Microsoft Flight Simulator

# Microsoft Flight Simulator — AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D

This combination of the 6-core AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D and the flagship NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D delivers playable frame rates across all tested settings in Microsoft Flight Simulator, with the data showing a clear pattern of GPU-bound scaling from 1080p to 4K. The measured results place this combo at rank 174 out of 2996 tested configurations, putting it in the top 6% of all recorded pairings for this flight simulator.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals how this system responds to increasing rendering resolution. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo averages 155 FPS. Moving to 1440p drops that to 144 FPS, a loss of 11 FPS or about 7%. Going further to 4K reduces the average to 130 FPS, which is 25 FPS below the 1080p result — a 16% decline from 1080p to 4K at Low settings.

The scaling pattern tightens at higher quality presets. With High settings, 1080p produces 127 FPS, 1440p yields 118 FPS, and 4K lands at 88 FPS. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 9 FPS (7%), while the drop from 1440p to 4K is 30 FPS (25%). At Ultra settings, the averages are 125 FPS at 1080p, 114 FPS at 1440p, and 84 FPS at 4K — again, a modest decline to 1440p but a substantial 30 FPS reduction when jumping to 4K.

This pattern — small losses from 1080p to 1440p, then large losses from 1440p to 4K — indicates that the RTX 5090 D has enough headroom at lower resolutions to keep the CPU largely relevant, but at 4K the GPU's rendering workload becomes the dominant constraint. The delta between 1080p and 1440p at any given setting stays within 8-11 FPS, suggesting that the CPU can feed the GPU adequately at these resolutions. The 4K results show a much steeper falloff, particularly at High and Ultra where the 30 FPS drop represents a 24-25% performance hit. This is consistent with a GPU that has enormous raw compute but is ultimately limited by the pixel throughput demands of 4K in a simulation-heavy title.

The Medium preset provides the only complete min/max FPS data in the measured set, offering a window into frame pacing. At 1080p Medium, the system ranges from 120 FPS minimum to 162 FPS maximum, with an average of 141 FPS. At 1440p Medium, the range narrows to 112-151 FPS with a 131 FPS average. At 4K Medium, the spread becomes 100-135 FPS with a 118 FPS average. The narrowing range at higher resolutions suggests that the GPU becomes more consistently saturated, reducing the variance caused by CPU-side frame generation spikes.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture (Vermeer codename), built on TSMC's 7 nm process. It runs at a base clock of 3.00 GHz with a boost up to 4.00 GHz, and it carries a substantial 96 MB shared L3 cache. The CPU's benchmark scores show a PassMark multi-thread result of 20,363 and a single-thread score of 2,941, placing it in the 85th percentile of all CPUs tested.

In this game, the CPU's role appears to be providing a stable baseline that rarely bottlenecks the GPU at lower resolutions. The fact that 1080p Low yields 155 FPS while 4K Low yields 130 FPS — only a 16% reduction — indicates that even at 1080p the GPU is still the primary limiter. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see much smaller FPS differences across resolutions, as the CPU workload would cap the frame rate regardless of pixel count.

The 5500X3D's nearest rivals by average benchmark score include the AMD Ryzen 5 5600F (0.2% higher), the AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 450 (0.2% lower), the Intel Core Ultra 5 225 (0.2% higher), and the Intel Core i9-12900T (0.3% lower). These deltas are all within a fraction of a percent, meaning the 5500X3D sits in a tightly clustered performance band. For a flight simulator that can be sensitive to single-thread performance, the 2,941 single-thread score is respectable but not class-leading. The 96 MB L3 cache, however, may help with the large asset streaming loads typical of Microsoft Flight Simulator's world rendering.

At 4K Ultra, the combo still manages 84 FPS, which suggests the CPU is not crippling the experience even in the most demanding configuration tested. The data does not show a scenario where the CPU becomes the clear limiting factor — every resolution and settings combination yields a playable average. This is notable given that flight simulators often have complex physics and scenery processing that can tax lower-core-count CPUs.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data provides four presets — Low, Medium, High, and Ultra — at three resolutions. The most striking finding is how close the High and Ultra results are at each resolution. At 1080p, High averages 127 FPS while Ultra averages 125 FPS — a difference of only 2 FPS. At 1440p, High delivers 118 FPS and Ultra delivers 114 FPS — a 4 FPS gap. At 4K, High hits 88 FPS and Ultra hits 84 FPS — again only a 4 FPS difference.

This suggests that the visual upgrade from High to Ultra comes at almost no measurable performance cost with this hardware. For users prioritizing visual fidelity, Ultra at 1440p (114 FPS) or even 4K (84 FPS) is clearly viable. The Medium preset sits between Low and High, with 141 FPS at 1080p, 131 FPS at 1440p, and 118 FPS at 4K.

Low settings provide the highest frame rates — 155 FPS at 1080p, 144 FPS at 1440p, and 130 FPS at 4K — but the jump from Low to Medium costs only 14 FPS at 1080p, 13 FPS at 1440p, and 12 FPS at 4K, while likely offering substantially better visual quality. The data indicates that Medium is the sweet spot for frame rate purists who want high refresh rates without sacrificing too much detail. For those with 120 Hz displays, 4K Medium at 118 FPS average is just under the refresh threshold, while 1440p High at 118 FPS and 1440p Ultra at 114 FPS are also close.

