The Technomancer

The Technomancer is a 2016 action RPG that still places notable demand on modern hardware. In this analysis, the tested configuration pairs an Intel Core i7-14700KF CPU with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GPU. Benchmark measurements show this combination ranks 3157th out of 3696 documented combos, placing it near the bottom of the field. The game's average frame rate at 1080p with High settings is 72 FPS, but this drops sharply as resolution increases, indicating a GPU-bound profile. Below is a detailed breakdown of how this CPU-GPU pair behaves in The Technomancer, based strictly on the measured data.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Core i7-14700KF and GTX 1660 SUPER occupies position 3157 of 3696 in the game's combo benchmark ranking. This rank places it just 539 spots above the worst-performing tested configuration, meaning it is within the bottom 15% of all measured setups. The rank reflects the overall geometric average of all tested resolutions and presets, which in this case is dominated by the GPU's limitations at higher resolutions.

Relative to the individual components, the CPU is a high-end desktop part. Its percentile among all processors is 94, and its average benchmark score is 70,163. It falls within 1% of several near rivals: the AMD Ryzen 7 9700F is 0.2% higher, the Ryzen 9 7940HX is 0.4% higher, and the Ryzen 9 7950X is 0.9% higher, while the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K trails by 1%. This positions the CPU as a top-tier performer in synthetic benchmarks.

The GPU, by contrast, remains a mid-range 10-series card. Its percentile among all GPUs is only 53, and its average benchmark score is 12,986. It stays within 1% of four rival cards: the RTX 3050 Ti Mobile and RX 580 are 0.4% higher, the Tesla M2090 is 0.7% lower, and the Radeon 740M is 0.9% lower. The gap in raw GPU power between this card and the CPU's headroom is substantial; the measured in-game frames reflect that imbalance.

The rank of 3157 is the direct consequence of the GPU being the limiting component. The CPU could easily drive far higher frame rates, but the GTX 1660 SUPÉRE's pixel throughput caps performance. In a game like The Technomancer, which stresses geometry and fill rate, the GPU bottleneck is evident at every resolution.

CPU Role

The Core i7-14700KF brings 20 cores and 28 threads across its Raptor Lake architecture, with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz. It has 33 MB of shared L3 cache and supports dual-channel DDR4/DDR5 memory. The CPU's synthetic performance is excellent: Cinebench R23 multi-core reaches 44,167 points and single-core 6,235 points, while PassMark multi-thread peaks at 52,425. These numbers place the processor among the fastest consumer chips.

In The Technomancer, the CPU's role appears to be entirely secondary to the GPU. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 110 FPS average; at 1080p Ultra, it falls to 56 FPS. The gap between low and ultra at 1080p is 81% of the low-FPS value, which is typical of GPU-heavy scaling. There is no evidence that the CPU limits frame rates even at the highest settings, since the game is from 2016 and does not fully exploit 20-core parallelism. The CPU's raw thread count is unlikely to be fully used by this title, but it does ensure that no frame drop is attributed to CPU limitations. In the second of the two percentiles, the CPU's 94th percentile indicates it can push far beyond what this 6 GB GPU can deliver.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER is a Turing-based card with 1,408 shading units, 88 texture units, and 48 ROPs. Its memory consists of 6 GB GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus, yielding 336.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU clock runs from 1530 MHz base to 1785 MHz boost, with memory at 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective). This is a card that was designed for 1080p in its era, and its performance in The Technomancer reflects that. The GPU only cut 2.027 TFLOPS out of the CPU's full potential, but the game's actual frame rate is consistently bounded by the GPU.

At 1080p, the GPU sustained an average of 110 FPS at Low preset, 84 FPS at Medium, 72 FPS at High, and 56 FPS at Ultra. The 6 GB frame buffer becomes a wall above 1080p: at 1440p, the High preset averages 47 FPS, and at 4K High it drops to 26 FPS. The Memory bandwidth of 336 GB/s, while respectable for the card's class, is insufficient for the fill-rate demand of a 4K resolution in a 2016 title. The GPU's own benchmark scores, such as PassMark G3D of 12,699, rank it mid-range, but the in-game data clearly shows it is the limiting component.

Resolution 486

The FPS logs show a steep decline as resolution climbs. From 1080p to 1440p, the average frame rate across settings — Low, Medium, High, Ultra — drops from 82 FPS (the average of 110, 84, 72, 56) to 59 FPS (average of 72, 55, 47, 37), a 28% decrease. The largest drop occurs between 1440p and 4K, where the average across the four settings goes from 59 FPS to 31 FPS (average of 39, 30, 26, 20) — a 47% reduction. This non-linear behavior indicates that the GPU runs out of fill rate and memory bandwidth as pixel count rises.

