Microsoft Flight Simulator

# How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X paired with the Intel Arc B570 occupies the 2406th position out of 2996 tested combos in Microsoft Flight Simulator. This places the combination in the lower-mid tier of the database, at roughly the 20th percentile of all tested system pairings for this title. The ranking reflects a significant imbalance: the CPU is a high-end 16-core part that lands in the 91st percentile among all processors, while the GPU sits in the 65th percentile among all graphics cards. When a top-decile CPU is coupled with a mid-range GPU, the system's overall game ranking is dragged down by the graphics component, which is precisely what the data shows here.

The combo's position becomes clearer when examining the individual component benchmarks. The Ryzen 9 5950X posts an average benchmark score of 51,947, which is competitive with its nearest rivals: it sits just 0.2% behind the Intel Core Ultra 5 235HX and 0.3% behind the AMD EPYC 8124P, while edging out the Intel Core i9-13900F by 0.4% and trailing the Intel Core i7-14700 by 0.7%. These are razor-thin margins, indicating the CPU is not the bottleneck in this pairing. The Intel Arc B570, meanwhile, shows a similar story relative to its own rivals: it is within 0.1% of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile and the Intel Arc A750, 0.4% ahead of the NVIDIA Quadro M4000M, and 0.5% behind the AMD Radeon R9 M390X. The GPU's performance class is clearly the limiting factor in this game, as the measured FPS at 4K Ultra drops to 28 frames per second, which is below the threshold most users would consider playable for a flight simulator.

FAQ

Q: How does this combo perform at 1080p with Ultra settings?

A: At 1920x1080 with Ultra settings, the measured average FPS is 48. This is playable but not smooth by modern standards, and it is notably lower than the 50 FPS achieved at High settings and the 67 FPS at Medium settings. The gap between Ultra and High is small, which suggests the GPU is nearing its limits in this title.

Q: What is the best settings preset for a 60 FPS target at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the Low preset delivers 69 FPS, which is the only setting that exceeds 60 FPS. Medium yields 54 FPS, High drops to 41 FPS, and Ultra falls to 39 FPS. The data indicates that a 60 FPS target at 1440p requires the Low preset, or a reduction in resolution.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the bottleneck in this system?

A: The benchmark data indicates the GPU is the limiting factor. The Ryzen 9 5950X's 16 cores and 32 threads, combined with a 91st percentile CPU rank, provide ample headroom. The Arc B570, with its 65th percentile GPU rank, cannot keep up with the CPU's capability, as evidenced by the steep FPS drops when moving from Low to Ultra settings.

Q: How much performance is lost when moving from 1080p to 4K at High settings?

A: At High settings, the average FPS drops from 50 at 1920x1080 to 41 at 2560x1440 and 30 at 3840x2160. This represents a 40% reduction in average FPS from 1080p to 4K, which is a significant loss that points directly at the GPU's rendering capacity as the cause.

Q: Does the Arc B570's 10 GB VRAM cause any issues in this game?

A: The data does not show any VRAM-related artifacts or failures in the measured results. The 10 GB GDDR6 memory with a 160-bit bus and 380.0 GB/s bandwidth appears sufficient for the tested settings, as the game runs at all presets without crashing, though performance drops substantially at higher resolutions and settings.

Q: How does this combo compare to the closest GPU rival, the Intel Arc A750?

A: The Arc B570 scores 20,556 on average benchmark tests, which is just 0.1% lower than the Arc A750's 20,582. In practical terms, this means the two GPUs are nearly identical in raw compute performance, and the measured FPS in this game would be expected to be very close between the two, with the B570 trailing by a negligible margin.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling across resolutions reveals a classic GPU-bound scenario. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 86 at 1080p to 69 at 1440p and 51 at 4K. This is a 41% reduction from 1080p to 4K, which is substantial but not as severe as at higher settings. At High settings, the drop is from 50 to 41 to 30, a 40% reduction. At Medium settings, the drop is from 67 to 54 to 40, a 40% reduction as well. The consistency of these percentage drops across all settings presets is a strong indicator that the GPU is the limiting component, as a CPU bottleneck would show a flatter scaling curve at lower resolutions where pixel count is less demanding.

