The Technomancer

The Technomancer, a 2016 Action RPG, presents an interesting challenge for the Intel Core Ultra 5 235 and AMD Radeon RX 9060 pairing. The benchmark data shows this combination is capable of delivering smooth gameplay at 1080p and 1440p, but it struggles to maintain playable frame rates at 4K with higher visual fidelity. The measured results indicate a system that is well-balanced for mainstream resolutions, with the GPU becoming the primary bottleneck as resolution increases. This analysis focuses purely on the measured FPS data to provide practical settings recommendations and a clear picture of the hardware's capabilities in this specific title.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark results for this combination of hardware in The Technomancer clearly indicate that the Medium preset provides the best balance of visual quality and performance across all tested resolutions. At 1080p, the Medium preset delivers an average of 120 FPS, which is a substantial 50% higher than the High preset's 103 FPS. While the Low preset pushes the frame rate to 157 FPS, the jump from Low to Medium is a significant visual upgrade for a relatively modest performance cost of 37 FPS. For most players, the Medium preset at 1080p is the sweet spot, offering high frame rates that are well above the threshold for smooth gameplay on standard 60Hz displays and even providing headroom for high-refresh-rate monitors.

Moving to 1440p, the Medium preset continues to be the recommended choice. The data shows an average of 79 FPS, which is a solid performance level for this resolution. This is a 12 FPS drop from the High preset's 67 FPS, but the visual improvements from High to Medium are often less noticeable at higher resolutions where pixel density helps mask some graphical compromises. The Low preset at 1440p achieves 102 FPS, but the visual downgrade is typically too severe for a game with action-RPG elements where atmosphere and world detail matter. The Ultra preset at 1440p, with an average of 52 FPS, is borderline playable but dips into territory where frame pacing can become noticeable, making Medium the safer and more consistent option.

At 4K, the situation changes dramatically. The Medium preset averages 43 FPS, which is playable but not ideal for fast-paced combat. The High preset drops to 37 FPS, and the Ultra preset falls to an unplayable 29 FPS. The Low preset, at 56 FPS, is the only setting that provides a consistently smooth experience at this resolution. If you have a 4K display, the recommendation is to use the Low preset to prioritize frame rate, or to accept the 43 FPS average of Medium if you prefer higher visual fidelity and can tolerate some stutter. The performance gap between Low and Medium at 4K is 13 FPS, which represents a 23% performance loss for better visuals. For this combination, 4K gaming is only viable at the lowest settings.

FAQ

Q: Is the Intel Core Ultra 5 235 a bottleneck for the AMD Radeon RX 9060 in The Technomancer?

A: Based on the benchmark data, the CPU does not appear to be a limiting factor at lower resolutions, but the GPU becomes the clear bottleneck as resolution increases. At 1080p, the system achieves 157 FPS on Low settings, indicating the CPU can feed the GPU effectively. However, the frame rate drops significantly at 4K (56 FPS on Low), which is a characteristic of GPU limitation rather than CPU limitation.

Q: How does the RX 9060's performance in this game compare to its closest rivals?

A: The RX 9060 has an average benchmark score of 16014, which places it just 0.7% behind the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti in the synthetic benchmarks. In the measured game data, the RX 9060 shows it can handle The Technomancer at 1080p with an average of 103 FPS on High settings, demonstrating its capability relative to its peer group.

Q: What is the best resolution to play The Technomancer with this hardware?

A: The data strongly supports 1440p as the best overall resolution for this combo. At 1440p on Medium settings, the system averages 79 FPS, which is a good balance of visual detail and performance. At 1080p, frame rates are higher but the visual clarity is lower, and at 4K, the system cannot maintain consistently high frame rates above Low settings.

Q: Does the Core Ultra 5 235's 14-core configuration help in this game?

A: The CPU has 14 cores and 14 threads, which is a high core count. The benchmark results for The Technomancer show that the game is heavily GPU-bound, as evidenced by the significant frame rate drops with increasing resolution. The CPU's multi-core performance, as indicated by its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 14769, ensures it is not a limiting factor in this title.

Q: How much performance is lost when switching from High to Ultra settings at 1080p?

A: The measured data shows a 23 FPS drop when moving from the High preset (103 FPS) to the Ultra preset (80 FPS) at 1080p. This represents a 22% performance decrease. The visual difference between High and Ultra is often subtle, so this performance cost may not be worth it for most users.

Q: Is the 8 GB of VRAM on the RX 9060 sufficient for this game?

A: The benchmark data does not directly measure VRAM usage, but the performance at 4K on Ultra settings (29 FPS) suggests the GPU is severely stressed. The 8 GB memory capacity and 288.0 GB/s bandwidth are likely contributing factors to the inability to maintain playable framerates at the highest settings and resolution, though the GPU's compute power is the more dominant factor in the observed results.

How This Combo Ranks

In the overall database of tested combinations for The Technomancer, this specific pairing of the Intel Core Ultra 5 235 and AMD Radeon RX 9060 ranks 1632 out of 2825 tested combos. This places it in the 58th percentile of all systems tested, meaning it outperforms a majority of combinations but is not at the top tier. The rank reflects a balanced mid-range setup that delivers reliable performance at mainstream resolutions but does not excel at 4K gaming.

