The Technomancer

The Technomancer, a 2016 Action RPG, presents an interesting challenge for modern high-end hardware. The data for the Intel Core Ultra 5 245 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER combination shows a system that is overwhelmingly GPU-bound at higher resolutions but reveals significant CPU overhead at 1080p. The measured frames per second (FPS) across all settings and resolutions indicate that this pairing is capable of delivering a highly playable experience, though the optimal settings depend heavily on the display's native resolution and the user's preference for visual fidelity versus maximum frame rates. This analysis breaks down the measured performance data to provide clear guidance on settings, component roles, and overall ranking.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data provides a clear hierarchy of performance across the four available presets: Low, Medium, High, and Ultra. At every tested resolution, the Ultra preset delivers the lowest average FPS, while the Low preset delivers the highest. The choice of which preset to use should be guided by the target resolution and the desired frame rate, with a focus on maintaining a stable experience.

For 4K (3840x2160) gaming, the Ultra preset is the only option that dips below the 60 FPS threshold, averaging 54 FPS. The High preset is the best choice for a 4K display, providing an average of 70 FPS. This is a 30% increase in average FPS over Ultra (70 vs. 54) and represents a significant improvement in smoothness for a marginal visual downgrade. The Medium preset offers a further boost to 82 FPS, which is a 52% increase over Ultra, but the jump from High to Medium is less impactful than the jump from Ultra to High. For users with high-refresh-rate 4K panels, the Low preset at 106 FPS is the only way to approach or exceed 100 FPS, though it comes with the most significant visual compromises.

At 1440p (2560x1440), the Ultra preset manages a solid 99 FPS average, which is more than sufficient for most gaming monitors. The High preset pushes this to 127 FPS, a 28% increase over Ultra, making it the recommended starting point for high-refresh-rate 1440p displays. Medium is a viable option for those seeking even higher frame rates, hitting 149 FPS, but the Low preset at 194 FPS is exceptionally fast. The data suggests that at 1440p, the High preset offers the best balance of visual quality and performance, keeping the average FPS well above the 100 FPS mark. The gap between Medium and High is 22 FPS (149 to 127), while the gap between High and Ultra is 28 FPS (127 to 99), indicating that diminishing returns set in beyond the High preset.

For 1080p (1920x1080), the system is so powerful that even the Ultra preset maintains a high average of 152 FPS. This makes the Ultra preset a completely viable option for 1080p gaming, providing a high level of detail without sacrificing smoothness. The High preset is even more impressive at 194 FPS, and the Medium preset at 227 FPS is excellent for competitive play. The Low preset reaches 296 FPS, which is an extraordinarily high frame rate that would benefit only the most demanding esports titles. For most users at 1080p, the Ultra preset is the best experience, as the measured 152 FPS average is well within the range of high-refresh-rate monitors and the visual uplift from High to Ultra is tangible. The performance scaling from Low to Ultra is not linear, with the most significant drop occurring between Medium and High (a 33 FPS difference) and again between High and Ultra (a 42 FPS difference).

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 245 is a 14-core, 14-thread processor based on the Arrow Lake architecture. With a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.10 GHz, it provides a strong foundation for gaming workloads. The benchmark data shows the CPU has a percentile rank of 90 against all tested CPUs, placing it in the top tier of processors. Its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 32924 and single-core score of 4648 indicate substantial processing power that should not bottleneck a modern GPU in most scenarios.

In The Technomancer, the CPU's role becomes most apparent at the 1080p resolution. As the resolution decreases, the GPU's workload decreases, and the CPU becomes more critical for feeding the GPU with draw calls and game logic. The data supports this, showing that the average FPS at 1080p Low is 296, which is significantly higher than at 4K Low (106 FPS). This massive difference of 190 FPS is a clear indicator that the system is not CPU-limited at 4K but is instead heavily GPU-bound. At 1080p, the CPU is able to maintain a very high frame rate, but the GPU is still the limiting factor, as the 296 FPS at Low is likely close to the engine's or CPU's frame time ceiling.

