Microsoft Flight Simulator

Microsoft Flight Simulator presents one of the most demanding rendering workloads in the benchmark database, and the combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 5600F with the Intel Arc B390 produces a distinctive performance profile. The data shows a system that is heavily constrained by the integrated graphics solution, with frame rates that scale predictably with resolution and settings but remain modest across the board. This analysis walks through the measured FPS data, focusing on how the system behaves at each resolution and preset, what the scores indicate about the hardware balance, and where this pairing ranks among the thousands of tested configurations.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a clear and consistent pattern of performance degradation as resolution increases, which is typical for a system where the GPU is the primary limiting factor. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the system achieves an average of 56 FPS, which is the highest score recorded across all tested configurations. Moving up to 2560x1440 at the same Low preset drops the average to 45 FPS, representing a reduction of 11 FPS or approximately 19.6% from the 1080p result. At 3840x2160 with Low settings, the average falls further to 33 FPS, which is a 41.1% decrease from the 1080p baseline and a 26.7% decrease from the 1440p result.

The scaling pattern becomes more pronounced when examining the Medium settings, which include minimum and maximum frame data. At 1920x1080 Medium, the average is 43 FPS with a range of 37 to 50 FPS. Moving to 2560x1440 Medium drops the average to 35 FPS with a range of 30 to 40 FPS, a reduction of 8 FPS or 18.6%. At 3840x2160 Medium, the average is 26 FPS with a range of 22 to 30 FPS, which is 17 FPS or 39.5% lower than the 1080p Medium score. The minimum frame rates show similar proportional drops, from 37 at 1080p to 30 at 1440p to 22 at 4K.

High settings exhibit a steeper relative decline. The 1080p High average is 33 FPS, which drops to 26 FPS at 1440p (a 21.2% reduction) and then to 19 FPS at 4K (a 42.4% reduction from 1080p). Ultra settings follow the same trend, with 31 FPS at 1080p, 25 FPS at 1440p, and 19 FPS at 4K. The fact that High and Ultra both bottom out at 19 FPS at 4K suggests that the system is hitting a hard performance ceiling at that resolution, regardless of the quality preset. This is a strong indicator that the Intel Arc B390, with its system-shared memory architecture, is completely saturated at 4K and cannot benefit from further reductions in graphical fidelity.

The scaling behavior points directly to the GPU as the limiting component. The Ryzen 5 5600F, with its 6 cores and 12 threads based on the Zen 3 architecture, provides ample processing power for this simulation, as evidenced by the fact that frame rates do not collapse at lower resolutions where CPU load would be relatively higher. Instead, the consistent 20-40% performance drops between each resolution step at every settings level indicate that the integrated graphics, which relies on system memory and has a 300 MHz base clock and 2500 MHz boost clock, is the bottleneck. The 9th percentile ranking for the GPU among all tested graphics cards reinforces this interpretation.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data provides a clear hierarchy of playable configurations, and the choice of settings depends heavily on the target resolution. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers the best experience with an average of 56 FPS, which is the only configuration in the entire dataset that approaches smooth playability. The Medium preset at 1080p offers 43 FPS average with a minimum of 37 FPS, which could be acceptable for a flight simulator where precise timing is less critical than in action games. High at 1080p drops to 33 FPS average, and Ultra is marginally worse at 31 FPS, suggesting that the visual quality gains from High to Ultra are not worth the 2 FPS cost, but both are below the threshold for comfortable play.

For 2560x1440, the Low preset is the only viable option for consistent performance, with an average of 45 FPS. The Medium preset at 1440p provides 35 FPS average with a 30 FPS minimum, which is borderline but may be tolerable for slower-paced flight scenarios. High at 1440p falls to 26 FPS, and Ultra is at 25 FPS, both of which are likely to feel stuttery and unresponsive. The data shows a 10 FPS gap between Low and Medium at 1440p, which is a significant jump, suggesting that the Medium preset's additional visual features carry a heavy performance cost on this hardware.

