Microsoft Flight Simulator

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 paired with the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT lands at rank 1298 out of 1795 tested combinations for Microsoft Flight Simulator. That places this configuration in the 72nd percentile of all tested combos, which is a solidly mid-pack result for a flight simulator that stresses both the CPU's single-thread performance and the GPU's ability to sustain complex rendering workloads at high resolutions.

Looking at the CPU's synthetic benchmark standing, the Ryzen 5 5500 sits at the 79th percentile among all processors, with an average benchmark score of 20875. Its nearest rivals in the synthetic suite are remarkably close: the Intel Core i5-12500 scores 20897 (a delta of -0.1%), the AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 4655GE scores 20900 (also -0.1%), and the AMD EPYC 7J13 scores 20845 (a delta of +0.1%). This means the 5500 is effectively performance-identical to these alternatives in general compute tasks, differing by no more than two-tenths of a percent. The Intel Core i5-12600T leads this cluster at 20917, but again, the margin is negligible at -0.2%.

The GPU component, the Radeon RX 6600 XT, holds the 71st percentile among all graphics cards with an average benchmark score of 27985. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti at 27956 (a delta of +0.1% favoring the RX 6600 XT) and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 at 28238 (a delta of -0.9% favoring the RTX 3070). The RX 6600 XT sits slightly ahead of the GTX 980 Ti and the AMD Radeon R9 M395X (27883, delta +0.4%), while trailing the RTX 3070 by less than one percentage point in aggregate benchmarks. This synthetic parity does not translate directly into flight simulator performance, as the measured FPS data reveals a more nuanced picture.

GPU Role

The Radeon RX 6600 XT brings 8 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 128-bit bus, yielding 256.0 GB/s of bandwidth. Its clock configuration shows a base of 1968 MHz, a game clock of 2359 MHz, and a boost clock of 2589 MHz, with memory running at 2000 MHz (16 Gbps effective). The chip is built on the RDNA 2.0 architecture with 2048 shading units, 128 texture mapping units, and 64 raster operation pipelines, plus 32 ray accelerators. Pixel throughput is rated at 165.7 GPixel/s and texture rate at 331.4 GTexel/s, with FP32 compute at 10.60 TFLOPS.

For Microsoft Flight Simulator, the VRAM capacity and bandwidth are the defining characteristics. The game renders vast terrain detail, dense autogen scenery, and high-resolution textures that collectively stress memory capacity. The measured FPS scaling across resolutions indicates that the 8 GB frame buffer is adequate at 1080p and 1440p, but at 4K with higher settings, the combination of memory pressure and compute load begins to show. The GPU's 64 ROPs are a limiting factor for pixel fill at 3840x2160, which explains the steep drop in frame rates at that resolution. The ray tracing cores are present but the game's implementation does not heavily leverage them in the measured settings, so the standard rasterization pipeline dominates.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a clear and consistent trend: frame rates drop substantially as resolution increases, and the magnitude of that drop varies significantly by settings preset. At Low settings, the average FPS moves from 98.3 at 1920x1080, to 81.6 at 2560x1440 (a 17% reduction), and then to 57.9 at 3840x2160 (a further 29% reduction from 1440p). This scaling pattern suggests that at Low settings, the CPU is the primary limiter at 1080p, and the GPU gradually becomes more involved as pixel count rises, but even at 4K Low the CPU still contributes meaningfully to the frame time.

At Medium settings, the progression is 80.2 FPS at 1080p, 62.7 FPS at 1440p (a 22% drop), and 45.3 FPS at 4K (a 28% drop from 1440p). The High preset shows 57.4 FPS at 1080p, 48.5 FPS at 1440p (a 16% drop), and 35.1 FPS at 4K (a 28% drop). Ultra settings produce 55.9 FPS at 1080p, 42.8 FPS at 1440p (a 23% drop), and 33.8 FPS at 4K (a 21% drop from 1440p).

