The Technomancer

The Technomancer, an action RPG released in 2016, demonstrates a demanding workload on modern hardware. The measured combination here pairs the Intel Core Ultra 7 265, a 20-core, 20-thread desktop processor with a 5.30 GHz boost clock, with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, a 4 GB GDDR5 card that launched in 2019. The collected frame data covers three resolutions and four presets, all measured on real hardware. In the overall game ranking, this combo sits at position 3568 out of 3696 total combinations, putting it near the very bottom of the measurable pool. That position signals an experience driven almost entirely by the GPU's 4 GB frame buffer and 128.1 GB/s memory bandwidth, rather than by the CPU's computational muscle. The kit is far from useless at 1080p, but beyond that resolution it gets problematic. The specific numbers—from 68 FPS at 1080p Low down to 13 FPS at 2160p Ultra—lay out a clear picture of why this pairing is built for nothing above 1920x1080.

Settings Recommendations

The measured frame rates make a strong, unambiguous recommendation: use the Medium preset at 1920x1080 for the playable experience. At 1080p with Medium, the data shows an average of 52 FPS, with a minimum of 44 FPS and a maximum of 60 FPS. This is the only settings level that delivers both a decent average and a drip that does not collapse below 60 FPS. The High preset drops to 45 FPS average, so that -19% reduction from Medium is really what pushes the visual quality well up toward the cost of a smooth experience. On the other end, Low gives 68 FPS but only by cutting the quality bar; the measured row does not include a min/max for Low, so it is not clear how steady that average is. Given the default we can see, Medium is the sweet spot.

At 1440p the same pattern repeats, but with a less-strong result. Medium at 2560x1440 gives 34 FPS with a 29-39 range, which only qualifies as "playable" if can live with stutters. High drops to 29 FPS and Ultra to 23. No setting at 1440p reaches a stable 60 FPS, and the data clearly shows the GPU is the limiting factor. At 2160p, every preset is too slow: Medium runs at 19 FPS (16-22), Low at 24 FPS, High at 16 FPS, and Ultra at 13 FPS. The only practical rule is that with this particular GPU, you should stay at 1080p. Medium is the recommended setting: it is one step lower than High in quality but gives a frame rate that is 28% higher (45 to 52) on average, and it still envelops the min/max range, which indicates consistent timing. Running the game at Ultra at 1080p yields 35 FPS, which is below the always-expected 50, so it is not a good trade if you want the concurrency. Low should be reserved only for testing, as the exposure to 68 FPS helps that but the visual penalty is high.

For the most demanding scenario—Ultra at 4K—the 13 FPS average renders the preset useless. So, in terms of the measured rows, the only "best" setting is Medium at 1080p.

GPU Role

The GeForce GTX 1650 shows its age in this title. It carries a 4 GB GDDR5 frame with a 128-bit interface, and bandwidth of 128.1 GB/s. That memory is the first stop: at 2160p with High, the data goes to 16 FPS, while at 1440p High 29 FPS, making it the way that memory capacity and bandwidth bottleneck the system. The contrast between 1080p High (45 FPS) and 4K High (16 FPS) shows the same: a 29 FPS reduction in the same preset as resolution grows.

The card itself uses the TU117 chip, a 12 nm design that packs 4,700 million transistors on a 200 mm² die. It has 896 shading units, 96 texture total 64 TMUs, 56 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. The boost clock of 1665 MHz and base 1485 MHz define the entire. With a fill rate of 53.28 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 93.24 GTexel/s, it can still handle The Technomancer's visual style at moderate settings, but the frame tracking suggests it can sustain the pixel majority only at lower resolutions. The GPU sits at the 40th percentile of all GPUs in the database, placing it in the lower half of the overall list. Its isolated rival comparison shows how tight the GTX 1650 is: versus Radeon HD 8850M, the 1650 leads by 0.3% (7.54% higher average score), ahead by 0.4% over the UHD 750 in terms of average score (7441), ahead by 0.6% over Radeon R7 350 with a 0.7% advantage. Against the Intel Arc T3100, it is actually 1% weaker, but that score is enough to keep the card at the bottom of the mid-range heap. What that means for The Technomancer: the card's compute resources are just enough for 1080p Medium with roughly 52 FPS, but anything more will push it over the edge.

The 4 GB VRAM is insufficient in the sense that the engine—while only a 2016 release—does have extra buffer usage at higher presets. The row data shows that the average FPS barely moves from Low to Ultra at 1080p? Wait, Ultra at 35 does drop from 68, so there is a scale. But the correlation to resolution is much larger than the impact from settings alone. Every doubling of pixel count (from 1080p to 4K) lowers FPS by roughly 1.4x at High and 1.8x at Low? I can only cite the cases. However, it reads as a classic GPU-bound scenario.

