Microsoft Flight Simulator

# Microsoft Flight Simulator — AMD Ryzen 7 5800XT + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080

This combo ranks 520th out of 1,795 tested CPU-GPU pairings in Microsoft Flight Simulator, placing it in the top 29% of all configurations. The Ryzen 7 5800XT sits at the 86th percentile among all CPUs, while the RTX 3080 ranks at the 80th percentile among all GPUs — a balanced pairing where neither component dramatically outstrips the other. The CPU's nearest rivals show extremely tight clustering: the Ryzen 7 PRO 5755GE trails by just 0.1%, the Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 leads by 0.3%, and the Ryzen 7 6800HS and Ryzen 7 7840H each sit 0.3% ahead. This indicates the 5800XT is positioned squarely in a dense performance band, with no single competitor holding a meaningful synthetic advantage. On the GPU side, the RTX 3080's nearest rivals — the AMD Radeon Pro Duo (-0.2%), AMD Radeon 880M (+0.4%), AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE (-0.9%), and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Mobile (+1%) — similarly bracket it within a single percentage point, underscoring that this pairing's placement in the 520th slot stems from game-specific behavior rather than component-level inferiority.

How This Combo Ranks

The 520th rank out of 1,795 combos translates to a position that is neither near the top nor mired in the middle — it sits in the upper third, which for a flight simulator with demanding CPU-bound simulation workloads is a respectable showing. The Ryzen 7 5800XT's 8 cores and 16 threads provide ample parallelism for Microsoft Flight Simulator's complex flight dynamics and weather systems, while the RTX 3080's 10 GB of GDDR6X memory handles the game's vast texture streaming requirements. The data shows that this pairing achieves playable frame rates across all tested settings at 1080p and 1440p, with 4K being the only resolution where high and ultra presets dip below the 60 FPS threshold. Compared to the CPU's nearest rivals, the 5800XT's synthetic benchmark scores — such as a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 23,794 and single-core of 3,359 — suggest strong computational headroom, yet the game's frame rates reveal that this headroom translates unevenly across resolutions. At 1080p, the gap between low and ultra settings is 67 FPS (157.2 down to 90.2), indicating that the CPU can feed the GPU adequately even at lower settings, while at 4K the same settings gap narrows to 39.9 FPS (94 down to 54.1), a sign that the GPU becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows provide a clear hierarchy of playability. At 1080p, all four settings deliver averages above 90 FPS, making even Ultra a viable choice for users prioritizing visual fidelity over raw frame rate. However, the step from High to Ultra costs only 4.1 FPS (94.3 to 90.2), while the step from Medium to High saves 28.8 FPS (94.3 versus 123.1) — suggesting that High offers the best balance of image quality and performance headroom at 1080p. At 1440p, the pattern shifts: High delivers 73 FPS, while Ultra drops to 70.2 FPS, a mere 2.8 FPS penalty that makes Ultra the preferred choice for 1440p users with 60 Hz displays. Medium at 1440p hits exactly 100 FPS, which is ideal for high-refresh monitors, but the visual trade-off from High to Medium is substantial in a game where terrain and cloud detail matter. At 4K, the situation becomes more constrained: High averages 54.9 FPS and Ultra 54.1 FPS — both below the 60 FPS mark — while Low achieves 94 FPS and Medium 72.7 FPS. For 4K users, Medium is the highest setting that maintains a comfortable margin above 60 FPS, though those with variable refresh rate displays could tolerate High's 54.9 FPS average. The data indicates that the optimal experience across all resolutions is High at 1080p or 1440p, with Medium serving as the pragmatic ceiling at 4K.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate progression from 1080p to 4K reveals where the bottleneck lies. At Low settings, the 1080p average of 157.2 FPS drops to 125.9 FPS at 1440p (−19.9%) and further to 94 FPS at 4K (−40.2% from 1080p). This scaling is steeper than what a purely GPU-limited scenario would show, suggesting that the Ryzen 7 5800XT contributes meaningfully to the frame rate at lower resolutions. At Ultra settings, the same resolution progression yields 90.2 FPS at 1080p, 70.2 FPS at 1440p (−22.2%), and 54.1 FPS at 4K (−40% from 1080p). The consistency of the percentage drops across settings — roughly 20% from 1080p to 1440p and 40% from 1080p to 4K — points to a balanced workload distribution between CPU and GPU. If the CPU were the sole limiter, the 4K numbers would show a smaller drop relative to 1080p; if the GPU were the sole limiter, the 1080p numbers would be much higher. Instead, the data shows that at 1080p, the CPU's 8-core/16-thread configuration is able to push frame rates well above 120 FPS in low and medium settings, but at 4K, the RTX 3080's 29.77 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 760.3 GB/s of memory bandwidth become the constraining factor. The RTX 3080's 10 GB VRAM capacity is sufficient for this game's textures, as evidenced by the playable 4K results, but the GPU's raw throughput determines the ceiling at higher resolutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full settings range is playable: Low averages 157.2 FPS, Medium 123.1 FPS, High 94.3 FPS, and Ultra 90.2 FPS. The delta between Low and Ultra is 67 FPS, with the largest single-step drop occurring between Medium and High (28.8 FPS), indicating that High introduces significant visual effects that burden the GPU. The step from High to Ultra is comparatively gentle at 4.1 FPS, suggesting that Ultra's additional features are less demanding than the jump from Medium to High.

