The Technomancer

The Technomancer, an Action RPG from 2016, is not a title that stresses modern hardware evenly. The measured results for the Intel Core i5-9400 and AMD Radeon RX 6600 combination show a pairing that is clearly GPU-limited at higher resolutions but capable of delivering strong frame rates at 1080p. The data indicates this combo ranks in the 1332nd position out of 1656 tested combinations, placing it in the lower-middle tier of the database. This rank suggests that while the system can play the game, many other pairings deliver smoother results, particularly at higher settings where the RX 6600’s 8 GB of GDDR6 memory and 224.0 GB/s bandwidth become the defining factor.

How This Combo Ranks

With a rank of 1332 out of 1656 tested combos, this pairing sits in the 20th percentile of all recorded systems for The Technomancer. This is a modest result, indicating that the hardware combination is sufficient for playable frame rates but does not excel in this specific title. The CPU, which holds a 50th percentile ranking among all processors, is not the bottleneck here; the GPU, which sits at a 69th percentile among all GPUs, is the limiting factor in this game. The measured FPS data confirms this: at 1080p with Ultra settings, the combo manages 68.5 FPS, but at 4K Ultra it drops to a slideshow-like 23 FPS. The gap between the CPU and GPU percentiles suggests that the i5-9400 has headroom to drive a more powerful graphics card, but the RX 6600 is holding the system back at higher resolutions. Compared to its nearest rivals, the RX 6600’s average benchmark score of 25235 is nearly identical to the AMD Radeon 890M (25246, 0% delta) and the AMD Radeon RX 580 2048SP (25287, -0.2% delta), while it trails the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti (25120, 0.5% delta) by a negligible margin. This explains why the combo does not rank higher; the GPU’s performance is solid for its class but not exceptional for a demanding title like The Technomancer.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo to achieve 60 FPS?

A: The only resolution where the combo consistently exceeds 60 FPS across all settings is 1920x1080. At 1080p, the average FPS ranges from 68.5 on Ultra to 131.8 on Low. At 2560x1440, only the Low preset (82.7 FPS) and High preset (55.8 FPS) approach or exceed 60 FPS, while Medium and Ultra fall below.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor in this game?

A: The data points to the GPU being the primary constraint. The RX 6600 holds a 69th percentile rank among all GPUs, while the i5-9400 holds a 50th percentile rank among CPUs. The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is steep, falling from 131.8 FPS at 1080p Low to 48.8 FPS at 4K Low, which is a classic sign of GPU saturation rather than CPU limitation.

Q: How does the i5-9400 compare to its closest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The i5-9400’s average benchmark score is 2305. This is 0.2% higher than the Intel Core i3-10305 (2300) and the Intel Core i3-1125G4 (2299), and 0.4% higher than the Intel Xeon E-2134 (2295). It trails the Intel Core i7-8809G (2319) by 0.6%. These deltas are minimal, indicating the CPU’s performance is comparable to these alternatives.

Q: What is the launch MSRP of the GPU in this combo?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 6600 had a launch MSRP of 329 USD.

Q: Can this combo handle 4K gaming in The Technomancer?

A: At 4K, the combo cannot maintain 60 FPS at any setting. The highest average FPS at 3840x2160 is 48.8 on Low, while High yields 29.7 FPS, Medium yields 36.1 FPS, and Ultra drops to 23 FPS. For a playable experience, 4K is not recommended unless the user is comfortable with Low settings and frame rates below 50.

