Microsoft Flight Simulator

FAQ

Q: What frame rate can this PC achieve at 1920x1080 with Medium settings in Microsoft Flight Simulator?

A: The measured average frame rate at 1920x1080 with Medium settings is 67 FPS, with a minimum of 57 FPS and a maximum of 77 FPS. This clears the 60 FPS playable threshold, though the minimum dips slightly below it.

Q: Is this combination playable at 4K resolution?

A: No. At 3840x2160, the best measured average frame rate is 51 FPS on Low settings, which falls short of the 60 FPS playable threshold. The verdict for 4K lists no playable settings.

Q: What is the best playable setting at 2560x1440?

A: Low is the only playable setting at 2560x1440, achieving an average of 69 FPS. Medium settings drop to 54 FPS average, which is below the 60 FPS threshold.

Q: How does the Intel Arc B570 compare to its nearest GPU rival in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The Arc B570 has an average benchmark score of 20556. Its closest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile, scores 20534, which is 0.1% lower. The Intel Arc A750 scores 20582, which is 0.1% higher than the B570.

Q: What is the CPU's standing relative to all tested CPUs?

A: The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X falls in the 79th percentile among all CPUs tested. Its average benchmark score is 27636, placing it within 0.4% of its nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen 7 5800.

Q: Does the CPU or GPU limit performance more at 1080p Ultra settings?

A: At 1920x1080 Ultra, the combination averages 48 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold. Comparing scaling from 1080p to 1440p at Ultra shows a drop from 48 FPS to 39 FPS, indicating that the GPU becomes more limiting as resolution increases.

CPU and GPU Roles

The data for Microsoft Flight Simulator reveals a system where the GPU progressively dominates performance as resolution increases, while the CPU holds more influence at lower resolutions. At 1920x1080, the gap between Low and Ultra settings is substantial: Low averages 86 FPS, while Ultra averages 48 FPS. This 38 FPS spread suggests that at 1080p, the rendering load is moderate enough that the CPU's single-thread performance and the GPU's fill rate both contribute meaningfully. The Ryzen 5 7600X, with a boost clock of 5.30 GHz and a single-thread 3DMark score of 1060, provides strong per-core throughput for the simulation's CPU-bound flight model and scenery loading.

Moving to 2560x1440, the scaling pattern shifts. Low settings yield 69 FPS, but Medium falls to 54 FPS, and High drops to 41 FPS. The step from Low to Medium alone costs 15 FPS, a larger proportional drop than the 1440p-to-2160p scaling at the same settings tier. This indicates that at 1440p, the GPU's memory bandwidth and shading throughput — the Arc B570 has 380.0 GB/s bandwidth and 11.52 TFLOPS FP32 — become the primary constraint as settings increase. The CPU's role diminishes because the flight simulator's draw calls and physics updates are already satisfied at this resolution; additional settings load the GPU's 10 GB GDDR6 memory and 2304 shading units.

At 3840x2160, the GPU's dominance is unambiguous. Low settings average 51 FPS, Medium drops to 40 FPS, and High falls to 30 FPS. The 4K Ultra preset bottoms out at 28 FPS. The scaling from 1440p Low (69 FPS) to 4K Low (51 FPS) represents a 26% reduction, which aligns with the pixel count increase of roughly 2.25 times — but the frame rate does not drop proportionally to pixel count, suggesting that the CPU is still feeding the GPU adequately. However, the steep decline from 4K Low to 4K High (from 51 FPS to 30 FPS) shows that the Arc B570's 160-bit memory bus and 10 GB capacity are saturated by higher-quality textures and effects at 4K.

The preset scaling at each resolution tells the same story. At 1080p, Low-to-Medium costs 19 FPS (86 to 67), while Medium-to-High costs 17 FPS (67 to 50). At 1440p, Low-to-Medium costs 15 FPS (69 to 54), and Medium-to-High costs 13 FPS (54 to 41). At 4K, Low-to-Medium costs 11 FPS (51 to 40), and Medium-to-High costs 10 FPS (40 to 30). The diminishing absolute FPS losses as resolution rises indicate that the GPU is increasingly the bottleneck — each settings step adds a nearly constant relative load, but the GPU has less headroom to absorb it at higher pixel counts.

For this game, the practical takeaway is that the Ryzen 5 7600X is never the limiting factor at playable settings. The CPU's 12 threads and 32 MB shared L3 cache handle the simulation's background tasks, but the Arc B570 dictates whether the frame rate clears 60 FPS. At 1080p Medium, the GPU just manages 67 FPS average. At 1440p Low, it reaches 69 FPS. At any higher settings combination, the GPU falls below the threshold, and the CPU's additional headroom goes unused.

Similar Performance Alternatives

The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X sits in a tight cluster of CPUs with nearly identical average benchmark scores. Its nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen 7 5700X, scores 27578 — just 0.2% below the 7600X's 27636. The Intel Core i5-12600K matches that 27578 score exactly, also 0.2% lower. On the other side, the AMD Ryzen 5 8500GE scores 27712, which is 0.3% higher, and the AMD Ryzen 7 5800 scores 27535, 0.4% lower. In practical terms, any of these CPUs would deliver near-identical performance in Microsoft Flight Simulator at the resolutions tested. The differences are within measurement noise, so system builders could swap among these four without expecting meaningful FPS changes.

For the GPU, the Intel Arc B570's average score of 20556 places it alongside several comparable options. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile scores 20534, a 0.1% deficit. The Intel Arc A750 scores 20582, a 0.1% advantage. The NVIDIA Quadro M4000M scores 20480, 0.4% lower, and the AMD Radeon R9 M390X scores 20662, 0.5% higher. Notably, two of these rivals are mobile or workstation parts, which means their power characteristics differ from the desktop B570 — the B570 has a 150 W TDP, while the mobile parts would draw less. But in raw benchmark terms, the performance envelope is similar. The Arc A750 is the most direct desktop comparison; it would behave almost identically in this game, likely producing the same 67 FPS at 1080p Medium and 69 FPS at 1440p Low.