The data also shows that the gap between Low and Ultra settings widens as resolution increases. At 1080p, the difference between Low (86 FPS) and Ultra (48 FPS) is 38 FPS, a 44% reduction. At 4K, the difference between Low (51 FPS) and Ultra (28 FPS) is 23 FPS, a 45% reduction. The relative penalty is consistent, but the absolute FPS numbers become critically low at 4K, with Ultra dipping below 30 FPS. This suggests that the Arc B570's raw throughput, measured at 11.52 TFLOPS FP32, is insufficient for high-fidelity rendering at 4K in this simulation title, which is known for its heavy draw calls and complex scenery.

The CPU's role in scaling is minimal here. The Ryzen 9 5950X, with its 16 cores and 32 threads, can easily handle the simulation's single-threaded and multi-threaded workloads. The 3DMark scores support this: a single-thread score of 944 and a 16-thread score of 10,810 indicate strong per-core performance and excellent multi-core scaling. Even at 1080p Low, where the GPU is least stressed and the CPU would be most likely to bottleneck, the system achieves 86 FPS, which is not indicative of a CPU limitation.

Measured FPS Breakdown

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

At 3840x2160, the Ultra preset delivers an average of 28 FPS, which is the lowest measured result. The High preset improves to 30 FPS, while Medium reaches 40 FPS with a minimum of 34 and a maximum of 46. The Low preset jumps to 51 FPS. The progression from Ultra to Low is a 45% performance increase, showing that the GPU has headroom when settings are reduced.

At 2560x1440, the Ultra preset averages 39 FPS, High averages 41 FPS, Medium averages 54 FPS with a range of 46 to 62, and Low averages 69 FPS. The gap between Ultra and High is only 2 FPS, which is within the margin of error and suggests that the Ultra preset's additional settings are not heavily taxing the GPU at this resolution. Medium offers a 15 FPS improvement over High, which is a significant gain.

At 1920x1080, the Ultra preset averages 48 FPS, High averages 50 FPS, Medium averages 67 FPS with a range of 57 to 77, and Low averages 86 FPS. The jump from High to Medium is 17 FPS, which is the largest single-step improvement at this resolution. Low to Medium is a 19 FPS gain, indicating that the Low preset is leaving considerable performance on the table.

The Medium preset is the only one that includes min and max FPS data across all resolutions, providing insight into frame time consistency. At 1080p, the range is 57 to 77 FPS, a 20 FPS spread. At 1440p, the range is 46 to 62 FPS, a 16 FPS spread. At 4K, the range is 34 to 46 FPS, a 12 FPS spread. The narrowing range at higher resolutions suggests that the GPU is more consistently saturated, which is typical of a GPU-bound scenario.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B570 is built on the Xe2-HPG architecture, codenamed Battlemage, and manufactured on a 5 nm process at TSMC. The chip, designated BMG-G21, contains 19,600 million transistors on a 272 mm² die, giving it a transistor density of 72.1 million per square millimeter. The GPU operates at a fixed clock speed of 2500 MHz for both base and boost, which is relatively high for a mid-range card and helps compensate for its modest core count.

The GPU has 2304 shading units, 144 texture mapping units, and 80 raster operation units. It also includes 18 ray tracing cores, which are relevant for Microsoft Flight Simulator's optional ray-traced effects, though the measured data does not specifically test RT performance. The memory subsystem consists of 10 GB of GDDR6 on a 160-bit bus, running at 2375 MHz with an effective data rate of 19 Gbps, yielding a bandwidth of 380.0 GB/s. This bandwidth is adequate for the game's texture streaming needs, as evidenced by the stable operation across all settings.

The GPU's compute capabilities are rated at 11.52 TFLOPS for FP32 and 23.04 TFLOPS for FP16 with a 2:1 ratio. The pixel rate is 200.0 GPixel/s and the texture rate is 360.0 GTexel/s. These figures place the B570 in the same performance tier as its nearest rivals, with an average benchmark score of 20,556, which is within 0.5% of its closest competitors. The passmark DirectX 11 score of 118 and DirectX 12 score of 72 indicate that the card performs better in DX11, which is relevant for a game like Microsoft Flight Simulator that has historically favored DX11.