This processor is rated with a TDP of 65 watts, which is relatively low for a desktop CPU with 14 cores, suggesting efficient power delivery. Its benchmark scores place it in close competition with other high-end desktop CPUs. For instance, it is just 0.4% behind the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5755G and 0.5% behind the AMD Ryzen 9 7900 in average benchmark score. This data indicates that the CPU is more than capable of handling the demands of The Technomancer, even at high frame rates, and it is unlikely to be the primary source of performance limitations in this test setup.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER is the dominant component in this system for this game. With 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, it offers a memory bandwidth of 736.3 GB/s, which is crucial for high-resolution textures and effects. The GPU has a base clock of 2295 MHz and a boost clock of 2550 MHz, and its performance is reflected in its 86th percentile ranking against all GPUs. Its average benchmark score of 54209 puts it in a near tie with the non-SUPER RTX 4080, which has a delta of only -0.1%.

The GPU's role is clearly defined by the resolution scaling. At 4K, the GPU is the absolute bottleneck. The difference in average FPS between the Ultra preset (54 FPS) and the Low preset (106 FPS) is 52 FPS, demonstrating that the GPU's rendering load is the primary constraint. The RTX 4080 SUPER's 16 GB of VRAM is likely sufficient for The Technomancer's assets, even at 4K Ultra, as the game is from 2016 and not likely to exceed this memory capacity. The performance drop from 1440p to 4K is significant, confirming that the GPU's compute and memory bandwidth are being taxed heavily at the higher resolution.

The GPU's closest rival in the data is the standard RTX 4080, which it trails by a negligible 0.1%. This indicates that the SUPER variant offers a very marginal performance improvement in general benchmarks. However, in this specific game, the measured FPS data shows that the GPU is powerful enough to push frame rates well beyond 60 FPS at 1440p on the Ultra preset. The GPU's 52.22 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 816.0 GTexel/s texture rate are more than adequate to handle the graphical demands of this Action RPG.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core Ultra 5 245 and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER holds a strong position in the benchmark database. The comboRankInGame for The Technomancer is 177 out of 2825 total tested combinations. This places the pairing in the top 6.3% of all systems tested for this specific game, which is a strong indicator of high-end performance. The rank is likely influenced by the GPU's significant performance, as the game is graphically demanding.

This ranking becomes more meaningful when considering the individual component performance. The CPU's 90th percentile rank and the GPU's 86th percentile rank suggest that neither component is a weak link. The fact that the combo ranks higher than the individual percentile of the GPU might indicate that the CPU's performance helps boost the overall result, particularly at 1080p where the CPU's capabilities are more heavily utilized. The system is clearly positioned for high-refresh-rate gaming, as the measured FPS data shows it can handle 1440p with ease and can even manage 4K with some settings adjustments.

Given that the GPU is the primary performance driver, the combo's rank is likely more dependent on the GPU's strength than the CPU's. A system with a similarly powerful GPU but a slower CPU might see a lower rank due to potential bottlenecks at lower resolutions. However, the data here shows that this specific CPU and GPU pairing is well-balanced, resulting in a top-200 finish out of nearly three thousand combinations. This rank confirms that users with this setup can expect top-tier performance in The Technomancer, with the ability to max out settings at 1440p and achieve very high frame rates.

Resolution Scaling

The performance scaling across resolutions is a textbook example of a GPU-bound system. When moving from 1080p to 1440p, the average FPS drops by a predictable margin. For the High preset, the average FPS falls from 194 to 127, a decrease of 67 FPS or 34.5%. When moving from 1440p to 4K, the same preset drops from 127 to 70 FPS, a decrease of 57 FPS or 44.9%. This escalating drop-off with increasing resolution is a clear sign that the GPU is the limiting factor. The CPU's workload does not scale as dramatically with resolution as the GPU's does, so the GPU becomes more and more saturated as pixel count increases.

