Microsoft Flight Simulator

The AMD Ryzen 7 5700 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER pairing delivers a playable but demanding experience in Microsoft Flight Simulator, with performance that scales predictably across resolutions and presets. The data shows a system that is firmly balanced between CPU and GPU capabilities, though the RTX 2070 SUPER’s 8 GB VRAM and the CPU’s 8-core/16-thread configuration dictate specific settings for optimal smoothness.

Settings Recommendations

For the best balance of visual fidelity and frame rate, the Medium preset stands out as the sweet spot at 1440p and 4K. At 2560x1440, Medium delivers 67.5 FPS, which is a solid 21.4% improvement over High’s 53 FPS, while still offering a significant visual upgrade over Low. At 3840x2160, Medium hits 48.1 FPS, which is playable, whereas High drops to 37 FPS and Ultra falls to 33.6 FPS, both of which feel sluggish for a flight simulator where smooth camera panning is critical.

At 1920x1080, the Medium preset also provides an excellent experience at 85.3 FPS, making it the recommended choice for high-refresh monitors. The High preset at 1080p (64.9 FPS) and Ultra at 1080p (64 FPS) are nearly identical, suggesting that the GPU becomes the limiting factor beyond Medium, as the extra settings overhead yields diminishing returns. Low is only advisable for competitive or framerate-maximizing scenarios, as it jumps to 112.6 FPS at 1080p, but the visual compromise is severe for a game centered on scenery and immersion.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER is the primary driver of resolution scaling, with its 8 GB GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus providing 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The benchmarks indicate that this memory configuration is sufficient for 1080p and 1440p, but at 4K, the card’s 65th percentile ranking among all GPUs becomes apparent, as the stress on the memory subsystem and the 9.062 TFLOPS of FP32 compute power begins to show its age.

The clock speeds, with a base of 1605 MHz and boost of 1770 MHz, are modest by modern standards, but the Turing architecture’s 2560 shading units and 64 ROPs handle the terrain rendering and photogrammetry data reasonably well. In direct comparison, the RTX 2070 SUPER sits near the NVIDIA RTX A400 (deltaPct -0.5) and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN Z (deltaPct 0.9), meaning its raw compute is on par with those cards. However, its 12 nm process node and 215 W TDP suggest that it runs hot under sustained load, which is a consideration for long-haul flights where the GPU is constantly rendering dense landscapes.

The VRAM capacity is the key limitation at 4K. The drop from Medium (48.1 FPS) to High (37 FPS) at 3840x2160 represents a 23.1% performance hit, which is steeper than the equivalent drop at 1440p (from 67.5 to 53 FPS, a 21.5% decrease). This suggests that at 4K, the card is hitting a wall where texture streaming and memory bandwidth become bottlenecks, making Ultra (33.6 FPS) a poor choice despite the visual payoff.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 5700, with 8 cores and 16 threads based on the Zen 3 architecture, provides a strong foundation for Microsoft Flight Simulator’s complex simulation logic. Its base clock of 3.70 GHz and boost clock of 4.60 GHz ensure single-threaded responsiveness, which is critical for the flight model and AI traffic calculations. The CPU’s 84th percentile ranking among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 27220, places it just 0.7% ahead of the Intel Core i9-9900K and 0.8% ahead of the Intel Core i7-12700H, indicating that it is a competent but not class-leading processor for this title.

The CPU’s 16 MB of L3 cache and 51.2 GB/s memory bandwidth are adequate for feeding the GPU, but the data shows that the CPU is not the primary bottleneck in most scenarios. At 1080p, the difference between Medium (85.3 FPS) and Low (112.6 FPS) is a 32% improvement, which is largely GPU-driven, as lowering settings reduces the shading load. However, the CPU’s multi-threaded performance, as evidenced by a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 20655, ensures that the game’s background tasks, such as weather simulation and airport traffic, do not cause frame drops.

The CPU’s TDP of 65 W is notably low, which is beneficial for system thermals, but its PCIe Gen 3 interface (20 lanes) may slightly limit data transfer to the GPU compared to newer Gen 4 platforms, though this is unlikely to be a significant factor given the GPU’s own bandwidth constraints.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the Ryzen 7 5700 and RTX 2070 SUPER ranks 1114 out of 1795 tested combos in Microsoft Flight Simulator, placing it in the lower-middle tier of all possible pairings. This ranking reflects that while neither component is weak individually, the pairing does not unlock any exceptional synergy. The CPU’s 84th percentile and the GPU’s 65th percentile scores indicate that the GPU is the weaker link, and the combo rank suggests that many other systems with newer or higher-end GPUs will outperform this setup in this game.

The rank is not a condemnation, as it still places the combo ahead of 681 other tested configurations, but it underscores that this is a mid-range system rather than a high-end one. For a flight simulator that demands both strong CPU simulation and high GPU throughput, the RTX 2070 SUPER’s 4K limitations drag the overall position down, even though the CPU is capable of holding its own against more modern rivals.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic GPU-bound profile. At Low settings, the frame rate drops from 112.6 FPS at 1920x1080 to 86.1 FPS at 2560x1440 (a 23.5% decrease) and then to 62.5 FPS at 3840x2160 (a 44.5% decrease from 1080p). This steep decline indicates that the RTX 2070 SUPER is heavily taxed by the increased pixel count, and the CPU is not the limiting factor, as the Ryzen 7 5700 can easily feed the GPU at lower resolutions.

At High settings, the scaling is similar, with 64.9 FPS at 1080p dropping to 53 FPS at 1440p (18.3% decrease) and then to 37 FPS at 4K (43% decrease from 1080p). The 4K figure is particularly telling, as it approaches the edge of playability. The pattern is consistent across presets, confirming that the GPU’s rendering pipeline is the primary constraint as resolution increases. The CPU’s role becomes more pronounced at 1080p, where the gap between Low and Medium (112.6 vs 85.3 FPS) is larger than at 4K (62.5 vs 48.1 FPS), suggesting that the CPU can maintain higher frame rates when the GPU is not saturated.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers 112.6 FPS on Low, 85.3 FPS on Medium, 64.9 FPS on High, and 64 FPS on Ultra. The near-identical High and Ultra numbers indicate that the GPU reaches its limit at these settings, and the extra visual effects in Ultra do not cost additional performance, likely because the CPU or memory bandwidth becomes the secondary constraint.

At 2560x1440, performance is 86.1 FPS on Low, 67.5 FPS on Medium, 53 FPS on High, and 46.4 FPS on Ultra. The gap between High and Ultra widens to 12.5%, suggesting that the GPU is now more consistently the bottleneck. This resolution is the practical ceiling for this combo, as all presets except Ultra remain above 50 FPS.

At 3840x2160, the system delivers 62.5 FPS on Low, 48.1 FPS on Medium, 37 FPS on High, and 33.6 FPS on Ultra. The 4K Low setting is the only one that approaches smoothness, and even then, it is at a significant visual compromise. The data shows that this combo is not suited for 4K gaming at high or ultra settings, with the GPU’s 8 GB VRAM and compute power being the decisive factors. For users targeting 4K, dropping to Medium is the only viable option, and even then, the 48.1 FPS average is borderline for a simulation where smooth panning is essential.