Microsoft Flight Simulator

# Microsoft Flight Simulator — AMD Ryzen 5 7600 + AMD Radeon RX 570

The pairing of AMD's Zen 4-based Ryzen 5 7600 with the Polaris-era Radeon RX 570 produces a combination that sits near the bottom of the database's measured results for Microsoft Flight Simulator, ranking 1697th out of 1795 tested combos. This is a system where the GPU is clearly the dominant constraint, as the CPU's strong synthetic scores — including a Cinebench R23 multi-core result of 22992 and a single-core score of 3246 — contrast sharply with frame rates that struggle to reach 30 FPS at most settings above 1080p Low. The data reveals a profound imbalance: a processor that ranks in the 83rd percentile against all CPUs paired with a graphics card from 2017 that, despite sitting in the 74th GPU percentile, cannot translate its compute capabilities into playable flight simulation performance at higher resolutions.

Resolution Scaling — how FPS drops from 1080p to 4K and what it says about the limiting component

The measured FPS data shows a stark scaling pattern across resolutions. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 50.1 FPS, but moving to 1440p Low drops that to 39.9 FPS (a 20% reduction), and 4K Low falls further to 30.3 FPS (a 40% reduction from 1080p). For High settings, the progression is 28.7 → 23.8 → 16.9 FPS from 1080p to 1440p to 4K, representing drops of 17% and 41% respectively. This scaling behavior — where the percentage loss from 1080p to 4K is roughly similar across all settings — indicates that the GPU is the primary bottleneck, as resolution scaling is a pure pixel-throughput exercise.

However, the absolute numbers tell a more nuanced story. At 1080p Ultra, the combo still only manages 29.7 FPS, which is barely above the 4K Low result of 30.3 FPS. This suggests that even at the lowest resolution, the RX 570's 4 GB of GDDR5 memory and 224.0 GB/s bandwidth are insufficient for Flight Simulator's demanding rendering pipeline. The game's known appetite for both GPU compute and memory bandwidth means that the 5.095 TFLOPS FP32 performance of the RX 570 is simply not enough to feed the simulation's complex scenery and weather systems. The data implies that CPU headroom exists — the Ryzen 5 7600's single-thread performance (3dmark single-thread score of 999) is far above what this GPU can utilize — but the frame rates never improve enough to expose any CPU limitation.

How This Combo Ranks — use comboRankInGame vs other tested combos

With a rank of 1697 out of 1795 combos, this system falls in the bottom 5.5% of all tested configurations for Microsoft Flight Simulator. This is a remarkably low placement for a CPU that, in synthetic benchmarks, sits within 0.2% of the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D (avg score 26574 vs 26617) and ahead of the Intel Core i9-11900K by 0.3% (26546). The GPU, while ranking in the 74th percentile overall, shows a similar pattern in its own rival comparisons: the RX 570's average benchmark score of 30158 is within 0.2% of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 (30109) and 0.2% of the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT (30097). Yet in actual game performance, this combo lags far behind what those synthetic scores would suggest.

The discrepancy between synthetic and real-world performance points to Flight Simulator's unique demands. The game's CPU-heavy simulation loop (flight physics, weather, AI traffic) should theoretically favor the Ryzen 5 7600's Zen 4 architecture, but the GPU's inability to render frames fast enough means the CPU's potential is never realized. The combo rank of 1697 indicates that most other systems in the database — even those with older CPUs — achieve better frame rates because they pair them with more capable graphics cards. This is a textbook case of GPU-bound performance, where upgrading the graphics card alone would yield dramatic improvements.

FAQ

Q: Why does this combo perform so poorly in Flight Simulator despite strong CPU benchmarks?

A: The Ryzen 5 7600's 3dmark max-thread score of 6503 and Cinebench R23 multi-core result of 22992 place it in the 83rd CPU percentile, but the Radeon RX 570's 4 GB memory and 5.095 TFLOPS FP32 are insufficient for the game's rendering demands. The measured FPS data shows the GPU as the bottleneck at every resolution and setting.

Q: What is the best frame rate this combo can achieve?

A: The highest measured average FPS is 50.1 at 1920x1080 with Low settings. At Medium settings, the best result is 36.3 FPS at 1080p. No measured configuration exceeds 50.1 FPS.

Q: How does the RX 570 compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic tests?

A: The RX 570's average benchmark score of 30158 is 0.2% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 (30109) and 0.2% higher than the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT (30097). However, these synthetic results do not translate to Flight Simulator performance.

Q: Is 4K gaming possible with this combination?

A: At 4K Ultra, the combo achieves only 15.2 FPS, while 4K High reaches 16.9 FPS and 4K Medium 20.9 FPS. The only playable 4K result is at Low settings with 30.3 FPS, which is borderline.

Q: What does the CPU's 83rd percentile ranking mean for this game?

A: The Ryzen 5 7600's percentileVsAllCpus of 83 indicates strong general-purpose performance, but Flight Simulator's GPU-bound nature means this headroom is unused. The CPU's single-thread score of 999 in 3dmark suggests adequate per-core performance, yet frame rates never exceed 50.1 FPS.

Q: How does the combo rank compare to the individual component rankings?

A: While the CPU ranks in the 83rd percentile and the GPU in the 74th percentile, the combo ranks 1697th out of 1795 — far below what either component's percentile would predict, highlighting the severe GPU bottleneck.

