Microsoft Flight Simulator

FAQ

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

A: This combo ranks 595th out of 1,795 tested combinations, placing it in the upper third of all tested systems for this game. That puts it ahead of roughly two-thirds of the field while still leaving headroom above it.

Q: How does the AMD Ryzen 5 5600G compare to its closest CPU rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The 5600G has an average benchmark score of 19,983, which places it within 0.2% of the Intel Core i7-11600H (19,949) and within 0.3% of the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5995WX (19,928). It trails the Intel Core i7-11800H and AMD EPYC 7713P by 0.2%, both scoring 20,024.

Q: What kind of frame rates can I expect at 1080p with this setup?

A: At 1920x1080, the measured average FPS ranges from 86.7 on Ultra settings up to 153.1 on Low settings. Medium settings deliver 118.8 FPS, while High settings produce 88.8 FPS.

Q: Is the RX 9070's 16 GB of VRAM sufficient for this flight simulator?

A: Yes, the 16 GB GDDR6 memory with a 256-bit bus and 644.6 GB/s bandwidth is more than adequate. The data shows playable frame rates even at 4K Ultra, indicating the memory capacity is not a limiting factor at the tested settings.

Q: How does the GPU perform relative to its nearest rivals in the benchmark database?

A: The RX 9070 has an average benchmark score of 34,780. It sits within 0.2% of the NVIDIA A2 (34,866) and within 0.3% of the NVIDIA Quadro GV100 (34,677). It leads the AMD Radeon HD 7970 by 0.7% (34,541) and the AMD Radeon PRO W6400 by 0.8% (34,511).

Q: What is the CPU's percentile ranking among all processors?

A: The Ryzen 5 5600G sits in the 78th percentile of all CPUs, meaning it outperforms 78% of processors in the database. The GPU sits in the 79th percentile of all GPUs, showing a well-matched pairing.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data provides a clear picture of how settings impact performance across resolutions. For the best balance of visual fidelity and smooth gameplay, Medium settings are the sweet spot. At 1920x1080, Medium delivers 118.8 FPS, which is 30 FPS higher than High settings (88.8 FPS) while still looking substantially better than Low. The jump from Medium to High costs 30 FPS, but the visual gains in a flight simulator are meaningful for reading instruments and scenery.

At 2560x1440, Medium settings produce 98.5 FPS, which remains well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth flight simulation. High settings at this resolution drop to 72.7 FPS, which is still playable but leaves less headroom for complex scenery or busy airports. For 1440p, Medium is the recommended starting point, with High as an option if you prefer visual quality over frame rate consistency.

At 3840x2160, Medium settings yield 67.8 FPS, which is right at the edge of comfortable playability. High settings drop to 52.7 FPS, and Ultra falls to 50 FPS. For 4K, Medium is the recommended preset because it maintains a frame rate above 60 FPS while preserving most of the visual detail that makes flight simulation immersive. The 91.9 FPS at Low settings shows there is significant headroom if you need smoother performance, but the visual compromise is substantial.

Ultra settings are only viable at 1080p, where 86.7 FPS is still smooth. At higher resolutions, Ultra pushes the system below 60 FPS, which flight simulators handle poorly during fast maneuvers or dense cloud layers. The data suggests that the performance curve from Medium to High is steep, while High to Ultra is gentler, making Medium the most efficient preset for this hardware combination.

How This Combo Ranks

This combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 5600G and AMD Radeon RX 9070 ranks 595th out of 1,795 tested combos in Microsoft Flight Simulator. That places this system in the 67th percentile of all tested configurations, which is a strong result for a mid-range CPU paired with a high-end GPU.

The ranking reveals that the CPU is the limiting factor in this pairing. The RX 9070 is a powerful card, sitting in the 79th percentile of all GPUs, while the 5600G is in the 78th percentile of all CPUs. In a flight simulator that relies heavily on single-threaded performance for physics and scenery loading, the CPU's single-thread score of 872 in 3DMark and 2,365 in Cinebench R23 becomes the bottleneck.

