The Technomancer

# The Technomancer with Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER

This pairing combines Intel's 24-core Core Ultra 9 290K Plus with NVIDIA's RTX 2060 SUPER, a Turing-based GPU with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory. In The Technomancer, the measured results show a system that delivers playable frame rates at 1080p and 1440p across most settings, but struggles at 4K Ultra where the average dips to 26 FPS. The data indicates a clear balance: the CPU has substantial headroom, while the GPU becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions and quality presets.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS rows, the optimal experience depends heavily on the target resolution. At 1920x1080, the High preset delivers 93 FPS average, which is only 16 FPS below the Low preset's 142 FPS and 16 FPS above the Medium preset's 109 FPS. The Ultra preset at 1080p drops to 73 FPS, still playable but a 21.5% reduction from High. For smooth gameplay with visual fidelity, High at 1080p is the sweet spot—it maintains a 93 FPS average while offering substantially better graphics than Low.

At 2560x1440, the High preset achieves 61 FPS average, which is exactly the threshold for smooth 60 Hz displays. The Medium preset at 1440p delivers 71 FPS, providing a 10 FPS buffer over High while sacrificing some visual quality. The Low preset at 1440p reaches 93 FPS, but the visual trade-off is significant. For 1440p users, Medium is the recommended preset—it offers the best balance of frame rate headroom and visual quality, with a minimum FPS of 61 that keeps gameplay consistent.

At 3840x2160, the situation changes dramatically. The High preset averages 34 FPS, Medium averages 39 FPS, and Low averages 51 FPS. The Ultra preset at 4K falls to 26 FPS, which is below playable thresholds for most users. The data shows that 4K gaming with this combo requires Low settings to maintain a 51 FPS average, though even that is below the 60 FPS target. For 4K, Low is the only setting that provides a playable experience, and users should expect to compromise heavily on visual quality.

The measured rows indicate that the Medium preset at 1440p provides the best overall experience when considering both frame rate and visual quality. It achieves 71 FPS average with a minimum of 61 FPS, which is smoother than the High preset at the same resolution. At 1080p, High is preferable because the 93 FPS average offers ample headroom for demanding scenes without the visual degradation of Medium or Low.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER features 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU's base clock is 1470 MHz with a boost clock of 1650 MHz, and it contains 2176 shading units, 136 texture mapping units, and 64 raster output units. The Turing architecture includes 34 RT cores and 272 tensor cores, though The Technomancer's benchmarks do not indicate any ray tracing workload.

The GPU's role in these results is evident from the FPS scaling across resolutions. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 142 FPS, but at 4K Low, it drops to 51 FPS—a 64% reduction. This scaling pattern is typical of a GPU-bound scenario, where the rendering load increases quadratically with resolution. The 8 GB VRAM capacity is sufficient for The Technomancer's settings, as even the Ultra preset at 4K does not show signs of memory-related stuttering in the measured data.

The RTX 2060 SUPER's benchmark scores place it at the 62nd percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 18093. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile (0.4% higher score), AMD Radeon Pro 5700 (0.5% higher), AMD Radeon RX 460 (1.5% higher), and Intel Arc A770M (1.6% higher). These small deltas indicate that the RTX 2060 SUPER sits in a competitive performance tier, though its end-of-life production status means it is no longer a current-generation product.

The GPU's texture rate of 224.4 GTexel/s and pixel rate of 105.6 GPixel/s are sufficient for 1080p and 1440p gaming, but the 4K results show the hardware's limits. The FP32 performance of 7.181 TFLOPS is modest by modern standards, which explains why the Ultra preset at 4K averages only 26 FPS. The data suggests that the RTX 2060 SUPER is a capable 1080p and 1440p GPU, but 4K gaming requires significant settings reductions.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in The Technomancer?

A: The measured data shows 1920x1080 High achieving 93 FPS and 2560x1440 Medium achieving 71 FPS. Both are playable, but 4K requires Low settings for a 51 FPS average. The 1440p Medium preset offers the best balance of resolution and smoothness.