VRAM specifically: at Ultra preset at 4K, the 13 FPS average precipitates that 4 GB quickly fills far past the buffer. Even the GTX 1650's 128-bit bandwidth (128.1 GB/s) is the pump insufficient to feed enough to feed a 4K render. The card's own compute-Offform score in 4090 buff can give 3048 points, which is meaningless for the game; but the engine (DirectX 11-era) will get the card's single-stream performance. A single-rail note: the GPU offers no power connectors, uses a 75 W TDP, and appeals via PCIe 3.0 x16—still, the data shows that frame lifts always track the resolution.

Resolution Scaling

There is a very visible pattern as, when going from 1080p up to 4K: the FPS numbers fall far from what the CPU would allow. For the Low preset - 1080p 68, 1440p 44, 4K 24. Going from 1080p to 1440p that shown drop 24 FPS (from 68 to 44), and 1080p to 4K it drops 44 FPS (from 68 to 24). That's a 64% lower FPS going to 4K? I can't say "64%" without that being a number, but I can say "more than half" or "drops to a third the value" (68 to 24). The same pattern appears for Medium: 1080p 52, 1440p 34, 4K 19. High: 45, 29, 16. Ultra: 35, 23, 13. In each setting there are two sizeable steps.

The change from 1440p Medium (34) to 4K Medium (19) is a delta of 15 FPS. Between 1080p Medium to 1440p Medium, the drop is 12 FPS. Such consistent large scaling is the classic sign of a GPU that is pixel-limited. The CPU would not show such a curve; a 20-core, 20-thread processor with a 5.30 GHz boost is not the bound here. The data: for Low preset, rate 68 at 1080p vs 44 at 1440p vs 24 at 4K, scaling almost exactly with pixel count. At 4K, the 1440p result (24 FPS low) is the fastest the card can get at that resolution, at roughly 1/5 of the 1080p average. That underplays. So the main takeaway is that this 1650 is a 1080p-class card in The Technomancer. For a 1440p monitor, you will need to avoid Medium (34 FPS) and use Low preset (44 FPS) if you want a solid, at least, not blurred experience. At 4K, there is no acceptable row: every average is on the wrong side of 30 FPS, and only Low manages 24 FPS—the rest are worse, such as the 19 FPS Medium or 16 High.

This behavior also confirms that the render resolution is the dominant variable. That is useful information for troubleshooting: if a user sees higher FPS on 4K monitor, the solution is not to tweak the CPU, but lower the resolution or use a lower preset. No amount of CPU single-core strength will fix the GPU's inability to perform at 2160p. The GTX 1650's 4 GB buffer and 2.984 TFLOPS are the blockers.

FAQ

Q: Which single setting should I choose for 1920x1080 if I have this CPU and GPU?

A: The Medium preset at 1920x1080 averages 52 FPS with a 44-to-60 range. That is the best balance of speed and visual fidelity for this combination. High drops to 45 FPS, while Low raises to 68 FPS but carries much lower image quality.

Q: Can the GTX 1650 handle 2560x1440 in The Technomancer?

A: Not really. At 1440p, the lowest settings (Low) gives a 44 FPS average, which is tough on a monitor. Medium yields 34 FPS (29-39), and High/Ultra are 29 and 23 FPS. Only does 1080p, it starts to get competitive with the 60 FPS line.

Q: What is the minimum FPS recorded at 1920x1080 Medium?

A: The measured minimum is 44 FPS, with a maximum of 60 FPS, giving a narrow 16-FPS range across the test.

Q: Does this GPU make a difference from 1440p to 4K?

A: Actually the drop is severe. For Low preset, 1440p is 44 FPS while 4K is 24 FPS. Medium drops from 34 FPS at 1440p to 19 FPS at 4K. The card is clearly binned for 1080p.

Q: How does the GTX 1650 rank against its nearest competitors?

A: The GTX 1650 averages 7472 in the database, which places it at the 40th percentile. In the nearest rival list: it leads the Radeon HD 8850M by 0.3% (score 7442), by 0.4% over the Intel UHD 750 (score 7441), and is 0.6% better than the Radeon R7 350 (7429). It trails the ARC A120 by 1% (the ARC score 7550). None of these compare with huge margins, and the 1650 sits on the edge of the curve.

Q: Does the CPU play any role in the low FPS at 4K?**

A: The CPU is strong—20 cores at 2.40 GHz base and 4.30 GHz boost—but The Technomancer at 4K shows FPS below 20 FPS at every setting except Low (24). That pattern is expected from GPU limit, so the processor is not the cause.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265 is a 20-core, 20-thread processor in the Arrow state, running at a base 2.40 GHz, boost 5.30 GHz, with 30 MB shared L3 cache. Its own multi-threaded benchmarks are very solid: 42,216 points in CineBench 23 (mine says 42216) and 6268 in CineBench R20. In single-thread, it scores 5962 in R23 cores, 884 in R20, 600 in the old R15. The percent of other CPUs is 93, so this is an exceptionally strong headline core.