At 3840x2160, the situation is much more constrained. Low settings produce 33 FPS average, which is the only 4K configuration that breaks the 30 FPS mark. Medium drops to 26 FPS, and both High and Ultra are locked at 19 FPS average. The fact that High and Ultra produce identical averages at 4K indicates that the system is not limited by the quality settings but by the raw pixel throughput of the integrated GPU. For users who must run at 4K, Low settings are the only reasonable choice, and even then, the 33 FPS average will be a compromise. The recommendation is to prioritize 1080p with Medium settings for the best balance of visual fidelity and frame rate, or drop to Low if smoothness is the primary concern.

FAQ

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

A: The highest recorded average FPS is 56, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This is the only configuration in the measured data that exceeds 50 FPS.

Q: How does the system perform at 4K resolution?

A: At 3840x2160, the system manages 33 FPS average on Low settings, 26 FPS on Medium, and 19 FPS on both High and Ultra. The identical 19 FPS results for High and Ultra suggest a hard performance ceiling at this resolution.

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

A: The data shows minimal differences. At 1080p, High averages 33 FPS and Ultra averages 31 FPS. At 1440p, High is 26 FPS and Ultra is 25 FPS. At 4K, both are exactly 19 FPS. The performance cost of Ultra over High is consistently small.

Q: What do the minimum frame rates tell us about stability?

A: The Medium preset includes min/max data. At 1080p, the range is 37-50 FPS. At 1440p, it is 30-40 FPS. At 4K, it is 22-30 FPS. The minimums are consistently about 6-8 FPS below the averages, indicating moderate frame time variance but no severe stuttering.

Q: How does the CPU's benchmark score relate to this game's performance?

A: The Ryzen 5 5600F has a Passmark multi-thread score of 19236 and a single-thread score of 2872, placing it in the 85th percentile of all CPUs. These scores suggest the CPU is not the limiting factor, as the frame rates scale more with resolution than with settings complexity.

Q: What is the GPU's benchmark standing?

A: The Intel Arc B390 has a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1482, which places it in the 9th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX at 1463 and the GeForce 800M at 1460, indicating it performs at a very low tier.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured dataset provides a comprehensive picture of this combo's capabilities. At 1920x1080, the system delivers 56 FPS on Low, 43 FPS on Medium (37-50 range), 33 FPS on High, and 31 FPS on Ultra. The spread from Low to Ultra is 25 FPS, which is the largest gap across all resolutions, indicating that the CPU can feed the GPU effectively at this resolution and that the GPU's performance is more sensitive to settings changes.

At 2560x1440, the averages are 45 FPS on Low, 35 FPS on Medium (30-40 range), 26 FPS on High, and 25 FPS on Ultra. The gap from Low to Ultra narrows to 20 FPS, and the difference between High and Ultra shrinks to just 1 FPS. This suggests that the pixel count is beginning to tax the GPU, reducing the impact of quality settings.

At 3840x2160, the results compress further: 33 FPS on Low, 26 FPS on Medium (22-30 range), 19 FPS on High, and 19 FPS on Ultra. The Low-to-Ultra spread is only 14 FPS, and High and Ultra are identical. The minimum frame rate of 22 at Medium 4K is the lowest recorded in the entire dataset, highlighting the stress that 4K puts on the system.

Looking at the Medium preset across resolutions, which is the only preset with complete min/max data, the scaling is consistent. The 1080p average of 43 FPS drops by 8 FPS to 35 at 1440p, then by another 9 FPS to 26 at 4K. The minimums follow a similar path: 37 at 1080p, 30 at 1440p, and 22 at 4K. The maximums are 50, 40, and 30 respectively. This linear degradation pattern is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario where each pixel increase adds proportional load.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B390 is the dominant factor in this system's performance profile. Based on the Xe3-LPG architecture on a 3 nm process, this integrated GPU operates with a base clock of 300 MHz and a boost clock of 2500 MHz. It has 1536 shading units, 48 texture mapping units, and 24 raster output units, along with 12 ray tracing cores. The compute capabilities are rated at 7.680 TFLOPS for FP32 and 15.36 TFLOPS for FP16 (2:1 ratio), with a pixel rate of 60.00 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 120.0 GTexel/s.

The most significant limitation is the memory configuration. The GPU uses system-shared memory, meaning it has no dedicated VRAM and instead borrows from the system's DDR4 pool. The memory bandwidth is listed as "System Dependent," which means it varies based on the system configuration. This architecture is likely the primary reason for the poor performance in Microsoft Flight Simulator, which is known for requiring large amounts of video memory to stream terrain and scenery data. The shared memory approach creates a bottleneck that caps performance regardless of the GPU's raw compute capabilities.

