Microsoft Flight Simulator

Microsoft Flight Simulator is a notoriously demanding title, and this pairing of an AMD Ryzen 5 5600G with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 produces a fascinating dataset. The measured frames per second reveal a system that is heavily influenced by resolution and settings, with the GPU clearly acting as the primary bottleneck at higher graphical loads. The data shows a configuration capable of smooth gameplay at 1080p and 1440p, but one that requires careful settings management to maintain playable framerates at 4K.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 has a profound impact on performance across all settings presets, confirming that Microsoft Flight Simulator's rendering load scales aggressively with pixel count. At the Low preset, the average framerate drops from 156.6 FPS at 1080p to 127.5 FPS at 1440p, a reduction of roughly 29 FPS, and then further down to 94.4 FPS at 4K. This represents a total drop of over 60 FPS from 1080p to 4K, which is a significant 39.7% reduction in performance.

Moving to the High preset, the scaling pattern shifts. The system delivers 94.8 FPS at 1080p, which falls to 72 FPS at 1440p and then to 52.2 FPS at 4K. The gap between 1080p and 4K here is 42.6 FPS, a 44.9% reduction. This steeper percentage drop at higher settings indicates that the additional detail, such as more complex geometry and textures, is amplifying the GPU's workload as resolution increases. The Ultra preset shows a similar trend, with 88.8 FPS at 1080p, 69.8 FPS at 1440p, and 51.3 FPS at 4K. The data suggests that the scaling from 1440p to 4K is particularly punishing, with the 4K results being nearly identical between High and Ultra presets (52.2 vs 51.3 FPS), indicating the GPU is hitting a hard performance ceiling.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 is the dominant component in this configuration, and its characteristics directly explain the measured results. With 10 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 320-bit bus providing 760.3 GB/s of bandwidth, the card has ample memory bandwidth for high-resolution textures. The GA102 chip, built on Samsung's 8 nm process, contains 8704 shading units and 96 ROPs, which are the key components for pixel throughput. The boost clock of 1710 MHz is standard for the Ampere architecture, and the card posts a strong Passmark G3D score of 25086, placing it in the 80th percentile of all GPUs.

The GPU's role becomes clear when examining the 4K results. At 4K Ultra, the system only manages 51.3 FPS, which is a marginal 1.7% improvement over the 50.8 FPS you would expect from scaling down the High preset. This near-identical performance between High and Ultra at 4K strongly suggests that the RTX 3080 is fully saturated. The card's 29.77 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 164.2 GPixel/s pixel rate are being maxed out by the combination of 4K resolution and high-detail flight simulation. The fact that the 1440p Ultra result (69.8 FPS) is significantly higher than the 4K High result (52.2 FPS) reinforces that the GPU is the limiting factor at 4K.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data provides a clear hierarchy for optimizing the experience in Microsoft Flight Simulator. For users targeting 4K, the Medium preset offers the best balance, delivering 72.2 FPS. This is a substantial 38.4% improvement over the Ultra preset's 51.3 FPS, while the visual difference between Medium and Ultra is often less perceptible in a flight sim where the camera is often static or moving slowly. The High preset at 4K (52.2 FPS) is only marginally faster than Ultra, so it offers little benefit over the highest quality settings.

At 2560x1440, the High preset at 72 FPS is the sweet spot, providing a fluid experience. The Ultra preset at 69.8 FPS is very close, so users with a 144Hz monitor might prefer High to maintain a higher refresh rate headroom. The Low preset at 1440p (127.5 FPS) is playable but sacrifices too much visual fidelity for the extra frames. For 1920x1080, the Ultra preset at 88.8 FPS is the recommended choice, as it offers high visual quality while still maintaining a framerate that is well above the 60 FPS target. The data indicates that the RTX 3080 has enough headroom at 1080p to run the most demanding preset without compromise.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the framerates are consistently high across all settings. The Low preset produces an average of 156.6 FPS, which is excellent for high refresh rate displays. Medium follows at 125.3 FPS, and High at 94.8 FPS. The Ultra preset still delivers a very playable 88.8 FPS, showing that the CPU is not a limiting factor at this resolution. The progression from Low to Ultra shows an expected performance cost, with Ultra being 43.3% slower than Low.

The 2560x1440 results show a more pronounced impact from the increased pixel count. The Low preset averages 127.5 FPS, which drops to 97.8 FPS on Medium. High and Ultra presets yield 72 FPS and 69.8 FPS respectively. The delta between High and Ultra at 1440p is a mere 2.2 FPS, which is within the margin of error, suggesting that the GPU is starting to become the bottleneck. The 4K results confirm this trend. At 3840x2160, the Low preset averages 94.4 FPS, Medium drops to 72.2 FPS, and High falls to 52.2 FPS. The Ultra preset is virtually identical to High at 51.3 FPS, reinforcing that the GPU is fully saturated at this resolution.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the benchmark database, this combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 5600G and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 ranks 531st out of 1795 tested combos for this specific game. This places it in the 70.4th percentile of all tested systems, indicating that it performs better than the majority of configurations. The ranking reflects the strength of the RTX 3080, which is the primary driver of gaming performance in this title.

The CPU's contribution to this ranking is less significant. The Ryzen 5 5600G has an average benchmark score of 19983, which places it in the 78th percentile of all CPUs. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i7-11600H, which is 0.2% slower, and the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5995WX, which is 0.3% faster. This shows that the 5600G is a competent mid-range processor that does not hold back the RTX 3080 in most scenarios. The combo's rank is likely higher than what the CPU alone would suggest, proving that the GPU is the main factor in achieving a good score.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600G, based on the Zen 3 architecture and codenamed Cezanne, provides 6 cores and 12 threads. Its base clock is 3.90 GHz with a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. In terms of raw processing power, it scores 16758 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 2365 in single-core. The 16 MB of L3 cache is adequate for gaming. The CPU's performance is solid, but its role in Microsoft Flight Simulator is secondary to the GPU. The game is known to be demanding on the CPU for physics and simulation logic, but the data here does not show a CPU bottleneck.

Evidence for this can be seen by comparing the 1080p and 1440p Low preset results. The jump from 156.6 FPS at 1080p to 127.5 FPS at 1440p is a 29.1 FPS drop, which is a direct result of increased GPU load. If the CPU were the limiting factor, the framerate would remain more constant across resolutions when settings are low. The fact that the framerate drops consistently with resolution and settings indicates the CPU has sufficient headroom to feed the GPU. The 5600G's Passmark multi-thread score of 19717 and single-thread score of 3177 confirm it is a capable processor, but it is not the star of this show. The data suggests that a user could potentially upgrade the CPU without seeing a major change in these specific framerates, as the RTX 3080 is the component determining the performance envelope at higher settings.