The Technomancer

The Intel Core i7-12700KF and Intel Arc B390 combination in The Technomancer lands very low in the measured field, at rank 3288 of 3696 tested combos. That position is dominated by the graphics component, which sits in the 9th percentile across all GPUs measured, while the CPU itself is a strong performer at the 85th percentile of processors. The resulting signature is one where the processor can easily feed frames, but the integrated-style Xe3-LPG part, with system-shared memory, pins playable throughput to around 1080p or 1440p on modest settings, and collapses at 4K. All results below are from measured data rather than carried over from synthetic scores.

How This Combo Ranks

The rank is unusually low: 3288 out of 3696 combos in the game leaves this pairing in the bottom slice of what the database has recorded. A position of 3288 means fewer than 300 other configurations sit below this one; the bulk of tested systems produce more average FPS. The causes are unbalanced: the Intel Core i7-12700KF occupies the 85th percentile of all tested CPUs with an average benchmark score of 35365, yet the Intel Arc B390 lands at the 9th percentile on the GPU side, averaging only 1482 in the DX12 Steel Nomad test. That scoring interval is impressive, because a GPU in that percentile bracket is typically associated with frame rates below playable standards; the data here agrees.

The CPU's nearest rivals put its position in the CPU pool in perspective. The i7-12700KF's average score of 35365 sits within 0.2% of three of its four listed neighbours: the i7-13700T (35403, delta -0.1%), the i5-13600T (35305, delta +0.2%), the Core 5 213SR (35428, delta -0.2%), and the i7-12700K (35287, delta +0.2%). These margins are negligible for gaming; the panel of rivals are effectively ties. In contrast, the GPU has no competition at its speed level at all — the closest listed GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX, scores 1463 and is 1.3% faster than the Arc B390; the GeForce GT 820 N is 1.5% behind at 1460; the 650 M lower, 2.5% slower at 1446; and the GT 625 OEM is 2.7% slower at 1443. Every one of those NVIDIA parts is a legacy card, not a current product. That explains the hard rank: with the GPU scraping the bottom, the combo cannot escape the low 3,200‑rank band no matter what the CPU does.

This rank is stable across the game preset because the game's own result averages match the GPU's standing. The CPU does nothing to mitigate the GPU's 9th percentile; it is always a near-certainty that the frame production will be bottled up at the renderer. Importantly, the combo's rank in The Technomancer specifically aligns with the fact the GPU sits at 9th, while the CPU percentile is 85 — a sign the test is rendering-bound and that the i7-12700KF is never the limiter. The direct takeaway: if a player wants to get out of the low rank, the first change must be the GPU, not the CPU.

GPU Role

The Arc B390 is a wide and slow device — wide on the shading side but slow in actual clock because it is built for efficiency. It has 1536 shading cores, 48 texture-mapping units, and 24 ROPs. The base clock of 300 MHz and boost of 2500 MHz create a large gap between idle and under load; the pixel rate is 60.00 GPixel/s and the texture rate is 120.0 GTexels/s. These are delivered on a 3 nm Intel process (Xe3‑LPG, Panther Lake chip), with a TDP of just 80 W, so the silicon is running in a power‑limited IGP configuration — its bus interface is listed as "IGP" and its display outputs are "Portable Device Dependent," meaning this is meant to drive a laptop/integrated slice, not a discrete desktop card. The RT cores number 12, and the chip claims full FP32 7.680 TFLOPS and FP16 15.36 TFLOPS (2:1).

The crucial detail for The Technomancer is the memory architecture: the memory pool is "System Shared" in size, type, and bus width, and bandwidth is "System Dependent". There is no private VRAM allocated on this card. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 result of 1482 places it in the 9th percentile, with the nearest GPU rival being the GeForce GT 520S at 1463 — that is over two generations old. For a game such as The Technomancer, a 2016 action role‑playing game, the game needs a reasonable frame buffer and pixel fill; the Arc B130's shared memory will borrow the CPU's DRAM, which is why the FPS data at 4K and high presets look so poor.

When we see the FPS panels, nothing in them contradicts the GPU's low niche. The average 4K FPS across the four presets goes between 15 and 28; the 1440 frame rates range from 26 to 52; at 1080p they top at 79. These values track the card's 60‑GPixel/s limit — there is enough fill rate for pixel fill at 1080p, but the pixel push to 4K – 3840x2160, nine times the pixel count of 1280×800 me — becomes too much. The boost clock of 2500 MHz is not being reached under load; the numbers indicate the card spends most of its time at a balanced point, with the sharp 60‑GPixel/s ROP ceiling most at 1440p and 4K. The RTX cores exist (12 of them) but The Technomancer is not a heavy RT title; its 2016 release means the workload is conventional raster. Still, the shared‑memory TDP of 80 W shows the card cannot sustain high average frames in a big map, even at medium.

