Microsoft Flight Simulator

FAQ

Q: How does the Intel Core i5-12400 compare to its closest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The i5-12400 posts an average benchmark score of 19850, placing it 0.1% above the Intel Core i7-9700 and 0.4% above the Intel Core i5-11600K. It trails the Intel Core i7-8700 by 0.2% and the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5995WX by 0.4%, making it statistically neck-and-neck with all four in overall CPU performance.

Q: What is the GPU's standing relative to other graphics cards?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT holds a 68th percentile ranking among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 24731. Its closest rival, the NVIDIA RTX A5000 Mobile, scores 24763 (0.1% higher), while the Intel Arc A350M trails by 0.3% and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Mobile by 0.6%.

Q: What resolution and settings yield the highest frame rate for this combo?

A: The best measured performance comes at 1920x1080 with Low settings, producing 96.4 FPS average. For a more visually demanding experience, 2560x1440 at Medium delivers 63.4 FPS, which remains fluid for simulation play.

Q: Does the CPU bottleneck the GPU in this game?

A: The data does not indicate a bottleneck. The i5-12400's 6 cores and 12 threads, combined with a 4.40 GHz boost clock, provide ample headroom. At 3840x2160 Ultra, the combo still produces 32.2 FPS, showing the GPU is the limiting factor at high resolutions rather than the processor.

Q: How much VRAM does the RX 5700 XT have, and is it sufficient?

A: The GPU features 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, with 448.0 GB/s bandwidth. This capacity proves adequate across all tested settings, as frame rates scale predictably from Low to Ultra without any abrupt drop-off that would indicate VRAM exhaustion.

Q: What is the combo's overall ranking among tested systems?

A: This pairing ranks 1378th out of 1795 tested combos in Microsoft Flight Simulator, placing it in the lower-middle tier of all configurations evaluated.

Settings Recommendations

For the best balance of visual fidelity and playable frame rates, Medium settings at 2560x1440 offer the sweet spot. The measured 63.4 FPS average at this preset is 41% higher than High settings at the same resolution (44.8 FPS), while still delivering a substantial visual upgrade over Low. At 1920x1080, Medium produces 76.9 FPS, which is 20% faster than High (55.3 FPS) and only 20% slower than Low (96.4 FPS), making it the recommended choice for 1080p displays.

If maximum smoothness is the priority, Low settings at 1920x1080 delivers 96.4 FPS, nearly double the frame rate of High at the same resolution. However, the jump from Low to Medium costs only 19.5 FPS at 1080p, a worthwhile trade for the improved scenery detail in a flight simulator. At 4K, Medium (44.9 FPS) is the only preset that clears 40 FPS besides Low (59 FPS), so users with 3840x2160 displays should stick to Medium unless they can tolerate 33.8 FPS at High or 32.2 FPS at Ultra.

Ultra settings are not recommended for this combo. Even at 1080p, Ultra yields 56.7 FPS, which is only 1.4 FPS more than High (55.3 FPS) — the cost of Ultra over High is minimal at 1080p, but at 1440p the gap widens to 1.4 FPS (46.2 vs 44.8). At 4K, Ultra's 32.2 FPS is barely playable and offers no meaningful advantage over High's 33.8 FPS.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT's 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which directly influences how the card handles texture streaming in Microsoft Flight Simulator's dense terrain. The GPU's 2560 shading units and 64 ROPs, paired with a boost clock of 1905 MHz, drive the pixel rate to 121.9 GPixel/s and the texture rate to 304.8 GTexel/s. These figures explain the frame rate scaling seen across resolutions.

At 1920x1080, the GPU delivers 96.4 FPS on Low, dropping to 76.9 FPS on Medium and 55.3 FPS on High. The 41.1 FPS difference between Low and High at 1080p narrows to 32.8 FPS at 1440p and 26.8 FPS at 4K, indicating that the GPU's compute resources become the limiting factor as resolution increases. The FP32 throughput of 9.754 TFLOPS keeps the card competitive at 1440p Medium (63.4 FPS), but Ultra at 4K (32.2 FPS) exposes the RDNA 1.0 architecture's age.

