Microsoft Flight Simulator

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data for Microsoft Flight Simulator with this AMD Ryzen 7 5700G + AMD Radeon RX 570 combination reveals a clear trade-off between visual fidelity and playability. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers an average of 50.9 FPS, which is the only setting that approaches a smooth, consistent experience. Medium at 1080p drops to 38.0 FPS, while High falls further to 26.5 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 29.6 FPS. The data suggests that for users prioritizing frame rate, the Low preset at 1080p is the only viable option, as it stays above the 30 FPS threshold that flight simulators typically need for adequate camera control and terrain rendering.

At 2560x1440, even the Low preset only manages 37.2 FPS, and every higher setting falls below 30 FPS. Medium yields 28.1 FPS, High produces 21.2 FPS, and Ultra drops to 23.3 FPS. The 4K results are more dire: Low achieves 28.5 FPS, Medium 21.4 FPS, High 14.8 FPS, and Ultra 18.2 FPS. Interestingly, Ultra at 4K scores slightly better than High at 4K (18.2 vs 14.8 FPS), which may indicate that certain Ultra settings are less demanding than specific High options in this title, or that the measurement captures variable scenery complexity. Regardless, the data indicates that 4K gaming is not practical with this hardware combo—even the lowest settings fail to reach 30 FPS.

The optimal experience per the measured rows is clearly the Low preset at 1920x1080, delivering 50.9 FPS. Users who insist on higher visual quality should note that no preset above Low reaches even 40 FPS at any resolution, meaning the GPU is the limiting factor well before CPU constraints become relevant. For a flight simulator where terrain detail and weather effects matter, the sacrifice to Low settings is substantial, but the alternative is a stutter-heavy experience below 30 FPS.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific CPU-GPU pairing ranks 1727 out of 1795 tested combos in Microsoft Flight Simulator, placing it in the bottom 4% of all configurations in the database. That ranking is a stark indicator of how demanding this game is on hardware. The Ryzen 7 5700G is a strong mid-range processor—its average benchmark score of 25626 places it in the 83rd percentile of all CPUs, just 0.3% behind the AMD Ryzen 7 6800U (25706) and 0.4% ahead of the Intel Xeon D-2752TER (25532). The GPU, however, tells a different story: the RX 570's average benchmark score of 30158 sits in the 74th percentile of all GPUs, with its nearest rival being the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 at 30109 (0.2% behind) and the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT at 30097 (0.2% ahead).

The disparity between the CPU's strong percentile (83) and the GPU's lower percentile (74) suggests that this combo's bottom-quartile ranking in Flight Simulator is driven by the graphics card, not the processor. The game's measured FPS at Low settings across resolutions (50.9 at 1080p, 37.2 at 1440p, 28.5 at 4K) shows a scaling pattern that is characteristic of GPU-bound scenarios—halving the pixel count roughly doubles the frame rate. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect less dramatic scaling from 4K to 1080p. The combo's rank of 1727/1795 means that over 96% of tested configurations deliver better performance in this title, which aligns with the GPU being a seven-year-old design (released 2017-04-17) facing a 2020 game with heavy draw calls and complex scenery streaming.

FAQ

Q: What is the best achievable frame rate with this combo in Microsoft Flight Simulator?

A: The highest measured average FPS across all configurations is 50.9 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 with the Low preset. No other setting or resolution combination reaches 50 FPS; the next closest is 38.0 FPS at 1080p Medium.

Q: Why does the Ultra preset at 4K (18.2 FPS) outperform High at 4K (14.8 FPS)?

A: The data shows this anomaly, which likely stems from specific in-game settings within the Ultra preset being less resource-intensive than their High counterparts for certain rendering features. It could also reflect variable scenery density during measurement, as Flight Simulator streams different terrain and weather conditions that affect GPU load.

Q: Is the Ryzen 7 5700G a bottleneck for the RX 570 in this game?