Given the small performance deltas between High and Ultra, the recommendation is straightforward: run Ultra if visual quality is the priority, since the measured cost is only 2-4 FPS depending on resolution. If maximum frame rates matter more, Medium offers the best balance of performance and quality, with 4K Medium still delivering 118 FPS average.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific pairing of the AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D achieves a combo rank of 174 out of 2,996 tested combinations for Microsoft Flight Simulator. That places it in approximately the top 5.8% of all recorded CPU-GPU pairings for this title. The rank reflects the measured FPS across the tested configurations, and the combination's performance is strong enough to land comfortably in the upper tier.

The RTX 5090 D itself holds the 92nd percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 77,712. Its nearest rivals by average score include the AMD Radeon RX 6650M XT (1.1% higher), the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (1.6% lower), the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB (2.1% lower), and the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB (2.4% lower). These are all within a few percentage points, indicating that the 5090 D's raw compute performance is competitive with a cluster of high-end cards, even if its absolute position in the benchmark database is not the very top.

The CPU's percentile rank of 85 means it outperforms 85% of all CPUs in the database, but its nearest rivals are all within 0.3% of its average score. This suggests that the 5500X3D is a solid mid-to-high-tier processor that does not dramatically shift the combo's standing. The GPU, however, is the dominant contributor to the combo's high rank. The data shows that in this game, the RTX 5090 D's raw power carries the pairing to a top-6% finish despite the CPU being several tiers below the GPU in overall market positioning.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with the GB202 chip, fabricated on a 5 nm process at TSMC. It contains 92,200 million transistors on a 750 mm² die, giving it a transistor density of 122.9 million per mm². The GPU has 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, delivering 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth. Its clock speeds are 2017 MHz base and 2407 MHz boost, with memory running at 1750 MHz (28 Gbps effective).

The GPU's compute resources are substantial: 21,760 shading units, 680 TMUs, 176 ROPs, 170 ray tracing cores, and 680 tensor cores. Its FP32 performance is rated at 104.8 TFLOPS, with FP16 also at 104.8 TFLOPS (1:1 ratio). The pixel rate is 423.6 GPixel/s and the texture rate is 1,636.8 GTexel/s. The card carries a TDP of 575 W and requires a 950 W suggested power supply.

In benchmark tests, the 5090 D scores 44,065 in PassMark G3D, 14,326 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, 310,674 in Geekbench OpenCL, and 376,915 in Geekbench Vulkan. These scores place it in the 92nd percentile of all GPUs. For Microsoft Flight Simulator specifically, the GPU's massive memory bandwidth and rendering throughput appear to be the key assets. The 32 GB VRAM capacity is far beyond what this game likely needs at any tested setting, which means memory capacity is not a limiting factor.

The measured FPS data shows that at 4K Ultra, the combo still produces 84 FPS. This is a demanding configuration, and the fact that the GPU maintains playable rates suggests that the 5090 D's architectural efficiency and raw compute are being utilized effectively. The GPU's role in this pairing is clearly the primary performance driver — the CPU's benchmark positioning is modest, yet the combo ranks in the top 6%, which would be impossible without a GPU that can push high frame rates even at 4K.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS this combo achieves in Microsoft Flight Simulator?

A: The highest measured average FPS is 155 at 1080p with Low settings. At 1440p Low, it drops to 144 FPS, and at 4K Low, it maintains 130 FPS.

Q: How does the combo perform at 4K with Ultra settings?

A: At 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the combination averages 84 FPS. This is only 4 FPS lower than 4K High (88 FPS), making Ultra a viable choice at 4K.

Q: Is there a significant performance difference between High and Ultra settings?

A: No. Across all three resolutions, the gap between High and Ultra is between 2 and 4 FPS. At 1080p, High averages 127 FPS versus 125 FPS for Ultra; at 1440p, it's 118 versus 114; at 4K, it's 88 versus 84.

Q: What is the combo's ranking among all tested configurations for this game?

A: The combo ranks 174 out of 2,996 tested combinations, placing it in approximately the top 5.8% of all recorded CPU-GPU pairings for Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Q: Does the CPU bottleneck the GPU at any tested resolution?

A: The data does not show a CPU bottleneck. Even at 1080p Low, where the CPU would be most likely to limit performance, the combo reaches 155 FPS, and the FPS drops consistently as resolution increases, indicating GPU-bound scaling.

Q: What are the minimum and maximum FPS recorded at Medium settings?

A: At 1080p Medium, the range is 120-162 FPS. At 1440p Medium, it's 112-151 FPS. At 4K Medium, it's 100-135 FPS. These are the only settings with complete min/max data in the measured results.

Measured FPS Breakdown

1920x1080 (1080p):

• Low: 155 FPS average
• Medium: 141 FPS average (120 min, 162 max)
• High: 127 FPS average
• Ultra: 125 FPS average

2560x1440 (1440p):

• Low: 144 FPS average
• Medium: 131 FPS average (112 min, 151 max)
• High: 118 FPS average
• Ultra: 114 FPS average

3840x2160 (4K):

• Low: 130 FPS average
• Medium: 118 FPS average (100 min, 135 max)
• High: 88 FPS average
• Ultra: 84 FPS average

The complete dataset shows a consistent ordering: Low always produces the highest average FPS, followed by Medium, then High, with Ultra slightly behind High. The largest absolute gap between any two presets at the same resolution is 30 FPS at 1080p (Low at 155 versus Ultra at 125) and 46 FPS at 4K (Low at 130 versus Ultra at 84). The Medium preset's min FPS values at each resolution — 120 at 1080p, 112 at 1440p, and 100 at 4K — indicate that even in the worst-case measured frames, the combo stays above 100 FPS across all resolutions when using Medium settings.