Specifically, at 4K High the game returns 26 FPS, which is not playable under any standard target. Even Low settings at 4K yields only 39 FPS, just over half of the 110 FPS registered at 1080p Low. The scaling pattern reveals a classic GPU-bound scenario: the CPU has enough headroom to compute logic at 4K, but the 1660 SUPER cannot deliver enough pixel output. The ratio of 1080p Low to 4K Low is 110/39, or 2.82× the pixel count, which shows the performance drop is proportional to the 2.25× pixel increase, indicating limited efficiency loss rather than a memory bandwidth wall.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The direct measurements for every resolution and preset are given below:

| Resolution | Preset | Avg FPS | Min / Max |

|------------|--------|---------|-----------|

| 3840x2160 | High | 26 | - |

| 3840x2160 | Low | 39 | - |

| 3840x2160 | Medium | 30 | 26 / 35 |

| 3840x2160 | Ultra | 20 | - |

| 2560x1440 | High | 47 | - |

| 2560x1440 | Low | 72 | - |

| 2560x1440 | Medium | 55 | 47 / 63 |

| 2560x1440 | Ultra | 37 | - |

| 1920x1080 | High | 72 | - |

| 1920x1080 | Low | 110 | - |

| 1920x1080 | Medium | 84 | 72 / 97 |

| 1920x1080 | Ultra | 56 | - |

At 1080p, three of the four presets exceed the 60 FPS threshold expected by many users. The Low preset offers the highest headroom at 110 FPS, and even High manages 72 FPS. In contrast, 1440p drops below 60 FPS for High (47) and Ultra (37), while Low (72) and Medium (55) remain close to or above the mark. At 4K, no preset reaches 45 FPS; the best score comes from Low at 39 FPS. The single most telling number is the 20 FPS score at 4K Ultra, which is practically unplayable for a responsive action game.

The variation in the Medium preset (for which min/max are recorded) shows a spread of about 9 FPS at 1440p (47–63) and 25 FPS at 4K (26–30) — the latter being only 4 FPS apart, indicating stutter-free but heavy frame throttling. The lack of min/max data for other presets means we cannot speak to frame hitch, but the average values alone demonstrate the GPU boundary.

Settings 489

When deciding best settings for playable performance, the data suggests a clear hierarchy. For 1080p, the High preset yields 72 FPS, which is still above the 60 FPS threshold and provides reasonably detailed visuals. The Medium preset yields 84 FPS, which is better for high-refresh monitors, while Ultra drops to 56 FPS, just under 60, implying slight frame drops could appear in effect-heavy scenes. For 1440p, the Low preset at 72 FPS is the only one that stays above 60 FPS; Medium delivers 55 FPS and High 47 FPS, both below. For 4K, even the Low preset only reaches 39 FPS, so unless you accept sub-60 FPS, 4K is not recommended for smooth gameplay.

Thus, the best "quality per frame-per-second" compromise is 1080p High, balancing the 6 GB memory bandwidth and the GPU's math throughput. If resolution is a priority, the 1440p Low (72 FPS) offers a 1.9× increase over 1080p High in pixel count with the same FPS level, though with lower visual detail. There is no preset that gives a playable experience at 4K, given the measured numbers.

FAQ

Q: What is the average frame rate at 1080p with High settings?

A: The measured average is 72 FPS, with no min/max data recorded for this preset.

Q: Does this combination achieve 60 FPS at 1440p?

A: Only the Low setting does, with an average of 72 FPS. The Medium and High presets stay below 60 FPS (55 and 47 FPS, respectively), and Ultra drops to 37 FPS.

Q: How many selectable resolution/preset combinations were tested?

A: The dataset includes 12 combinations: 4 resolutions (1080p, 1440p, 2160p, 2160p Ultra) and 4 settings (Low, Medium, High, Ultra). Not every combination has full min/max data, but all average FPS values are present.

Q: Which component is the primary bottleneck when running this game?

A: The GPU is clearly the limiting factor. The CPU is a 94th-percentile processor, but the GPU falls in the 53rd percentile for all GPUs. At each resolution, the FPS scales inversely with pixel count, which is characteristic of a GPU-bound situation; the CPU never shows as a constraint.

Q: How much faster is the CPU's synthetic multi-thread score compared to the GPU's typical game load?

A: Though not a direct comparison, the Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 44,167 and PassMark multi-thread of 52,525 highlight the CPU's strength. The GPU's PassMark G3D is only 12,699, indicating a huge gap in raw compute, but in this specific game the GPU is the determiner of frame rate.

Q: What is the lowest FPS recorded at any tested setting?

A: The lowest minimum FPS listed is 26 FPS, observed in the 4K Medium preset (shown as 30 average, 26 min). The average lowest value is 20 FPS at 4K Ultra.

Q: Has the release date of the game any relationship to the performance drop?

A: The Technomancer was released in 2016, a year before the GPU entered the market, so the game is programmed with the hardware of that era. The CPU sits well above that, but the GPU only comes out at 53rd‑percentile overall, aligning with its 2019 release date. The performance drop is more a matter of GPU capacity than game coding age.

This analysis of The Technomancer with the Core i7-14700KF and GTX 1660 SUPER demonstrates a marked asymmetry: the CPU alone is in the top 6 percentile, while the GPU sitting near the median produces the limiting frames. The most playable experience comes from the 1080p High preset (72 FPS), and no preset at 4K manages to reach even 45 FPS. The data is unambiguous — if you want to play this title at smooth frame rates, the GTX 1660 SUPER must be capped at 1080p.