Microsoft Flight Simulator

Resolution Scaling

The measured framerates for Microsoft Flight Simulator with the AMD Ryzen 5 5600 and AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX reveal a pronounced scaling pattern as resolution increases. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo produces 172.4 FPS, which drops to 153.1 FPS at 1440p and further to 109.9 FPS at 4K. This represents a 36% reduction from 1080p to 4K on Low settings, indicating that the GPU is taking on progressively more work as pixel count rises.

Moving to High settings, the scaling is steeper in relative terms. The 109.5 FPS at 1080p falls to 91.1 FPS at 1440p, then to 66.9 FPS at 4K. The gap between 1080p and 4K here is 39%, which suggests that the higher preset amplifies the resolution penalty. The Ultra preset shows a similar pattern: 104.4 FPS at 1080p, 86.2 FPS at 1440p, and 61.5 FPS at 4K, a 41% drop across the resolution range.

The data indicates that the limiting component shifts with resolution. At 1080p, the CPU's six cores and twelve threads are likely the primary constraint, as evidenced by the relatively modest framerate gains when moving from High to Ultra at that resolution (109.5 to 104.4 FPS, a 5% decline). At 4K, the GPU's rendering load dominates, and the framerate differences between presets become more pronounced. The 4K Low result of 109.9 FPS versus the 4K Ultra result of 61.5 FPS shows a 44% performance spread, highlighting how much headroom the RX 7900 XTX retains when settings are relaxed.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX brings substantial resources to this flight simulator. Its 24 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 384-bit bus delivers 960.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is critical for streaming the vast, detailed scenery that Microsoft Flight Simulator loads. The GPU's boost clock of 2498 MHz and game clock of 2365 MHz, built on the RDNA 3.0 architecture with 6144 shading units, provide the raw throughput needed to handle the simulator's complex rendering tasks.

Benchmark results place this GPU in the 85th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 44019. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti, which scores 44900 (2% higher), and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile at 43667 (0.8% lower). The RX 7900 XTX's 61.39 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 959.2 GTexel/s texture rate are directly relevant to the heavy texture streaming and terrain rendering that define this game's visual workload.

The measured results show that the GPU is rarely the bottleneck at 1080p. At Low settings, the 172.4 FPS at 1080p versus 109.9 FPS at 4K demonstrates that the GPU has ample headroom when resolution is lowered. However, at 4K Ultra, the 61.5 FPS result approaches the lower boundary of smooth gameplay, and the GPU's role becomes more decisive. The 24 GB framebuffer is particularly valuable here, as it allows the simulator to cache large texture sets without stuttering, a factor that the smooth average framerates across all presets attest to.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600, with six cores and twelve threads, operates at a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. Its Zen 3 architecture, codenamed Vermeer, includes 32 MB of shared L3 cache and supports DDR4 memory with 51.2 GB/s of bandwidth. This processor scores in the 79th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 21765. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i7-11700F at 21957 (0.9% higher) and the AMD EPYC 9554P at 21899 (0.6% higher), indicating that the 5600 sits in a competitive mid-range position.

The CPU's single-thread performance, as measured by the 3dmark single-thread score of 882 and the Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2584, is crucial for Microsoft Flight Simulator, which relies heavily on a primary simulation thread. The multi-threaded scores, including the Cinebench R23 multicore result of 18309 and the PassMark multithread score of 21541, show that the processor can handle auxiliary tasks like AI traffic and physics calculations.

The data suggests that the CPU becomes a limiting factor at lower resolutions. At 1080p Low, the 172.4 FPS result is well above what the GPU alone would dictate, and the transition to 1440p Low (153.1 FPS) and 4K Low (109.9 FPS) shows the GPU catching up to the CPU's output. The 1080p Ultra result of 104.4 FPS versus the 4K Ultra result of 61.5 FPS indicates that the CPU sustains its performance across resolutions, while the GPU's load increases. The 5600's boost clock of 4.40 GHz is sufficient to feed the RX 7900 XTX at 1080p, but the framerate ceiling appears to be set by the CPU's single-thread capabilities in that scenario.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows provide a clear picture of how settings affect performance. At 1080p, the Low preset delivers 172.4 FPS, which is more than adequate for any display, while Ultra still achieves 104.4 FPS. The High preset at 109.5 FPS and Medium at 146.9 FPS offer intermediate options. For users prioritizing smoothness, the Medium preset at 1080p provides a 34% improvement over High while maintaining visual quality that is unlikely to be distinguishable in fast-moving flight scenarios.

At 1440p, the Medium preset at 119 FPS stands out as the best balance. It offers a 31% framerate advantage over High (91.1 FPS) and a 38% advantage over Ultra (86.2 FPS). The Low preset at 153.1 FPS is available for competitive or high-refresh-rate play, but Medium captures the visual fidelity that the RX 7900 XTX can comfortably sustain. The 4K results suggest that Medium at 88.7 FPS is the recommended setting, as it stays above the 60 FPS threshold while providing a 44% improvement over Ultra (61.5 FPS). High at 66.9 FPS is viable, but Medium offers a 33% framerate boost with only a modest visual compromise.

The data indicates that the Ultra preset, while technically playable at all resolutions (61.5 FPS at 4K, 86.2 FPS at 1440p, 104.4 FPS at 1080p), does not justify its performance cost relative to High or Medium. The step from High to Ultra at 4K costs 8% performance (66.9 to 61.5 FPS), whereas the step from Medium to High costs 25% (88.7 to 66.9 FPS). For most users, Medium at 4K provides the best experiential outcome per the measured rows.

How This Combo Ranks

In the broader context of tested combinations, the Ryzen 5 5600 paired with the RX 7900 XTX ranks 260th out of 1795 combos in Microsoft Flight Simulator. This places the pairing in the top 15% of all tested configurations, which is a strong result given that the CPU is a mid-range 2022 part and the GPU is a high-end 2022 flagship. The rank reflects the GPU's dominance in this workload, as the simulator's resolution scaling data shows that the RX 7900 XTX carries the majority of the rendering burden at higher resolutions.

The CPU's percentile ranking of 79 and the GPU's percentile ranking of 85 suggest that the GPU is the stronger component in this pairing. This is consistent with the measured results: at 1080p, where the CPU is more likely to be the limiter, the framerates (172.4 FPS Low, 104.4 FPS Ultra) are high but not exceptional for a top-tier GPU. At 4K, where the GPU is fully utilized, the Ultra result of 61.5 FPS is respectable but not class-leading, given that the RX 7900 XTX's nearest rivals include the RTX 4070 Ti, which scores 2% higher in synthetic benchmarks.

The 260th rank out of 1795 combos indicates that there are 259 configurations that achieve higher average framerates in this game, likely featuring more powerful CPUs or GPUs. However, the combination's position in the top 15% demonstrates that the Ryzen 5 5600 does not significantly bottleneck the RX 7900 XTX in Microsoft Flight Simulator, particularly at 1440p and 4K where the GPU's 24 GB framebuffer and 960.0 GB/s bandwidth are fully leveraged. The data supports the conclusion that this is a well-matched pairing for flight simulation enthusiasts who prioritize resolution and visual fidelity over raw framerate.