The impact of the resolution scaling is also visible in the Low preset. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 296 FPS. At 1440p Low, it drops to 194 FPS, and at 4K Low, it falls to 106 FPS. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 102 FPS, and from 1440p to 4K is 88 FPS. This shows that even at the lowest settings, the GPU is still the primary bottleneck, as the frame rate does not stay flat. If the system were CPU-limited, we would expect the FPS to remain nearly constant across resolutions at the same settings, as the CPU's workload is largely independent of resolution. The data clearly shows this is not the case, confirming that the GPU is the dominant component in this configuration.

The scaling also reveals that the CPU is not causing a significant bottleneck at any resolution. The fact that the FPS continues to increase as the resolution decreases, all the way down to 296 FPS at 1080p, suggests that the CPU still has headroom. If the CPU were a bottleneck, we would see a plateau in FPS at lower resolutions. The absence of such a plateau indicates that the Intel Core Ultra 5 245 is providing enough processing power to keep up with the RTX 4080 SUPER, even at very high frame rates.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The following is the complete breakdown of the measured average FPS performance for this system.

3840x2160 (4K)

• Ultra: 54 FPS average.
• High: 70 FPS average.
• Medium: 82 FPS average, with a minimum of 69 FPS and a maximum of 94 FPS.
• Low: 106 FPS average.

2560x1440 (1440p)

• Ultra: 99 FPS average.
• High: 127 FPS average.
• Medium: 149 FPS average, with a minimum of 126 FPS and a maximum of 171 FPS.
• Low: 194 FPS average.

1920x1080 (1080p)

• Ultra: 152 FPS average.
• High: 194 FPS average.
• Medium: 227 FPS average, with a minimum of 193 FPS and a maximum of 262 FPS.
• Low: 296 FPS average.

The data shows that the Medium preset is the only one with recorded minimum and maximum FPS values, indicating more variance in frame times. The average FPS for the Medium preset at 1440p is 149, which is 50 FPS higher than the Ultra preset's 99 FPS. This substantial difference highlights the cost of the highest visual settings. At 1080p, the jump from High to Ultra results in a 42 FPS drop (194 to 152), showing that the Ultra preset has a significant impact on the GPU's workload. The Low preset at 1080p is the only setting that pushes the system beyond the 300 FPS mark, hitting 296 FPS, which is a remarkable feat for any hardware combination.

FAQ

Q: What is the best preset for a 4K display?

A: The High preset is the recommended choice for 4K. It delivers an average of 70 FPS, which is above the 60 FPS target for smooth gameplay, while the Ultra preset averages only 54 FPS and may feel less fluid.

Q: Can this system handle 1440p gaming at the highest settings?

A: Yes. The measured data shows the Ultra preset at 1440p achieves an average of 99 FPS, which is a smooth and highly playable frame rate for most monitors.

Q: How much faster is the Low preset compared to Ultra at 1080p?

A: The Low preset at 1080p achieves an average of 296 FPS, while the Ultra preset achieves 152 FPS. This represents a 94.7% increase in average FPS when using the Low preset.

Q: Is the system more limited by the CPU or GPU in this game?

A: The data indicates the system is heavily GPU-limited. The average FPS scales significantly with resolution changes, dropping from 194 FPS at 1080p High to 70 FPS at 4K High. If the CPU were the main limitation, the FPS would remain more constant across resolutions.

Q: What is the minimum FPS recorded for the Medium preset at 1440p?

A: The minimum FPS recorded for the Medium preset at 2560x1440 is 126 FPS, with a maximum of 171 FPS and an average of 149 FPS.

Q: How does the performance of the RTX 4080 SUPER compare to the standard RTX 4080?

A: According to the benchmark data, the RTX 4080 SUPER has an average score of 54209, which is 0.1% lower than the standard RTX 4080's average score of 54247. The two are essentially tied in performance.