Microsoft Flight Simulator

FAQ

Q: How does the AMD Ryzen 7 5800XT compare to its closest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The Ryzen 7 5800XT posts an average benchmark score of 29774, placing it in the 86th percentile of all CPUs. It is essentially tied with the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5755GE, which is 0.1% slower, and the AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360, which is 0.3% slower. It trails the AMD Ryzen 7 6800HS and AMD Ryzen 7 7840H by 0.3% each.

Q: What is the performance gap between the RTX 3070 and its nearest GPU rivals?

A: The RTX 3070 has an average benchmark score of 28238, putting it in the 72nd percentile of all GPUs. It leads the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT by 0.9% and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti by 1%. The AMD FirePro S7150 is 0.6% faster, and the AMD Radeon R9 M295X is 1.1% faster.

Q: What frame rate can this combo achieve at 1080p with High settings?

A: At 1920x1080 with High settings, the measured average frame rate is 76.7 FPS. This is a playable level for a flight simulator, though not the highest available.

Q: How much of a performance jump is there from Low to Ultra settings at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the Low preset delivers 108.5 FPS, while the Ultra preset delivers 60.7 FPS. This represents a significant drop of roughly 44% when moving from the lowest to the highest quality settings.

Q: Does the CPU or GPU appear to be the limiting factor at 4K resolution?

A: At 3840x2160, the Ultra preset yields 44.4 FPS, while the Low preset yields 78 FPS. The relatively modest spread between presets at this resolution, compared to lower resolutions, indicates the GPU is heavily stressed at 4K.

Q: Where does this specific combination rank among all tested combos for this game?

A: The AMD Ryzen 7 5800XT + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 combination ranks 830 out of 1795 tested combos for Microsoft Flight Simulator.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800XT is an 8-core, 16-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture, codenamed Vermeer. It operates on a base clock of 3.80 GHz and can boost up to 4.80 GHz. This configuration is important for Microsoft Flight Simulator, which must handle the complex physics, weather modeling, and AI traffic that are distinct from typical first-person shooters.

The CPU's benchmark data shows its capability profile. In Cinebench R23, it scores 3359 in single-core and 23794 in multi-core tests. The single-core score is particularly relevant for flight simulation, as the core game loop often depends on a single primary thread for flight model calculations. A strong single-thread result helps ensure that the simulator's core logic doesn't become a bottleneck, even when the GPU is rendering dense terrain.

The 3DMark thread scaling tests provide insight into its multi-threading behavior. The 2-thread score is 1879, the 4-thread score is 3603, and the 8-thread score is 6141. The scaling from 2 to 8 threads is nearly linear, which suggests the processor can effectively utilize its physical cores. The max-thread score of 7680 is only slightly higher than the 8-thread score of 6141, indicating that the additional logical threads (via Simultaneous Multi-Threading) offer diminishing returns in this synthetic workload.

In the context of this game, the data shows that the CPU's performance is competitive with its closest rivals. The average benchmark score of 29774 places it in the 86th percentile, and its deltaPct against the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5755GE (0.1%), AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 (0.3%), AMD Ryzen 7 6800HS (-0.3%), and AMD Ryzen 7 7840H (-0.3%) shows it is essentially in a dead heat with all four. This means that for users upgrading from any of those nearby processors, the Ryzen 7 5800XT will not introduce a significant change in CPU-bound performance for this title.

The processor's cache hierarchy includes a 32 MB L3 cache, which is important for holding the large data sets of flight simulation scenery and aircraft systems. With a PassMark data compression score of 350154 and a data encryption score of 21370, the CPU demonstrates strong computational throughput for background tasks that may run concurrently with the simulator.

Settings Recommendations

The measured frame rate data provides a clear picture of how the settings presets affect performance at different resolutions. For a balance between visual quality and smoothness, the Medium preset appears to be the most sensible choice across most resolutions.

At 1920x1080, the Medium preset delivers 106.3 FPS, which is a substantial jump from the High preset's 76.7 FPS. The Ultra preset at this resolution drops to 73.5 FPS, which is only a small gain over High but a significant cost from Medium. For users with high refresh rate monitors, the Low preset at 1080p achieves 136.9 FPS, but this likely sacrifices too much visual detail for a simulator where cockpit readability and terrain fidelity matter.

Moving to 2560x1440, the Medium preset yields 81.9 FPS, which is a comfortable experience for a flight simulator. The High preset at 62 FPS is also playable, but the Ultra preset at 60.7 FPS begins to approach the threshold where panning across dense cityscapes may feel less fluid. The Low preset at 108.5 FPS is excellent for competitive fluidity but again strips out much of the visual context.

