Microsoft Flight Simulator

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 7 5700 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER combination lands at rank 1282 out of 1795 tested combos in Microsoft Flight Simulator, placing it in the lower-middle tier of the database. This position, roughly the 29th percentile of all tested pairings, tells a story of a system that can run the sim but will not be setting any records in dense urban environments or with maximum scenery complexity. The ranking suggests that while this is a coherent, balanced pairing for many titles, Flight Simulator's particular demands push it down the ladder compared to its performance in other games.

What is striking is the delta between the two components' individual standings. The CPU sits at the 84th percentile among all processors, with an average benchmark score of 27220, while the GPU sits at the 63rd percentile with an average score of 19774. The combo rank of 1282/1795 indicates that the pair underperforms what the CPU alone might suggest, pointing squarely at the graphics card as the limiting factor in this specific simulation. The data implies that the 5700 has headroom to spare, while the 2060 SUPER is working near its ceiling when rendering the detailed terrain and aircraft models that Flight Simulator demands.

GPU Role

The RTX 2060 SUPER brings 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, yielding 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. In a game like Microsoft Flight Simulator, which streams vast amounts of texture data for photogrammetry cities and detailed airports, that memory capacity and bandwidth are critical. The 2060 SUPER's 2176 shading units, 136 TMUs, and 64 ROPs are the workhorses here, while its 34 RT cores and 272 tensor cores are present but less relevant, as the sim's lighting model does not heavily leverage ray tracing in the measured presets.

The clock behavior is revealing: a base clock of 1470 MHz boosting to 1650 MHz. The measured FPS data shows that at 1080p, the GPU can push from 56.8 FPS at Ultra to 98.8 FPS at Low, a spread of 42 FPS that illustrates how much headroom exists when the render load is reduced. At 4K, the same settings spread yields only 35.7 FPS to 58.5 FPS, a narrower 22.8 FPS gap. This compression at higher resolutions is classic GPU-bound behavior — the 2060 SUPER's raw throughput, rated at 7.181 TFLOPS FP32, simply cannot scale the frame rate when pixel count quadruples. The 448.0 GB/s bandwidth becomes the bottleneck at 4K, as the card struggles to feed the render pipeline with enough texture data per frame.

FAQ

Q: How does the Ryzen 7 5700 compare to its closest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The CPU scores 27220 on average, which is 0.7% ahead of the Intel Core i9-9900K (27043), 0.8% ahead of the Intel Core i7-12700H (27006), 0.8% ahead of the Intel Core i7-1370P (26991), and 1.2% ahead of the AMD Ryzen AI 5 340 (26909). These deltas are all within the noise margin, indicating near-parity with these four rivals.

Q: What is the GPU's standing relative to its nearest competitors?

A: The RTX 2060 SUPER averages 19774, edging out the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN by 0.3% (19706), the RTX 2070 by 0.5% (19680), the Quadro K5200 by 0.8% (19623), and the Tesla K40m by 1.3% (19519). It holds a slight but consistent lead over all four.

Q: Does the 8 GB VRAM capacity cause issues at 4K resolution?

A: The measured data suggests yes. At 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the combo averages 35.7 FPS, and at High settings it reaches only 34.8 FPS — nearly identical. This plateau indicates the 8 GB frame buffer is saturated, preventing the High preset from delivering a meaningful improvement over Ultra, whereas at lower resolutions the settings spread is much wider.

Q: How much faster is the Low preset compared to Ultra at each resolution?

A: At 1080p, Low (98.8 FPS) is 74% faster than Ultra (56.8 FPS). At 1440p, Low (81.9 FPS) is 76.5% faster than Ultra (46.4 FPS). At 4K, Low (58.5 FPS) is 63.9% faster than Ultra (35.7 FPS). The percentage gap narrows at 4K because the GPU is more consistently bottlenecked regardless of settings.

Q: What is the combo's rank in this game, and what does that percentile imply?

A: It ranks 1282 out of 1795 tested combinations. This places it in the lower third of all combos, meaning roughly 513 pairings perform worse. For a flight simulator that favors strong single-thread CPU performance and substantial GPU memory bandwidth, this rank is underwhelming but expected for a mid-range GPU from the Turing generation.

Q: Does the CPU's 16 MB L3 cache play a role in Flight Simulator's performance?

A: The Ryzen 7 5700's cache configuration — 64 KB L1 per core, 512 KB L2 per core, and 16 MB shared L3 — is typical for the Zen 3 architecture. The CPU's multithreaded score of 24303 in Passmark and single-thread score of 3296 indicate solid capability, but the measured FPS data shows the GPU is the binding constraint, as evidenced by the 4K results remaining below 60 FPS even at Low settings.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured data provides a clear picture of how this combo scales across three resolutions and four quality presets. At 1920x1080, the system delivers playable frame rates across the board: Low hits 98.8 FPS, Medium drops to 76.1 FPS, High settles at 56.9 FPS, and Ultra lands at 56.8 FPS. The near-identical High and Ultra results at 1080p (56.9 vs 56.8) suggest that the Ultra preset's additional effects are being partially offset by the GPU's limits, or that the sim's engine reaches a similar bottleneck regardless of which of these two presets is active.

