The Technomancer

The Technomancer, an Action RPG released in mid-2016, is exactly the kind of title a modern gaming laptop should flatten — and the data for the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Mobile confirms it does. Across every tested resolution and preset the frame rates stay high, with 4K Ultra sitting at 42 FPS average and 1080p Low reaching 229 FPS. The combo ranks 992 out of 3696 tested configurations in this game, which places it in roughly the top quarter of recorded pairings. All figures below are measured, not estimated.

Resolution Scaling

The measured averages drop in a clean, GPU-bound pattern as pixel count rises. At 1080p Medium the combo delivers 176 FPS; at 1440p Medium the same preset falls to 115 FPS; at 4K Medium it lands at 63 FPS. That is a predictable staircase: each step up in resolution cuts frame rate by a similar proportional margin, which is the classic signature of a graphics-limited workload rather than a CPU-limited one.

The High preset tells the same story — 150 FPS at 1080p, 98 FPS at 1440p, 54 FPS at 4K. Note the coincidence in the data: 1080p High and 1440p Low both sit at exactly 150 FPS, and 1440p High and 4K Medium both sit at 98 and 63 respectively with 4K Medium's minimum dipping to 54 — the same value as 4K High's average. These overlaps reinforce the conclusion that the RTX 5080 Mobile is the gating component at every resolution. If the Core Ultra 9 185H were the bottleneck, the higher-resolution numbers would plateau rather than continue falling at this rate.

The scaling curve also tells you where the sensible ceiling is. The jump from 1080p to 1440p costs roughly a third of the frame rate; the jump from 1440p to 4K costs almost half again. For an older Action RPG like this, 1440p is the sweet spot — High still clears 98 FPS average there.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the database's recorded runs of The Technomancer, this pairing ranks 992 out of 3696 tested combinations. That puts it comfortably above the median — roughly the top quarter of all configurations benchmarked in this title. That is a strong placement, though not an elite one, and it lines up with the component-level percentiles: the Core Ultra 9 185H sits at the 85th percentile versus all CPUs, and the RTX 5080 Mobile sits at the 81st percentile versus all GPUs.

Context from the CPU's nearest rivals shows how tight the field is around it. The Ultra 9 185H carries an average benchmark score of 35670, and its closest competitors — the AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 350 at 35719, the Intel Core 7 250H at 35728, the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845 at 35802, and the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X at 35909 — all sit within a fraction of a percent, with deltas ranging from -0.1 to -0.7 percent. On the GPU side, the average score of 38349 puts it marginally ahead of the GeForce MX570 (deltaPct 0.1) and the RTX 4080 Mobile (deltaPct 0.6), and marginally behind the MX570 A and Radeon Pro 580X (both -0.9). In short: this is a high-end mobile pairing, not a record-setter, and its rank in this game reflects that honestly.

CPU Role

The Core Ultra 9 185H is a Meteor Lake mobile part with 16 cores and 22 threads, a 3.90 GHz base clock, a 5.10 GHz boost clock, and a 45 W TDP. It carries 112 KB of L1 cache per core, 2 MB of L2 per core, and a shared 24 MB L3 slab, feeds off dual-channel DDR5 with 89.6 GB/s of memory bandwidth, and includes Arc Xe-LPG integrated graphics with 128 execution units. Its launch MSRP was $640.

For a 2016 Action RPG, this chip is drastically overqualified on the multithreaded side. Its benchmark sheet — 2801.5 in Cinebench R15 multi, 10356 in R20 multi, 17984.5 in R23 multi, 11657 in Geekbench multi, and 29376 in PassMark multithread — describes a CPU with far more throughput than The Technomancer can use. Single-thread numbers matter more for older titles: 264.5 in R15, 1462 in R20, 1810.5 in R23, 1794 in Geekbench, and 3697 in PassMark single-thread. Those figures are respectable but not top-tier, and they help explain why this combo ranks in the top quarter rather than the top handful — the games-side ceiling here comes from the GPU pairing and the platform as a whole, not from a weak CPU.

The key observation from the measured data is that resolution scaling dominates: frame rates keep dropping as pixels increase, which means the CPU is not the limiting factor at any tested setting. In a title of this vintage, that is expected — the render pipeline leans on the GPU almost entirely once draw calls are issued, and the Ultra 9 185H issues them without breaking a sweat.

Measured FPS Breakdown

All numbers below are measured averages.

