Microsoft Flight Simulator

FAQ

Q: What is the average FPS for this combo at 4K Ultra settings?

A: At 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the measured average FPS is 72. This is the lowest average among all tested settings at 4K.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its nearest rival in multi-threaded performance?

A: The AMD Ryzen 7 5800XT has an average benchmark score of 29879. Its closest rival, the AMD Ryzen 7 7840H, scores 29868, a delta of 0%. The Ryzen 5 9600X trails slightly at 29713, which is 0.6% behind.

Q: What is the GPU's memory configuration and bandwidth?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 features 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering a bandwidth of 960.0 GB/s. Its memory clock runs at 1875 MHz (30 Gbps effective).

Q: Does the CPU support overclocking?

A: Yes, the AMD Ryzen 7 5800XT has an unlocked multiplier, making it overclockable. It is built on the Zen 3 architecture (Vermeer) using a 7 nm process from TSMC.

Q: What is the combo's rank among all tested configurations in this game?

A: This specific CPU-GPU combination ranks 203rd out of 3714 tested combos in Microsoft Flight Simulator. This places it in the top percentile of all tested systems.

Q: Is there FPS data available for Medium settings at all resolutions?

A: Yes, Medium settings are the only preset with both minimum and maximum FPS recorded across all resolutions. At 1080p, it averages 170 FPS (min 144, max 195); at 1440p, it averages 137 FPS (min 116, max 157); at 4K, it averages 101 FPS (min 86, max 116).

Settings Recommendations

The measured data provides a clear hierarchy across four presets—Low, Medium, High, and Ultra—at three resolutions. For users prioritizing smoothness and consistency, Medium settings offer the best balance between visual fidelity and frame rate stability. This is the only preset where minimum FPS values are recorded, indicating a more predictable frame delivery.

At 1080p, Medium delivers an average of 170 FPS with a minimum of 144 FPS, ensuring that even demanding flight scenarios over dense terrain remain fluid. High settings at the same resolution drop the average to 128 FPS, which is still playable but leaves less headroom above typical 60-144 Hz display refresh rates. Ultra at 1080p averages 122 FPS, a marginal 6 FPS reduction from High, suggesting diminishing returns from the highest preset.

Moving to 1440p, Medium produces 137 FPS average (min 116), while High averages 103 FPS and Ultra averages 98 FPS. The gap between Medium and High is 34 FPS, a substantial jump that justifies staying on Medium for competitive or high-refresh-rate displays. At 4K, Medium averages 101 FPS, which is above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, while High drops to 76 FPS and Ultra falls to 72 FPS.

For the best overall experience, Medium settings at 1440p provide the most balanced outcome: 137 FPS average with a 116 FPS minimum, offering both high visual clarity and smooth motion. At 4K, Medium is the recommended preset because it is the only one that maintains an average above 100 FPS while staying within the measured minimum of 86 FPS. Users with 60 Hz displays could consider High at 4K (76 FPS), but the data suggests Medium as the safer choice for maintaining consistent frame pacing.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a GB203 chip manufactured on a 5 nm process. It contains 10,752 shading units, 336 texture mapping units, and 112 raster output pipelines. The GPU operates at a base clock of 2295 MHz and a boost clock of 2617 MHz.

Memory configuration is a critical factor for Microsoft Flight Simulator, which streams vast amounts of terrain and aircraft data. The RTX 5080's 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 960.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This is substantial for a flight simulator that loads high-resolution textures and detailed scenery. The memory clock runs at 1875 MHz with 30 Gbps effective speed, ensuring rapid data transfer between GPU memory and the rendering pipeline.

The GPU's raw computational power includes 56.28 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 879.3 GTexel/s texture rate. These specifications directly influence the simulator's ability to render complex scenes with multiple aircraft, weather effects, and photogrammetry data. The 84 ray tracing cores and 336 tensor cores support advanced lighting and AI-accelerated features, though the measured FPS data reflects standard rasterization performance.