The GPU role here is to be the bottle. From Low to Medium to High to Ultra, the frame average drop is systematic—1080p Low is 79 FPS, 1080p Medium is 61, High is 52, and Ultra is 40. That is precisely a GPU curve, with each step adding more shading branches and pixel-driven cost. At 4K, Medium is 22 FPS, High is 19, and Low 28 — a wide spread but even the best 4K number barely beats the 1080p Medium. The slow start (base 312 MHz, by the way) also explains the portrait 1080pre.

Resolution Scaling

The data rows show a clear scaling gradient from pixel count. The best measured FPS is 79 at 1920x1080 Low. Moving to 2560x1440 Low, the average is 52 — that is a drop of more than a third in raw FPS. At 3840x2160 Low, the average falls to 28, which is barely a third of the 1080 number. That is the parcel curve of a single component that is not meet the pixel demand. The Medium preset tells the same story: 61 at 1080p, 40 at 1440p, and 22 at 4k. High is 52→34→19; Ultra is 40→26→15.

The scaling ratio shows that moving from 1080p to 4k drops the FPS by a factor of around 2.8 regardless of preset — medium drops from 61 to 22, Ultra from 40 to 15, High from 52 to 19, and Low from 79 to 28. There is no preset that escapes this: well at 1080p a setting gives you 79 FPS, at 4k it produces only 28. These raw data are a direct sign that the GPU features are the limiter; the CPU's 3.60–5.00 GHz boost speed (behind the 5.00 GHz max single core) can certainly feed a higher fill rate, but the GPU frame buffer and bandwidth are spent. If the processor were the bottleneck, a 4k resolution wouldn't cut the FPS by 2.75×—the CPU wouldn't drop with extra pixels. Since FPS goes down in lockstep with the number of pixels, the critical resource is the Arc B390's memory and its limited to 7.×.

At 1440p the FPS window is 26 to 52 — that makes 1440p only usable for the Low and Medium presets, with the 40–52 average for Low/Medium. The 1080p numbers (40 to 79) give more headroom. The 4k numbers of 15–22 show that all presets at UHD are below 30 FPS, with the exception of Low at 28, which is still too behind for smooth gameplay. So the GSV is the typical case of a chip that is capable at pixel rates of 60.00 GPixpol/s but is unable to handle a 7.7M pixel target at minimum workloads.

The measured min/max data (when present) clarify stability. At 4K Medium the average is 22, with a minimum of 19 and a maximum of 25 — the frame time band is tight because the game continually vsync drops. At 1440p the Medium (average 40, min 34, max 42) and at 1080p the Medium (average 59, min 52, max 70) show a declining margin; the 130 ±‐min 29 leads to stutters visible in 230. The 4K Medium's 19 minimum is sub‑30, so the lowest frame is visible as a hitch. Because we have max/min data only for the three Medium rows, the other presets show only the average, which is still a representative baseline.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured rows break down as follows, resolving the exact values:

• 3840x2160, High: average 15 FPS — the worst sampled number in the entire set
• 3840x2160, Low: average 28 FPS
• 3840x2160, Medium: average 22 FPS with a minimum of 19 and a maximum of 25
• 3840x2160, Ultra: average 15 FPS

• 2560x1440, High: average 34 FPS
• 2560x1440, Low: average 52 FPS
• 2560x1440, Medium: average 40 FPS with a minimum of 34 and a maximum of 43
• 2560x1440, Ultra: average 26 FPS

• 1920x1080, High: average 52 FPS
• 1920x1080, Low: average 79 FPS (the best result from this config)
• 1920x1080, Medium: average 61 FPS with a minimum of 52 and a maximum of 70
• 1920x1080, Ultra: average 40 FPS

The pattern is unambiguous: for an average of 60+ FPS is attainable only at 1080p Low and 1080p Medium, and the latter caps at the same 61 average as. The 1440p Medium's 40 average is at the edge of playability, and the 4K Medium 22 is not. Notice that 1080p High and 1440p Low share the same 52 average, a useful fact for anyone wanting quality per pixel without changing the frame count.

Settings Recommendations

Given the measured rows, the best practice for this hardware in the game is to run 1080p with the Medium preset. At that setting the average is 61 F