Microsoft Flight Simulator

Microsoft Flight Simulator presents an unusually demanding workload that stresses both the CPU and GPU heavily. The measured results for the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X paired with the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT reveal a configuration that is capable of high frame rates but requires careful attention to settings to maintain smoothness, particularly at higher resolutions. The data shows a system that is well-balanced, though the scaling patterns indicate where the performance ceiling lies.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is significant and reveals a system that transitions from a CPU-bound state to a GPU-bound state as pixel count increases. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 176.0 at 1920x1080 to 104.3 at 3840x2160, a reduction of 71.7 FPS. This scaling is expected, as the lower graphical settings reduce GPU load, allowing the CPU to become the limiting factor at 1080p. The 71.7 FPS difference at Low settings highlights that the Ryzen 9 9900X, with its 12 cores and 24 threads, is capable of feeding the GPU exceptionally well at lower resolutions, but the RX 7900 XT eventually becomes the bottleneck as resolution increases.

At Ultra settings, the drop is less severe in absolute terms but still substantial. The average FPS falls from 100.9 at 1920x1080 to 58.6 at 3840x2160, a 42.3 FPS reduction. This smaller absolute delta at Ultra settings is a clear indicator that the GPU is already heavily loaded even at 1080p with maximum detail. The RX 7900 XT, with its 20 GB of GDDR6 memory and 800.0 GB/s bandwidth, is working hard to render the complex scenery and atmospheric effects, and the CPU has more headroom to keep up. The data suggests that at 1080p Ultra, the system is not fully GPU-bound, but the GPU’s workload is substantial enough to limit the scaling advantage the CPU provides at lower settings.

The intermediate resolutions show a smooth progression. At 2560x1440, the average FPS ranges from 141.6 at Low to 79.9 at Ultra. The scaling from 1440p to 4K at Medium settings shows a drop from 108.0 to 77.4, a 30.6 FPS difference. This pattern indicates that the RX 7900 XT’s performance scales predictably with pixel count, but the CPU’s influence diminishes as the GPU becomes more saturated. The benchmark results show that at 4K, even at Low settings, the system cannot reach the 1440p Low frame rate, confirming that the GPU is the primary limiter at that resolution.

Settings Recommendations

Analyzing the measured FPS across the three resolutions, the Medium preset offers the most balanced experience for this hardware combination. At 1920x1080, Medium produces an average of 138.7 FPS, which is a substantial improvement over the 102.4 FPS at High and 100.9 FPS at Ultra. The jump from Medium to High is a significant 36.3 FPS loss, while the jump from High to Ultra is a much smaller 1.5 FPS loss. This suggests that the High preset introduces a significant performance penalty without the visual fidelity increase that Ultra provides over High in this specific configuration.

At 2560x1440, the Medium preset delivers 108.0 FPS, which is a very playable frame rate for a flight simulator. High drops to 84.1 FPS, and Ultra falls to 79.9 FPS. The 23.9 FPS difference between Medium and High is notable, but the 4.2 FPS difference between High and Ultra is negligible. For users with 1440p displays, Medium is the clear choice to maintain a high refresh rate experience, while High remains viable for those prioritizing visual fidelity over frame rate smoothness.

At 3840x2160, the situation becomes more constrained. Medium produces 77.4 FPS, which is above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. High yields 59.9 FPS, and Ultra drops to 58.6 FPS. The data shows that at 4K, the Medium preset is the only setting that consistently stays above 60 FPS average. High and Ultra are essentially equivalent in performance, with less than a 1.5 FPS difference between them, indicating that users with 4K displays should either use Medium for smoothness or accept the marginal visual gains of High/Ultra with a frame rate that hovers near 60 FPS. The Low preset, while offering 104.3 FPS at 4K, sacrifices too much visual quality for a flight simulator where scenery detail is a core part of the experience.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT is the dominant component in this configuration, and its specifications directly influence the measured results. The GPU features a boost clock of 2394 MHz and a game clock of 2025 MHz, which are modestly high for the RDNA 3.0 architecture. The 20 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 320-bit bus provides 800.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This memory configuration is crucial for Microsoft Flight Simulator, which is known for streaming large amounts of terrain and texture data.