At 2560x1440, frame rates remain strong: Low achieves 125.9 FPS, Medium 100 FPS, High 73 FPS, and Ultra 70.2 FPS. The Medium-to-High drop is 27 FPS, nearly identical to the 1080p pattern, while the High-to-Ultra penalty shrinks to 2.8 FPS. Low at 1440p still clears 120 FPS, making it viable for 120 Hz displays, though the visual compromise is significant. Medium at exactly 100 FPS is the sweet spot for 1440p high-refresh users.

At 3840x2160, the data shows a sharper division: Low averages 94 FPS, Medium 72.7 FPS, High 54.9 FPS, and Ultra 54.1 FPS. The High-to-Ultra gap narrows to just 0.8 FPS, meaning that at 4K, the Ultra preset adds almost no measurable performance cost over High — both sit in the mid-50s. Medium stands out as the only preset above 60 FPS besides Low, providing a 17.8 FPS advantage over High. The 4K Low figure of 94 FPS is notable, as it matches the 1080p High result (94.3 FPS), demonstrating that the RTX 3080 can deliver 4K performance comparable to 1080p High when settings are reduced.

GPU Role

The RTX 3080's specifications directly influence these results. Its GA102 chip contains 8,704 shading units, 272 texture mapping units, and 96 render output units, with a boost clock of 1710 MHz. The 10 GB GDDR6X memory operates at 19 Gbps effective across a 320-bit bus, yielding 760.3 GB/s of bandwidth — a figure that proves adequate for Microsoft Flight Simulator's streaming of photogrammetry and terrain data. The GPU's 68 ray tracing cores and 272 tensor cores are present but less relevant to this title, which primarily stresses traditional rasterization and CPU simulation. The 320 W TDP and suggested 700 W PSU indicate a power-hungry part, but the benchmark data does not show thermal throttling artifacts.

The GPU's percentile rank of 80 among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 35,787, places it slightly below the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE (36,101, +0.9% delta) and above the RTX 5070 Ti Mobile (35,435, −1% delta). In game-specific terms, the RTX 3080's 4K Ultra result of 54.1 FPS shows that the GPU's 29.77 TFLOPS of FP32 throughput is just shy of delivering a locked 60 FPS at maximum settings, while the 4K Low result of 94 FPS demonstrates substantial headroom when settings are reduced. The memory clock of 1188 MHz (19 Gbps effective) is a key contributor to the GPU's 4K performance, as the high bandwidth allows the 10 GB frame buffer to be fed efficiently during rapid camera movements over dense urban areas. The GPU's process node of 8 nm (Samsung) and 28,300 million transistors on a 628 mm² die result in a transistor density of 45.1M per mm², but these physical characteristics only manifest in the observed frame rates: the RTX 3080 provides a 32.3% performance uplift from 4K High to 4K Low (54.9 to 94 FPS), a range that gives users flexibility in balancing visual quality against frame rate targets.