Microsoft Flight Simulator

FAQ

Q: How does the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X compare to its closest rivals in overall CPU performance?

A: The Ryzen 5 9600X posts an average benchmark score of 28,246, placing it essentially in a dead heat with the Intel Core i5-13490F (28,173, deltaPct 0.3) and AMD Ryzen 5 230 (28,164, deltaPct 0.3). It trails the AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS by 0.4% (28,369) and the Intel Core i5-14500T by 0.5% (28,377), meaning all four rivals sit within a 0.8% performance band—statistically indistinguishable.

Q: What is the GPU's standing relative to comparable graphics cards?

A: The GeForce GTX 1650 achieves an average benchmark score of 8,713, which is 0.4% behind the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 A Mobile (8,746) and the AMD Radeon 550X (8,749), 0.5% ahead of the NVIDIA Quadro P2200 (8,671), and 0.5% behind the AMD Radeon Pro WX 5100 (8,761). Its percentile ranking places it below only 43% of all GPUs, indicating entry-level positioning.

Q: What frame rates can be expected at 1080p with this combo?

A: At 1920x1080, the measured average FPS ranges from 50.5 on Low settings to 27.5 on Ultra. Medium yields 36.1 FPS and High produces 30.7 FPS. The data shows that only the Low preset approaches playable smoothness for this flight simulator.

Q: How does the combo rank among all tested configurations for this game?

A: This CPU+GPU combination ranks 1,744th out of 1,795 tested combos in Microsoft Flight Simulator, placing it in the bottom 2.8% of all configurations. This indicates that the pairing is severely constrained in this particular title.

Q: What is the CPU's multi-threaded performance profile?

A: The Ryzen 5 9600X scores 25,525 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 10,720 in Cinebench R20 multi-core, with a PassMark multi-thread score of 30,027. Its 3DMark scores scale from 2,456 with 2 threads to 7,590 with max threads, showing strong scaling across its 6 cores and 12 threads.

Q: What is the GPU's memory configuration and how might it affect this game?

A: The GTX 1650 features 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus with 128.1 GB/s bandwidth. For a modern flight simulator with extensive scenery streaming, the 4 GB capacity is a likely bottleneck, particularly at higher resolutions and settings.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data reveals a clear hierarchy across resolutions and presets, with the 1920x1080 Low setting being the only configuration that delivers a genuinely fluid experience. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 50.5 FPS average—the single highest score in the entire dataset. Dropping to 1080p Medium reduces the average to 36.1 FPS, a 28.5% decrease that may still be tolerable for slower-paced flight simulation, but the gap widens further at 1080p High (30.7 FPS) and 1080p Ultra (27.5 FPS).

For users prioritizing visual fidelity, 2560x1440 Low produces 38.2 FPS, which is the best result at that resolution but comes with a substantial visual downgrade compared to Medium or High. At 1440p Medium, the average falls to 28.8 FPS, and High drops to 21.7 FPS. Ultra at 1440p is largely impractical at 18.4 FPS.

At 3840x2160, all settings produce sub-30 FPS averages: Low yields 28.4 FPS, Medium 19.9 FPS, High 18.3 FPS, and Ultra 16.4 FPS. The data indicates that 4K is not viable for this pairing, regardless of preset. The scaling pattern—from 50.5 FPS at 1080p Low down to 16.4 FPS at 4K Ultra—demonstrates that the GTX 1650's 4 GB frame buffer and 128.1 GB/s bandwidth are overwhelmed by the simulator's high-resolution texture and terrain demands.

The optimal balance between playability and quality is 1920x1080 with the Low preset. It provides the only average above 50 FPS, which accommodates the simulator's tendency to experience frame drops during complex scenery loads. Users who accept lower frame rates might consider 1080p Medium (36.1 FPS) for improved terrain detail, but the measured data suggests diminishing returns beyond that point. For any resolution above 1080p, the Low preset is the only reasonable choice, and even then, 1440p and 4K results remain marginal.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 9600X brings a 6-core, 12-thread configuration based on the Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge), fabricated on TSMC's 4 nm process. Its base clock of 3.90 GHz and boost clock of 5.40 GHz provide substantial single-thread headroom, reflected in a 3DMark single-thread score of 1,253 and a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 3,603. These figures place the CPU in the 85th percentile among all processors, indicating strong computational capability for a desktop chip.