The resolution scaling behavior indicates that the limiting component shifts depending on the preset. At Low and Medium settings, the 1080p to 1440p drop is larger than the 1440p to 4K drop, which is typical of a CPU-bound scenario at lower resolutions where the GPU has headroom. At High and Ultra settings, the 1080p to 1440p drop is smaller, suggesting the GPU is already becoming the bottleneck at 1080p, and the 4K results confirm that the RX 6600 XT cannot sustain playable frame rates at the highest resolutions with demanding presets.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows point to a clear sweet spot for this combination. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset delivers 80.2 FPS average, which is 39% higher than the High preset's 57.4 FPS and 43% higher than Ultra's 55.9 FPS. The jump from Low to Medium costs 18.1 FPS (from 98.3 to 80.2), but the visual improvement in a flight simulator is substantial—terrain detail, object density, and shadow quality all improve meaningfully. The step from Medium to High costs 22.8 FPS (from 80.2 to 57.4), which is a larger absolute loss, and the step from High to Ultra costs only 1.5 FPS (from 57.4 to 55.9), which is marginal.

At 2560x1440, the Medium preset at 62.7 FPS is the recommended target. High drops to 48.5 FPS and Ultra falls to 42.8 FPS, both of which are below the 60 FPS threshold that many flight simmer users prefer for smooth panning and instrument readability. Low at 1440p yields 81.6 FPS, but the visual compromise is severe for a game where situational awareness depends on ground detail. The Medium preset at 1440p offers a balance that keeps frame pacing comfortable while retaining enough visual fidelity.

At 3840x2160, no preset reaches 60 FPS. Low achieves 57.9 FPS, Medium 45.3 FPS, High 35.1 FPS, and Ultra 33.8 FPS. For 4K users, the Low preset is the only viable option for near-smooth operation, and even then, the margin above 30 FPS is thin. The data suggests that 4K is not a practical target for this combo in Microsoft Flight Simulator, and users should either accept the Low preset at 4K or drop to 1440p for a better experience.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full range of settings produces the following average frame rates: Low 98.3 FPS, Medium 80.2 FPS, High 57.4 FPS, and Ultra 55.9 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 42.4 FPS, with the largest single-step drop occurring between Medium and High (22.8 FPS). The High-to-Ultra delta is minimal at 1.5 FPS, indicating that the Ultra preset adds little performance cost over High at this resolution, but the Medium-to-High transition represents a significant rendering load increase.

At 2560x1440, the results are: Low 81.6 FPS, Medium 62.7 FPS, High 48.5 FPS, and Ultra 42.8 FPS. The spread is 38.8 FPS. The step from Low to Medium costs 18.9 FPS, from Medium to High costs 14.2 FPS, and from High to Ultra costs 5.7 FPS. Notably, the 1440p Medium result of 62.7 FPS is only 5.3 FPS lower than the 1080p High result of 57.4 FPS is higher—meaning 1440p Medium outperforms 1080p High by 5.3 FPS while rendering 78% more pixels. This indicates that the Medium preset is more efficient in terms of GPU resource utilization.

At 3840x2160, the results are: Low 57.9 FPS, Medium 45.3 FPS, High 35.1 FPS, and Ultra 33.8 FPS. The spread is 24.1 FPS, which is the narrowest of any resolution. The step from Low to Medium costs 12.6 FPS, from Medium to High costs 10.2 FPS, and from High to Ultra costs 1.3 FPS. The 4K Low result of 57.9 FPS is essentially the same as the 1080p High result of 57.4 FPS, showing that the GPU is fully saturated at 4K regardless of preset. The Ultra preset at 4K produces 33.8 FPS, which is marginally above the 33.8 FPS floor but below the 35.1 FPS of High, confirming that the Ultra preset's additional effects have diminishing returns at this pixel count. The data overall shows that the Ryzen 5 5500 provides adequate CPU throughput for this GPU at 1080p and 1440p, but the RX 6600 XT's 8 GB frame buffer and 128-bit memory interface become the definitive constraint at 4K.