1920x1080:

• Low: 229 FPS
• Medium: 176 FPS average (150 min, 202 max)
• High: 150 FPS
• Ultra: 117 FPS

2560x1440:

• Low: 150 FPS
• Medium: 115 FPS average (98 min, 132 max)
• High: 98 FPS
• Ultra: 77 FPS

3840x2160:

• Low: 82 FPS
• Medium: 63 FPS average (54 min, 73 max)
• High: 54 FPS
• Ultra: 42 FPS

The only runs with recorded minimum and maximum values are the Medium presets, and they show tight frame-rate corridors: 150-to-202 at 1080p, 98-to-132 at 1440p, and 54-to-73 at 4K. A narrow min-to-max spread like that indicates consistent frame delivery rather than stuttery, swingy performance — exactly what you want in an Action RPG with real-time combat.

Practical read: 1080p at any preset is smooth, including Ultra at 117 FPS. 1440p is effectively free at Low through High (150, 115, 98), and even 1440p Ultra's 77 FPS is comfortably playable. 4K is where choices matter — Low's 82 FPS is fine, Medium's 63 average with a 54 minimum is acceptable, High's 54 average is borderline, and Ultra's 42 average is best reserved for players who tolerate lower frame rates for maximum image quality.

GPU Role

The RTX 5080 Mobile is a Blackwell 2.0 part built on TSMC's 5 nm process, using the GB203 chip with 45,600 million transistors packed into a 378 mm² die at a density of 120.6 million transistors per square millimetre. It runs a 975 MHz base clock and a 1500 MHz boost clock, with GDDR7 memory at 1750 MHz (28 Gbps effective) on a 256-bit bus. That yields 16 GB of VRAM and 896.0 GB/s of memory bandwidth. The shader array counts 7680 shading units, 240 texture mapping units, 96 render output units, 60 RT cores, and 240 tensor cores, producing a 144.0 GPixel/s pixel rate, a 360.0 GTexel/s texture rate, and 23.04 TFLOPS of FP32 compute. Its TDP is 80 W, and it connects over PCIe 5.0 x16 with DirectX 12 Ultimate, OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4 support.

For The Technomancer, the raw specs translate directly into the measured frame rates. The 896 GB/s of bandwidth and 96 ROPs are why 4K remains viable at all — pushing 3840x2160 pixels is a fill-rate and memory-bandwidth exercise, and this GPU has enough of both to hold 63 FPS at 4K Medium and 54 FPS at 4K High. The GPU's benchmark results support this read: 27711 in PassMark G3D, 4952 in 3DMark Steel Nomad (DX12), 166986 in Geekbench OpenCL, and 169754 in Geekbench Vulkan.

The 16 GB of VRAM is significant overkill for a 2016 title, which means texture-heavy presets at 4K impose essentially no memory pressure — the limiting variable is pure pixel throughput, not capacity. Given the game's age, ray tracing and the 60 RT cores go unused; the heavy lifting is rasterization, where the 23.04 TFLOPS of FP32 and the dense shader count carry the load. In short: the RTX 5080 Mobile is the component setting the performance ceiling in every single measured configuration, and it sets that ceiling high enough that the game is playable at every tested resolution and preset.

FAQ

Q: Can this laptop combo run The Technomancer at 4K?

A: Yes, with caveats. Measured averages are 82 FPS at Low, 63 FPS at Medium, 54 FPS at High, and 42 FPS at Ultra. Medium and High are the practical ceiling for smooth play at 3840x2160.

Q: Which resolution gives the best experience with this hardware?

A: 2560x1440. It delivers 150 FPS at Low, 115 FPS at Medium, 98 FPS at High, and 77 FPS at Ultra — high frame rates across every preset without the steep cost of moving to 4K.

Q: How does this pairing rank against other tested combos in this game?

A: It ranks 992 out of 3696 tested combinations, placing it in roughly the top quarter of recorded pairings for The Technomancer.

Q: Is the CPU or the GPU the bottleneck here?

A: The GPU. Frame rates fall steadily as resolution increases at every preset — for example, Medium goes 176, 115, 63 from 1080p to 1440p to 4K — which is the signature of a graphics-limited workload. The Core Ultra 9 185H, with 16 cores and 22 threads, has far more CPU power than this 2016 title demands.

Q: Is frame delivery consistent, or are there big dips?

A: The Medium-preset runs, the only ones with min/max data recorded, show tight spreads: 150 to 202 FPS at 1080p, 98 to 132 at 1440p, and 54 to 73 at 4K. That indicates steady frame pacing rather than large swings.

Q: How strong is the RTX 5080 Mobile relative to other GPUs?

A: It sits at the 81st percentile versus all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 38349, marginally ahead of the GeForce MX570 and the RTX 4080 Mobile, and just behind the MX570 A and Radeon Pro 580X in the database's aggregate scoring.