Microsoft Flight Simulator

FAQ

Q: What is the overall performance ranking of this CPU and GPU combination in Microsoft Flight Simulator?

A: The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 combo ranks 1731 out of 1795 tested combinations, placing it in the bottom 3.5% of all tested systems for this specific game.

Q: Which resolution provides the most playable experience with this hardware?

A: At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combination achieves 45.8 FPS average, which is the only configuration that approaches a playable 60 FPS target. The 2560x1440 Low setting delivers 37.3 FPS, while 3840x2160 at any setting remains below 30.5 FPS.

Q: How does the GTX 1650 compare to its nearest GPU rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The GTX 1650's average benchmark score is 8713, which is 0.4% behind the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 A Mobile (8746) and 0.5% behind the NVIDIA Quadro P2200 (8671). It sits essentially at parity with the AMD Radeon 550X (8749) and AMD Radeon Pro WX 5100 (8761).

Q: What is the CPU's synthetic performance relative to its closest competitors?

A: The Ryzen 5 5500 scores 20875 on average, which is 0.1% behind the Intel Core i5-12500 (20897) and 0.1% behind the AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 4655GE (20900). It is 0.1% ahead of the AMD EPYC 7J13 (20845) and 0.2% behind the Intel Core i5-12600T (20917).

Q: Does the 4 GB VRAM capacity limit performance at high resolutions?

A: The data shows a severe drop at 3840x2160: High settings produce 18.2 FPS, and Ultra drops to 13.3 FPS. The 128-bit memory bus with 128.1 GB/s bandwidth appears insufficient for the high-resolution texture loads in Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Q: Can this system handle Ultra settings at any resolution?

A: No. Ultra settings produce 24.6 FPS at 1920x1080, 20.4 FPS at 2560x1440, and 13.3 FPS at 3840x2160. All are below playable thresholds, even for a flight simulator where frame rates are less critical than in fast-paced genres.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 is the primary bottleneck in this configuration for Microsoft Flight Simulator. The GPU's 4 GB GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus delivers 128.1 GB/s of bandwidth, which proves insufficient for the game's demands at higher resolutions and settings. The data shows a clear pattern: at any given settings level, moving from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 costs roughly 20-25% of the frame rate, and moving to 3840x2160 costs another 30-40%.

The GPU's clock speeds range from a 1485 MHz base to a 1665 MHz boost, which are modest figures for the architecture. The 896 shading units and 32 ROPs process the scene data, but the 2.984 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is limiting for the complex terrain and weather systems in the simulator. The 75 W TDP and lack of power connectors indicate this is a slot-powered card, and the data reflects that thermal and power headroom constraints cap its sustained performance in demanding scenes.

The GTX 1650's benchmark percentile of 43 places it below the median of all GPUs, and its nearest rivals show how tight the competition is at this tier. The RTX 3050 A Mobile (0.4% higher score) and the Quadro P2200 (0.5% lower) all cluster within a fraction of a percent, yet none of them would substantially change the outcome here. The GPU's 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 305 and PassMark G3D score of 7880 confirm its entry-level positioning.

In practical terms, the GPU's 4 GB VRAM appears to be the hard ceiling. At 1920x1080 Low, the system achieves 45.8 FPS, which suggests the game fits within memory limits. But at 3840x2160, even Low settings only produce 30.5 FPS, indicating that resolution scaling forces the GPU into memory-swapping territory. The 53.28 GPixel/s pixel rate and 93.24 GTexel/s texture rate are simply not enough to fill 8.3 million pixels per frame at acceptable speeds.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination ranks 1731 out of 1795 tested combos, placing it in the bottom percentile for Microsoft Flight Simulator. This is a severe underdog configuration for a game that is known for its demanding world-streaming and physics simulation. The rank reflects that the GTX 1650's 43rd GPU percentile and the Ryzen 5 5500's 79th CPU percentile do not translate into competitive gaming performance for this title.

The ranking disparity between the CPU's strong synthetic position and the combo's poor game-specific rank highlights how GPU-bound Microsoft Flight Simulator is at the tested settings. The Ryzen 5 5500 sits in the 79th percentile of all CPUs, yet the combo still lands at the bottom 3.5% of tested systems. This suggests that the GPU is not just a bottleneck but a wall that prevents the CPU from demonstrating its capability.

The measured FPS data at 1920x1080 Low (45.8 FPS) is the only configuration that approaches the 60 FPS mark, but even this is below the ideal target. For reference, the combo's average FPS across all tested settings and resolutions is roughly 28.1, which is well below the 30 FPS baseline that many would consider the minimum for a playable experience in a flight sim.

Given the 1795 total combinations tested, the 1731 rank means only 64 other combos perform worse. This positions the GTX 1650 + Ryzen 5 5500 as a pairing that is suitable for older or less demanding titles but is significantly outclassed by even mid-range alternatives in Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Settings Recommendations

The data clearly indicates that Low settings at 1920x1080 provide the best experience for this hardware combination. The 45.8 FPS average at this configuration is the only measured result above 40 FPS, and it is 7.5 FPS higher than the next-best configuration (2560x1440 Low at 37.3 FPS). The gap between Low and Medium at 1920x1080 is substantial — 45.8 FPS versus 38.3 FPS — which suggests that the Low preset avoids the most demanding visual effects that cripple the GPU.