At 3840x2160, the situation changes. The Medium preset produces 59.1 FPS, while High drops to 46.3 FPS and Ultra to 44.4 FPS. The Low preset at 78 FPS is the only one that provides a clearly smooth experience, but it does so at the cost of almost all visual effects. For 4K users, the Medium preset at 59.1 FPS is the recommended starting point, as it stays just above the 60 FPS target while retaining more visual quality than Low.

The data suggests that the Medium preset is the sweet spot for this combination. It provides a significant performance uplift over High and Ultra while maintaining enough visual fidelity for the simulator's core experience. At 1080p and 1440p, Medium easily clears 80 FPS, and even at 4K it stays above 55 FPS. Users who prioritize maximum visual quality can use Ultra at 1080p (73.5 FPS) or 1440p (60.7 FPS), but should expect a noticeable hit at 4K.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800XT combined with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 ranks 830 out of 1795 tested combos for Microsoft Flight Simulator. This places it in the upper-middle portion of the overall distribution, which is a reasonable result for a mid-range to upper-mid-range pairing.

The CPU's 86th percentile ranking among all CPUs suggests that the processor is not a limiting factor in this combo. Its nearest rivals are all within 0.3% of its average score, indicating that the CPU tier is well established. The GPU, however, sits in the 72nd percentile, which is a lower standing than the CPU. This suggests that the RTX 3070 is the more likely bottleneck in this pairing, particularly at higher resolutions where the GPU workload increases.

In the context of the game's overall ranking, being at position 830 out of 1795 means there are roughly 965 combos that perform better. That is a substantial number, but it also means this combo outperforms about 54% of all tested configurations. The combination is not at the top tier, but it is far from the bottom.

The ranking data should be interpreted with the resolution and settings in mind. At 1080p with Low settings, this combo achieves 136.9 FPS, which would likely place it much higher than the overall rank of 830. Conversely, at 4K with Ultra settings, the 44.4 FPS result would drop its standing significantly. The rank of 830 is an aggregate measure that likely averages across various test conditions.

Compared to its GPU rivals, the RTX 3070's position is clear: it is 0.9% faster than the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT and 1% faster than the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti. This means that in a direct swap between these GPUs while keeping the same CPU, the frame rate differences would be minimal. The CPU's tie with its rivals reinforces that the combo's ranking is not due to an unusual CPU advantage or disadvantage, but rather the balanced characteristics of both components.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 is based on the Ampere architecture, built on Samsung's 8 nm process. It features 5888 shading units, 184 texture mapping units, and 96 raster output units. The GPU has 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing a memory bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s. The memory operates at 1750 MHz, translating to 14 Gbps effective.

For Microsoft Flight Simulator, the GPU's role is to render the high-resolution terrain, detailed aircraft models, and dynamic weather effects. The 8 GB VRAM capacity is a crucial factor, as the simulator can use large texture sets for photogrammetry cities and detailed airports. The memory bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s allows the GPU to feed these textures efficiently to the shading units.

The clock speeds are a base of 1500 MHz and a boost of 1725 MHz. The boost clock is the relevant figure for sustained gaming performance, as the GPU will typically run at or near this speed under load. The FP32 performance of 20.31 TFLOPS indicates the raw compute capability available for the simulator's shader work.

In the benchmark data, the RTX 3070 scores 22214 in PassMark G3D and 11195 in PassMark GPU Compute. The G3D score is the more relevant metric for gaming, while the compute score reflects its ability to handle non-graphics tasks. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 3162 provides a modern API benchmark result.

The GPU's percentile ranking of 72 is notably lower than the CPU's 86th percentile. This disparity is reflected in the frame rate results at higher resolutions. At 4K, the GPU is clearly the limiting factor: the Ultra preset only achieves 44.4 FPS, and even the Low preset cannot exceed 78 FPS. This indicates that the GPU's raw throughput is insufficient to fully drive the CPU's capabilities at this resolution.

At 1080p, the GPU has more headroom. The Low preset reaches 136.9 FPS, which is a solid result, and the Medium preset at 106.3 FPS is also strong. However, the gap between Low and Ultra at 1080p (136.9 vs 73.5 FPS) shows that the GPU's performance falls off sharply as shader complexity and texture quality increase. The RTX 3070's 8 GB VRAM may also be a constraint at Ultra settings, where texture sizes can exceed the available memory.

The GPU's nearest rival data shows it is closely matched with the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT (0.9% faster) and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti (1% faster). This means that for this game, the RTX 3070 does not have a decisive advantage over those older or lower-tier cards, despite its newer architecture and features like ray tracing cores. For users considering this GPU for Microsoft Flight Simulator, the data suggests that it is a capable but not exceptional performer, particularly at 4K resolution.