Microsoft Flight Simulator

# Microsoft Flight Simulator — AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D + AMD Radeon RX 9070

This analysis covers the measured performance of the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D paired with the AMD Radeon RX 9070 in Microsoft Flight Simulator, based on benchmark data collected at three resolutions and four settings presets. The combo ranks 833rd out of 2,996 tested combinations in this game, placing it in the 72nd percentile of all tested systems. The data set includes 12 measured FPS configurations, with full min/max values available for Medium settings at each resolution.

FAQ

Q: How does this CPU compare to its nearest rivals in overall benchmark scores?

A: The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D has an average benchmark score of 54,762, which places it 0.6% behind the Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF (55,093), 1.3% ahead of the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K (54,053), 2.0% ahead of the Intel Xeon 6505P (53,701), and 2.1% ahead of the Intel Core i7-14700F (53,620). This places the CPU in the 91st percentile among all tested CPUs.

Q: What is the GPU's relative standing among all tested graphics cards?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 9070 achieves an average GPU benchmark score of 23,877, placing it in the 69th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN Z, scores 23,736 (0.6% lower), while the AMD Radeon RX 6800S scores 24,063 (0.8% higher) and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER scores 24,170 (1.2% higher).

Q: What FPS can I expect at 1080p with Medium settings?

A: At 1920x1080 with Medium settings, the measured average FPS is 121, with a minimum of 103 FPS and a maximum of 139 FPS. This represents a solid playable experience with reasonable headroom above typical display refresh rates.

Q: How does the combo's game-specific ranking compare to its component-level percentiles?

A: The combo ranks 833rd out of 2,996 tested combinations (72nd percentile) in Microsoft Flight Simulator. The CPU sits in the 91st percentile among all CPUs, while the GPU sits in the 69th percentile among all GPUs, suggesting the game-specific result is constrained more by the GPU than the CPU.

Q: What is the difference between Low and Ultra settings at 4K?

A: At 3840x2160, Low settings produce an average of 92 FPS, while Ultra settings produce an average of 51 FPS — a difference of 41 FPS or roughly 80% higher frame rate at Low compared to Ultra. High settings sit at 54 FPS and Medium at 72 FPS.

Q: Are there any resolutions where the frame rate exceeds 144 FPS?

A: Yes, only at 1920x1080 with Low settings does the average FPS reach 155. All other configurations at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K fall below 144 FPS average, with 1080p High achieving 91 FPS and 1440p Low achieving 125 FPS.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 is built on the RDNA 4.0 architecture using the Navi 48 chip, manufactured on a 4 nm process at TSMC with 53,900 million transistors across a 357 mm² die. The GPU operates with a base clock of 1330 MHz, a game clock of 2070 MHz, and a boost clock of 2520 MHz, with memory clocked at 2518 MHz (20.1 Gbps effective). The card features 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing 644.6 GB/s of memory bandwidth — a configuration well-suited to the large texture workloads typical of flight simulation.

The GPU's shading resources include 3,584 shading units, 224 texture mapping units, and 128 raster operation pipelines, along with 56 ray tracing cores. Compute throughput is rated at 36.13 TFLOPS for both FP32 and FP16 (1:1 ratio). Pixel rate is 322.6 GPixel/s and texture rate is 564.5 GTexel/s. The card supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, and connects via PCIe 5.0 x16 with a dual-slot form factor and dual 8-pin power connectors.

In this game, the GPU's role is most apparent in the scaling between settings presets. At 4K, the difference between Low and Ultra settings is 41 FPS (92 vs 51), which represents an 80% performance drop from the lowest to the highest quality preset. The Medium preset at 4K shows a minimum FPS of 61 and maximum of 83 with an average of 72, indicating that the GPU can maintain playable frame rates with some fluctuation. At 1440p, the gap between Low (125 FPS) and Ultra (70 FPS) is 55 FPS, while at 1080p the gap is 69 FPS (155 vs 86). This increasing spread at lower resolutions suggests that as resolution decreases, the GPU becomes less of a bottleneck and other factors — likely CPU-bound simulation logic — begin to limit performance.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D is a 12-core, 24-thread processor from the 9000 series, based on the Zen 5 architecture with the Granite Ridge codename. It operates on the AMD Socket AM5 platform with a base clock of 4.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.50 GHz, with a TDP of 120 W. The CPU is manufactured on a 4 nm process at TSMC with 16,630 million transistors across two 70.6 mm² dies. Cache configuration includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 1 MB of L2 per core, and a substantial 128 MB of L3 cache. Memory support is DDR5 with dual-channel access and 89.6 GB/s bandwidth, and the CPU provides PCIe Gen 5 with 24 lanes.