Q: How much performance is gained by lowering settings from Ultra to Low at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the difference between Ultra (46.2 FPS) and Low (82.7 FPS) is 36.5 FPS, representing a 79% improvement. This is a significant jump, indicating that the game’s Ultra preset is particularly demanding on the GPU.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data suggests that the optimal experience for this combo depends heavily on the target resolution. At 1920x1080, the High preset is the best balance, delivering 86.6 FPS. This is well above the 60 FPS threshold and leaves headroom for demanding scenes. The Medium preset (101.8 FPS) offers a higher margin but does not visually differ as much as the FPS gap suggests. For 2560x1440, the High preset at 55.8 FPS is the playable option, though it falls just short of 60 FPS. Dropping to Medium (63.4 FPS) is a viable alternative that secures a stable 60 FPS experience with a minor visual trade-off. At 3840x2160, no preset is truly comfortable. The Low preset at 48.8 FPS is the only one that approaches a playable frame rate, but it will feel stuttery. The data indicates that the Ultra preset is not worth the performance hit at any resolution; at 1080p it costs 18.1 FPS compared to High, and at 4K it is essentially unplayable. For this pairing, the best experience is High at 1080p or Medium at 1440p, depending on the user’s display preference.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a clear picture of performance across three resolutions and four quality presets. At 1920x1080, the combo starts strong with 131.8 FPS on Low, drops to 101.8 FPS on Medium, 86.6 FPS on High, and bottoms out at 68.5 FPS on Ultra. The scaling is consistent, with a total drop of 48% from Low to Ultra. Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates are 82.7 FPS on Low, 63.4 FPS on Medium, 55.8 FPS on High, and 46.2 FPS on Ultra. The performance hit from 1080p to 1440p is roughly 37% across all settings, which is a typical penalty for the increased pixel count. At 3840x2160, the system struggles significantly: Low yields 48.8 FPS, Medium drops to 36.1 FPS, High falls to 29.7 FPS, and Ultra manages only 23 FPS. The 4K results are consistently below 50 FPS, even at the lowest preset, indicating that the RX 6600 is not suited for this resolution in The Technomancer. The data shows no minimum or maximum FPS values, so the average figures represent the steady-state performance without spikes or drops.

Resolution Scaling

The scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a GPU-bound system. At Low settings, the FPS drops from 131.8 at 1080p to 82.7 at 1440p (a 37% reduction) and then to 48.8 at 4K (a 41% reduction from 1440p). This pattern is consistent across all presets. For example, at High settings, the combo goes from 86.6 FPS at 1080p to 55.8 FPS at 1440p (a 36% drop) and then to 29.7 FPS at 4K (a 47% drop). The steep decline from 1440p to 4K is characteristic of a GPU hitting its memory bandwidth and shading unit limits. The RX 6600 has 1792 shading units and a 128-bit memory bus with 224.0 GB/s bandwidth, which is adequate for 1080p but insufficient for the 4K pixel workload. The CPU’s role in this scaling is minimal; the i5-9400 with 6 cores and 6 threads at a 2.90 GHz base clock and 4.10 GHz boost is not the constraint. If the CPU were the bottleneck, the FPS would remain flat across resolutions. The data clearly shows otherwise, confirming that the limiting component is the GPU.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 is a 6-core, 6-thread processor based on the Coffee Lake architecture, running on a 14 nm process. It has a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.10 GHz, with 9 MB of shared L3 cache. For a game like The Technomancer, which is not heavily multithreaded, this configuration is more than adequate. The CPU’s synthetic benchmark scores are modest: a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 7969 and a single-core score of 1125. In the context of this game, the i5-9400’s 50th percentile ranking among all CPUs suggests it is a mainstream part that will not bottleneck a mid-range GPU like the RX 6600 at lower resolutions. The measured FPS data supports this: at 1080p Low, the combo achieves 131.8 FPS, which is well within the CPU’s ability to feed frames to the GPU. The game relies on single-thread performance for many tasks, and the i5-9400’s 4.10 GHz boost clock handles this adequately. However, the CPU’s lack of hyper-threading (6 threads total) could cause minor stutters in CPU-intensive scenes, but the average FPS data does not show this as a major issue. The pairing works well because the GPU is the limiting factor; the i5-9400 has enough headroom to support the RX 6600’s output without being a drag on performance.