The VRAM capacity is a critical factor at higher resolutions and settings. With 20 GB available, the card is unlikely to be constrained by memory capacity in this game, even at 4K Ultra. The data supports this, as the performance drop from High to Ultra at 4K is minimal (59.9 to 58.6 FPS), suggesting that the GPU is not running out of memory but rather is limited by its compute throughput. The FP32 performance of 51.48 TFLOPS and the 5376 shading units are the primary drivers of the frame rates seen in the benchmark results.

The GPU’s role as the limiting factor is most evident when comparing the scaling between settings at a fixed resolution. At 1920x1080, the difference between Low and Ultra is 75.1 FPS (176.0 to 100.9), which is a massive range. This indicates that the GPU’s workload scales dramatically with settings, and the CPU is able to keep up with even the lowest setting. However, at 3840x2160, the difference between Low and Ultra is 45.7 FPS (104.3 to 58.6), which is a smaller absolute range but still confirms the GPU is the bottleneck. The RX 7900 XT’s performance is consistent with its 82nd percentile ranking among all GPUs, and benchmark results show it is a capable but not top-tier card for this specific title.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a complete picture of the system’s capabilities across all settings and resolutions. At 1920x1080, the system achieves an average of 176.0 FPS on Low, 138.7 FPS on Medium, 102.4 FPS on High, and 100.9 FPS on Ultra. The spread from Low to Ultra is 75.1 FPS, demonstrating that the CPU has ample headroom to push high frame rates when the GPU is not heavily taxed. The 1080p Medium result of 138.7 FPS is particularly strong, indicating that this resolution is well-suited for high-refresh-rate displays.

At 2560x1440, the averages are 141.6 FPS on Low, 108.0 FPS on Medium, 84.1 FPS on High, and 79.9 FPS on Ultra. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p is consistent, with a reduction of approximately 34.4 FPS at Low, 30.7 FPS at Medium, 18.3 FPS at High, and 21.0 FPS at Ultra. The 1440p results show that the system remains highly capable, with Medium easily clearing 100 FPS and even High staying above 80 FPS.

At 3840x2160, the averages are 104.3 FPS on Low, 77.4 FPS on Medium, 59.9 FPS on High, and 58.6 FPS on Ultra. The 4K results are the most telling for the GPU’s limitations. The Low setting’s 104.3 FPS shows that the RX 7900 XT has significant raw power, but the High and Ultra settings both fall below 60 FPS, indicating that this configuration is not ideal for maximum detail at 4K. The difference between High and Ultra at 4K is 1.3 FPS, which is within the margin of error and suggests that Ultra offers no meaningful performance penalty over High, but also no benefit in this scenario.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT ranks 370th out of 1795 tested combos for Microsoft Flight Simulator, placing it in the top 21 percent of all configurations. This is a strong showing, but not a top-tier result. The CPU’s individual performance is notable, with an average benchmark score of 54450 and a 94th percentile ranking among all CPUs. The Ryzen 9 9900X sits close to its nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D, which has an average score of 54681, a delta of -0.4 percent. It also edges out the Intel Core i7-14700F by 0.7 percent and trails the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K by -1.5 percent.

The GPU’s individual ranking is lower, with an 82nd percentile among all GPUs and an average benchmark score of 38358. Its nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Mobile, has a nearly identical score of 38349, a delta of 0 percent. The RX 7900 XT also performs within 0.6 percent of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile. This mid-pack GPU performance, combined with the high-end CPU, explains the combo’s 370th rank. The data suggests that the CPU is not holding the system back, but the GPU’s performance relative to other high-end cards prevents this combo from reaching the upper echelons of the rankings. For a flight simulator that is heavily dependent on both single-threaded and multi-threaded performance, this pairing delivers a solid experience, but users seeking top-tier 4K Ultra performance would need a more powerful GPU.