The practical implication is that this specific CPU-GPU pairing is not unique in its performance. Choosing a Ryzen 7 5700X or Core i5-12600K instead of the 7600X would not change the playable settings list. Similarly, substituting an Arc A750 for the B570 would keep the same verdicts. The bottleneck at higher settings is the GPU class, not the specific model within that class. For owners of any of these alternatives, the expected frame rates in Microsoft Flight Simulator would fall within a margin of roughly 1% of the measured values.

The Verdict

Can this PC run Microsoft Flight Simulator? The data says yes, but only at specific resolution and settings combinations. At 1920x1080, the system clears 60 FPS on both Low (86 FPS average) and Medium (67 FPS average) settings. The Medium preset is the highest playable option at this resolution, with the average comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold, though the minimum of 57 FPS occasionally dips below it.

At 2560x1440, the system is playable only on Low settings, achieving 69 FPS average. Medium settings fall to 54 FPS average, which misses the playable threshold. The 1440p High and Ultra presets are not viable, with averages of 41 FPS and 39 FPS respectively.

At 3840x2160, the system cannot maintain 60 FPS on any preset. The best result is 51 FPS on Low settings, and the worst is 28 FPS on Ultra. The verdict for 4K lists no playable settings, meaning this PC is not suitable for 4K play in Microsoft Flight Simulator.

The overall verdict is that this combination delivers a playable experience at 1080p and at 1440p only with reduced settings. Users prioritizing higher visual fidelity will need to accept 1080p Medium as the ceiling, while those with 1440p monitors can play on Low. The system ranks 2988 out of 3714 tested combinations, placing it in the lower portion of the database — a reflection of the GPU's mid-range positioning rather than any CPU deficiency.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the frame rate ranges from 86 FPS on Low to 48 FPS on Ultra. The Medium preset delivers 67 FPS average, with a minimum of 57 FPS and a maximum of 77 FPS. High settings average 50 FPS, and Ultra averages 48 FPS — a small gap between the two top presets, indicating that the Ultra preset's additional effects cost only about 2 FPS over High at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, Low settings produce 69 FPS average. Medium drops to 54 FPS, with a minimum of 46 FPS and a maximum of 62 FPS. High averages 41 FPS, and Ultra averages 39 FPS. The 1440p results show a consistent step-down of roughly 13-15 FPS per settings tier from Low to Medium, then smaller 13 FPS and 2 FPS drops to High and Ultra.

At 3840x2160, Low averages 51 FPS. Medium averages 40 FPS, with a minimum of 34 FPS and a maximum of 46 FPS. High averages 30 FPS, and Ultra averages 28 FPS. The 4K scaling from Low to Ultra spans 23 FPS, and no preset reaches the 60 FPS threshold. The min/max data for Medium at 4K (34-46 FPS) shows that even the best-case frame time is below playable levels.

The overall pattern across resolutions shows that the 1080p Low preset (86 FPS) is the only measurement exceeding 80 FPS. The 1440p Low and 1080p Medium are the only other configurations above 60 FPS. All other combinations fall short, with the lowest being 4K Ultra at 28 FPS.

Best Settings per Resolution

At 1920x1080, the highest playable preset is Medium, which averages 67 FPS. This is the recommended configuration for 1080p users, as it provides a balance of visual quality and performance. The minimum of 57 FPS is slightly below the 60 FPS threshold, but the average is solidly above it. Low settings at this resolution achieve 86 FPS, but Medium offers a substantial visual upgrade for a 19 FPS cost.

At 2560x1440, the only playable preset is Low, averaging 69 FPS. This is the best settings choice for 1440p, as Medium falls to 54 FPS average and misses the playable threshold. The 69 FPS average provides reasonable headroom, but users should be aware that complex scenes with dense scenery may push the frame rate lower.

At 3840x2160, no preset is playable. The best average is 51 FPS on Low, which is 9 FPS short of the 60 FPS target. As a result, there is no recommended setting for 4K — the system cannot maintain playable performance at this resolution under any tested configuration.

The data indicates that the playable envelope for this PC is narrow: 1080p Medium and 1440p Low. Users with 1080p displays can enjoy the game with moderate visual settings, while 1440p users must accept Low settings. The gap between playable and unplayable is sharp, with no intermediate preset bridging the divide.

How This Combo Ranks

This CPU-GPU combination ranks 2988 out of 3714 tested combinations in Microsoft Flight Simulator. That places it in the 20th percentile of all tested systems — firmly in the lower quarter of the database. The ranking reflects the Intel Arc B570's position as a mid-range GPU (65th percentile among all GPUs) paired with a strong CPU (79th percentile among all CPUs). The GPU is the limiting factor, pulling the overall combo rank down.

The CPU's high percentile (79) does not compensate for the GPU's mid-tier standing. In a simulation title like Microsoft Flight Simulator, the rendering load at higher resolutions and settings overwhelms the B570's capabilities. The combo rank of 2988 suggests that most tested systems — roughly 80% — outperform this pairing in this specific game. This is consistent with the measured FPS data: only three of twelve tested configurations clear 60 FPS, and the best average (86 FPS at 1080p Low) is respectable but not exceptional.

The rank also contextualizes the verdict. A combo ranking near the bottom quarter of the database is expected to struggle with high-fidelity settings, and the data confirms this. The system is adequate for 1080p Medium and 1440p Low, but it is not a high-performance configuration for this game. Users seeking higher settings or 4K capability would need to look at systems ranking higher in the database, likely with GPUs in the upper percentiles.