In The Technomancer, this compute units are nearly free. At 1080p Low, the CPU + GTX 1650 combination yields 68 FPS, yet at 1080p Ultra only 35 FPS. The CPU not at all the limit: if it were, the FPS would not collapse to 45, 52, 35 depending only on the preset changes that effect GPU load. The game does not utilize the 20.2 FPS single-thread capability; it's more of a bounded GPU scenario even at Low.

The combo's ranking 3568 out of 3696 is not a GPU problem exclusively? It's the entire kit cap. The CPU being in the 93rd-percentile overall while the "game rank" lands in the bottom 10% shows that the overall gaming pool includes far faster GPUs. The processor's absurd headroom (a 20-core with 5.30 GHz boost) is not needed by this title; the GPU will starve it. What might that CPU do? At 1080p Low, the target FPS is 68, which is the clear ceiling. If this GPU could push higher FPS, the CPU's single-core 893 points (R20 single-core) could probably keep up, but the data does not offer a higher floor because the GPU has bottomed out. Rival comparisons put the Ultra 7 265 ahead of the 265T by 0.3% average, ahead of the EPYC 9144 not by 0.7% (the exact rival scores: 4464P, 64823), and it's 0.3% better than EPYC 9124 by delta... Well, I can check: against the Ultra 7 265F it is +0.3%, vs EPYC 7343 +0.7%, vs EPYC 9124 -0.7%. This shows that even within the very high (95%) class, the Ultra is within a fraction of a percent of other server EPYC entries, but none of that matters for the game because the GPU is clearly the constraint. A 40-percentile GPU paired with a top-tier 93 percentile CPU means that for Technomancer, the CPU is all idle.

In terms of the memory bandwidth: the CPU uses dual-channel DDR5 with 102.4 GB/s of theoretical end bandwidth. That is more than enough for the GPU's PBM data flow (128.1 GB/s on the GPU but does not interact). The processor provides 20-lane PCIe Gen 5 interface, which is more than ample for the GTX 1650's PCIe 3.0 x16. As a result, the CPU is no worry. The only part where the processor's architecture might surface is at 1080p, 50 FPS for a crowds or physics, but the measured rows give no sign of a CPU-bound scenario because the drop from 1080p to 1 (68 to 24) is purely a pixel count issue.

The Ultra 7 265 provides the confidence that other, heavier games where the GPU is strong will not be bottlenecked by the CPU, but in The Technomancer the calculation sits on the GPU side. A 2060-class card would boost the FPS slightly to the 1080 High, but with the GTX 1650 the CPU can sleep. It uses its 65 W TDP and is not a constraint on the total frame budget. The card's only active role is to display the game's core; the CPU simply provides enough single-threading to give the FPS that a 40th percentile GPU can produce.

This means if you own this CPU and plan to play The Technomancer, do not feel pressured by a fast 1080p monitor. A 144 Hz monitor could only be fed by lowering the preset to Low, which hits 68. With any higher settings the CPU is sleeping while the GPU struggles.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The table below lists the numeric results for all valid measurements.

1920x1080 (Full HD)

• Low: average 68 FPS (no min/max reported)
• High: average 45 FPS
• Medium: average 52 FPS, min 44 FPS, max 60 FPS
• Ultra: average 35 FPS

At 1080p, the Low entry produces 68 FPS, which is the only overnight result above 60 for this hardware. The Medium row offers a 52/52-60 range, providing visual stability. At Ultra the average drops 20% for 7 more frames? Actually from Medium 52 to Ultra 35, a 17 FPS decrease, and the gameplay will feel slower. High's 45 FPS lies right in the middle.

2560x1440 (QHD)

• Low: average 44 FPS
• High: average 29 FPS
• Medium: average 34 FPS, min 29 FPS, max 39 FPS
• Ultra: average 23 FPS

At QHD resolution Low becomes the baseline if you want acceptable movement; 44 FPS is functional but shows tearing phases. Medium is 34 average and has a tighter drop. High/Ultra are near-or-under the 30 threshold.

3840x2160 (UHD)

• Low: average 24 FPS
• High: average 16 FPS
• Medium: average 19 FPS, min 16 FPS, max 22 FPS
• Ultra: average 13 FPS

At 4K res, all preset values drop to sub-30 FPS, and 13-24 FPS is qualifies as a slowdown. The Medium entry provides the only min/max that stay in the area of 16-22, so even the fastest Low cannot reach a real playable threshold.

The comprehensive picture is clear: the both resolutions and presets show that this device will be running in the low-end range. For a pair of numbers: from Low at 1080p (68) to Medium at 4K (19) is a drastic 49 FPS loss. The data here never exceeds 60 FPS with 1080p Low as the only borderline. The GPU is the insurmountable barrier; all CPU strength yields no gain. If you have a target of a stable 60, you would use 1080 Low or you live with Medium's 52 FPS. Everything else is use only in an environment that tolerates 30-40 during a moment. This breakdown, combined with the config ranking of 3568, suggests that players should keep the title on 1080p for comfort, if they need more, either the GTX 1650 or look to newer cards.