Compared to the GPU's nearest rivals, the RX 9070 is competitive with the NVIDIA A2 and Quadro GV100, but those are workstation cards. The 5600G's nearest rivals include laptop chips like the Core i7-11600H and i7-11800H, which highlights that this desktop processor is competing with mobile parts in raw CPU throughput. The 595th rank out of 1,795 combos suggests that pairing this CPU with a faster GPU would yield diminishing returns, while pairing this GPU with a stronger CPU would push the combo significantly higher in the rankings.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data covers three resolutions and four settings presets, providing a complete picture of performance scaling.

At 1920x1080, the frame rates are consistently high. Low settings produce 153.1 FPS, Medium drops to 118.8 FPS, High falls to 88.8 FPS, and Ultra settles at 86.7 FPS. The gap between High and Ultra is only 2.1 FPS, suggesting that Ultra is nearly free at this resolution. The jump from Low to Medium costs 34.3 FPS, while Medium to High costs 30 FPS, showing a steep performance curve as visual quality increases.

At 2560x1440, the pattern shifts. Low settings deliver 122 FPS, Medium produces 98.5 FPS, High drops to 72.7 FPS, and Ultra falls to 70.4 FPS. The resolution increase from 1080p to 1440p costs roughly 20% performance across most settings. The Medium preset remains the best balance, staying above 90 FPS while providing good visual quality.

At 3840x2160, the system starts to strain. Low settings still produce 91.9 FPS, which is excellent for 4K. Medium drops to 67.8 FPS, High falls to 52.7 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 50 FPS. The scaling from 1440p to 4K is more severe, costing roughly 30-35% performance across settings. The 4K data shows that this combo can handle 4K gaming, but only at Medium settings or lower for consistently smooth performance.

The resolution scaling is consistent: 1080p to 1440p costs about 20%, and 1440p to 4K costs about 30%. This matches expectations for a GPU-heavy workload where pixel count drives performance.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 is the dominant component in this pairing, and the data confirms it is doing the heavy lifting. The GPU features 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus with 644.6 GB/s bandwidth. The 3,584 shading units, 224 texture mapping units, and 128 ROPs provide substantial rasterization throughput.

The clock speeds are notable: a base clock of 1,330 MHz, a game clock of 2,070 MHz, and a boost clock of 2,520 MHz. The memory runs at 2,518 MHz with 20.1 Gbps effective speed. These clocks translate into 36.13 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 564.5 GTexel/s of texture fill rate.

In Microsoft Flight Simulator, the GPU's role is rendering terrain, aircraft models, and weather effects. The 4K results show that the GPU can handle the pixel load when the CPU can feed it enough data. At 4K Low, the system produces 91.9 FPS, which indicates the GPU is not the bottleneck at lower settings. The GPU's 79th percentile ranking among all GPUs places it above most mainstream cards.

The RX 9070's nearest rivals include the NVIDIA A2 and Quadro GV100, which are workstation-oriented cards. This suggests the RX 9070 has strong compute capabilities that may not be fully utilized in this flight simulator, where raw rasterization and memory bandwidth matter more.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600G is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture, codenamed Cezanne. It runs at a base clock of 3.90 GHz and boosts to 4.40 GHz, with a 65W TDP. The 16 MB of L3 cache is shared across all cores, and each core has 64 KB of L1 and 512 KB of L2 cache.

The CPU's benchmark results show strong single-thread performance for its class. It scores 872 in 3DMark single-thread, 993 in Cinebench R20 single-core, and 2,365 in Cinebench R23 single-core. Multi-thread scores are 5,451 in 3DMark with 16 threads and 16,758 in Cinebench R23 multicore. These numbers place the CPU in the 78th percentile of all processors.

In Microsoft Flight Simulator, the CPU handles flight model physics, AI traffic, and scenery loading. The game is known to be CPU-intensive, especially at lower resolutions where the GPU has headroom. The data shows this clearly: at 1080p Low, the system hits 153.1 FPS, which is likely CPU-limited in some scenarios. The 5600G's single-thread performance is adequate but not exceptional, which explains why the combo ranks 595th rather than higher.

The CPU's nearest rivals are interesting: the Intel Core i7-11600H and i7-11800H are laptop chips, while the AMD EPYC 7713P and Threadripper PRO 5995WX are server/workstation parts. This shows the 5600G sits in a middle ground, outperforming older desktop chips but trailing newer or higher-end parts. For this game, the CPU's 6 cores and 12 threads are sufficient, but the single-thread performance is the limiting factor in CPU-bound scenarios.