Q: How does the RTX 2060 SUPER compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The RTX 2060 SUPER's average benchmark score of 18093 is 0.4% lower than the RTX 3060 Mobile, 0.5% lower than the Radeon Pro 5700, 1.5% lower than the RX 460, and 1.6% lower than the Arc A770M. These are minimal differences in synthetic benchmarks.

Q: Is the 8 GB VRAM sufficient for The Technomancer?

A: Yes, the measured FPS data shows no evidence of VRAM limitations. The GPU maintains consistent frame rates across all settings, and even the 4K Ultra preset, while slow at 26 FPS, does not exhibit stuttering or frame drops beyond what the rendering load would cause.

Q: Why does the FPS drop so significantly from 1080p to 4K?

A: The drop from 142 FPS at 1080p Low to 51 FPS at 4K Low represents a 64% reduction. This is consistent with a GPU-bound scenario, as the rendering pixel count increases fourfold from 1080p to 4K, and the GPU's compute resources become the limiting factor.

Q: What CPU is paired with this GPU, and does it bottleneck?

A: The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus has 24 cores and 24 threads with a boost clock of 5.80 GHz. Its benchmark scores, including a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 51731, place it at the 96th percentile among all CPUs. The data indicates this CPU does not bottleneck the RTX 2060 SUPER in this game.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested combinations?

A: The combo ranks 2001st out of 2825 tested combinations, placing it in the lower-middle tier. This ranking reflects the GPU's position as the limiting component, as the CPU is far more capable than the GPU in this pairing.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured FPS values span a wide range across presets. The Low preset achieves 142 FPS average, which is the highest measured value in the dataset. Medium reaches 109 FPS average with a minimum of 93 FPS and a maximum of 126 FPS. High drops to 93 FPS average, and Ultra falls to 73 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 69 FPS, indicating that the GPU handles the increasing quality load with predictable scaling.

At 2560x1440, the performance tier shifts downward. Low averages 93 FPS, which matches the 1080p High result. Medium averages 71 FPS with a minimum of 61 FPS and a maximum of 82 FPS. High averages 61 FPS, and Ultra averages 48 FPS. The 1440p results show that the Medium preset provides a 10 FPS advantage over High, while Low offers a 32 FPS advantage over High. The minimum FPS of 61 at Medium suggests that this preset can maintain smooth gameplay in demanding scenes.

At 3840x2160, the results reveal the GPU's limitations. Low averages 51 FPS, Medium averages 39 FPS with a minimum of 33 FPS and a maximum of 45 FPS, High averages 34 FPS, and Ultra averages 26 FPS. The 4K data shows that even the Low preset falls short of 60 FPS, and the Ultra preset's 26 FPS average is barely interactive. The Medium preset's minimum of 33 FPS indicates noticeable frame drops during intense gameplay sequences.

Across all resolutions, the pattern is consistent: Low settings provide a 50-70% FPS advantage over Ultra, and the gap widens as resolution increases. At 1080p, the difference between Low and Ultra is 69 FPS (94.5% advantage for Low). At 1440p, the difference is 45 FPS (93.8% advantage). At 4K, the difference is 25 FPS (96.2% advantage). This shows that the GPU's workload scales more severely at higher resolutions, making settings reductions more impactful.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a GPU-bound system. At Low settings, 1080p averages 142 FPS, 1440p averages 93 FPS, and 4K averages 51 FPS. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 49 FPS (34.5% reduction), and from 1440p to 4K is 42 FPS (45.2% reduction). The larger drop at higher resolutions is consistent with the quadratic increase in pixel count: 1440p has 1.78 times the pixels of 1080p, and 4K has 2.25 times the pixels of 1440p.

At Medium settings, the scaling is similar: 1080p averages 109 FPS, 1440p averages 71 FPS, and 4K averages 39 FPS. The reductions are 38 FPS (34.9%) from 1080p to 1440p, and 32 FPS (45.1%) from 1440p to 4K. High settings show 93 FPS at 1080p, 61 FPS at 1440p, and 34 FPS at 4K—reductions of 32 FPS (34.4%) and 27 FPS (44.3%). Ultra settings show 73 FPS at 1080p, 48 FPS at 1440p, and 26 FPS at 4K—reductions of 25 FPS (34.2%) and 22 FPS (45.8%).