At 2560x1440, the story shifts toward GPU-bound behavior. Low produces 81.9 FPS, Medium 62.5 FPS, High 48.6 FPS, and Ultra 46.4 FPS. The gap between High and Ultra widens slightly compared to 1080p, but remains small at 2.2 FPS. The 1440p results show that the 2060 SUPER can maintain 60 FPS only at Medium settings or below, which is a notable constraint for users with 1440p monitors who prefer higher visual fidelity.

At 3840x2160, the results are sobering. Low yields 58.5 FPS, Medium 44.5 FPS, High 34.8 FPS, and Ultra 35.7 FPS. Interestingly, Ultra outperforms High by 0.9 FPS at 4K, which is within measurement variance but hints that the High preset is not consistently lighter than Ultra in this engine's render path. None of the 4K presets reach 60 FPS, and even Low struggles to hold above the 58.5 FPS mark, indicating that 4K gaming with this combo requires either significant settings compromises or acceptance of sub-60 FPS performance.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows point to 1080p Medium as the sweet spot for this combination. At 76.1 FPS, it delivers a comfortable margin above the 60 FPS threshold while retaining the Medium preset's improved lighting and terrain detail over Low. The jump from Low to Medium costs 22.7 FPS at 1080p (98.8 to 76.1), but the visual improvement in Flight Simulator's cockpit displays and ground textures is substantial enough to justify that trade-off. For users who prioritize smoothness above all, 1080p Low at 98.8 FPS is the only preset that approaches triple-digit frame rates, which can be valuable for panning across dense photogrammetry areas where frame drops are common.

At 1440p, the recommendation shifts to Medium at 62.5 FPS, which is the only preset that clears 60 FPS without resorting to Low. High at 48.6 FPS and Ultra at 46.4 FPS are playable but will exhibit noticeable stutter during rapid camera movements or when flying over complex scenery. For 4K users, the data suggests Low at 58.5 FPS is the only viable option for semi-smooth gameplay, though the 44.5 FPS Medium preset might be acceptable for slower, more methodical flying. The 4K High and Ultra results (34.8 and 35.7 FPS) are best avoided unless the user is flying in sparse areas with minimal scenery load.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 5700 is a Zen 3 architecture processor built on TSMC's 7 nm process, featuring 8 cores and 16 threads. Its base clock of 3.70 GHz boosts to 4.60 GHz, and it carries a 65 W TDP. The CPU's benchmark data shows strong multithreaded capability: Cinebench R23 multicore scores 20655, while single-core reaches 2916. Passmark multithread scores 24303, with single-thread at 3296. These figures place the 5700 in the 84th percentile of all CPUs, well above the GPU's 63rd percentile standing.

In Flight Simulator, the CPU's role is primarily in physics calculations, flight model updates, and AI traffic management. The 8 cores and 16 threads provide ample parallel processing for these tasks, and the 3dmark_16_threads score of 6628 versus the max_threads score of 6617 indicates that the processor scales effectively with additional threads. However, the measured FPS data reveals that this CPU headroom is not being fully utilized. The fact that 4K Ultra (35.7 FPS) and 4K High (34.8 FPS) are nearly identical, while 1080p Ultra (56.8 FPS) and 1080p High (56.9 FPS) are equally matched, suggests that the GPU is the primary bottleneck across all resolutions. If the CPU were the limiting factor, we would expect to see larger FPS differences between low and high settings at lower resolutions where the GPU has more headroom.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is dramatic and revealing. At Low settings, the system goes from 98.8 FPS at 1080p to 58.5 FPS at 4K, a 40.8% reduction. At Medium, it drops from 76.1 to 44.5 FPS, a 41.5% reduction. At High, 56.9 to 34.8 FPS represents a 38.8% drop, and at Ultra, 56.8 to 35.7 FPS is a 37.1% drop. These reductions are remarkably consistent across settings, suggesting that the scaling penalty is driven by pixel count rather than by specific preset features.

The pattern indicates a GPU-bound scenario at 4K, but the scaling is not as steep as a purely fill-rate-limited system might show. A perfectly GPU-bound system would typically see FPS drop by roughly 75% when going from 1080p to 4K (since 4K has 4x the pixels), but this combo only loses about 40%. This discrepancy suggests that the CPU is providing some lift at 4K, or that the GPU's memory bandwidth is partially compensating for the pixel increase. The 448.0 GB/s bandwidth and 8 GB VRAM are likely helping to maintain higher-than-expected 4K FPS, even as the 2060 SUPER's compute units struggle with the increased resolution.

The 1440p results sit almost exactly midway between the 1080p and 4K numbers, which is expected given that 1440p has roughly 1.78x the pixels of 1080p. This linear scaling behavior is a hallmark of a balanced system where neither component is dramatically over- or under-powered for the task. The measured data suggests that the RTX 2060 SUPER is the binding constraint at all resolutions above 1080p Medium, and that the Ryzen 7 5700 has sufficient computational headroom to support a more powerful GPU if the user were to upgrade in the future.