The combo's rank is consistent with the individual components' standings. The Core Ultra 5 235 sits in the 89th percentile of all CPUs, indicating strong processing power, while the RX 9060 is in the 59th percentile of all GPUs. The system's overall rank is a composite of these factors, with the GPU being a more significant limiter in this game. The nearest rival for the CPU is the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375, which has a nearly identical average benchmark score (46030 vs 46062, a 0.1% difference), suggesting the CPU's performance is well-matched with its competitors. For the GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is the closest rival, with a score of 16129 versus the RX 9060's 16014, a 0.7% difference.

This rank of 1632 means that in a large sample of hardware combinations, this setup is comfortably in the upper half. For a game like The Technomancer, which is not a top-tier AAA title from its era, this rank indicates that the system can handle the game well at reasonable settings. The data shows that users with this combo will have a better experience than 42% of the other tested configurations, which is a solid result for a mid-range pairing.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured frame rates for this combination provide a detailed picture of its performance across three resolutions and four quality presets. The data reveals a clear performance hierarchy, with 1080p and Low settings yielding the highest frame rates and 4K and Ultra settings yielding the lowest.

At 1920x1080, the system performs exceptionally well. The Low preset achieves an average of 157 FPS, which drops to 120 FPS on Medium and 103 FPS on High. The Ultra preset is the most demanding, with an average of 80 FPS. The Medium preset has a minimum of 102 FPS and a maximum of 138 FPS, showing a consistent frame time range. The spread from Low to Ultra is 77 FPS, which is a significant performance range that gives users many options depending on their preference for visuals versus frame rate.

At 2560x1440, the performance scales down as expected. The Low preset averages 102 FPS, Medium averages 79 FPS, and High averages 67 FPS. The Ultra preset drops to 52 FPS. The Medium preset at this resolution has a minimum of 67 FPS and a maximum of 90 FPS. The performance gap between Low and Ultra at 1440p is 50 FPS, which is a smaller absolute difference than at 1080p, indicating the GPU is becoming more of a limiting factor as the pixel count increases.

At 3840x2160, the system struggles to maintain high frame rates. The Low preset averages 56 FPS, which is the only playable option. Medium averages 43 FPS, High averages 37 FPS, and Ultra averages a low 29 FPS. The Medium preset has a minimum of 37 FPS and a maximum of 50 FPS, showing significant frame drops. The difference between Low and Ultra at 4K is 27 FPS, which is proportionally large given the lower starting point. The data clearly shows that 4K gaming is only feasible with significant visual compromises on this hardware.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals important information about the system's bottleneck. At High settings, the average frame rate drops from 103 FPS at 1080p to 67 FPS at 1440p and further to 37 FPS at 4K. This represents a 35% drop from 1080p to 1440p and a 64% drop from 1080p to 4K. This steep decline is a classic indicator of GPU-bound performance. As the resolution increases, the GPU must render more pixels, and its workload scales accordingly, while the CPU's workload remains relatively constant.

The same pattern is visible at other settings. On Low, the frame rate goes from 157 FPS at 1080p to 102 FPS at 1440p and 56 FPS at 4K. This is a 65% reduction from 1080p to 4K. On Medium, the drop is from 120 FPS to 79 FPS to 43 FPS, a 64% reduction. On Ultra, the drop is from 80 FPS to 52 FPS to 29 FPS, a 64% reduction. The consistency of this ~64% performance loss from 1080p to 4K across all settings confirms that the AMD Radeon RX 9060 is the primary limiting component.

The Core Ultra 5 235, with its high single-thread performance (Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2085) and multi-core capability (Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 14769), is more than capable of handling the game's CPU demands. The fact that the frame rate scales almost perfectly with pixel count indicates that the CPU is not holding back the GPU. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see a plateau in frame rates at lower resolutions, but the data shows continuous scaling, which points to the GPU being the definitive limiting factor at all resolutions.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 235 is a 14-core, 14-thread processor based on the Arrow Lake architecture, built on a 3 nm process. Its specifications show a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz. The CPU has a 24 MB shared L3 cache and supports DDR5 memory. In terms of synthetic benchmarks, it scores 14769 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 2085 in single-core, placing it in the 89th percentile of all CPUs. Its average benchmark score of 46062 is nearly identical to its nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375, which scores 46030, a mere 0.1% difference.

In the context of The Technomancer, the CPU's role is to feed the GPU with rendering data. The measured FPS data shows that the CPU is not a bottleneck in this game. At 1080p with Low settings, the system achieves 157 FPS, which is a very high frame rate. If the CPU were limiting performance, we would expect to see frame rates plateau at a lower level. Instead, the frame rates are high, and the performance scaling with resolution is consistent with GPU limitation.

The CPU's 14 cores provide ample parallel processing power, and its high boost clock of 5.00 GHz ensures strong single-thread performance, which is often important in games. The PassMark single-thread score of 4516 and the Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2085 confirm its capability in this area. The benchmark results for this game indicate that the Core Ultra 5 235 provides more than enough processing power to support the RX 9060 at all settings. The system's performance is entirely dictated by the GPU's ability to render frames, not the CPU's ability to compute game logic or prepare draw calls. Therefore, users should focus on GPU settings and resolution when tuning performance for The Technomancer, as the CPU is not a limiting factor.