The Technomancer

The Technomancer, a 2016 Action RPG, presents a demanding workload that stresses both modern processors and graphics cards. This analysis examines the performance of the Intel Core Ultra 7 165H paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080, using measured frame rate data to understand the balance between CPU and GPU responsibilities across different resolutions and quality settings. The data reveals a system capable of high refresh rates at 1080p and 1440p, while 4K demands careful settings management to maintain playability.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 165H is a 16-core, 22-thread mobile processor based on the Meteor Lake architecture, built on a 7 nm process. It features a base clock of 3.80 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz, with a 28 W TDP that classifies it as a power-efficient part for laptops. Its cache hierarchy includes 112 KB of L1 per core, 2 MB of L2 per core, and 24 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU's benchmark scores place it in the 84th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 34083. In synthetic tests, it achieves a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 14551 and a single-core score of 1759, indicating robust multi-threaded performance that is well-suited for modern game engines that can utilize many cores.

In the context of The Technomancer, the CPU's role becomes evident when examining the frame rate data at lower resolutions. At 1080p with Low settings, the system achieves an average of 229 FPS. This high frame rate suggests that the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU with enough data to exceed 200 FPS, even when the GPU is not heavily taxed by visual effects. The single-threaded performance, indicated by a PassMark single-thread score of 3509, is crucial for maintaining consistent frame pacing in a game that may rely on a primary game thread for physics and AI calculations. The 22 threads provide ample headroom for background tasks and streaming, ensuring that the main game logic does not become a bottleneck.

Compared to its nearest rivals, the Core Ultra 7 165H is statistically tied with the Intel Core Ultra 5 338H, showing a mere 0.3% performance difference. It also performs nearly identically to the AMD EPYC 4244P and AMD Ryzen AI 7 350, with the Intel part trailing by 0.4% in both cases. The AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, a much older desktop part, holds a slight 0.5% advantage. These small deltas indicate that the mobile Core Ultra 7 165H provides desktop-class multi-threaded performance in its segment, making it a strong partner for a high-end GPU.

However, the data shows that the CPU is not the limiting factor in most scenarios. The frame rate drop from 1080p to 1440p at High settings is from 150 FPS to 98 FPS, a 34.7% reduction. This significant drop suggests that the GPU is becoming the primary constraint as pixel count increases. The CPU's ceiling appears to be above the 229 FPS seen at 1080p Low, as the GPU cannot maintain that pace at higher settings. In summary, the Core Ultra 7 165H provides sufficient compute power to avoid bottlenecking the RTX 5080 in The Technomancer, allowing the GPU to be the performance arbiter at higher resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

The measured frame rate data provides clear guidance for the optimal settings preset at each resolution, balancing visual quality with a playable frame rate. The game offers four presets: Low, Medium, High, and Ultra. For each resolution, we can identify which preset delivers the best experience based on the average FPS.

At 3840x2160 (4K), the High preset yields an average of 54 FPS, which is on the border of smooth playability. The Medium preset provides a more comfortable 63 FPS, with a minimum of 54 FPS and a maximum of 73 FPS, indicating acceptable consistency. The Low preset jumps to 82 FPS but sacrifices significant visual fidelity. The Ultra preset drops to 42 FPS, which is too low for a consistent experience. For 4K, the Medium preset is the recommended choice, as it offers a frame rate that is 16.7% higher than High and remains above the 60 FPS target for the average, while still providing a reasonable level of detail.

At 2560x1440 (1440p), the High preset delivers an average of 98 FPS, which is an excellent balance of visual quality and performance. The Medium preset reaches 115 FPS, with a minimum of 98 FPS and a maximum of 132 FPS, making it the choice for users prioritizing higher refresh rates. The Low preset achieves 150 FPS, but the visual downgrade is substantial. The Ultra preset runs at 77 FPS, which is still playable but represents a 21.4% drop from High. For 1440p, the High preset is the recommended option, providing a near-100 FPS experience that takes advantage of the GPU's capabilities without compromising on detail.

At 1920x1080 (1080p), the High preset achieves an average of 150 FPS, which is ideal for high-refresh-rate monitors. The Medium preset runs at 176 FPS, with a minimum of 150 FPS and a maximum of 202 FPS, offering even higher headroom. The Low preset reaches 229 FPS, which is exceptionally fast but visually sparse. The Ultra preset, at 117 FPS, is also viable but offers less performance headroom than High. For 1080p, the High preset is the balanced recommendation, as 150 FPS exceeds the refresh rate of most standard monitors and provides a rich visual experience. Users with 240 Hz displays may prefer Medium to stay above 170 FPS.

