Microsoft Flight Simulator

Microsoft Flight Simulator remains one of the heaviest consumer workloads in the benchmark database, and this pairing — AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ 395 driving an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Mobile — lands in a peculiar position: a near-desktop-class CPU attached to a mid-tier mobile GPU. The measured results show exactly the asymmetry you would expect. The CPU sits in the 95th percentile of all processors in the database, while the GPU sits in the 67th, and in a simulator that leans hard on single-threaded CPU performance, that gap shapes the entire experience. Across the twelve measured configurations, frame rates span from 34 FPS at 4K Ultra to 103 FPS at 1080p Low, and the data tells a clear story about where the bottleneck lives at each resolution.

Resolution Scaling

The scaling behavior of Microsoft Flight Simulator on this hardware is unusually revealing. At 1080p Medium the combo delivers 80 FPS average; moving to 1440p Medium drops that to 65 FPS, and 4K Medium falls further to 48 FPS. That is a 40 percent loss from 1080p to 4K — a decline steep enough to indicate that the RTX 5060 Mobile's pixel-pushing capacity, not the processor, is the governing constraint at higher resolutions.

Compare that to the Ultra preset, where the curve flattens dramatically: 58 FPS at 1080p, 46 FPS at 1440p, and 34 FPS at 4K. The gap between 1080p and 4K at Ultra is smaller in both absolute and relative terms than at Medium, which is the classic fingerprint of a CPU limitation creeping in at the lower resolutions. When the GPU is fully saturated by demanding settings, lowering the resolution buys progressively less performance because the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 — for all its 16 cores — can only feed the simulation loop so fast.

The Low preset tells the same story from the opposite direction. At 1080p Low the system hits 103 FPS, but at 1440p Low it manages only 83, and 4K Low slides to 61. A purely CPU-bound scenario would show near-identical numbers at all three resolutions; the fact that Low loses 42 FPS between 1080p and 4K confirms that even the lightest preset becomes GPU-limited as pixel count rises. In short: this configuration is GPU-bound at 4K in every measured case, GPU-bound at 1440p at lighter settings, and begins brushing against the CPU ceiling at 1080p — though that ceiling is high, given the processor's single-thread credentials.

FAQ

Q: Can this configuration run Microsoft Flight Simulator at 4K?

A: Only with heavy compromises. At 3840x2160 the measured averages are 34 FPS on Ultra, 36 FPS on High, 48 FPS on Medium, and 61 FPS on Low. The Medium preset is the only 4K option that crosses a 45 FPS average, with a recorded minimum of 41 FPS, making it the practical ceiling for playable 4K flight.

Q: What is the single best-measured result in the dataset?

A: 1920x1080 at the Low preset, at 103 FPS average. The next-best results are 1440p Low at 83 FPS and 1080p Medium at 80 FPS, with a recorded range of 68 to 92 FPS on that Medium row.

Q: How does this CPU/GPU pairing rank against other combos in this game?

A: It ranks 2454 out of 3714 measured combinations in Microsoft Flight Simulator — solidly in the lower-middle of the field. That placement is consistent with the components' database standing: the CPU sits at the 95th percentile versus all CPUs, while the GPU sits at only the 67th percentile versus all GPUs.

Q: Is the CPU a bottleneck here?

A: Mostly not. The resolution-scaling data shows large FPS drops as resolution rises, which points at the GPU. However, the compressed scaling at the Ultra preset — 58 to 46 to 34 FPS from 1080p to 1440p to 4K — suggests the processor does impose a ceiling that becomes visible once the GPU is maximally loaded at lower resolutions.

Q: How strong is the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 relative to its rivals?

A: Its aggregate benchmark average of 77740 places it within striking distance of the Intel Core i9-14900K (79097 average, a 1.7 percent gap), slightly ahead of the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9945WX and AMD EPYC Embedded 8224P (both roughly 1.6 percent behind), and 2 percent ahead of the AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX.

Q: How does the RTX 5060 Mobile compare to competing GPUs?

A: Its average score of 22435 puts it in a dead heat with the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT (22549, a 0.5 percent gap), 1.2 percent ahead of the Radeon RX 5700, 1.3 percent ahead of the Radeon RX 6700S, and 1.3 percent behind the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Mobile.

GPU Role

The RTX 5060 Mobile is a Blackwell 2.0 part built on TSMC's 5 nm process, with 3328 shading units, 104 TMUs, 48 ROPs, 26 RT cores, and 104 tensor cores on a 181 mm² die packing 21,900 million transistors. Its boost clock reaches 1455 MHz from a 952 MHz base, and it produces 9.684 TFLOPS of FP32 throughput with a pixel rate of 69.84 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 151.3 GTexel/s.

The critical specification for this game is memory. The card carries 8 GB of GDDR7 on a 128-bit bus, delivering 384 GB/s of bandwidth at an effective 24 Gbps. Microsoft Flight Simulator is a texture- and scenery-heavy title, and an 8 GB framebuffer is the most plausible explanation for the sharp falloff at Ultra: 58 FPS at 1080p Ultra versus 60 FPS at 1080p High suggests the heaviest preset tips the workload past what the memory subsystem and shader array can comfortably deliver together, with the Ultra penalty growing more severe as resolution climbs — down to 34 FPS at 4K Ultra, curiously one frame below the 4K High result of 36 FPS.