The CPU's benchmark results show strong multi-threaded capability: Cinebench R23 multi-core scores 47,737 while single-core scores 6,739; Geekbench multi-core reaches 22,884 and single-core 3,041; 3DMark max threads scores 13,795. PassMark results include a multi-thread score of 56,154 and single-thread of 4,646. This processor ranks in the 91st percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 54,762.

In Microsoft Flight Simulator, the CPU's influence is most evident when examining performance at lower resolutions where the GPU is less taxed. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 155 FPS, which is the highest measured value in the entire data set. However, the scaling from Low to Ultra at 1080p (155 to 86 FPS) shows a 44.5% reduction, which is significant but smaller than the 80% reduction seen at 4K. This suggests that even at 1080p, the GPU still plays a substantial role. The combination of 12 cores and 24 threads, along with the large 128 MB L3 cache, provides ample computational headroom for the simulation's complex flight modeling, but the data indicates that Microsoft Flight Simulator's frame rate is heavily influenced by GPU rendering load across all tested configurations.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D + AMD Radeon RX 9070 combination ranks 833rd out of 2,996 tested combinations in Microsoft Flight Simulator, placing it in the top 27.8% of all tested systems. This ranking is notable because the CPU alone sits in the 91st percentile of all CPUs, while the GPU sits in the 69th percentile of all GPUs — the game-specific result falls between these two component-level positions.

The gap between the CPU's high percentile ranking and the combo's overall position suggests that Microsoft Flight Simulator's performance ceiling is being set more by the GPU than the CPU in this pairing. The CPU's strong multi-threaded performance (Cinebench R23 multi-core of 47,737 and PassMark multi-thread of 56,154) provides more than enough processing power for the game's simulation logic, but the RX 9070's 69th percentile GPU standing becomes the limiting factor, particularly at higher resolutions and settings.

Comparatively, the CPU's nearest rivals show similar overall benchmark scores with deltas ranging from -0.6% to +2.1%, meaning the 9900X3D is effectively in the same performance tier as the Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF, Core Ultra 5 245K, Xeon 6505P, and Core i7-14700F. The GPU's nearest rivals — the GTX TITAN Z, RX 6800S, RTX 3080 Mobile, and RTX 2080 SUPER — all fall within a 1.2% band of the RX 9070's average score, indicating the GPU is tightly clustered with these previous-generation parts in synthetic benchmarks. The game-specific ranking of 833rd out of 2,996 reflects this mid-pack GPU positioning combined with top-tier CPU performance.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS data, the optimal settings preset depends heavily on the target resolution and desired frame rate. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset delivers an average of 121 FPS with a minimum of 103 FPS and maximum of 139 FPS, offering the best balance of visual quality and performance for smooth gameplay. High settings at 1080p drop to 91 FPS average, which is still playable but sacrifices the headroom that Medium provides. Ultra at 1080p yields 86 FPS average, representing a marginal 5 FPS improvement over High in terms of quality cost — the 5 FPS difference between High and Ultra (91 vs 86) is relatively small compared to the 30 FPS difference between Medium and High (121 vs 91), suggesting diminishing returns at the highest preset.

At 2560x1440, Medium settings produce an average of 97 FPS with a minimum of 83 FPS and maximum of 112 FPS, making it the recommended choice for a smooth experience at this resolution. High settings at 1440p average 73 FPS, which remains playable but approaches the threshold where frame pacing becomes more noticeable. Ultra at 1440p averages 70 FPS, only 3 FPS below High, indicating that the performance cost of Ultra over High is minimal at this resolution — a surprising result that suggests the GPU is not fully saturated at these settings.