Across all resolutions, the Ultra preset consistently shows a significant performance penalty compared to High, with drops of 22.2% at 4K, 21.4% at 1440p, and 22.0% at 1080p. This suggests that Ultra settings introduce effects that heavily tax the GPU without a proportional visual benefit. The Medium preset provides the best minimum frame rate stability, as seen in the 4K and 1440p data where min FPS is only slightly below the average.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and settings combination for this CPU and GPU in The Technomancer?

A: The data indicates that 1440p with High settings is the sweet spot, delivering an average of 98 FPS. This provides a high frame rate while maintaining good visual quality. At 4K, dropping to Medium settings yields 63 FPS, which is more playable than High's 54 FPS.

Q: How does the Core Ultra 7 165H compare to its closest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The Core Ultra 7 165H has an average benchmark score of 34083, which is essentially tied with the Intel Core Ultra 5 338H (0.3% difference). It trails the AMD EPYC 4244P and AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 by 0.4%, and the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X by 0.5%. These are negligible differences, indicating comparable multi-threaded performance.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor at 1080p with Low settings?

A: At 1080p Low, the system achieves 229 FPS. This is likely near the CPU's maximum frame throughput, as the GPU is not heavily stressed at these settings. The fact that higher settings at the same resolution reduce the FPS confirms that the GPU becomes the limiting factor as its workload increases.

Q: What is the frame rate impact of moving from High to Ultra settings?

A: Moving from High to Ultra consistently reduces the average frame rate by approximately 22% across all resolutions. Specifically, at 1080p it drops from 150 FPS to 117 FPS, at 1440p from 98 FPS to 77 FPS, and at 4K from 54 FPS to 42 FPS.

Q: Does the RTX 5080 provide a stable frame rate at 4K Medium settings?

A: At 4K Medium, the average frame rate is 63 FPS, with a minimum of 54 FPS and a maximum of 73 FPS. The minimum frame rate is above the 30 FPS playability threshold, but it does dip below 60 FPS, indicating some inconsistency. The average is solid, but users may notice occasional stutters.

Q: How does this combo rank among other tested systems for this game?

A: The Intel Core Ultra 7 165H and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 combination ranks 717th out of 2825 tested combos in The Technomancer, placing it in the top 25% of all tested systems.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core Ultra 7 165H and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 is ranked 717th out of 2825 tested combos for The Technomancer. This places it in the 74.6th percentile of all systems tested, meaning it outperforms roughly three-quarters of the configurations in this game. This high ranking is primarily driven by the RTX 5080's strong performance, as the CPU is a mobile part that, while capable, is not the fastest available. The rank suggests that this pairing is well-balanced for this title, with the GPU's compute power compensating for the CPU's lower clock speeds compared to desktop parts.

In the context of the GPU's own benchmark percentile, the RTX 5080 sits in the 87th percentile of all GPUs, with an average score of 56083. Its nearest rivals, the AMD Radeon 8060S and the AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB, are within 0.7% of its score, indicating that the 5080 is at the top of its immediate performance class. The CPU's 84th percentile ranking is slightly lower, but the combination still achieves a top-quartile rank in this specific game. This suggests that The Technomancer's engine is more sensitive to GPU performance than CPU performance, which is common for games of its era.

The rank of 717 out of 2825 also implies that there is a wide range of systems that perform better, likely including those with higher-end desktop CPUs. However, for a mobile platform, this result is impressive. The data shows that in this game, the combination is not held back by a CPU bottleneck, as the frame rates scale appropriately with resolution changes, indicating that the GPU is the primary driver of performance at higher settings.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 is a high-end graphics card based on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture, built on a 5 nm process at TSMC. It features a massive 45,600 million transistors on a 378 mm² die, with a base clock of 2295 MHz and a boost clock of 2617 MHz. The GPU is equipped with 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 960.0 GB/s. Its compute power is substantial, with 10752 shading units and a FP32 performance of 56.28 TFLOPS. The card also includes 84 RT cores and 336 Tensor cores, making it a future-proof part for ray tracing and AI workloads, though The Technomancer does not utilize these features.

In The Technomancer, the GPU's role is to render the game's environments and characters. The measured frame rates show that the RTX 5080 is the dominant factor in performance scaling. At 1080p Low, the GPU produces 229 FPS, but as settings increase to Ultra, the frame rate drops to 117 FPS, a 48.9% reduction. This demonstrates that the GPU is heavily taxed by the game's higher visual detail settings, such as texture quality, shadow resolution, and post-processing effects. The 16 GB of VRAM is more than sufficient for this game, as even at 4K Ultra, the game is unlikely to exceed 8 GB of usage, leaving ample headroom.

