Microsoft Flight Simulator

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X paired with the AMD Radeon RX 570 delivers a severely constrained experience in Microsoft Flight Simulator, with the data showing the GPU as the overwhelming bottleneck across all tested resolutions and settings.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a predictable but steep decline as resolution increases, though the pattern is heavily skewed by the GPU's limitations. At 1080p, the combo achieves its best results, with Low settings producing 46.8 FPS and Medium hitting 40.1 FPS. These are the only configurations that approach playable territory, yet even here the numbers suggest the RX 570 is struggling to keep pace with the CPU's capabilities. High settings at 1080p drop to 27.3 FPS, while Ultra falls to 24.4 FPS—a 48% reduction from Low to Ultra at the same resolution.

Moving to 1440p, the performance collapse becomes more pronounced. Low settings yield 38.9 FPS, which is 16.9% lower than the 1080p Low result. Medium drops to 29.5 FPS, High to 22 FPS, and Ultra to 23.1 FPS. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p at High settings shows a 19.4% loss, indicating that the GPU's pixel throughput is already saturated. The fact that Ultra at 1440p (23.1 FPS) is nearly identical to Ultra at 1080p (24.4 FPS) suggests the frame rate is hitting a hard floor imposed by the graphics card's raw compute limits rather than memory bandwidth or resolution-specific effects.

At 4K, the results are uniformly poor. Low settings produce just 26.6 FPS, which is the best 4K result recorded. Medium drops to 20.5 FPS, High to 18.8 FPS, and Ultra to 18.4 FPS. The delta between 1440p Low and 4K Low is a 31.6% reduction, while the gap between 1080p Low and 4K Low is 43.2%. These figures demonstrate that the RX 570's 4 GB GDDR5 memory and 224.0 GB/s bandwidth are insufficient for the texture and geometry demands of Microsoft Flight Simulator at high resolutions. The frame rate compression at 4K—where all settings cluster between 18.4 and 26.6 FPS—indicates the GPU is the sole limiting component, with the Ryzen 9 9900X's substantial headroom going entirely unused.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo rank in game is 1734 out of 1795 tested combinations, placing it in the bottom 3.4% of all configurations. This ranking is remarkably poor given the CPU's standing—the Ryzen 9 9900X sits in the 94th percentile among all CPUs with an average benchmark score of 54450. The GPU, by contrast, ranks in the 74th percentile among all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 30158. The massive disparity between the two components' individual standings and the combo's near-bottom rank underscores how completely the RX 570 negates the CPU's advantages.

The nearest rival data for the CPU shows it trading blows with top-tier processors: the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D scores 54681 (a 0.4% delta), the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K scores 55304 (a 1.5% delta), and the Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF scores 55421 (a 1.8% delta). The Intel Core i7-14700F scores 54097, which is 0.7% lower. These margins are negligible in real-world terms, meaning the 9900X is fully competitive with the best CPUs available. Yet in Microsoft Flight Simulator, this combo ranks 1734th, placing it behind configurations with far weaker processors but stronger graphics cards.

For the GPU, the nearest rivals are equally telling. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 scores 30109 (a 0.2% delta), the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT scores 30097 (a 0.2% delta), and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Mobile scores 29928 (a 0.8% delta). The NVIDIA Tesla M60 scores 29969 (a 0.6% delta). These comparisons show the RX 570 is performing exactly at the level expected of its class, which is to say far below what Microsoft Flight Simulator demands for smooth frame rates at any resolution above minimal settings.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X is a Zen 5 architecture processor built on TSMC's 4 nm process, featuring 12 cores and 24 threads. Its base clock is 4.40 GHz with a boost clock of 5.60 GHz, and it carries a 120 W TDP. The L3 cache is 64 MB shared, with 1 MB of L2 per core and 80 KB of L1 per core. In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU demonstrates exceptional multi-threaded capability: Cinebench R23 multi-core scores 46438, while single-core scores 6555. The 3DMark results show scaling from 2519 at 2 threads to 13929 at max threads, indicating strong thread utilization.

In Microsoft Flight Simulator, however, these CPU strengths are largely irrelevant. The game's frame rates are dictated by the GPU's ability to render the simulated world, and the RX 570 simply cannot produce enough frames to stress the CPU. The measured FPS at 1080p Low (46.8 FPS) is the highest recorded, and even that figure is modest by modern standards. The CPU's single-thread performance—Geekbench single-core 3341 and 3DMark single-thread 1286—would be more than adequate for the game's simulation logic, but the rendering pipeline bottlenecks before the CPU's potential becomes a factor.

