Microsoft Flight Simulator

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows for this combination of AMD Ryzen 5 7600X and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 in Microsoft Flight Simulator reveal a clear hierarchy across the four available presets. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers an average of 49.2 FPS, which is the only configuration in the entire dataset that approaches a fluid, playable experience. Medium at the same resolution drops to 35.9 FPS, while High falls further to 26.0 FPS, and Ultra sits at 27.7 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium at 1080p is substantial — 13.3 FPS — suggesting that the GTX 1650's 4 GB frame buffer and 128-bit memory interface are quickly saturated as texture quality and draw distances increase.

At 2560x1440, the picture becomes more constrained. Low produces 35.9 FPS, Medium 30.0 FPS, High 24.9 FPS, and Ultra 19.7 FPS. The step from Low to Medium here is only 5.9 FPS, a much smaller delta than at 1080p, indicating that resolution scaling is already imposing a hard limit on the GPU's throughput. At 3840x2160, no preset reaches even 30 FPS: Low averages 29.9 FPS, Medium 24.2 FPS, High 16.0 FPS, and Ultra 16.3 FPS. The data strongly suggests that the Low preset is the only viable choice for consistent frame delivery, particularly at 1080p where it nearly doubles the frame rate of the next-highest preset. For users willing to accept lower visual fidelity, Low at 1080p is the recommended setting; anything above that risks dropping below 30 FPS in demanding scenes, which is especially problematic for a flight simulator where smooth camera pans and instrument readability matter.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the benchmark database, this specific CPU-GPU pairing ranks 1741 out of 1795 tested combinations for Microsoft Flight Simulator. That places it in the bottom 3% of all recorded configurations, a position that reflects the fundamental mismatch between the game's demands and the hardware's capabilities. The GTX 1650, with a percentile ranking of 43 among all GPUs, is the primary bottleneck; the Ryzen 5 7600X, by contrast, sits at the 83rd percentile among CPUs. The combo rank of 1741 is not a surprise given that the GPU's average benchmark score of 8713 is barely above the lowest quartile of modern graphics cards, while the CPU's average score of 26272 is solidly mid-pack.

The data shows that this pairing is heavily lopsided: the CPU is capable of far more than the GPU can deliver in this title. In practical terms, the combo rank means that nearly every other tested setup — 1794 of them — outperforms this one in Microsoft Flight Simulator. The nearest GPU rivals, such as the NVIDIA Quadro P2200 (0.5% higher average score) and the AMD Radeon Pro WX 5100 (0.5% lower), do not change the overall picture: this is a low-end configuration by any measure. The CPU's nearest rivals — the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U, Ryzen 7 7735U, and Ryzen 5 PRO 5655GE — all score within 0.2% of the 7600X, but that CPU performance is irrelevant when the GPU cannot translate it into frame rate.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 is the decisive component in this analysis. Its 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus delivers 128.1 GB/s of bandwidth, which is the hard ceiling for texture streaming and geometry throughput in Microsoft Flight Simulator. The GPU's base clock of 1485 MHz and boost clock of 1665 MHz are modest, and the 2.984 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is low for a game that relies heavily on continuous draw calls and terrain tessellation. The 896 shading units and 32 ROPs are insufficient for high-resolution rendering, as evidenced by the 4K Ultra result of 16.3 FPS — barely above a slideshow.

The GTX 1650's 12 nm process node and 75 W TDP indicate a design optimized for power efficiency rather than raw performance, but that efficiency does not help in a simulator that scales poorly with limited VRAM. The GPU's benchmark percentile of 43 places it below the median, and its nearest rivals — the RTX 3050 A Mobile (0.4% higher) and Radeon 550X (0.4% higher) — are similarly constrained. In Microsoft Flight Simulator, the 4 GB VRAM is the critical weakness: at 1440p and above, the frame rate collapses regardless of preset, which points to memory capacity exhaustion rather than compute limits. The 128.1 GB/s bandwidth also becomes a bottleneck when the game streams high-resolution satellite imagery and photogrammetry data.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured averages range from 49.2 FPS at Low to 27.7 FPS at Ultra. The progression is not linear: Low to Medium drops 13.3 FPS, Medium to High drops 9.9 FPS, but High to Ultra actually gains 1.7 FPS. This anomaly suggests that the Ultra preset may be applying different optimization paths or that the GTX 1650 is hitting a memory bandwidth wall that makes certain settings changes negligible. The 1080p Low result of 49.2 FPS is the only measured value that clears 40 FPS across the entire dataset.