Benchmark results show the RTX 5080 scores 36,565 in Passmark G3D and 21,789 in GPU compute tests. Its average benchmark score across all tests is 56,083, placing it in the 87th percentile of all GPUs. The nearest rival, AMD Radeon 8060S, scores 55,757 (0.6% behind), while the AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE leads by 2.2% with a score of 57,367. This places the RTX 5080 in a competitive position relative to its peers.

In practice, the GPU's role becomes more pronounced at higher resolutions. At 4K, the difference between Low and Ultra settings is 58 FPS (130 vs 72), highlighting the GPU's workload scaling. The measured data indicates the RTX 5080 can handle 4K Medium at 101 FPS, which is a strong result for a flight simulator known for its demanding rendering requirements.

How This Combo Ranks

This configuration of AMD Ryzen 7 5800XT and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 achieves a rank of 203 out of 3,714 tested combos in Microsoft Flight Simulator. This places it in the top 5.5% of all tested systems, a notable position given the wide range of hardware combinations evaluated.

The rank reflects the synergy between the CPU and GPU. The Ryzen 7 5800XT, with its 8 cores and 16 threads, provides sufficient processing power to feed the RTX 5080 at most settings. However, the rank also suggests that there are 202 combinations that outperform this pairing, likely featuring newer or higher-tier CPUs that better complement the GPU's capabilities.

The combo's percentile ranking for the CPU is 81, meaning the processor outperforms 81% of all CPUs in the database. The GPU sits in the 87th percentile. When combined, the system ranks higher than either component's individual percentile, indicating that the pairing works effectively together in this specific game.

Notably, the combo ranks higher than what individual component scores might suggest. The CPU's nearest rival, AMD Ryzen 7 7840H, has a nearly identical average score (29868 vs 29879), yet the overall combo rank depends on how the specific CPU-GPU interaction performs in Flight Simulator. The measured FPS data shows strong results across all resolutions, confirming that this pairing is well-balanced for this title.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800XT is a desktop processor based on the Zen 3 architecture, codenamed Vermeer. It features 8 cores and 16 threads, with a base clock of 3.80 GHz and a boost clock of 4.80 GHz. The processor is manufactured on a 7 nm process by TSMC, containing 4,150 million transistors on a 74 mm² die.

Cache hierarchy plays a significant role in gaming performance. The CPU has 64 KB of L1 cache per core, 512 KB of L2 per core, and 32 MB of shared L3 cache. This substantial L3 cache is particularly beneficial for flight simulators, which often reuse terrain and aircraft data across frames. The CPU supports DDR4 memory with dual-channel configuration, providing 51.2 GB/s of memory bandwidth.

The 5000-series processor maintains a TDP of 105 W, fitting into the AMD Socket AM4 platform. It supports PCIe Gen 4 with 20 lanes from the CPU, enabling fast communication with the RTX 5080's PCIe 5.0 interface, though the connection operates at the CPU's Gen 4 speed.

Single-thread performance is crucial for flight simulators, which often have a primary simulation thread. The CPU scores 959 in 3DMark single-thread and 3,359 in Cinebench R23 single-core. These scores indicate strong per-core performance, which translates to responsive frame times in simulation-heavy scenes. Multi-threaded scores are equally impressive: 7,683 in 3DMark 16-thread and 23,794 in Cinebench R23 multi-core.

The CPU's average benchmark score is 29,879, placing it in the 81st percentile of all CPUs. Its nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen 7 7840H, scores nearly identically at 29,868 (0% delta). The AMD Ryzen 5 9600X trails by 0.6% with a score of 29,713. This suggests the 5800XT provides competitive performance despite being from an older generation.

In Microsoft Flight Simulator, the CPU's role is evident when comparing FPS across settings at the same resolution. At 1080p, Low settings achieve 187 FPS, while Ultra drops to 122 FPS—a 65 FPS difference. This scaling indicates that the CPU can maintain high frame rates when GPU load is low, but the overall performance bottleneck shifts as settings increase.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data covers three resolutions and four settings presets, providing a comprehensive view of performance.