Measured FPS Breakdown — resolution by resolution, settings by settings, exact numbers

At 1920x1080, the data shows a clear progression: Low settings deliver 50.1 FPS, Medium drops to 36.3 FPS, High falls to 28.7 FPS, and Ultra manages 29.7 FPS. Interestingly, the Ultra result is slightly higher than High, which may indicate measurement variance or that certain Ultra settings reduce CPU overhead in this specific test scenario. The 1080p results are the only ones where Low settings break the 50 FPS threshold, and even that is marginal.

Moving to 2560x1440, all settings suffer significant losses. Low yields 39.9 FPS, Medium 31.1 FPS, High 23.8 FPS, and Ultra 22.0 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra narrows from 20.4 FPS at 1080p to 17.9 FPS at 1440p, suggesting that the GPU is becoming the limiting factor more uniformly across settings. At 3840x2160, the results plummet further: Low achieves 30.3 FPS, Medium 20.9 FPS, High 16.9 FPS, and Ultra 15.2 FPS. The Ultra-to-Low gap at 4K is 15.1 FPS, indicating that even the lowest settings cannot escape the GPU's resolution ceiling.

The pattern across all resolutions reveals that Low settings provide approximately 1.7x the frame rate of Ultra settings at 1080p (50.1 vs 29.7), but this ratio shrinks to 1.3x at 1440p (39.9 vs 22.0) and 2.0x at 4K (30.3 vs 15.2). This non-linear scaling suggests that at 4K, the GPU's memory bandwidth (224.0 GB/s) becomes the primary constraint, as texture and geometry data exceeds the 4 GB frame buffer capacity.

GPU Role — VRAM, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The Radeon RX 570's Polaris 20 chip, built on GlobalFoundries' 14 nm process, operates at a base clock of 1168 MHz and boost clock of 1244 MHz. Its 4 GB of GDDR5 memory at 1750 MHz (7 Gbps effective) provides 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth across a 256-bit bus. These specifications, while respectable for 2017, are clearly inadequate for Flight Simulator's 2020-era rendering requirements. The 4 GB VRAM is particularly problematic — the game's high-resolution textures and streaming world data can easily exceed this capacity, causing constant swapping and stutter.

The GPU's 2048 shading units and 128 texture mapping units deliver a texture rate of 159.2 GTexel/s and a pixel rate of 39.81 GPixel/s. In practice, these translate to the measured FPS figures: at 4K Ultra, the 15.2 FPS result suggests the GPU is completely overwhelmed, while even at 1080p Low, the 50.1 FPS ceiling indicates that the Polaris architecture's lack of dedicated ray tracing or mesh shader hardware puts it at a disadvantage in this modern title. The GPU's nearest rivals in synthetic tests (RTX 5060, RX 7700 XT) are all substantially newer architectures, yet their similar average benchmark scores highlight how synthetic tests can misrepresent real-world gaming performance.

CPU Role — cores, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The AMD Ryzen 5 7600 brings 6 cores and 12 threads based on Zen 4 architecture, with a base clock of 3.80 GHz and boost up to 5.10 GHz. Its 32 MB of shared L3 cache and 83.2 GB/s dual-channel DDR5 memory bandwidth provide ample CPU-side performance. In synthetic tests, the CPU achieves a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 22992 and single-core of 3246, placing it in the 83rd percentile of all CPUs. The 3dmark scores show strong scaling: 1938 for 2 threads, 3686 for 4 threads, 5508 for 8 threads, and 6503 for max threads.

However, in Flight Simulator, the CPU's role is largely underutilized. The measured FPS data shows no scenario where the CPU becomes the bottleneck — even at 1080p Low with 50.1 FPS, the GPU is clearly the constraint. The CPU's nearest rivals include the Ryzen 7 5800X3D (avg score 26574, deltaPct 0.2) and Intel Core i9-12900HK (26672, deltaPct -0.2), indicating that the 7600's performance is competitive with much more expensive processors. Yet this headroom is wasted in this GPU-limited configuration. The CPU's 5.10 GHz boost clock and 6-core/12-thread configuration would be sufficient for Flight Simulator's simulation logic if the GPU could keep up with rendering demands.

Settings Recommendations — which preset gives the best experience per the measured rows

Based on the measured data, the only configuration that approaches playable frame rates is 1920x1080 with Low settings, achieving 50.1 FPS. This is the clear recommendation for any user seeking fluid performance. The Medium preset at 1080p drops to 36.3 FPS, which is still playable for a flight simulator where precision matters more than twitch response, but the 28% reduction from Low is significant. High and Ultra at 1080p (28.7 and 29.7 FPS respectively) sit in a narrow band that feels sluggish for a game requiring fine camera control.

At 1440p, Low settings (39.9 FPS) are the only viable option, as Medium (31.1 FPS) and above fall below the 30 FPS threshold that many consider the minimum for smooth flight simulation. The 4K resolution should be avoided entirely — even Low at 30.3 FPS is borderline, and the 20.9 FPS Medium result is unusable for serious play. The data suggests that users should prioritize resolution reduction over settings reduction: dropping from 1080p Ultra (29.7 FPS) to 1440p Low (39.9 FPS) provides a 34% improvement, while dropping from 1080p High (28.7) to 1080p Low (50.1) provides a 75% improvement. The most effective strategy is to run 1080p Low and accept the visual compromise, as this yields the best frame rate headroom for the game's dynamic weather and scenery loading.