The benchmark data confirms this interpretation. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1482 places the GPU in the 9th percentile of all GPUs, and its nearest rivals are all legacy low-end parts: the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX (1463, delta 1.3%), the GeForce 800M (1460, delta 1.5%), the GT 625 OEM (1446, delta 2.5%), and the GT 710 (1443, delta 2.7%). The fact that the Arc B390 is only 1.3% faster than a GT 520MX, a GPU from over a decade ago, underscores its position at the very bottom of the performance spectrum.

The system's TDP of 80 W for the GPU and 65 W for the CPU indicates a power-efficient but low-performance pairing. The GPU's 24 ROPs are particularly limiting for high-resolution rendering, as raster operation throughput directly affects pixel fill rate. At 4K, the 19 FPS ceiling for both High and Ultra settings is likely due to the ROP count and memory bandwidth being insufficient to process the 8.3 million pixels per frame.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600F provides a stark contrast to the GPU's limitations. This 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture (codenamed Vermeer) operates at a base clock of 3.00 GHz and a boost clock of 4.00 GHz. It has a 32 MB shared L3 cache, 512 KB L2 per core, and 64 KB L1 per core, built on TSMC's 7 nm process with 4,150 million transistors on a 74 mm² die.

The CPU's benchmark scores are robust. The Passmark multi-thread score is 19236, the single-thread score is 2872, and the average benchmark score is 36945, placing it in the 85th percentile of all CPUs. Its nearest rivals in the CPU benchmark database are the Intel Core Ultra 5 225 (36938, delta 0%), the AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D (37018, delta -0.2%), the AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 450 (37093, delta -0.4%), and the Intel Core i9-12900T (37112, delta -0.5%). These scores show that the 5600F is competitive with modern mid-range processors, with negligible performance differences against its closest competitors.

In Microsoft Flight Simulator, the CPU's role is to handle flight dynamics, physics calculations, and AI traffic, which are all heavily single-threaded tasks. The single-thread score of 2872 is above average, and the 4.00 GHz boost clock provides adequate responsiveness. The data supports the conclusion that the CPU is not the bottleneck: the frame rates scale almost entirely with resolution and GPU settings, and there is no evidence of CPU-induced frame drops at lower resolutions where the GPU has more headroom.

The CPU's memory bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s for dual-channel DDR4 is worth noting, as the GPU shares this memory. This could be a secondary bottleneck, as the GPU's system-shared memory must compete with CPU memory accesses. However, the fact that the CPU is only using a fraction of its capacity in this game means that memory contention is unlikely to be severe, and the primary constraint remains the GPU's limited throughput.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested combinations for Microsoft Flight Simulator, this pairing of the AMD Ryzen 5 5600F and Intel Arc B390 holds a rank of 2665 out of 2996 total combos. This places it in the bottom 11% of all tested configurations, which is consistent with the GPU's 9th percentile ranking and the low FPS numbers observed across all resolutions and settings.

The rank is particularly telling when compared to the CPU's strong standing. The 5600F is in the 85th percentile of all CPUs, yet the combo rank is in the 11th percentile of combos. This discrepancy highlights how severely the GPU drags down the overall performance. The CPU is capable of supporting much higher frame rates, but the Arc B390 cannot deliver them.

The measured FPS data reinforces this ranking. The best-case scenario (1080p Low at 56 FPS) is playable, but every other configuration falls below 45 FPS, and the majority of settings at 1440p and 4K are below 35 FPS. For a flight simulator that often involves dense terrain and complex scenery, these frame rates would likely result in a less immersive experience, with visible stuttering during camera movements and rapid scene changes.

The combo rank of 2665 out of 2996 means that 331 other combinations performed worse, which provides some context. However, the vast majority of tested systems (89%) achieved better results. The data suggests that this pairing is only suitable for users who are willing to play at 1080p with Low or Medium settings, and who prioritize CPU performance for other tasks over gaming frame rates in this specific title. The Intel Arc B390 is fundamentally mismatched with the demands of Microsoft Flight Simulator, and no amount of CPU capability can compensate for the GPU's 9th percentile standing.