the combo's ranking. The GPU features 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering a bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s. Its base clock runs at 1605 MHz, boosting to 1770 MHz, with memory clocked at 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective). These figures are modest by modern standards, but they are sufficient for a 2019-era card targeting 1440p gaming. In The Technomancer, an Action RPG from 2016, the GPU's role is to handle the game's rendering workload, which includes detailed environments and character models. The 8 GB VRAM capacity is adequate for this title, even at higher settings, but the card's raw compute throughput—9.062 TFLOPS FP32—sets a hard limit on frame rates. The GPU's average benchmark score of 22206 places it in the 65th percentile, with nearest rivals including the NVIDIA RTX A400 (0.5% faster), the GTX TITAN Z (0.9% slower), and the RTX 4060 Mobile (2.3% faster). These margins are narrow, meaning the RTX 2070 SUPER's performance is well understood and predictable, but it lacks the headroom to push beyond mid-range results.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a clear pattern of GPU-bound scaling as resolution increases. At 1080p with High settings, the combo achieves 102.3 FPS, which drops to 67.3 FPS at 1440p and further to 37 FPS at 4K. This scaling—a reduction of 34% from 1080p to 1440p and an additional 45% from 1440p to 4K—demonstrates that the GPU is the limiting component, as frame rates degrade proportionally with pixel count. The CPU, with its 14 cores and 20 threads, has ample capacity to feed the GPU at lower resolutions, but the GPU's pixel rate of 113.3 GPixel/s and texture rate of 283.2 GTexel/s become saturated as resolution climbs. At Low settings, the pattern is even more pronounced: 159 FPS at 1080p, 103 FPS at 1440p, and 57.8 FPS at 4K. The fact that even at Low 4K the frame rate barely exceeds 60 FPS underscores that the RTX 2070 SUPER's memory bandwidth and compute resources are the primary constraints, not the game's settings or the CPU's processing speed.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The benchmark results provide a comprehensive view of performance across three resolutions and four quality settings. At 1920x1080, the combo delivers 159 FPS on Low, 119.3 FPS on Medium, 102.3 FPS on High, and 78.7 FPS on Ultra. These numbers indicate that at 1080p, the system can handle even Ultra settings with playable frame rates, though the gap between Low and Ultra (a 50% reduction) shows the GPU's sensitivity to graphical workload. Moving to 2560x1440, the scores are 103 FPS on Low, 77.8 FPS on Medium, 67.3 FPS on High, and 50.3 FPS on Ultra. Here, the drop from Low to Ultra is 51%, and the Ultra figure falls below the 60 FPS threshold, suggesting that users seeking smooth gameplay at 1440p should stick to High settings or lower. At 3840x2160, the results are 57.8 FPS on Low, 44.3 FPS on Medium, 37 FPS on High, and 26.4 FPS on Ultra. These figures show that 4K gaming is only viable at Low settings, and even then, the frame rate is marginal. The data indicates a predictable linear relationship between settings and FPS, with no anomalous spikes or drops, confirming stable performance characteristics across the board.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14600K plays a supporting role in this pairing, but its specifications ensure that it never becomes a bottleneck. The CPU features 14 cores and 20 threads, with a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.30 GHz, built on Intel's 10 nm Raptor Lake architecture. Its cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 2 MB of L2 per core, and 24 MB of shared L3 cache, which provides fast access to frequently used data. In The Technomancer, which is not particularly CPU-intensive due to its age, the i5-14600K's single-core performance—evidenced by a Geekbench single-core score of 2803 and a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4642—is more than sufficient to drive the game's logic and physics. Multi-core performance is also strong, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 32881, but this is largely unused in a 2016 title. The CPU's average benchmark score of 49166 places it within 1% of rivals like the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (0.2% faster) and the Intel Core i5-14600KF (0.4% slower), indicating that its processing power is well above what this game requires. The data shows that at 1080p Low, where the GPU is least stressed, the CPU still delivers 159 FPS, proving that it can keep up with the RTX 2070 SUPER's output without imposing any frame rate ceiling. In essence, the i5-14600K provides a stable foundation, but the RTX 2070 SUPER's aging architecture is what ultimately defines the combo's performance envelope.