At 3840x2160, Medium settings average 72 FPS with a minimum of 61 FPS and maximum of 83 FPS, providing the best playable experience at 4K. High settings at 4K drop to 54 FPS average, which is borderline for smooth gameplay, while Ultra averages 51 FPS — only 3 FPS below High. Low settings at 4K achieve 92 FPS, but the visual quality trade-off is substantial. For the best experience at any resolution, Medium settings consistently offer the most favorable balance between visual fidelity and frame rate, with the 1080p Medium configuration being the only preset/resolution combination that provides both high average FPS (121) and a minimum FPS above 100.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average FPS across settings presets is as follows: Low settings produce 155 FPS, Medium produces 121 FPS (with a minimum of 103 and maximum of 139), High produces 91 FPS, and Ultra produces 86 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra represents a 44.5% reduction in frame rate, with the largest single drop occurring between Medium and High (121 to 91 FPS, a 24.8% decrease).

At 2560x1440, the FPS values are: Low settings achieve 125 FPS, Medium achieves 97 FPS (minimum 83, maximum 112), High achieves 73 FPS, and Ultra achieves 70 FPS. The total reduction from Low to Ultra is 44.0%, nearly identical to the 1080p scaling. The Medium-to-High drop at 1440p is 24.7% (97 to 73 FPS), consistent with the 1080p pattern.

At 3840x2160, the results are: Low settings reach 92 FPS, Medium reaches 72 FPS (minimum 61, maximum 83), High reaches 54 FPS, and Ultra reaches 51 FPS. The reduction from Low to Ultra at 4K is 44.6%, again matching the percentage drops seen at lower resolutions. The Medium-to-High drop at 4K is 25.0% (72 to 54 FPS), maintaining the consistent pattern across all resolutions.

The Medium settings at each resolution provide the only complete min/max data in the measured set. At 1080p, the frame time variance between minimum and maximum is 36 FPS (103 to 139). At 1440p, the variance is 29 FPS (83 to 112). At 4K, the variance is 22 FPS (61 to 83). This decreasing variance at higher resolutions indicates that frame rate becomes more stable as resolution increases, likely due to the GPU becoming the primary bottleneck and reducing CPU-induced frame time spikes.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1080p to 1440p to 4K reveals consistent scaling patterns across all settings presets. At Low settings, the FPS drops from 155 at 1080p to 125 at 1440p (a 19.4% reduction) and then to 92 at 4K (a further 26.4% reduction from 1440p). The total reduction from 1080p to 4K at Low settings is 40.6%.

At Medium settings, the scaling shows 121 FPS at 1080p, 97 FPS at 1440p (a 19.8% reduction), and 72 FPS at 4K (a 25.8% reduction from 1440p). The total reduction from 1080p to 4K is 40.5%. At High settings, the values are 91 FPS at 1080p, 73 FPS at 1440p (a 19.8% reduction), and 54 FPS at 4K (a 26.0% reduction from 1440p), totaling 40.7% from 1080p to 4K. At Ultra settings, the pattern continues: 86 FPS at 1080p, 70 FPS at 1440p (an 18.6% reduction), and 51 FPS at 4K (a 27.1% reduction from 1440p), totaling 40.7% from 1080p to 4K.

This remarkable consistency — with total reductions from 1080p to 4K falling between 40.5% and 40.7% across all settings — indicates that the performance scaling is governed by a uniform factor. The percentage drops between 1080p and 1440p (approximately 19-20%) and between 1440p and 4K (approximately 26-27%) are proportional to the pixel count increases: 1440p has 1.78 times the pixels of 1080p, and 4K has 2.25 times the pixels of 1440p. The slightly larger percentage drop at the 1440p-to-4K transition suggests the GPU is becoming progressively more saturated as resolution increases, but the overall pattern points to a system where neither the CPU nor the GPU is dramatically bottlenecking the other at any resolution. The consistent 40% frame rate reduction from 1080p to 4K across all settings presets — whether the GPU is lightly loaded (Low) or heavily loaded (Ultra) — indicates that Microsoft Flight Simulator's rendering pipeline scales predictably with pixel count, and the combination of the Ryzen 9 9900X3D and RX 9070 maintains balanced performance characteristics throughout the resolution range tested.