The GPU's benchmark scores further contextualize its performance. It achieves a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 8637 and a Geekbench Vulkan score of 255450, indicating strong DirectX 12 and Vulkan API performance. Its PassMark G3D score of 36565 places it in the 87th percentile of all GPUs. Compared to its nearest rivals, it is 0.6% faster than the AMD Radeon 8060S and 0.7% faster than the AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB, but it is 2.2% slower than the AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE. These small margins suggest that the RTX 5080 is competitively positioned at the top of its segment, delivering consistent high frame rates in games that are GPU-bound.

The GPU's clock speeds are also noteworthy. The boost clock of 2617 MHz is high for a modern card, and the memory clock of 1875 MHz (30 Gbps effective) ensures that the 960 GB/s bandwidth is not a bottleneck. In The Technomancer, this bandwidth is unlikely to be fully utilized, as the game's textures are not particularly demanding by modern standards. Overall, the RTX 5080 provides more than enough raw power to drive this game at high frame rates, with the CPU being the secondary consideration.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured frame rate data provides a comprehensive view of performance across three resolutions and four settings presets. At 1920x1080, the system achieves an average of 229 FPS on Low, 176 FPS on Medium, 150 FPS on High, and 117 FPS on Ultra. The Medium preset shows a minimum of 150 FPS and a maximum of 202 FPS, indicating a stable frame time distribution. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a steady decline, with the largest single drop occurring between High and Ultra, a 22.0% reduction.

At 2560x1440, the averages are 150 FPS on Low, 115 FPS on Medium, 98 FPS on High, and 77 FPS on Ultra. The Medium preset again shows the most detailed data, with a minimum of 98 FPS and a maximum of 132 FPS. The drop from Low to Medium is 23.3%, and from Medium to High is 14.8%. The Ultra preset is 21.4% slower than High, mirroring the 1080p trend. The frame rates at 1440p are still high, with even Ultra exceeding 60 FPS.

At 3840x2160, the averages drop significantly: 82 FPS on Low, 63 FPS on Medium, 54 FPS on High, and 42 FPS on Ultra. The Medium preset provides the only minimum FPS data at this resolution, with a minimum of 54 FPS and a maximum of 73 FPS. The jump from Low to Medium is a 23.2% reduction, and from Medium to High is a 14.3% reduction. The Ultra preset is 22.2% slower than High, consistent with the other resolutions. At 4K, the Ultra preset is the only configuration that dips below 45 FPS, making it less suitable for smooth gameplay.

The data reveals a consistent pattern: the percentage drop from Low to Medium is roughly 23%, from Medium to High is about 14-15%, and from High to Ultra is approximately 22%. This suggests that the game's settings scaling is not linear, with Ultra having a disproportionately high cost. The only resolution with complete min/max data is Medium, which shows that the minimum FPS is always equal to the High preset's average FPS, indicating that Medium provides a stable baseline.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is a critical indicator of system balance. At High settings, the average FPS drops from 150 at 1080p to 98 at 1440p, a 34.7% reduction, and then to 54 at 4K, a further 44.9% reduction from 1440p. The total drop from 1080p to 4K is 64.0%. At Low settings, the drop is from 229 FPS to 150 FPS (34.5% drop) to 82 FPS (45.3% drop), totaling 64.2%. This consistent scaling pattern across settings indicates that the GPU is the primary limiting factor, as the frame rate drops proportionally to the increase in pixel count.

The number of pixels at 4K (3840x2160) is 8.29 million, which is 4 times the pixel count at 1080p (2.07 million). If the GPU were perfectly scaling, we would expect the frame rate at 4K to be approximately one-quarter of the 1080p rate. However, the observed 4K High FPS of 54 is 36.0% of the 1080p High FPS of 150. This suggests that the GPU is not purely pixel-bound; there are other factors, such as memory bandwidth and fill rate, that allow it to perform better than the theoretical pixel count limit. The RTX 5080's 960 GB/s bandwidth is likely sufficient to handle the increased data throughput at 4K.

The fact that the frame rate does not drop by the full 75% indicates that the CPU is also playing a role in limiting performance at 1080p. At 1080p High, the CPU may be nearing its limit of 150 FPS, preventing the GPU from achieving a higher frame rate. As resolution increases, the GPU becomes more heavily loaded, and the CPU has more time to prepare frames. This is why the frame rate drop from 1440p to 4K (44.9%) is larger than the drop from 1080p to 1440p (34.7%), as the GPU bottleneck becomes more pronounced at higher resolutions. The data shows that the system is well-balanced, with the CPU providing a high ceiling that allows the GPU to scale effectively as resolution increases, though the GPU is the dominant constraint at 4K.