1920x1080 (1080p):

• Low: 187 average FPS
• Medium: 170 average FPS (min 144, max 195)
• High: 128 average FPS
• Ultra: 122 average FPS

At 1080p, the system delivers excellent performance across all settings. The jump from Low to Medium costs 17 FPS, while the jump from Medium to High costs 42 FPS—a significant drop that suggests the High preset introduces substantial graphical effects. Ultra only costs an additional 6 FPS over High, making it a viable option for users with high-refresh-rate 1080p displays.

2560x1440 (1440p):

• Low: 174 average FPS
• Medium: 137 average FPS (min 116, max 157)
• High: 103 average FPS
• Ultra: 98 average FPS

At 1440p, the pattern shifts. Low settings remain very high at 174 FPS, but Medium drops to 137 FPS. The Medium preset's minimum of 116 FPS is still above the 100 FPS threshold, ensuring smooth gameplay. High and Ultra are closer together (103 vs 98 FPS), indicating that the Ultra preset adds minimal visual benefit for a 5 FPS cost at this resolution.

3840x2160 (4K):

• Low: 130 average FPS
• Medium: 101 average FPS (min 86, max 116)
• High: 76 average FPS
• Ultra: 72 average FPS

At 4K, the GPU becomes the primary bottleneck. Low settings achieve 130 FPS, but Medium drops to 101 FPS. The gap between Medium and High is 25 FPS, while High to Ultra only costs 4 FPS. This suggests that the High and Ultra presets include features that heavily tax the GPU at 4K resolution, pushing average frame rates below the 60 FPS threshold for smoother motion.

The Medium preset is the only one with recorded minimum and maximum FPS values across all resolutions, providing insights into frame pacing. At 1080p, the minimum of 144 FPS indicates consistent delivery, while the 4K minimum of 86 FPS still maintains playability.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS data reveals how performance scales with resolution, providing insights into the system's bottleneck characteristics.

From 1080p to 1440p, the average FPS drops by approximately 7-13% across settings: Low drops from 187 to 174 FPS (7% decrease), Medium from 170 to 137 FPS (19% decrease), High from 128 to 103 FPS (20% decrease), and Ultra from 122 to 98 FPS (20% decrease). These reductions are relatively modest, suggesting that the CPU and GPU combination handles the increased pixel count without severe performance loss.

From 1440p to 4K, the scaling becomes more pronounced. Low drops from 174 to 130 FPS (25% decrease), Medium from 137 to 101 FPS (26% decrease), High from 103 to 76 FPS (26% decrease), and Ultra from 98 to 72 FPS (27% decrease). This consistent ~25% reduction across all settings indicates that the GPU is becoming the limiting factor at 4K resolution.

Comparing the overall scaling from 1080p to 4K: Low drops from 187 to 130 FPS (30% decrease), Medium from 170 to 101 FPS (41% decrease), High from 128 to 76 FPS (41% decrease), and Ultra from 122 to 72 FPS (41% decrease). The Low preset shows less degradation, suggesting that at lower graphical settings, the CPU can maintain higher frame rates even at 4K, while higher settings amplify the GPU's workload.

The diminishing returns at higher settings reveal the bottleneck structure. At 1080p, the difference between Low and Ultra is 65 FPS, but at 4K, this difference shrinks to 58 FPS. This indicates that as resolution increases, the GPU's pixel throughput becomes the dominant constraint, reducing the impact of CPU-side settings changes.

The consistent ~25% FPS drop from 1440p to 4K across Medium, High, and Ultra suggests the system is well-balanced, with neither component creating a disproportionate bottleneck. The slightly smaller drop for Low settings (25% vs 26-27%) hints that the CPU has some headroom at lower graphics loads, but overall, the RTX 5080's 16 GB memory and 960.0 GB/s bandwidth are sufficient to maintain playable frame rates at 4K Medium (101 FPS) without exceeding the CPU's capability to feed frames.