The Ryzen 9 9900X's 24 threads and 64 MB L3 cache are designed for workloads that scale across cores, but Flight Simulator's frame generation is inherently GPU-bound at these performance levels. The CPU's PassMark multi-thread score of 54643 and Cinebench R20 multi-core of 19503 confirm its position well above the 94th percentile of all CPUs, yet the combo's in-game rank of 1734 demonstrates that raw CPU power cannot compensate for a GPU that is five years older in architecture and nearly a decade older in release date.

FAQ

Q: What is the best frame rate this combo achieves in Microsoft Flight Simulator?

A: The highest recorded average FPS is 46.8 at 1080p with Low settings. Medium settings at 1080p produce 40.1 FPS, while High and Ultra drop to 27.3 and 24.4 FPS respectively.

Q: How does the combo perform at 4K resolution?

A: At 3840x2160, the results range from 26.6 FPS on Low settings to 18.4 FPS on Ultra. Medium settings yield 20.5 FPS, and High settings produce 18.8 FPS. All 4K results are below playable thresholds.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor in this game?

A: The GPU is the clear bottleneck. The RX 570's 4 GB GDDR5 memory and 224.0 GB/s bandwidth are insufficient, as evidenced by the frame rate compression at 4K where all settings produce nearly identical results. The CPU's 94th percentile standing contrasts sharply with the combo's 1734th rank out of 1795.

Q: What are the CPU's nearest rivals and how do they compare?

A: The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D scores 54681 (0.4% higher), the Intel Core i7-14700F scores 54097 (0.7% lower), the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K scores 55304 (1.5% higher), and the Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF scores 55421 (1.8% higher). These differences are minimal, confirming the CPU's competitive positioning.

Q: What are the GPU's nearest rivals based on average benchmark scores?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 scores 30109 (0.2% higher), the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT scores 30097 (0.2% higher), the NVIDIA Tesla M60 scores 29969 (0.6% lower), and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Mobile scores 29928 (0.8% lower). The RX 570's score of 30158 places it in the 74th percentile of all GPUs.

Q: What is the difference between Low and Ultra settings at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, Low settings produce 46.8 FPS while Ultra produces 24.4 FPS, representing a 47.9% reduction. The gap narrows at higher resolutions, with only a 30.8% difference at 4K, further indicating GPU saturation.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 570 is built on the Polaris 20 chip using GCN 4.0 architecture, manufactured on GlobalFoundries' 14 nm process. It features 2048 shading units, 128 texture mapping units, and 32 raster output units. The base clock is 1168 MHz with a boost clock of 1244 MHz, and the memory runs at 1750 MHz (7 Gbps effective). The 4 GB GDDR5 memory operates on a 256-bit bus, providing 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The card's pixel rate is 39.81 GPixel/s and texture rate is 159.2 GTexel/s, with FP32 performance rated at 5.095 TFLOPS.

These specifications, while respectable for the GPU's 2017 release, are wholly inadequate for Microsoft Flight Simulator's demands. The 5.095 TFLOPS of compute power is the fundamental constraint, as evidenced by the measured frame rates. At 1080p Low, the card manages 46.8 FPS, but this drops to 26.6 FPS at 4K Low—a 43.2% reduction that reflects the 2.25x increase in pixel count. The texture rate of 159.2 GTexel/s and fill rate of 39.81 GPixel/s become progressively more strained as resolution increases, explaining the steep FPS drops.

The 4 GB VRAM capacity is a critical limitation for Flight Simulator, which streams vast amounts of terrain and scenery data. The GPU's nearest rivals in average benchmark scores—the RTX 5060, RX 7700 XT, and RTX 5070 Mobile—all have substantially more modern architectures and larger memory pools, yet they score nearly identically to the RX 570 in synthetic benchmarks. This parity underscores that the RX 570's performance ceiling is fixed by its GCN 4.0 design, and no amount of CPU headroom from the Ryzen 9 9900X can overcome it. The GPU's 74th percentile ranking against all GPUs sounds respectable, but in the context of this demanding simulator, it translates to sub-30 FPS at every resolution above 1080p Medium.