Microsoft Flight Simulator

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X and AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT combination delivers a distinctive performance profile in Microsoft Flight Simulator, one that shifts its bottleneck characteristics dramatically depending on the resolution and quality settings selected. The data shows a system capable of high refresh rates at 1080p but one that settles into a more visually oriented, sub-60 FPS experience at 4K.

CPU Role — cores, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The Ryzen 7 5800X is an 8-core, 16-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture, built on a 7 nm process. Its base clock is 3.80 GHz with a boost clock of 4.70 GHz, and it carries 32 MB of L3 cache. In synthetic benchmarks, the processor posts a single-thread score of 943 in 3dmark and a multi-thread score of 7586 in the 16-thread test, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 23571 and a single-core score of 3327.

In Microsoft Flight Simulator, the CPU's role is substantial but not always the limiting factor. The benchmark results indicate that at lower resolutions and settings, the processor's single-thread strength becomes the primary driver of performance. The 3dmark single-thread score of 943 and the 2-thread score of 1846 suggest that the game's simulation and scenery processing threads can be fed adequately, but the scaling from Low to Ultra settings reveals where the CPU's influence wanes. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 121.3 FPS, but at 1080p Ultra, that drops to 64.5 FPS, a reduction of over 46%. This delta is far larger than what the GPU alone would typically cause at a fixed resolution, indicating that the CPU is not the sole bottleneck at Low settings, but the game's increased draw calls and object complexity at Ultra begin to strain the processor's throughput.

The CPU's 16 threads are likely well-utilized by the simulator's multi-threaded scenery loading, but the game's core simulation loop still relies heavily on single-thread performance. Relative to its closest rivals, the 5800X is effectively the median performer. It sits 0.3% ahead of the AMD Ryzen 7 5800 in average benchmark score, and is 0.4% behind the AMD Ryzen 5 8500GE and the Intel Core i7-13700H, and 0.8% behind the Intel Core i5-12600KF. This suggests that in CPU-bound scenarios, the 5800X will trade blows with these processors within a narrow margin, but its overall percentile ranking of 84 among all CPUs places it in the upper tier for handling the simulator's demands.

How This Combo Ranks — use comboRankInGame vs other tested combos

This specific pairing of the Ryzen 7 5800X with the Radeon RX 6700 XT ranks 1006 out of 1795 tested combinations in Microsoft Flight Simulator. This places it in the 56th percentile of all tested combos, meaning roughly 44% of configurations deliver higher average frame rates. This middling rank is somewhat surprising given the individual component strengths, but it reflects the game's peculiar scaling behavior.

The combo's rank is heavily influenced by the 4K results, which drag down the overall average. At 1080p, the system is competitive, but at 4K Ultra, the frame rate falls to 40.7 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold many users target. The data indicates that this combo is not optimized for maximum 4K fidelity, but rather for high-refresh 1080p or balanced 1440p play. The rank of 1006 suggests that many other combos, likely featuring higher-end GPUs, surpass it in the resolution ranges where the RX 6700 XT's 12 GB VRAM and 384.0 GB/s bandwidth are insufficient. Conversely, combos with weaker CPUs but stronger GPUs may rank higher at 4K, as the CPU becomes less relevant at that resolution. The 5800X's strong synthetic scores do not translate into a top-tier game ranking because the GPU becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions.

Resolution Scaling — how FPS drops from 1080p to 4K and what it says about the limiting component

The FPS scaling across resolutions reveals a classic GPU-bound transition. At Low settings, moving from 1080p to 1440p reduces the average frame rate from 121.3 to 93.6, a 22.8% drop. Moving from 1440p to 4K at Low settings drops the frame rate to 68.9, another 26.4% reduction. This consistent decline indicates that the RX 6700 XT is the primary limiter at Low settings; the CPU has enough headroom to feed the GPU at 1080p, but the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth are strained as pixel count increases.

At Ultra settings, the scaling is more severe in absolute terms but similar in percentage. From 1080p Ultra (64.5 FPS) to 1440p Ultra (54.2 FPS) is a 16% drop, and from 1440p to 4K Ultra (40.7 FPS) is a 24.9% drop. The smaller percentage drop from 1080p to 1440p at Ultra suggests that the CPU is starting to become more involved, as the game's object counts and shadow complexity at Ultra settings add a per-frame CPU cost that reduces the GPU's ability to show a pure resolution scaling curve. However, the continued decline to 4K confirms the GPU is still the dominant constraint.