A: Benchmark results indicate the CPU is not the limiting factor. The processor's 8 cores and 16 threads, with a boost clock of 4.60 GHz, place it in the 83rd percentile of all CPUs. The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K (50.9 to 28.5 at Low settings) shows the GPU becoming progressively more saturated, which is the signature of a GPU-bound workload.

Q: How does this combo compare to its nearest GPU rivals in average benchmark scores?

A: The RX 570's average score of 30158 is nearly identical to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 (30109, 0.2% lower) and the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT (30097, 0.2% lower). This suggests that, despite being an older architecture, the RX 570 performs on par with those modern cards in synthetic benchmarks—yet the Flight Simulator rankings show this combo still lands at 1727/1795, indicating the game's specific demands outweigh raw GPU scores.

Q: Can this combo handle 1440p gaming at any playable level?

A: Only the Low preset at 2560x1440 reaches a marginally acceptable 37.2 FPS. All other 1440p settings fall below 30 FPS (Medium 28.1, High 21.2, Ultra 23.3), which is generally considered too low for smooth flight simulation where camera panning and instrument reading require stable frame delivery.

Q: What does the CPU's single-thread performance suggest about its suitability for this game?

A: The Ryzen 7 5700G scores 2930 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 899 in 3DMark single-thread. Flight Simulator relies heavily on single-threaded rendering tasks like scenery tile loading and physics calculations, so these scores indicate the CPU has adequate headroom—the measured FPS limitations come from the GPU, not the processor's per-core capability.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured FPS table for this combo shows a predictable hierarchy across resolutions and settings. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers 50.9 FPS, Medium drops to 38.0, High falls to 26.5, and Ultra lands at 29.6. The Ultra setting outperforming High at 1080p (29.6 vs 26.5) is consistent with the 4K anomaly noted earlier, suggesting a quirk in how certain Ultra options are optimized in this game version.

Moving to 2560x1440, Low achieves 37.2 FPS, Medium 28.1, High 21.2, and Ultra 23.3. The gap between Low and Medium at 1440p is 9.1 FPS, while the gap between Medium and High is 6.9 FPS, and High to Ultra is a slight increase of 2.1 FPS. This non-linear scaling indicates that the Ultra preset may disable or lower certain effects that are enabled in High, such as volumetric clouds or shadow cascades, which can paradoxically improve performance.

At 3840x2160, the results are uniformly poor: Low 28.5, Medium 21.4, High 14.8, and Ultra 18.2. The 4K Low result is notable—it is only 1.7 FPS below the 1440p Ultra result (28.5 vs 23.3), meaning that dropping resolution from 4K to 1440p while keeping settings at Ultra yields a 5.1 FPS improvement. Across all resolutions, the Low preset provides the most consistent frame delivery, with a spread of 22.4 FPS from 1080p to 4K (50.9 to 28.5), compared to High's spread of 11.7 FPS (26.5 to 14.8) and Ultra's spread of 11.4 FPS (29.6 to 18.2).

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a near-linear relationship with pixel count, which is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario. At Low settings, 1080p yields 50.9 FPS, 1440p yields 37.2 FPS (a 27% drop), and 4K yields 28.5 FPS (a 44% drop from 1080p). The pixel counts are 2.07 million (1080p), 3.69 million (1440p), and 8.29 million (4K), so the frame rate decrease from 1080p to 4K (44%) is far less than the pixel count increase (300%), indicating that the GPU is not fully saturated at 4K with Low settings—there is likely some CPU or memory bandwidth limitation coming into play.

At Medium settings, the scaling is steeper: 1080p 38.0, 1440p 28.1 (26% drop), 4K 21.4 (44% drop). High settings show 1080p 26.5, 1440p 21.2 (20% drop), 4K 14.8 (44% drop). Ultra settings follow a similar pattern: 1080p 29.6, 1440p 23.3 (21% drop), 4K 18.2 (39% drop). The consistent 44% drop from 1080p to 4K across all settings suggests that the RX 570's 224.0 GB/s memory bandwidth is the limiting factor—as resolution increases, texture fetch demands grow, and the 4 GB GDDR5 frame buffer becomes a constraint.

