The Technomancer

The Technomancer, a 2016 Action RPG, presents a clear picture of how the Intel Core i7-14700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 combination scales under varying graphical loads. The measured frame rates across three resolutions and four quality presets reveal a system where the GPU is the primary bottleneck at higher settings, while the CPU's substantial headroom becomes apparent at lower resolutions and quality levels.

Resolution Scaling

The performance drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and consistent, indicating that the RTX 3070 is the limiting component as pixel count rises. At High settings, the average frame rate falls from 128.8 FPS at 1920x1080 to 85.1 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of approximately 34%. Moving to 3840x2160, the average drops further to 42.8 FPS, which is exactly half the 1440p figure and just a third of the 1080p result. This scaling pattern is typical of a GPU-bound scenario where the rendering workload increases exponentially with resolution.

The data shows that the RTX 3070 struggles to maintain high refresh rates at 4K. Even at Medium settings, the 4K average of 54.5 FPS is below the 60 FPS threshold often considered the baseline for smooth gameplay. At Ultra settings, the 4K average plummets to 36.9 FPS, making the experience borderline unplayable for demanding users. The Low preset at 4K yields 69.2 FPS, which is the only 4K configuration that approaches acceptable playability, yet it still represents a significant compromise in visual fidelity.

The scaling from 1440p to 4K is particularly telling. At High settings, the frame rate drops by 50% when moving from 2560x1440 (85.1 FPS) to 3840x2160 (42.8 FPS). This near-linear relationship with pixel count (2.25x more pixels) confirms that the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth are being saturated. The RTX 3070's 8 GB of GDDR6 memory and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth are sufficient for 1440p but become a limiting factor at 4K, where texture data and frame buffers demand more capacity and speed.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070, built on the Ampere architecture with a GA104 chip, is the clear performance driver in this pairing. Its 5888 shading units, 184 texture mapping units, and 96 ROPs provide substantial rasterization power. The GPU's boost clock of 1725 MHz and base clock of 1500 MHz, combined with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, deliver a memory bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s. This configuration explains why the card performs admirably at 1080p and 1440p but begins to show strain at 4K.

The benchmark results show that the RTX 3070's FP32 performance of 20.31 TFLOPS is well-suited for The Technomancer's DirectX 12 workload. The PassMark G3D score of 22214 and the 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 3162 indicate strong DirectX 12 capabilities. The GPU's 72nd percentile ranking among all tested GPUs places it in the upper-midrange tier, which aligns with its observed performance in this game.

At 1080p, the GPU's dominance is evident. The jump from Low (193.4 FPS) to High (128.8 FPS) to Ultra (97.7 FPS) shows that even at the highest settings, the card maintains frame rates well above 90 FPS. The RTX 3070's 46 RT cores and 184 tensor cores are not heavily utilized in this title, but the raw shader throughput and memory bandwidth are sufficient to handle The Technomancer's effects without issue. The GPU's 96 ROPs deliver a pixel rate of 165.6 GPixel/s, which proves adequate for 1440p but falls short at 4K Ultra, where the 36.9 FPS result reflects the pixel fill rate ceiling.

FAQ

Q: How does the RTX 3070 perform at 4K in The Technomancer?

A: The RTX 3070 delivers an average of 42.8 FPS at 4K High settings and 36.9 FPS at 4K Ultra settings. Only the Low preset (69.2 FPS) and Medium preset (54.5 FPS) approach playable frame rates at this resolution.

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo to maintain high frame rates?

A: At 1440p High settings, the combo achieves 85.1 FPS, and at 1080p High settings it reaches 128.8 FPS. For smooth 60+ FPS gameplay with quality visuals, 1440p is the sweet spot, while 1080p allows for very high refresh rates.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the main bottleneck at 1080p?

A: At 1080p, the GPU remains the primary bottleneck, as evidenced by the 193.4 FPS at Low settings versus 97.7 FPS at Ultra. The Intel Core i7-14700K's 20 cores and 28 threads provide ample headroom, but the RTX 3070's rendering capacity determines the final frame rate.

Q: How does the RTX 3070 compare to its nearest rivals in raw performance?

A: The RTX 3070 has an average benchmark score of 28238. It trails the AMD FirePro S7150 by 0.6%, leads the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT by 0.9%, and is 1% faster than the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti. The AMD Radeon R9 M295X is 1.1% ahead.

