Microsoft Flight Simulator

Measured FPS Breakdown

The recorded data for Microsoft Flight Simulator shows a system that struggles to reach a comfortable frame rate at any resolution. Across all twelve measured configurations, the highest average FPS recorded is 56, which occurs at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This is below the 60 FPS playable threshold used by the database.

At 3840x2160, the results are consistently poor. The Low preset delivers an average of 33 FPS, Medium drops to 26 FPS with a minimum of 22 and maximum of 30, while High and Ultra both settle at 19 FPS average. The gap between Low and Medium is 7 FPS, indicating a significant cost from the jump in visual fidelity. High and Ultra produce identical averages, suggesting the bottleneck is no longer the settings but the hardware ceiling itself.

Moving to 2560x1440 improves the situation but not enough for comfortable play. Low settings yield 45 FPS average, Medium produces 35 FPS with a minimum of 30 and maximum of 40, High reaches 26 FPS, and Ultra drops to 25 FPS. The delta between Low and Medium here is 10 FPS, larger than at 4K, which shows that at lower resolutions the settings have more room to influence performance before hitting the same wall.

At 1920x1080, the best numbers appear. Low settings produce 56 FPS average, the closest any configuration comes to the 60 FPS target. Medium delivers 43 FPS with a minimum of 37 and maximum of 50, High reaches 33 FPS, and Ultra yields 31 FPS. The step from Low to Medium costs 13 FPS, while the step from Medium to High costs 10 FPS. The final step from High to Ultra only costs 2 FPS, again revealing that the hardware saturates before the preset differences can fully express themselves.

The minimum and maximum values are only recorded for Medium presets across all three resolutions. At 3840x2160, the 22 to 30 range shows a narrow band of performance. At 2560x1440, the 30 to 40 range is similarly tight. At 1920x1080, the 37 to 50 range widens slightly, indicating more headroom at lower pixel counts.

Best Settings per Resolution

For 3840x2160, no preset achieves 60 FPS. The best available option is Low at 33 FPS average, which is 27 FPS short of the playable threshold. Medium at 26 FPS is the second option, but the 7 FPS gain from dropping to Low is substantial enough to recommend Low as the only viable choice for users who insist on 4K, accepting the visual compromise.

For 2560x1440, again no preset clears 60 FPS. Low at 45 FPS is the strongest result, 15 FPS below the target. Medium at 35 FPS is a 10 FPS step down, and the visual upgrade may not justify that loss for users prioritizing smoothness. The data shows that Low is the only reasonable preset at this resolution for anyone hoping to stay as close to 60 as possible.

For 1920x1080, the closest result is Low at 56 FPS, just 4 FPS under the threshold. This is the single best configuration in the entire dataset. Medium at 43 FPS is a 13 FPS drop, which is a steep price for the visual improvements. The gap between Low and Medium here is the largest across any resolution, so users must decide whether the fidelity gain is worth sacrificing the near-playable frame rate.

The verdict data confirms this: the database lists no playable settings for any resolution. The best settings per resolution are Low for all three, with the 1080p Low preset being the only configuration that approaches smoothness.

CPU and GPU Roles

The data reveals that this game at these settings is overwhelmingly GPU-bound, but the CPU still matters at lower resolutions. Comparing the scaling between 3840x2160 and 1920x1080 at the Low preset, the average FPS rises from 33 to 56, a 23 FPS increase or roughly 70% improvement. This large jump indicates that pixel fill rate is the dominant constraint at 4K, and the Intel Arc B390, an integrated-class GPU with a 9th percentile ranking among all GPUs, simply cannot push enough pixels.

At the Ultra preset, the scaling is much flatter: 19 FPS at 4K, 25 FPS at 1440p, and 31 FPS at 1080p. The total spread is only 12 FPS across resolutions. This compression suggests that at Ultra settings, the workload becomes so heavy that even reducing resolution by more than half only recovers a modest amount of performance. The GPU is saturated at every resolution, and the CPU has little room to help.

The AMD Ryzen 5 2600, a 6-core 12-thread processor from the 2000 series with a 75th percentile ranking among all CPUs, is not the primary limiter. Its multi-threaded scores are competitive with much newer parts, as shown by its nearest rivals: the Intel Core Ultra 5 228V sits within 0.2%, the Intel Core i9-11900H within 0.5%, and the AMD EPYC 9454 within 1.2%. The CPU delivers adequate throughput for a flight simulator, which relies heavily on single-thread performance for physics and scenery loading. Its PassMark single-thread score of 2239 is modest, but the game's demands at these resolutions are dominated by the GPU's rendering capability.

