Microsoft Flight Simulator

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D and the AMD Radeon RX 580 places at rank 1679 out of 1795 tested combos in Microsoft Flight Simulator. This is a bottom-decile placement, sitting in the 6th percentile of all tested configurations. The pairing is dramatically unbalanced: the CPU is a top-tier part, while the GPU is a legacy component from 2017. Benchmark results indicate the graphics card becomes the overwhelming constraint, dragging what would otherwise be a high-end simulation platform into the lower ranks of the database.

The data shows a consistent pattern across all resolutions and settings—the RX 580 is the limiting factor. The CPU's percentile ranking versus all processors is 90, meaning it outperforms 90% of all CPUs in the database. The GPU's percentile versus all GPUs is 53, placing it just above the median. This 37-percentile gap between components is the defining characteristic of this combo. The result is a system that can process flight simulation logic efficiently but cannot render the scenery at playable frame rates for most quality presets.

FAQ

Q: Why does this high-end CPU produce such low frame rates in Microsoft Flight Simulator?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 580 is the bottleneck. The CPU is in the 90th percentile of all processors, but the GPU is in the 53rd percentile, and the graphics card cannot keep up with the rendering demands of the simulator.

Q: What is the best playable setting for this combo?

A: At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combo achieves an average of 56.8 FPS. This is the only tested configuration that approaches a smooth 60 FPS target. At Medium settings, the average drops to 40.8 FPS.

Q: Can this combo handle 4K resolution?

A: No. At 3840x2160, the highest average FPS recorded is 32.2 on Low settings. On Ultra settings, it falls to 14.6 FPS, which is not a playable experience.

Q: How does the RX 580 compare to its closest rivals in benchmark scores?

A: The RX 580's average benchmark score is 13559. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 scores 13564, a delta of 0%. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 scores 13549, a delta of 0.1%. The Radeon Pro 455 scores 13416, a delta of 1.1%.

Q: How does the Ryzen 7 9800X3D compare to its nearest CPU rivals?

A: The Ryzen 7 9800X3D has an average benchmark score of 37780. The Intel Xeon 6353P scores 37811, a delta of -0.1%. The Intel Core Ultra 5 225 scores 37831, a delta of -0.1%. The Intel Core i9-13900HK scores 38020, a delta of -0.6%.

Q: Is the bottleneck the CPU or the GPU?

A: The GPU. Evidence comes from the resolution scaling: frame rates drop sharply as resolution increases, which is characteristic of a graphics-bound scenario. The CPU's capabilities are underutilized in this configuration.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals how the workload scales with resolution, and the pattern is unambiguous. Moving from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 on High settings, the average frame rate drops from 31.1 to 22.8 FPS—a degradation of 8.3 FPS. Moving further to 3840x2160, the average falls to 18.5 FPS. This is a total loss of 12.6 FPS from 1080p to 4K on High settings.

The Low settings preset tells a similar story. At 1080p, the average is 56.8 FPS. At 1440p, it drops to 42. This is a 14.8 FPS loss. At 4K, it drops further to 32.2 FPS. The scaling is nearly linear, which is typical for a GPU-bound scenario. The pixel count quadruples from 1080p to 4K, and the frame rate nearly halves, indicating the rendering pipeline is saturated.

This behavior confirms the limiting component. If the CPU were the bottleneck, the frame rates would stay relatively flat across resolutions because the processor workload would be similar. Instead, the data shows significant drops at every step up in resolution. The RX 580, with its 8 GB of GDDR5 memory and 256-bit bus, is being overwhelmed by the pixel fill requirements of higher resolutions. The simulation engine's draw calls are not the constraint; the rasterization throughput is.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its best performance. On Low settings, the average FPS is 56.8, which is the only preset to exceed 50 FPS. Medium settings produce 40.8 FPS. High settings produce 31.1 FPS, and Ultra settings produce 30.6 FPS. The gap between High and Ultra is minimal, only 0.5 FPS, suggesting that the Ultra preset adds effects that the GPU cannot process efficiently.

At 2560x1440, the performance degrades noticeably. Low settings average 42 FPS. Medium settings average 31.9 FPS. High settings average 22.8 FPS. Ultra settings average 25.4 FPS. Interestingly, Ultra outperforms High at this resolution, which is an anomaly in the data. This could reflect different rendering paths or scene complexity variations, but the overall trend is downward.

At 3840x2160, the results are largely unplayable. Low settings average 32.2 FPS. Medium settings average 21.6 FPS. High settings average 18.5 FPS. Ultra settings average 14.6 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 17.6 FPS, showing that the GPU has very little headroom at this resolution. The 4K Low result is the only one that approaches a marginally playable frame rate, and even that is below the 60 FPS target most users expect.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 580 is a Polaris 20 chip built on a 14 nm process from GlobalFoundries. It has 2304 shading units, 144 texture mapping units, and 32 ROPs. The base clock is 1257 MHz, with a boost clock of 1340 MHz. The memory runs at 2000 MHz, which translates to 8 Gbps effective, across a 256-bit bus. This yields a memory bandwidth of 256.0 GB/s. The 8 GB of GDDR5 memory is sufficient for capacity, but the bandwidth is the issue in Microsoft Flight Simulator.

The GPU's benchmark scores corroborate its mid-range standing. The PassMark G3D score is 8813, and the 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score is 1005. The GPU's percentile versus all GPUs is 53, placing it just above the median. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 with a delta of 0% and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 with a delta of 0.1%. The RX 580 is functionally equivalent to those cards in aggregate compute, which explains its inability to handle the simulator's high-resolution textures and complex geometry.

The FP32 performance is 6.175 TFLOPS, which is low by modern standards. The pixel rate is 42.88 GPixel/s, and the texture rate is 193.0 GTexel/s. These figures are consistent with a card that was designed for 1080p gaming in 2017. The data shows that at 1080p Low settings, the card can achieve 56.8 FPS, which is near its practical limit. At higher settings or resolutions, the card simply runs out of throughput.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is a Zen 5 part from the 9000 series, codenamed Granite Ridge. It has 8 cores and 16 threads, with a base clock of 4.70 GHz and a boost clock of 5.20 GHz. The L3 cache is 96 MB shared, which is substantial. The CPU is built on a 4 nm TSMC process with 8,315 million transistors on a 70.6 mm² die. This is a modern, high-performance processor, and its benchmark scores reflect that.

The Cinebench R23 multicore score is 34004, and the single-core score is 4800. The Geekbench multicore score is 18413, with a single-core score of 3341. The PassMark multithread score is 40009, and the single-thread score is 4430. The CPU's percentile versus all CPUs is 90, and its average benchmark score is 37780. Its nearest rivals are all within 0.7% performance delta, including the Intel Core i5-13600KF at -0.7% and the Intel Core i9-13900HK at -0.6%.

In Microsoft Flight Simulator, the CPU handles the flight model, weather simulation, and AI traffic. The data suggests that the 9800X3D is more than capable of these tasks. The bottleneck is not the processor, as evidenced by the resolution scaling. If the CPU were the constraint, lower resolutions would not show higher frame rates. Instead, the 1080p Low result of 56.8 FPS versus the 4K Low result of 32.2 FPS indicates that the GPU is the limiting factor. The CPU has headroom to spare, but it cannot compensate for the GPU's lack of rendering power.