In Microsoft Flight Simulator, the CPU's role is primarily in physics simulation, flight dynamics, and AI traffic management—workloads that benefit from both high single-thread performance and multi-thread scaling. The 9600X's 3DMark scores show efficient scaling from 2,456 (2 threads) to 6,726 (8 threads) and 7,590 (max threads), suggesting that the 12 threads are well-utilized when the simulator spawns multiple background processes. The 32 MB shared L3 cache and 89.6 GB/s memory bandwidth provide adequate data throughput for the simulator's world-streaming engine, though the DDR5 memory bus is likely not the primary constraint in this configuration.

However, the benchmark results indicate that the CPU is not the limiting factor in this pairing. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 50.5 FPS, but the GPU's performance percentile (43rd) is dramatically lower than the CPU's (85th). This asymmetry suggests that the Ryzen 5 9600X has substantial headroom remaining even at the lowest settings, and the frame rate is being capped by the GTX 1650's rendering throughput. The CPU's PassMark physics score of 2,012 and floating-point math score of 60,081 further confirm that the processor is capable of handling the simulator's computational demands without becoming a bottleneck at the measured settings.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Ryzen 5 9600X and GTX 1650 ranks 1,744th out of 1,795 tested configurations in Microsoft Flight Simulator, placing it in the bottom 2.8% of all combinations. This ranking is notably poor given that the CPU alone sits in the 85th percentile of all processors. The discrepancy highlights how severely the GPU constrains overall system performance in this title.

The rank suggests that among the 1,795 combos tested, only 51 configurations perform worse than this pairing. This is a striking result for a CPU that benchmarks within 0.5% of recent mid-range rivals like the Intel Core i5-13490F and AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS. The data implies that most other tested combinations—even those with older or lower-tier CPUs—are paired with more capable GPUs, resulting in better overall frame rates.

Examining the measured FPS data contextualizes this ranking: the best result (50.5 FPS at 1080p Low) is achievable by many GPU configurations, but the GTX 1650's 43rd percentile standing means it falls behind the majority of graphics cards in the benchmark database. The combo's rank in this specific game reflects the simulator's heavy GPU demands, particularly at higher resolutions where the 4 GB VRAM capacity becomes a hard limiting factor. Users considering this pairing should recognize that the CPU's potential is largely unrealized in this configuration, and that upgrading the GPU would yield far greater performance gains than any CPU adjustment.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, built on the Turing architecture (TU117 chip) using a 12 nm process, operates with a base clock of 1485 MHz and a boost clock of 1665 MHz. Its 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus provides 128.1 GB/s of bandwidth, which is modest by modern standards. The GPU's 896 shading units and 32 ROPs deliver a pixel rate of 53.28 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 93.24 GTexel/s, with FP32 performance rated at 2.984 TFLOPS.

In Microsoft Flight Simulator, the GPU is responsible for rendering dense terrain, complex aircraft models, and dynamic weather effects—workloads that heavily tax both fill rate and memory bandwidth. The measured FPS data shows a clear correlation between resolution and performance: at 1080p, the average FPS ranges from 50.5 (Low) to 27.5 (Ultra), while at 4K, it drops to between 28.4 (Low) and 16.4 (Ultra). This scaling pattern indicates that the GPU's 4 GB frame buffer becomes exhausted at higher resolutions, forcing texture paging and reducing throughput.

The GTX 1650's benchmark scores reinforce its entry-level positioning: a PassMark G3D score of 7,880 and a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 305 place it in the 43rd percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rivals—the RTX 3050 A Mobile, Radeon 550X, and Quadro P2200—all sit within 0.5% in average score, confirming that this GPU is at the bottom of the performance landscape for modern titles. The simulator's DirectX 12 support is present (DirectX 12_1), but the GPU's lack of dedicated ray tracing or tensor cores means it relies entirely on traditional rasterization, which the measured results show is insufficient for smooth gameplay beyond 1080p Low. The 75 W TDP and dual-slot design indicate a low-power card, but the data shows that power efficiency does not translate into adequate performance for this demanding flight simulator.