The consistency of these percentage reductions across all presets is notable. Regardless of quality setting, the FPS drops by approximately 34-35% from 1080p to 1440p, and by approximately 44-46% from 1440p to 4K. This uniformity strongly indicates that the GPU is the limiting component at all resolutions—if the CPU were the bottleneck, the scaling would show smaller FPS drops at higher resolutions where CPU load is relatively lower.

The limiting component analysis points squarely at the GPU. The RTX 2060 SUPER's pixel rate of 105.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 224.4 GTexel/s are the hardware constraints that determine these results. The CPU, with its 96th percentile ranking and 5.80 GHz boost clock, has ample headroom to feed the GPU at all tested settings.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus is a 24-core, 24-thread processor based on the Arrow Lake Refresh architecture, manufactured on a 3 nm process by TSMC. It operates at a base clock of 3.70 GHz and boosts to 5.80 GHz, with a TDP of 125 W. The CPU's cache hierarchy includes 192 KB of L1 per core, 3 MB of L2 per core, and 36 MB of shared L3 cache.

In synthetic benchmarks, the 290K Plus demonstrates exceptional performance. Its Cinebench R23 multi-core score is 51731, and single-core score is 7303. PassMark multi-thread score is 60860, with a single-thread score of 4823. The CPU's average benchmark score of 84003 places it at the 96th percentile among all CPUs. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K (0.2% higher score), AMD EPYC 4584PX (1.1% higher), AMD EPYC 9135 (1.2% higher), and AMD EPYC 7F72 (1.3% lower).

The CPU's role in The Technomancer is largely supportive, as the game's measured FPS values are consistent with GPU-bound behavior. The FPS scaling across resolutions follows the GPU's rendering load, and the CPU's massive multi-threading capabilities (24 cores, 24 threads) are not a limiting factor. The PassMark physics score of 3315 and data compression score of 698346 suggest that the CPU handles any game logic or physics computations with ease.

The 290K Plus supports DDR5 memory with a dual-channel bus and 115.2 GB/s bandwidth. This memory bandwidth is more than sufficient for feeding the GPU's 448.0 GB/s frame buffer bandwidth, especially in a game like The Technomancer that does not appear to require extreme CPU-to-GPU data transfer rates. The PCIe Gen 5 interface with 20 CPU lanes provides ample bandwidth for the GPU's PCIe 3.0 x16 connection.

In comparison to the GPU's 62nd percentile ranking, the CPU's 96th percentile ranking highlights a significant performance disparity. The 290K Plus is among the top 4% of all CPUs tested, while the RTX 2060 SUPER sits in the 62nd percentile. This mismatch means the CPU is never the bottleneck in this pairing—the GPU determines the frame rates at all resolutions and settings.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER ranks 2001st out of 2825 tested combinations in The Technomancer. This places the combo in the 29th percentile of all tested systems, meaning roughly 71% of tested combos perform better in this game.

This ranking is primarily attributable to the GPU's performance tier. The RTX 2060 SUPER, with its 62nd percentile ranking among all GPUs, is a mid-range component by current standards. The CPU's 96th percentile ranking does not compensate for the GPU's limitations in a game that is clearly GPU-bound, as demonstrated by the resolution scaling analysis. The data shows that the FPS is determined by the GPU across all measured configurations, so a lower-ranked GPU directly translates to a lower combo ranking.

The combo's position at 2001st out of 2825 indicates that it outperforms the bottom 824 tested combinations but lags behind the top 2000. This is consistent with the RTX 2060 SUPER's position relative to its nearest rivals—all of which score within 1.6% of its average benchmark score. The performance tier is tightly clustered, and small differences in synthetic scores translate to meaningful differences in gaming frame rates.

Given the CPU's headroom, users could improve this combo's ranking by upgrading the GPU. However, the measured data shows that at 1080p and 1440p, the current pairing delivers playable frame rates at most settings. The 4K results are the weakest aspect, with even Low settings failing to reach 60 FPS. For users targeting 1080p or 1440p, this combo provides a satisfactory experience, but it does not rank highly among all tested combinations due to the GPU's mid-range positioning.