Microsoft Flight Simulator

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT combination in Microsoft Flight Simulator presents a clear study in component scaling and bottleneck behavior. The measured data shows a system where the GPU is the primary performance constraint at higher resolutions, while the CPU’s strong single-threaded capabilities ensure the frame rate scales predictably as graphical load increases. This analysis breaks down the measured FPS across resolutions and settings, the roles each component plays, and how this pairing ranks among over 1,700 tested configurations.

Resolution Scaling

The performance drop from 1080p to 4K in Microsoft Flight Simulator follows a steep, predictable curve that clearly identifies the GPU as the limiting factor. At Low settings, the average frame rate falls from 126.8 FPS at 1920x1080 to 74 FPS at 3840x2160, a reduction of 41.6% when moving to 4K. This substantial decline indicates that even at the lowest graphical preset, the Radeon RX 6750 XT cannot maintain the same throughput as the pixel count quadruples. The scaling pattern is consistent across all settings, with the High preset dropping from 76 FPS at 1080p to 41.9 FPS at 4K — a 44.9% decrease.

The relationship between resolution and frame rate reveals that the CPU is not the bottleneck in most scenarios. The Ryzen 9 9900X, with its 12 cores and 24 threads, is capable of feeding frames faster than the GPU can render them at 4K. This is particularly evident at 1440p, where the High preset achieves 58 FPS — nearly identical to the 4K Medium result of 58.2 FPS. The fact that increasing resolution from 1440p High to 4K Medium yields almost the same frame rate, despite a significant pixel increase, suggests the GPU is saturated at both points. Meanwhile, the 1080p Low result of 126.8 FPS shows the upper ceiling of what this combination can produce, indicating that the CPU can push well beyond 120 FPS when the GPU load is light.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT, built on the RDNA 2.0 architecture with a 7 nm process, is the decisive component in this pairing for Microsoft Flight Simulator. The GPU’s 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus provides 432.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which proves adequate for the game’s high-resolution textures. The card operates with a base clock of 2150 MHz and a boost clock of 2600 MHz, with a game clock rated at 2495 MHz. These clock speeds, combined with 2560 shading units and 64 ROPs, deliver a peak FP32 performance of 13.31 TFLOPS.

In the context of this benchmark, the RX 6750 XT’s performance ceiling is clearly visible at the Ultra setting. Across all resolutions, Ultra produces the lowest frame rates: 40.9 FPS at 4K, 53.3 FPS at 1440p, and 67.9 FPS at 1080p. The card’s percentile rank of 79 among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 35327, places it in the upper-midrange tier. Its nearest rivals in the benchmark database include the AMD Radeon RX 5600M with a deltaPct of 0.2, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Mobile at -0.3, and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 at -1.3. These deltas indicate that the RX 6750 XT performs within a tight 1.3% band of these competitors, making it a consistent performer in its class.

How This Combo Ranks

Among the 1,795 tested combinations in the benchmark database, the Ryzen 9 9900X paired with the RX 6750 XT ranks 900th for Microsoft Flight Simulator. This median placement reflects a pairing where the GPU’s midrange position tempers the CPU’s high-end capabilities. The 900th rank out of 1,795 combos places this system squarely in the middle of the distribution, indicating that while the CPU is in the top percentile for its class, the overall gaming experience is limited by the graphics card.

The CPU alone achieves a percentile of 94 against all processors, with an average benchmark score of 54450. Its nearest rivals in the CPU benchmark database include the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D with a deltaPct of -0.4, the Intel Core i7-14700F at 0.7, and the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K at -1.5. These tight deltas show the 9900X is competitive with the best mainstream processors, but the GPU’s percentile of 79 and average score of 35327 drags the combined system to a lower overall ranking. The data suggests that for this specific game, the combo rank is a direct reflection of the GPU’s position in the hierarchy — a faster GPU would likely push this CPU into a much higher rank.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a complete picture of performance across three resolutions and four settings. At 1920x1080, the system delivers 126.8 FPS on Low, 99.8 FPS on Medium, 76 FPS on High, and 67.9 FPS on Ultra. The step from Low to Medium costs 21.3% of the frame rate, while the step from Medium to High costs 23.8%, and High to Ultra costs 10.7%. This pattern shows diminishing returns as settings increase, with the largest performance hit occurring between Medium and High.

At 2560x1440, the averages are 99.3 FPS on Low, 77.7 FPS on Medium, 58 FPS on High, and 53.3 FPS on Ultra. The transition from 1080p to 1440p reduces frame rates by 21.7% on Low, 22.1% on Medium, 23.7% on High, and 21.5% on Ultra. These consistent reductions indicate that the GPU is scaling linearly with pixel count, further confirming it as the primary constraint. The 1440p Ultra result of 53.3 FPS is only 6.1% higher than the 4K Medium result of 58.2 FPS, showing that the GPU is nearing its limits at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the system achieves 74 FPS on Low, 58.2 FPS on Medium, 41.9 FPS on High, and 40.9 FPS on Ultra. The gap between 1440p and 4K is significant: Low drops by 25.5%, Medium by 25.1%, High by 27.8%, and Ultra by 23.3%. The 4K Ultra result of 40.9 FPS is the lowest recorded in this dataset, and the small difference between 4K High (41.9 FPS) and 4K Ultra (40.9 FPS) — a mere 2.4% — suggests that the Ultra preset is not fully utilizing the hardware due to other bottlenecks, likely in the game’s rendering pipeline.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X, based on the Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge), is a 12-core, 24-thread processor with a base clock of 4.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz. Its 64 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel DDR5 memory support with 89.6 GB/s of bandwidth provide ample headroom for simulation workloads. The CPU’s benchmark results are exceptional: a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 46438 and a single-core score of 6555, which places it in the 94th percentile of all CPUs.

In Microsoft Flight Simulator, the CPU’s role is primarily to manage the simulation’s physics, AI, and terrain streaming. The single-thread performance is critical for this game, and the 9900X’s single-core scores — 1286 in 3DMark single-thread and 3341 in Geekbench single-core — ensure that the CPU is rarely the limiting factor. The data supports this: at 1080p Low, the system produces 126.8 FPS, which is only slightly below the CPU’s potential ceiling. The 3DMark 2-thread score of 2519 and 4-thread score of 4886 indicate strong low-thread-count performance, which is typical of flight simulators that rely heavily on a few primary threads.

The CPU’s 12 cores and 24 threads are more than sufficient for this game, as evidenced by the fact that the frame rate drops consistently with resolution increases, rather than plateauing due to CPU limitations. The 120W TDP and 4 nm process node (TSMC) allow the processor to sustain high boost clocks without thermal throttling, though the exact thermal behavior is not measured in this dataset. The CPU’s nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D, scores only 0.4% higher on average, indicating that the additional cache of the X3D variant does not translate into a meaningful advantage for this game’s CPU-bound scenarios.