The card's PCIe 4.0 x16 interface and 7 nm process node (10,300 million transistors on a 251 mm² die) are adequate for this title. The 1750 MHz game clock and 14 Gbps effective memory speed provide consistent performance across all measured presets. Notably, the GPU's 68th percentile ranking among all GPUs and its near-tie with the NVIDIA RTX A5000 Mobile (0.1% difference) suggest it remains a viable option for 1080p and 1440p flight simulation, though 4K Ultra pushes it to its limits.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo produces 96.4 FPS on Low, 76.9 FPS on Medium, 55.3 FPS on High, and 56.7 FPS on Ultra. The Ultra preset's slight increase over High (1.4 FPS) is an anomaly in the data, suggesting the High preset may employ more demanding shadows or reflections than Ultra in this title's configuration. The 41.1 FPS gap between Low and High at 1080p narrows to 32.8 FPS at 1440p and 26.8 FPS at 4K, showing that resolution scaling compresses the settings spread.

At 2560x1440, the measured averages are 77.6 FPS on Low, 63.4 FPS on Medium, 44.8 FPS on High, and 46.2 FPS on Ultra. The 33 FPS difference between Low and High at 1440p is proportionally similar to 1080p, but the absolute values are lower across the board. The jump from Medium to High costs 18.6 FPS, while High to Ultra only costs 1.4 FPS more — a negligible penalty that makes Ultra the better choice over High at this resolution.

At 3840x2160, the averages fall to 59 FPS on Low, 44.9 FPS on Medium, 33.8 FPS on High, and 32.2 FPS on Ultra. The Low to Medium transition costs 14.1 FPS, and Medium to High costs 11.1 FPS, but High to Ultra only costs 1.6 FPS. This pattern repeats across all resolutions: the High-to-Ultra gap is consistently the smallest, making Ultra a viable option wherever High is playable.

The overall range spans 32.2 FPS (4K Ultra) to 96.4 FPS (1080p Low), a spread of 64.2 FPS. The data shows that 1080p Medium (76.9 FPS) outperforms 1440p Medium (63.4 FPS) by 21.3%, while 1440p Medium outperforms 4K Medium (44.9 FPS) by 41.2%. This scaling is consistent with the GPU's 448.0 GB/s bandwidth being the primary constraint at higher resolutions.

How This Combo Ranks

This configuration ranks 1378th out of 1795 tested combos in Microsoft Flight Simulator, placing it in the 23rd percentile of all systems evaluated. The rank reflects the combined capability of the i5-12400 and RX 5700 XT, but the GPU's 68th percentile standing among all GPUs is notably higher than the combo's overall rank, suggesting the game's engine heavily weights graphics performance over CPU throughput.

The CPU's 77th percentile among all processors indicates it is not the limiting factor in this pairing. The i5-12400's average benchmark score of 19850 sits within 0.4% of four nearest rivals, all of which would likely produce similar in-game results. The combo's ranking is therefore driven primarily by the GPU's position relative to other tested graphics cards.

Given that the RX 5700 XT's closest rival, the NVIDIA RTX A5000 Mobile, scores 0.1% higher on average, the combo's rank would shift minimally with a slightly faster GPU. The 1795 total combos span a wide range of hardware, and this pairing's 1378th position means it outperforms roughly 23% of tested systems, with the remaining 77% achieving higher frame rates in this simulator.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400 brings 6 cores and 12 threads from the Alder Lake-S architecture, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. The 18 MB shared L3 cache and 1.25 MB L2 per core provide ample data locality for Microsoft Flight Simulator's terrain and physics calculations. The 65 W TDP keeps thermals manageable, though the 10 nm process node and 163 mm² die size are modest by modern standards.

Synthetic benchmarks show the CPU's strength in multithreaded workloads: Cinebench R23 multicore scores 15935, while single-core scores 2249. The 3DMark results range from 910 (single-thread) to 5890 (max threads), indicating strong scaling up to 8 threads (4745) with diminishing returns beyond. PassMark multithread scores 18747, with integer math at 58366 and floating-point at 45494.

In this game, the CPU's 12 threads handle the simulator's background simulation tasks, but the measured FPS scaling across resolutions reveals that the GPU is the primary bottleneck. At 4K, the frame rate drops 41% from Low (59 FPS) to Ultra (32.2 FPS), while the CPU's workload remains constant. The CPU's 77th percentile ranking and near-identical scores to rivals (all within 0.4%) confirm that any modern 6-core processor would perform similarly in this title.

The i5-12400's support for DDR4 and DDR5 memory, along with PCIe Gen 5, ensures compatibility with current platforms. Its locked multiplier and 65 W TDP make it a straightforward choice for simulation builds, where consistent frame times matter more than peak overclocking headroom. The 3DMark single-thread score of 910 and PassMark single-thread of 3456 indicate adequate per-core performance for the simulator's main thread, which handles camera and input logic.