Q: What does the frame rate difference between Medium and Ultra settings indicate?

A: Across all resolutions, the gap between Medium and Ultra is substantial. At 1080p, Ultra (97.7 FPS) is 33.4% slower than Medium (146.7 FPS). At 4K, the difference is 32.3% (36.9 FPS vs 54.5 FPS), showing that Ultra settings impose a heavy cost on the GPU.

Q: Does the combo rank high among all tested configurations?

A: The combination ranks 750th out of 1656 tested combos, placing it in the 55th percentile. This indicates a mid-pack position, reflecting the RTX 3070's 72nd percentile GPU ranking balanced against the powerful CPU.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i7-14700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 pairing achieves a combo rank of 750 out of 1656 tested combinations in The Technomancer. This places the system in the 54.7th percentile, meaning roughly 45% of tested combos deliver higher average frame rates in this specific game. The ranking reflects a balance between the CPU's top-tier performance and the GPU's mid-to-upper-midrange capability.

The CPU component of this combo is exceptionally strong. The Core i7-14700K holds a 96th percentile ranking among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 70074. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core i7-14700KF, scores 70104 (a 0% delta), while the AMD EPYC 9115 is 0.3% ahead at 69887. The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X leads by 0.5% with 70420, and the Intel Xeon Platinum 8270 trails by 1.4% at 71056. This places the CPU near the top of the performance hierarchy.

The GPU, conversely, holds a 72nd percentile ranking among all GPUs with an average score of 28238. Its nearest rivals include the AMD FirePro S7150 (28409, 0.6% ahead), AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT (27985, 0.9% behind), and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti (27956, 1% behind). The AMD Radeon R9 M295X is 1.1% ahead at 28541. This mid-upper placement explains why the combo does not rank higher overall—the GPU's 4K performance is a limiting factor.

The combo ranking suggests that for The Technomancer, the RTX 3070 constrains the system's potential. At 1080p and 1440p, the CPU's power is underutilized, as the GPU reaches its limits first. The 750th rank out of 1656 indicates that many other configurations with stronger GPUs or more balanced pairings achieve higher frame rates, particularly at higher resolutions where the GPU's 8 GB memory and bandwidth become bottlenecks.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700K, based on the Raptor Lake architecture with a 10 nm process, provides an enormous amount of computational headroom for The Technomancer. With 20 cores, 28 threads, and boost clocks reaching 5.60 GHz, the CPU is far from being a limiting factor in any of the tested scenarios. Its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 44534 and single-core score of 6287 demonstrate exceptional processing power that easily handles the game's AI, physics, and game logic.

The CPU's cache hierarchy—80 KB L1 per core, 2 MB L2 per core, and 33 MB shared L3—ensures that data access latency is minimized, which is beneficial for the game's streaming and entity management systems. The PassMark multi-thread score of 52392 and single-thread score of 4472 confirm that the CPU excels in both heavily threaded and latency-sensitive workloads. In The Technomancer, which is not known for extreme CPU demands, this processor operates well within its capabilities.

The evidence for CPU headroom is most apparent in the frame rate scaling at 1080p. When moving from Low to Ultra settings, the frame rate drops from 193.4 FPS to 97.7 FPS, a 49.5% reduction that is almost entirely attributable to GPU workload. If the CPU were a bottleneck, the frame rate differences between quality presets would be much smaller, as the CPU would cap performance regardless of GPU load. Instead, the GPU's rendering time dominates, confirming that the i7-14700K is never the constraining component.

The CPU's nearest rivals in benchmark scores include the Core i7-14700KF (70104, 0% delta) and AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (70420, 0.5% ahead), indicating that this chip is at the very top of consumer desktop performance. Its 96th percentile ranking among all CPUs means it outperforms the vast majority of processors. In The Technomancer, this translates to consistent frame delivery without stutters or dips, as the CPU can always feed the GPU with prepared frames faster than the GPU can render them.

Even at 4K Ultra, where the GPU produces only 36.9 FPS, the CPU's role remains supportive rather than dominant. The 20 cores and 28 threads handle background tasks and game logic with ease, while the 5.60 GHz boost clock ensures responsive single-thread performance for the main game loop. The combo's overall rank of 750 stems from the GPU's limitations, not the CPU's, making this a case where upgrading the graphics card would yield far greater performance gains than any CPU change.