Against its competitive set, the GPU's position is unremarkable mid-pack: within half a percent of the Radeon RX 7700 XT, marginally ahead of the RX 5700 and RX 6700S, and slightly behind the previous-generation RTX 4060 Mobile. Those tight deltas mean none of the measured rivals would materially change this game's outcomes; the RTX 5060 Mobile's 67th-percentile standing among all GPUs is the honest summary, and the flight-sim results sit exactly where a 67th-percentile card should. The 45 W thermal envelope is another factor — a constrained power target caps sustained clocks, which matters in a simulator where long sessions at 4K hold the GPU under continuous load.

Measured FPS Breakdown

All twelve rows below are measured results. Where minimum and maximum figures were captured, they appear alongside the average.

At 3840x2160, the four presets produce a compressed but decisive ladder:

• 4K Low: 61 FPS average
• 4K Medium: 48 FPS average (41 min / 55 max)
• 4K High: 36 FPS average
• 4K Ultra: 34 FPS average

At 2560x1440, the spread widens considerably:

• 1440p Low: 83 FPS average
• 1440p Medium: 65 FPS average (55 min / 74 max)
• 1440p High: 49 FPS average
• 1440p Ultra: 46 FPS average

At 1920x1080, the pattern holds with the largest dynamic range in the dataset:

• 1080p Low: 103 FPS average
• 1080p Medium: 80 FPS average (68 min / 92 max)
• 1080p High: 60 FPS average
• 1080p Ultra: 58 FPS average

Two patterns deserve emphasis. First, the High-to-Ultra penalty is tiny at every resolution — two frames at 1080p, three at 1440p, two at 4K — meaning Ultra settings cost performance without delivering a meaningful extra frame cost once the GPU is already saturated. Second, the min/max spreads on the Medium rows (68–92 at 1080p, 55–74 at 1440p, 41–55 at 4K) are proportionally consistent, indicating frame-time stability scales predictably with resolution rather than exhibiting erratic spikes. The 1080p Medium minimum of 68 FPS is the most reassuring number in the set for smooth gameplay.

CPU Role

The Ryzen AI Max+ 395 is a mobile Zen 5 processor, codenamed Strix Halo, manufactured on TSMC's 4 nm node across two 70.6 mm² dies. It brings 16 cores and 32 threads, a 3.00 GHz base clock, a 5.10 GHz boost clock, and a 55 W TDP on Socket FP11. The cache hierarchy is generous: 80 KB of L1 and 1 MB of L2 per core, with a shared 64 MB L3 slab. Memory support is quad-channel LPDDR5X delivering 256 GB/s of bandwidth — an unusually fat pipe for a mobile part, and one that helps feed the integrated Radeon 8060S graphics, though the discrete RTX card handles rendering in this configuration.

For a flight simulator, single-threaded throughput matters most, and the benchmark record here is strong: 316 in Cinebench R15 single-core, 2044 in R23 single-core, 2464 in Geekbench single-core, and 4147 in PassMark single-thread. Multi-threaded scores — 5463 in R15, 35314 in R23, 20992 in Geekbench, and 54934 in PassMark multithread — confirm that scenery streaming and background world simulation have ample headroom. The aggregate average of 77740 places it 95th percentile among all CPUs in the database, just 1.7 percent behind the Intel Core i9-14900K and ahead of workstation-class parts like the Threadripper PRO 9945WX.

In this game's results, the CPU's influence shows up in the Ultra rows. The compressed scaling between resolutions at Ultra — 58, 46, 34 FPS — implies a processor-side ceiling that the simulation loop enforces regardless of how much GPU headroom exists. Notably, at 1080p the difference between High (60 FPS) and Ultra (58 FPS) is nearly nil, which is consistent with the CPU and GPU reaching a shared equilibrium point. The instruction-level results support this read: a PassMark floating point score of 128682, integer math at 200665, and extended instructions at 56346 describe a chip with the computational depth to sustain the simulator's physics and world-streaming demands at these frame rates.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data supports three distinct configurations depending on target resolution.

For 1080p, Medium is the clear pick: an 80 FPS average with a 68 FPS minimum delivers headroom well above the 60 FPS threshold, and Low's 103 FPS is largely wasted on a flight simulator where visual fidelity carries the experience. Players sensitive to frame drops who want maximum fluidity can drop to Low; those chasing detail can take Ultra at 58 FPS, though the data shows High at 60 FPS actually outscores it while running the same basic visual tier — Ultra's two-frame deficit makes it hard to justify here.

For 1440p, the Medium preset again wins: 65 FPS average with a 55 FPS minimum keeps the experience consistently above 60 on average, while High (49 FPS) and Ultra (46 FPS) both fall into stutter-prone territory for fast low-altitude flying. Low at 83 FPS remains available for pilots who prioritize smoothness over scenery.

For 4K, expectations must be recalibrated. Medium at 48 FPS average with a 41 FPS minimum is the only row that approaches comfortable play, and even then the minimum dips below 45. High at 36 FPS and Ultra at 34 FPS are below what most pilots would consider acceptable for a title that demands sustained visual tracking of instruments and terrain. The pragmatic 4K answer is Low at 61 FPS average — smooth, if visually stripped — or a step down to 1440p Medium, which delivers better visual quality and a higher frame rate simultaneously. That trade-off, 48 FPS at 4K Medium versus 65 FPS at 1440p Medium with recorded mins of 41 versus 55, favors 1440p decisively for this hardware pairing.