Medium settings at 1920x1080 produce 38.3 FPS, which may be acceptable for players who prioritize visual fidelity over smoothness, but the 7.5 FPS penalty is steep for the incremental visual gain. High settings at 1920x1080 drop to 29.2 FPS, which is below the 30 FPS threshold for comfortable play. Ultra settings are not viable at any resolution, with the best Ultra result being 24.6 FPS at 1920x1080.

For players willing to accept lower frame rates for better visuals, 2560x1440 Low at 37.3 FPS is the best balance at higher resolutions. However, the jump to 3840x2160 at any setting is unjustifiable — even Low only achieves 30.5 FPS, and the visual fidelity gained from 4K resolution is undermined by the stutter and sluggish response.

The practical recommendation is to run 1920x1080 with the Low preset, and if the frame rate feels too variable, consider that the game may benefit from external frame rate limiting to maintain consistency. The 45.8 FPS average is within the range where adaptive sync technologies could smooth out the experience, but the data does not suggest headroom for higher settings without significant sacrifices.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the settings scaling is as follows:

• Low: 45.8 FPS average
• Medium: 38.3 FPS average
• High: 29.2 FPS average
• Ultra: 24.6 FPS average

The delta between Low and Medium is 7.5 FPS, Medium to High is 9.1 FPS, and High to Ultra is 4.6 FPS. The diminishing returns at the top end suggest that Ultra is not worth the performance loss over High.

At 2560x1440:

• Low: 37.3 FPS average
• Medium: 32.8 FPS average
• High: 21.5 FPS average
• Ultra: 20.4 FPS average

The drop from Low to Medium is 4.5 FPS, but the plunge from Medium to High is 11.3 FPS, indicating a particular setting in the High preset that the GTX 1650 cannot handle at this resolution. The Ultra preset only costs 1.1 FPS more than High, which is unusual and suggests that the GPU is already saturated at High.

At 3840x2160:

• Low: 30.5 FPS average
• Medium: 25.0 FPS average
• High: 18.2 FPS average
• Ultra: 13.3 FPS average

The 4K results are uniformly poor. The 5.5 FPS drop from Low to Medium is significant, and the 6.8 FPS drop from Medium to High is even worse. The Ultra preset's 13.3 FPS is barely above a slideshow. The 4 GB VRAM is likely spilling over at this resolution, causing the GPU to thrash.

The overall pattern shows that the GTX 1650 loses approximately 25-30% of its frame rate when moving from 1080p to 1440p at the same settings, and another 30-40% when moving from 1440p to 2160p. The only configuration that stays above 45 FPS is 1080p Low.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 provides 6 cores and 12 threads based on the Zen 3 (Cezanne) architecture, running at a 3.60 GHz base clock and 4.20 GHz boost clock. This is a competent processor for gaming, as evidenced by its Cinebench R23 multicore score of 16429 and single-core score of 2319. The 16 MB L3 cache and 51.2 GB/s dual-channel memory bandwidth are adequate for feeding a GPU in most scenarios.

In Microsoft Flight Simulator, the CPU handles the flight model calculations, weather simulation, and terrain streaming. The Ryzen 5 5500's 3dmark scores — 836 single-thread, 4593 8-thread, and 5411 max-thread — indicate that the processor has sufficient single-thread performance for the game's primary simulation loop. However, the combo's 1731 rank out of 1795 suggests that the CPU is not the limiting factor here; the GPU is.

The CPU's 79th percentile ranking among all CPUs contrasts sharply with the GPU's 43rd percentile. This disparity means the Ryzen 5 5500 is waiting for the GTX 1650 to finish rendering frames. The data supports this: the FPS drops are more pronounced when settings increase (GPU workload) than when resolution changes (also GPU workload). The CPU is likely underutilized in this pairing.

The nearest CPU rivals — Intel Core i5-12500 (0.1% faster), AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 4655GE (0.1% faster), AMD EPYC 7J13 (0.1% slower), and Intel Core i5-12600T (0.2% faster) — all perform nearly identically in synthetic benchmarks. This means that swapping the CPU for any of these would not meaningfully change the gaming results, as the GPU bottleneck would remain.

The Ryzen 5 5500's 65 W TDP and AM4 socket compatibility make it an easy drop-in upgrade, but the measured data shows that for Microsoft Flight Simulator, the CPU is not the component holding back performance. The 10,700 million transistors on a 7 nm TSMC process deliver efficient compute, but the game's frame rate is dictated by the GPU's ability to rasterize the complex scenes. If a user were to upgrade from this combo, the GTX 1650 should be the first component replaced, as the CPU has proven headroom in its benchmark scores relative to the GPU's output.