The Technomancer

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i7-13700K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti lands at rank 1438 out of 1656 tested combos in The Technomancer. That places this pairing in the bottom 13% of all configurations, a position that reflects the GPU's modest standing rather than the CPU's capability. The data shows a system that is heavily constrained by its graphics card, with the processor's substantial headroom going largely unused in this title.

To put the CPU side in perspective, the i7-13700K sits in the 93rd percentile against all tested CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 47282. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i7-13700KF at 47334 (a 0.1% difference) and the AMD EPYC 4364P at 47131 (0.3% ahead). The GPU, however, tells a different story: the GTX 1660 Ti ranks in only the 55th percentile against all GPUs, with an average score of 13925. Its closest competitor, the AMD Radeon RX 570X, scores 13871 — a mere 0.4% gap. This imbalance between a top-tier CPU and a mid-range GPU defines the entire performance profile of this combo.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti brings 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, delivering 288.0 GB/s of bandwidth. Its base clock runs at 1500 MHz with a boost clock of 1770 MHz, and the memory operates at 1500 MHz (12 Gbps effective). The card is built on the TU116 chip using a 12 nm process from TSMC, with 6,600 million transistors on a 284 mm² die. It offers 1536 shading units, 96 texture mapping units, and 48 raster output units, producing a pixel rate of 84.96 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 169.9 GTexel/s. Peak FP32 throughput is 5.437 TFLOPS, with FP16 reaching 10.87 TFLOPS (2:1).

In The Technomancer, these specifications translate into playable but not spectacular results. The GPU's 55th percentile standing among all GPUs indicates it is a middle-of-the-pack performer, and the measured frame rates confirm this. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo hits 109.8 FPS average, but pushing to Ultra drops that to 59.8 FPS. The 6 GB VRAM capacity is adequate for this game's demands at 1080p, though the data suggests the card begins to struggle as resolution climbs. The GTX 1660 Ti's nearest rivals in benchmark scores — the RX 570X at 13871 and the GTX 680 at 13812 — all sit within a 0.8% band, showing that this GPU is clustered with older and lower-tier hardware despite its Turing architecture.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a steep performance cliff as resolution increases. At 1080p High settings, the combo averages 74.5 FPS. Moving to 1440p High drops that to 45 FPS — a 39.6% reduction. At 4K High, the average falls to 26.2 FPS, which is 64.8% below the 1080p figure. This scaling pattern is characteristic of a GPU-bound system, where the graphics card's fill rate and memory bandwidth become the limiting factors.

The Low settings data reinforces this interpretation. At 1080p Low, the system produces 109.8 FPS, dropping to 69.8 FPS at 1440p and 36.9 FPS at 4K. The gap between Low and Ultra at each resolution shows how much headroom the game's settings allow: at 1080p, the difference between Low and Ultra is 50 FPS (109.8 vs 59.8), while at 4K it narrows to 15.1 FPS (36.9 vs 21.8). This compression at higher resolutions indicates that the GPU's raw throughput is the ceiling, not the CPU or memory subsystem.

FAQ

Q: Is this combo capable of running The Technomancer at 60 FPS?

A: Yes, but only at 1080p. The data shows 74.5 FPS at High settings and 87.3 FPS at Medium. At 1440p, no setting reaches 60 FPS, with the best result being 69.8 FPS at Low.

Q: How does the GTX 1660 Ti compare to its closest benchmark rivals?

A: The GPU scores 13925 on average, which is 0.4% behind the NVIDIA Tesla K10 (14029) and 0.4% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 570X (13871). The RTX A2000 Mobile trails by 0.8%, and the GTX 680 is also 0.8% behind.

Q: What resolution should I target with this hardware?

A: The measured data supports 1080p as the primary target. At 1440p, only Low settings exceed 60 FPS (69.8 FPS), while Medium drops to 56.7 FPS. At 4K, all settings fall below 37 FPS, making it impractical for smooth gameplay.

Q: How does the i7-13700K's CPU performance rank relative to other processors?

A: The CPU sits in the 93rd percentile of all tested CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 47282. It is 0.1% ahead of the AMD EPYC 4364P (47131) and 0.4% ahead of the Intel Core i9-12900F (47081), while trailing the i7-13700KF by 0.1%.

Q: What is the FPS difference between Low and Ultra settings at 1080p?

A: The gap is 50 FPS. Low settings produce 109.8 FPS, while Ultra drops to 59.8 FPS. Medium sits between at 87.3 FPS, and High reaches 74.5 FPS.

Q: Does the CPU bottleneck the GPU in this game?

A: No. The CPU's benchmark scores (93rd percentile) far exceed the GPU's (55th percentile), and the frame rate scaling patterns across resolutions indicate the GTX 1660 Ti is the limiting component throughout.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its strongest results. Low settings produce an average of 109.8 FPS. Medium settings reduce this to 87.3 FPS, while High settings yield 74.5 FPS. Ultra settings bring the average down to 59.8 FPS, which remains above the 50 FPS threshold but below the 60 FPS mark.

Moving to 2560x1440, performance drops noticeably across all settings. Low settings average 69.8 FPS, Medium falls to 56.7 FPS, High reaches 45 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 40.2 FPS. Only the Low preset maintains a frame rate above 60 FPS at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the combo struggles to maintain playable frame rates. Low settings average 36.9 FPS, Medium drops to 27.5 FPS, High reaches 26.2 FPS, and Ultra falls to 21.8 FPS. None of these results approach 60 FPS, indicating that 4K is not a viable target for this pairing.

The progression from 1080p to 4K at High settings illustrates the GPU's limitations clearly: 74.5 FPS at 1080p, 45 FPS at 1440p, and 26.2 FPS at 4K. The 1440p to 4K drop is particularly steep, reflecting the memory bandwidth constraints of the 288.0 GB/s bus when pushing 8.3 million pixels.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-13700K is a 16-core, 24-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake architecture, manufactured on Intel's 10 nm process. It features a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.40 GHz, with a 125 W TDP. The cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 2 MB of L2 per core, and 30 MB of shared L3 cache. It supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory across a dual-channel bus, and it includes UHD Graphics 770 integrated graphics, though these are irrelevant for gaming with a discrete GPU installed.

The CPU's benchmark results are impressive. In Cinebench R23, it scores 39000 in multi-core and 5505 in single-core. Geekbench shows 17731 multi-core and 2850 single-core. Passmark multi-thread scores 45887, with single-thread at 4333. These numbers place the processor firmly in the top tier of tested CPUs, far exceeding the demands of a 2016 action RPG like The Technomancer.

In this specific game, the CPU's role is secondary. The measured frame rates at 1080p Low (109.8 FPS) show the processor is capable of feeding the GPU well beyond its limits. The i7-13700K's nearest rivals in benchmark scores — the i7-13700KF at 47334 and the Ryzen 9 PRO 5945 at 47527 — are all within 0.5% of its average score, meaning any of these CPUs would perform nearly identically in this pairing. The bottleneck is unequivocally the GTX 1660 Ti, whose 55th percentile GPU ranking and 6 GB VRAM capacity constrain performance regardless of the CPU's substantial headroom.