The evidence points to the GPU as the decisive factor. At 1080p Low, the system reaches 56 FPS, and the CPU has enough headroom to feed the GPU. But at 1080p Ultra, the FPS collapses to 31, a 25 FPS drop from Low, despite the same CPU and resolution. This is a pure GPU limitation. Similarly, the 4K Low to 4K Ultra drop is 14 FPS, again with the CPU unchanged. The pattern is consistent: the Intel Arc B390, with its 7.680 TFLOPS FP32 throughput and 60.00 GPixel/s pixel rate, is the bottleneck.

Similar Performance Alternatives

The nearest rivals for the CPU and GPU provide useful context for what similar hardware would achieve. For the AMD Ryzen 5 2600, the closest matches in average benchmark score are the Intel Core Ultra 5 228V with a delta of 0.2% higher, the Intel Core i9-11900H at 0.5% higher, the Intel Xeon D-1746TER at 0.7% lower, and the AMD EPYC 9454 at 1.2% higher. These processors would behave nearly identically in this game, meaning the CPU is not a differentiator within this performance class.

For the Intel Arc B390, the nearest rivals are dramatically weaker on paper but numerically close in benchmark scores. The NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX scores 1.3% lower, the GeForce 800M scores 1.5% lower, the GeForce GT 625 OEM scores 2.5% lower, and the GeForce GT 710 scores 2.7% lower. This cluster of GPUs all sit in the bottom percentile of performance, and the data indicates that any of these would produce similar frame rates in Microsoft Flight Simulator. The Arc B390 is the strongest of this group, but the margin is thin.

The practical implication is that swapping the CPU for any of its nearest rivals would not change the measured FPS meaningfully, since the GPU is the limiter. Swapping the GPU for any of its nearest rivals would also not change the picture, as they all fall within a 2.7% band. This system is firmly anchored in the low-performance tier for this game.

The Verdict

The recorded measurements are unambiguous: this combination cannot run Microsoft Flight Simulator at a playable 60 FPS at any resolution or preset tested. The verdict data lists zero playable settings for 3840x2160, 2560x1440, and 1920x1080.

At 3840x2160, the best result is 33 FPS on Low, which is 27 FPS below the threshold. At 2560x1440, the best result is 45 FPS on Low, 15 FPS below. At 1920x1080, the best result is 56 FPS on Low, just 4 FPS below. The system comes closest at 1080p with the lowest settings, but it still fails to clear the bar.

The game is technically playable in the sense that it renders frames, but the database's playable threshold of 60 FPS is not met anywhere. Users who tolerate sub-60 frame rates could run this at 1080p Low with a nearly acceptable experience, or at 1440p Low with a more noticeable compromise. 4K is not recommended under any settings, as even Low produces only 33 FPS.

The GPU's 9th percentile ranking among all GPUs and the CPU's 75th percentile ranking paint a clear picture: the processor is competent, but the graphics solution is far too weak for this simulator's demands.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of AMD Ryzen 5 2600 and Intel Arc B390 ranks 3302 out of 3714 tested combos in the database for Microsoft Flight Simulator. That places it in the bottom 11% of all configurations tested for this game.

The rank reflects the severe GPU limitation. The CPU alone is a mid-range part from 2018, but its benchmark scores remain competitive with newer processors, as the nearest rival data shows. The GPU, however, is an integrated-class solution with a 9th percentile standing, and the combination inherits that weakness.

Compared to the full field of 3714 combinations, this system is closer to the bottom than the top by a wide margin. The 56 FPS best case at 1080p Low is a hard ceiling, and most other tested combos, even modest ones, would exceed this figure. The rank of 3302 indicates that the vast majority of hardware pairings in the database deliver higher frame rates in this game.

The data suggests that upgrading the GPU alone would dramatically improve the ranking, while replacing the CPU would yield minimal gains given the current bottleneck. The CPU's nearest rivals all score within 1.2% of its average, meaning any of them would land in the same performance tier. This combo's position in the database is defined by the GPU, and that component is the clear target for any user seeking a playable experience in Microsoft Flight Simulator.