Microsoft Flight Simulator

Settings Recommendations

The measured frame rates across presets and resolutions reveal a consistent pattern: the Low preset delivers the highest average FPS, but with a trade-off in visual fidelity that may not be justified given the available headroom. At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves 135.4 FPS, which is 6.1% faster than Medium (127.1 FPS) and 24.5% faster than High (108.8 FPS). However, the Ultra preset still produces 107 FPS at this resolution, indicating that the system can comfortably handle maximum settings without dipping below a smooth playable threshold.

At 2560x1440, the difference between presets narrows considerably. Low yields 126.7 FPS, Medium 115 FPS, and both High and Ultra settle at 104.4 FPS. The fact that High and Ultra produce identical average FPS at this resolution suggests that the simulation becomes limited by another factor—likely CPU or memory bandwidth—before the GPU's graphical workload becomes the bottleneck. This is a critical observation: the user gains nothing in frame rate by dropping from Ultra to High at 1440p, so choosing Ultra is strictly better for visual quality without a performance penalty.

At 3840x2160, the scaling changes again. Low produces 112.3 FPS, Medium 105.2 FPS, High 81.6 FPS, and Ultra 77.8 FPS. Here, the gap between Low and Ultra is 30.7%, which is substantial. The jump from High to Ultra costs only 4.7% performance, while the drop from Medium to Low gains 6.7%. For a flight simulator where terrain detail and cockpit instruments benefit from higher settings, the Medium preset at 4K offers a balanced experience: 105.2 FPS is well above the threshold for smooth simulation, and the visual uplift over Low is meaningful.

The optimal recommendation depends on resolution. For 1080p and 1440p, the Ultra preset is the clear choice—at 1440p it ties High in FPS, and at 1080p it trails High by only 1.7%. For 4K, the Medium preset provides the best experience per the measured rows: it delivers 105.2 FPS, which is 35.2% faster than Ultra (77.8 FPS), while maintaining a higher level of visual detail than Low. Users prioritizing maximum smoothness at 4K should consider Low (112.3 FPS), but the 6.7% gain over Medium is marginal compared to the visual compromise.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is the dominant component in this pairing, and its specifications explain the frame rates observed. With 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus, the GPU provides 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth—a figure that is critical for Microsoft Flight Simulator, which streams vast terrain and photogrammetry data. The memory clock runs at 1313 MHz (21 Gbps effective), and the GPU's base clock of 2235 MHz boosts to 2520 MHz, enabling the high fill rates and texture throughput needed for dense scenery.

The GPU's raw compute capabilities are substantial: 16,384 shading units, 512 TMUs, and 176 ROPs deliver a pixel rate of 443.5 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 1,290.2 GTexel/s. The FP32 throughput of 82.58 TFLOPS, along with 128 RT cores and 512 tensor cores, supports the simulation's lighting and effects pipelines. In the benchmark data, the RTX 4090 scores 38,194 in Passmark G3D and 26,613 in GPU compute, placing it in the 91st percentile among all GPUs. Its average benchmark score of 66,473 is within 0.4% of the NVIDIA Tesla T4 (66,733) and 0.5% above the Tesla P40 (66,127), though those rivals are compute-oriented rather than gaming-focused.

The GPU's influence on the measured FPS is most evident at 4K, where the workload shifts heavily onto the graphics card. The drop from 112.3 FPS at Low to 77.8 FPS at Ultra represents a 30.7% reduction, which is consistent with the GPU being the primary bottleneck at higher settings. At 1080p and 1440p, the GPU has more headroom, as evidenced by the smaller deltas between presets—at 1440p, the difference between Low and Ultra is only 17.6%. The 24 GB VRAM capacity ensures that even at Ultra settings with high-resolution textures, the frame buffer does not become a limiting factor.

FAQ

Q: What is the best preset for 4K gaming with this hardware?

A: The Medium preset at 3840x2160 delivers 105.2 FPS, which is 35.2% faster than Ultra (77.8 FPS) and only 6.7% slower than Low (112.3 FPS). This provides the best balance between smoothness and visual fidelity.

Q: Does the Ultra preset offer any performance advantage over High at 1440p?

A: No—both High and Ultra produce exactly 104.4 FPS at 2560x1440. The identical scores indicate that the system is not GPU-limited at this resolution, so choosing Ultra provides better visuals at no frame rate cost.

Q: How much FPS is lost when moving from Low to Ultra at 1080p?

A: The difference is 28.4 FPS, from 135.4 FPS at Low to 107 FPS at Ultra, representing a 21.0% reduction. The Ultra preset still maintains over 100 FPS, making it a viable choice for most users.