The 1080p to 1440p scaling is more moderate (20-27% drops), which implies that at 1080p, the CPU's 8-core Zen 3 architecture at 3.80 GHz base and 4.60 GHz boost provides enough instruction throughput to keep the GPU fed, but at 4K, the GPU's shading units (2048) and texture units (128) are overwhelmed regardless of CPU speed. The ratio of 4K to 1080p FPS at Low is 0.56, meaning the game runs at 56% of its 1080p speed when pixel count quadruples—this is a GPU scaling pattern, not a CPU one.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 5700G brings 8 cores and 16 threads based on Zen 3 architecture, built on a 7 nm process with a base clock of 3.80 GHz and boost up to 4.60 GHz. Its L3 cache is 16 MB, and it supports DDR4 memory with 51.2 GB/s bandwidth. In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU scores 20755 in Cinebench R23 multicore and 2930 in single-core, placing it in the 83rd percentile of all CPUs. These numbers suggest the processor has substantial headroom for Flight Simulator's CPU-intensive tasks like terrain mesh generation and AI traffic simulation.

However, the measured FPS data indicates the CPU is not the bottleneck in this game. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 6629 and max-thread score of 6627 show the CPU can deliver consistent multi-threaded performance, but the game's engine appears to scale primarily with GPU fill rate. The passmark single-thread score of 3283 and Geekbench single-core of 2016 confirm adequate per-core performance, yet the FPS at 1080p Low (50.9) is barely above what a weaker GPU would produce. The fact that reducing resolution from 1080p to 4K at Low settings only drops FPS from 50.9 to 28.5—rather than by the expected 75% based on pixel count—points to the CPU providing a baseline performance floor that the GPU cannot exceed.

The 5700G's integrated Radeon Vega 8 graphics (though not used in this discrete GPU configuration) indicates the chip is designed for systems where the iGPU handles light loads, but with the RX 570 installed, the CPU's 65W TDP and unlocked multiplier suggest thermal headroom is available. The 3DMark 8-thread score of 5648 versus 16-thread 6629 reveals modest scaling beyond 8 threads, meaning Flight Simulator's likely usage of 4-8 threads is well-served, but the GPU remains the limiter.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 570 is a Polaris 20 chip on a 14 nm process with 2048 shading units, 128 texture units, and 32 ROPs. It operates at a base clock of 1168 MHz and boost of 1244 MHz, with 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus delivering 224.0 GB/s bandwidth. The GPU's 74th percentile ranking (average score 30158) is respectable for its age, but its 4 GB VRAM capacity is a critical limitation for Flight Simulator, which streams high-resolution terrain textures and photogrammetry data.

The measured FPS data shows the GPU's memory bandwidth is the primary constraint. At 1080p Low, the 50.9 FPS result uses the GPU's full capability, but the 4K Low result of 28.5 FPS suggests the 4 GB frame buffer cannot hold the necessary textures, forcing constant swapping. The GPU's FP32 performance of 5.095 TFLOPS and pixel rate of 39.81 GPixel/s are modest by modern standards, and the 150W TDP with a single 6-pin connector limits overclocking potential.

The GPU's benchmark scores are remarkably close to its nearest rivals—the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 (30109, 0.2% lower) and AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT (30097, 0.2% higher)—yet those cards have significantly more VRAM and newer architectures. This discrepancy highlights that synthetic benchmarks do not capture Flight Simulator's unique memory footprint. The 4K Ultra result of 18.2 FPS versus 4K High of 14.8 FPS is telling: the Ultra preset likely reduces texture streaming distance or LOD settings, which eases VRAM pressure and yields a paradoxical FPS increase. The GPU's 74th percentile score is misleading for this game—the 4 GB VRAM and 224 GB/s bandwidth are the hard ceilings that produce the 1727/1795 combo ranking.