The gap between Low and Ultra settings widens as resolution decreases. At 4K, the difference between Low (68.9 FPS) and Ultra (40.7 FPS) is 28.2 FPS. At 1080p, the same settings gap is 56.8 FPS (121.3 vs 64.5). This suggests that at 1080p, the CPU has enough headroom to allow the GPU to flex its muscle, whereas at 4K, the GPU is saturated by pixel throughput, and the CPU's workload scaling has less impact on the final frame rate.

Measured FPS Breakdown — resolution by resolution, settings by settings, exact numbers

The measured FPS data provides a granular view of the combo's behavior. At 1920x1080, the system delivers 121.3 FPS on Low, 92.7 FPS on Medium, 71.8 FPS on High, and 64.5 FPS on Ultra. The step from Low to Medium is a 23.6% reduction, while the step from Medium to High is a 22.5% reduction, and from High to Ultra is a 10.2% reduction. The diminishing returns at Ultra settings indicate that the CPU's single-thread performance is beginning to cap the frame rate, as the GPU is still capable of more work at 1080p.

At 2560x1440, the figures are 93.6 FPS on Low, 72.7 FPS on Medium, 56.3 FPS on High, and 54.2 FPS on Ultra. The drop from Low to Medium is 22.3%, and from Medium to High is 22.6%. Notably, the drop from High to Ultra is only 3.7%, which is a minimal difference. This suggests that at 1440p, the GPU is heavily loaded, and the additional visual complexity of Ultra over High (which often includes more demanding shadows and reflections) does not cost much in frame rate because the GPU is already near its limit.

At 3840x2160, the results are 68.9 FPS on Low, 55.9 FPS on Medium, 42 FPS on High, and 40.7 FPS on Ultra. The Low to Medium drop is 18.9%, Medium to High is 24.9%, and High to Ultra is 3.1%. The 4K Ultra result of 40.7 FPS is the lowest measured, and the tiny delta between High and Ultra at both 1440p and 4K suggests a hard GPU limit. The RX 6700 XT's 12 GB VRAM is likely sufficient, but the 192-bit memory bus and 384.0 GB/s bandwidth are the constraining factors at these pixel densities.

GPU Role — VRAM, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT is built on the RDNA 2.0 architecture with the Navi 22 chip, featuring a base clock of 2321 MHz and a boost clock of 2581 MHz. It has 2560 shading units, 160 TMUs, and 64 ROPs, with 40 ray accelerators. The GPU's 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus provides 384.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is a critical factor in Microsoft Flight Simulator's texture streaming.

The GPU's synthetic scores show a strong mid-range position. It posts a 3dmark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 2435, a Passmark G3D score of 19786, and a Geekbench Vulkan score of 108032. Its percentile ranking of 77 among all GPUs is respectable, but its nearest rivals reveal the competitive landscape. The RX 6700 XT is 0.7% behind the AMD Radeon RX 6800, 1% behind the older AMD Radeon HD 7950 and RX 480, and 1.3% ahead of the NVIDIA RTX A5000. The fact that it trades blows with much older cards like the HD 7950 and RX 480 in average benchmark score confirms the efficiency of RDNA 2.0, but it also shows that raw compute is not the sole determinant of frame rates in this simulator.

In-game, the GPU's role is to handle the vast amounts of photogrammetry and terrain data. At 1080p, the GPU can push high frame rates on Low settings, but as settings increase, the CPU's simulation threads become more critical. The data shows that at 1080p Ultra, the system only achieves 64.5 FPS, which is 56.8 FPS lower than at Low. This is a GPU-driven reduction, as the increased texture detail and shadow resolution at Ultra require more memory bandwidth and fill rate. The 12 GB VRAM is not exceeded at 1080p, but the 384.0 GB/s bandwidth is likely saturated by the game's asset streaming. At 4K, the GPU is clearly the bottleneck, with the frame rate dropping to 40.7 FPS on Ultra. The 384.0 GB/s bandwidth is simply insufficient for the pixel throughput required at 4K with high-quality textures, and the 40 ROPs limit the pixel fill rate to 165.2 GPixel/s, which is evident in the 4K results. The GPU's 13.21 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is adequate, but the memory subsystem is the limiting factor at higher resolutions.