At 2560x1440, the same preset ladder yields 35.9 FPS at Low, 30.0 FPS at Medium, 24.9 FPS at High, and 19.7 FPS at Ultra. The drop from Low to Medium is only 5.9 FPS, and from Medium to High another 5.1 FPS, showing that the GPU is running out of headroom as pixel count increases. The 1440p Low result matches the 1080p Medium result exactly at 35.9 FPS, which is a useful data point: resolution has a similar impact to one full settings tier.

At 3840x2160, the results are uniformly poor: 29.9 FPS at Low, 24.2 FPS at Medium, 16.0 FPS at High, and 16.3 FPS at Ultra. The 4K Low result nearly matches the 1440p Medium result (30.0 FPS), indicating that the GPU is so bandwidth-limited that even the lowest settings cannot compensate for the 4K pixel workload. The small gap between High and Ultra at 4K (0.3 FPS) further confirms that the GPU is saturated and additional settings changes have almost no effect.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1080p to 1440p to 4K reveals a steep performance cliff. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 49.2 at 1080p to 35.9 at 1440p — a 27% reduction — and then to 29.9 at 4K, another 17% reduction. At Medium settings, the drop is from 35.9 to 30.0 to 24.2, with a 33% loss from 1080p to 4K. At High settings, the numbers fall from 26.0 to 24.9 to 16.0, with the 4K result being 38% lower than 1080p. At Ultra, the pattern is 27.7 to 19.7 to 16.3, a 41% decline from 1080p to 4K.

These scaling patterns indicate that the limiting component is the GPU, not the CPU. The Ryzen 5 7600X, with its 6 cores and 12 threads boosting to 5.30 GHz, has ample single-thread performance for the simulator's main thread; the CPU's Cinebench R23 single-core score of 3406 and multi-core score of 24128 are far above what this game requires at these frame rates. The steady FPS erosion with each resolution increase — even at Low settings where CPU load would be relatively higher — is a classic sign of a GPU that is running out of fill rate and memory bandwidth. If the CPU were the bottleneck, the FPS would remain flat across resolutions. Instead, the data shows the GTX 1650's 128.1 GB/s bandwidth being overwhelmed by the pixel workload.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X is a Zen 4 (Raphael) part built on TSMC's 5 nm process, with 6 cores and 12 threads. Its base clock of 4.70 GHz and boost clock of 5.30 GHz give it outstanding single-thread performance, as reflected in the 3DMark single-thread score of 1060 and Geekbench single-core score of 2892. In Microsoft Flight Simulator, which is known for its heavy single-threaded rendering loop, this CPU should be more than adequate. The 32 MB of shared L3 cache and 83.2 GB/s of DDR5 memory bandwidth further support fast data access for the game's world-streaming systems.

However, the measured FPS data shows that the CPU's capabilities are never fully utilized. The highest average FPS in the entire dataset — 49.2 at 1080p Low — is still below what a 7600X could drive if paired with a stronger GPU. The CPU's percentile ranking of 83 versus the GPU's 43 makes this mismatch clear. The 7600X's nearest rivals, all within 0.2% in average benchmark score, include the Ryzen 7 5700X and Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U; none of these would change the outcome here because the GPU is the wall. The CPU's 105 W TDP and unlocked multiplier indicate a desktop part designed for high sustained performance, but in this pairing, it spends most of its time waiting on the GTX 1650 to deliver frames. The data suggests that upgrading the GPU alone would yield dramatic FPS improvements, while upgrading the CPU would have almost no measurable effect in this title at these settings.