In this game, the GPU's role is clearly the primary determinant of FPS. The scaling data shows a consistent 40-45% drop in performance from 1080p to 4K across all settings, which is a classic sign of pixel-throughput limitation. The card's 160-bit memory bus, while sufficient for 10 GB of VRAM, does limit memory bandwidth compared to wider-bus competitors, and this could contribute to the steep drop at 4K where texture bandwidth demands are highest.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X is a 16-core, 32-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture, codenamed Vermeer, and manufactured on a 7 nm process at TSMC. It operates at a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 4.90 GHz, with a 105 W TDP. The CPU supports DDR4 memory in a dual-channel configuration, providing a memory bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s, and it supports ECC memory, which is a feature more commonly found in workstation processors.

The cache hierarchy is substantial: 64 KB of L1 cache per core, 512 KB of L2 cache per core, and 64 MB of shared L3 cache. This large L3 cache is beneficial for simulation games that have large working sets, as it reduces the need to access system memory. The CPU's 3DMark scores show strong performance across the board: a single-thread score of 944, a 2-thread score of 1,856, a 4-thread score of 3,595, an 8-thread score of 6,598, a 16-thread score of 10,810, and a max-thread score of 11,597. The scaling from 8 to 16 threads is a 64% improvement, which is excellent and indicates that the CPU can effectively utilize its cores.

In Cinebench R23, the multicore score is 26,017 and the single-core score is 1,614. The Geekbench scores are 15,233 for multicore and 2,083 for single-core. PassMark tests show a multithread score of 45,424 and a single-thread score of 3,470. The CPU's percentile rank of 91 among all processors confirms its high-end status.

In Microsoft Flight Simulator, the CPU's role is to handle the simulation logic, physics, and draw call submissions. The game is known to be single-thread-limited in certain scenarios, particularly with complex aircraft and dense scenery. The Ryzen 9 5950X's single-thread performance, evidenced by the 944 3DMark single-thread score, is strong for a 2020-era processor, but it is not the fastest available. However, the measured FPS data does not show signs of CPU limitation: even at 1080p Low, where the GPU is least stressed, the system achieves 86 FPS, which is far below the CPU's theoretical maximum for this type of workload.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS data, the optimal settings preset depends on the user's target resolution and acceptable frame rate.

For 4K gaming, the data shows that only the Low preset achieves an average FPS above 50, at 51 FPS. The Medium preset averages 40 FPS, which is borderline playable for a flight simulator, but the High and Ultra presets drop to 30 and 28 FPS, respectively. For a smooth experience at 4K, Low settings are recommended, as they provide a 24% improvement over Medium while maintaining visual clarity at that resolution.

For 1440p, the Medium preset offers the best balance, with an average of 54 FPS and a minimum of 46 FPS. This is a 13 FPS improvement over High and a 15 FPS improvement over Ultra, while still providing better visuals than Low. The Low preset does hit 69 FPS, which is smoother, but the Medium preset's minimum of 46 FPS is acceptable for a flight simulator where frame pacing is less critical than in fast-paced action games.

For 1080p, the High preset at 50 FPS is the recommended choice for visual quality, as it is only 17 FPS below the Low preset's 86 FPS but provides significantly better graphics. The Medium preset at 67 FPS is the best choice for users who prioritize smoothness, as it offers a 17 FPS improvement over High with a minimum of 57 FPS, which is very playable. The Ultra preset at 48 FPS is not recommended, as it provides a negligible visual improvement over High while costing 2 FPS in performance.

The data indicates that the Medium preset is the sweet spot for this combo across all resolutions, as it consistently offers a significant FPS improvement over High and Ultra while maintaining reasonable visual fidelity. The variance data for Medium shows stable frame times, with a 12-20 FPS range depending on resolution, which is acceptable for a simulation title. Users seeking maximum smoothness should opt for Low settings, but those wanting a balance of visuals and performance will find Medium to be the most sensible choice for this pairing.