Q: Is the RTX 4090's performance typical for its class?

A: The GPU's average benchmark score of 66,473 places it in the 91st percentile. Its nearest rival, the NVIDIA Tesla T4, scores 66,733 (0.4% higher), while the Tesla P40 scores 66,127 (0.5% lower). The differences are negligible.

Q: What CPU benchmark scores are relevant for this game's performance?

A: The Ryzen 5 3600 scores 15,045 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 2,124 in single-core. Its Passmark multi-thread score is 17,700, and single-thread is 2,562. These scores place the CPU in the 76th percentile among all CPUs.

Q: Does the GPU's memory bandwidth matter for this simulation?

A: Yes—the 1.01 TB/s bandwidth from 24 GB of GDDR6X on a 384-bit bus is critical for streaming terrain data. The memory clock of 1313 MHz (21 Gbps effective) supports the high texture throughput required at 4K Ultra settings.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 ranks 261st out of 1,795 tested combos in Microsoft Flight Simulator, placing it in the top 14.5% of all configurations. This rank is impressive given the CPU's relative age—it was released in 2019 and is not a top-tier processor by modern standards. The RTX 4090, by contrast, is an end-of-life flagship that still commands a 91st percentile ranking among all GPUs.

The combo's rank reflects the GPU's dominance in this workload. The RTX 4090's average benchmark score of 66,473 is nearly 3.7 times higher than the CPU's average of 18,129, and the GPU's nearest rivals in the benchmark database—Tesla T4, Tesla P40, Radeon Pro Vega 56, and Quadro P6000—are all within 1.3% of its score. The CPU, meanwhile, sits in a tight cluster with the Intel Core i5-11400 (18,150, -0.1%), AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS (18,101, +0.2%), AMD Ryzen 5 1600 (18,158, -0.2%), and AMD EPYC 9274F (18,189, -0.3%). This suggests that the CPU is not a differentiator in this pairing; the GPU is doing the heavy lifting.

The 261st rank out of 1,795 is notable because it places this combo ahead of many systems with newer CPUs, but behind those with equally powerful GPUs paired with more capable processors. The data indicates that in Microsoft Flight Simulator, the GPU is the primary driver of frame rates—the measured FPS at 1080p Ultra (107 FPS) and 1440p Ultra (104.4 FPS) are close, suggesting a CPU or memory bottleneck emerges at lower resolutions, while the 4K Ultra result (77.8 FPS) shows the GPU scaling as expected.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 3600 is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 2 architecture (codenamed Matisse), manufactured on a 7 nm process by TSMC. It operates with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 4.20 GHz, with a TDP of 65 W. The CPU features 64 KB of L1 cache per core, 512 KB of L2 per core, and 32 MB of shared L3 cache. Its memory support is dual-channel DDR4 with a bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s, and it provides PCIe Gen 4 with 16 lanes.

In benchmark terms, the Ryzen 5 3600 scores 15,045 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 2,124 in single-core. Its Passmark multi-thread score is 17,700, and single-thread is 2,562. These scores place it in the 76th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 18,129. Its nearest rivals are tightly clustered: the Intel Core i5-11400 scores 18,150 (-0.1%), the AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS scores 18,101 (+0.2%), the AMD Ryzen 5 1600 scores 18,158 (-0.2%), and the AMD EPYC 9274F scores 18,189 (-0.3%). This indicates the CPU performs within a 0.5% band of its immediate competitors.

In Microsoft Flight Simulator, the CPU's role becomes apparent when comparing frame rates across resolutions. At 1080p, the Ultra preset yields 107 FPS, while at 1440p Ultra, the score is 104.4 FPS—a negligible difference of 2.4%. This plateau suggests that the CPU, with its 6 cores and 12 threads, is limiting the frame rate when the GPU has spare capacity. The 3DMark scores support this: the CPU achieves 4,605 in the 16-thread test and 4,603 in the max-thread test, indicating that multi-threaded scaling is nearly flat beyond 16 threads. The single-thread score of 696 is comparatively low, which matters for a flight simulator that relies on single-thread performance for physics and flight model calculations.

The CPU's 32 MB of L3 cache and 51.2 GB/s memory bandwidth are adequate for the simulation's data streaming, but they are not exceptional by modern standards. The boost clock of 4.20 GHz is modest, and the 76th percentile ranking reflects a mid-pack processor. For this combo, the CPU is not the bottleneck at 4K Ultra (where the GPU is clearly limiting), but it does constrain performance at 1080p and 1440p, where the RTX 4090 could otherwise push much higher frame rates if paired with a stronger processor.