Microsoft Flight Simulator

FAQ

Q: How does the Intel Core i5-12400 compare to its closest rivals in average benchmark score?

A: The i5-12400 posts an average benchmark score of 19850. It sits essentially tied with the Intel Core i7-9700, which scores 19831 (a 0.1% difference), and the Intel Core i7-8700 at 19894 (-0.2%). It also edges out the Intel Core i5-11600K by 0.4% and trails the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5995WX by 0.4%, meaning all four rivals are within a fraction of a percent.

Q: What is the GPU's standing relative to its nearest competitors?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT has an average benchmark score of 49982, placing it in the 87th percentile of all GPUs. Its closest rival, the Intel Arc A550M, scores 49737 (0.5% lower), while the NVIDIA RTX A1000 is 1.7% faster. The NVIDIA CMP 50HX trails by 1.9%, and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER is 2.6% behind.

Q: What is the best 1080p result for this combo in Microsoft Flight Simulator?

A: At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combo achieves 152.4 FPS average. This is the highest measured FPS across all resolutions and settings in the data. Ultra settings at 1080p drop to 85.8 FPS, a significant 43.7% reduction from Low.

Q: How does the combo rank among all tested combinations?

A: This pairing ranks 614th out of 1795 total tested combos in Microsoft Flight Simulator. That places it in the upper third of all combinations, indicating a strong but not top-tier configuration for this specific title.

Q: What memory and interface capabilities does the GPU bring to the table?

A: The RX 6800 XT features 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering 512.0 GB/s of bandwidth. It uses a PCIe 4.0 x16 interface. The CPU supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory in dual-channel configuration, offering flexibility in platform memory choices.

Q: What are the CPU's multi-threaded performance characteristics?

A: The i5-12400 scores 15935 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 5890 in 3DMark max threads. Its 3DMark 16-thread score is 5873, while 8-thread and 4-thread scores are 4745 and 3012 respectively. Single-thread performance is notably lower, with a 3DMark single-thread score of 910.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT is built on the RDNA 2.0 architecture with a 7 nm process from TSMC. Its 26,800 million transistors are packed into a 520 mm² die, with a transistor density of 51.5M per mm². The GPU operates at a base clock of 1825 MHz, a game clock of 2015 MHz, and a boost clock of 2250 MHz. Memory runs at 2000 MHz with 16 Gbps effective speed.

The 16 GB GDDR6 frame buffer on a 256-bit bus provides 512.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This memory capacity is substantial for Microsoft Flight Simulator, which is known for loading large texture sets and terrain data. The 4608 shading units, 288 TMUs, and 128 ROPs give the card strong raw throughput, backed by 20.74 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and a pixel rate of 288.0 GPixel/s.

In the benchmark data, the GPU's role becomes evident when comparing Ultra settings across resolutions. At 1080p Ultra, the combo produces 85.8 FPS. Moving to 1440p Ultra reduces that to 66.8 FPS, a 22.1% drop. At 4K Ultra, the result is 47.9 FPS, which is 44.2% lower than the 1080p Ultra figure. This scaling pattern suggests that the GPU is being increasingly stressed as pixel count rises, which is typical for a flight simulator with heavy draw distances and detailed scenery.

The GPU's 87th percentile ranking among all GPUs indicates it is a high-performing part, though not at the absolute top tier. Its average benchmark score of 49982 places it just 0.5% above the Intel Arc A550M and 1.7% below the NVIDIA RTX A1000. The RX 6800 XT outperforms the NVIDIA CMP 50HX by 1.9% and the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER by 2.6%, showing it holds its own against modern competitors.

The card supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, which covers the API requirements of Microsoft Flight Simulator. Its 72 ray accelerators and RDNA 2 architecture are well-suited for the game's lighting and shadow effects, though the measured FPS data does not isolate ray tracing performance.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400 is a 6-core, 12-thread processor from the Alder Lake-S family, built on Intel's 10 nm process. It has a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz, with a 65 W TDP. The CPU supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory, and its 18 MB shared L3 cache, along with 1.25 MB L2 per core and 80 KB L1 per core, provides reasonable cache capacity for game workloads.

In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU shows balanced performance. Its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 15935 and single-core score of 2249 indicate strong multi-threaded capability relative to single-threaded work. The 3DMark scores scale from 910 (single-thread) to 5890 (max threads), with 16-thread at 5873 and 8-thread at 4745. This scaling suggests the processor effectively utilizes its 12 threads across workloads.

The CPU's 77th percentile ranking among all CPUs places it above average, but its nearest rivals show how competitive this segment is. The i7-9700 scores 19831 (0.1% lower), the i7-8700 scores 19894 (0.2% higher), and the i5-11600K scores 19771 (0.4% lower). The Threadripper PRO 5995WX is only 0.4% ahead despite being a workstation-class part, which highlights that the i5-12400 punches well above its weight in general compute.

In Microsoft Flight Simulator, the CPU's role is tied to physics calculations, AI traffic, and flight model updates. The measured FPS data shows that at 1080p Low, the combo achieves 152.4 FPS, which is the highest result in the dataset. This suggests the CPU is not the limiting factor at lower settings and resolutions, as the frame rate is high enough to indicate headroom.

However, the CPU's single-thread score of 910 in 3DMark and 2249 in Cinebench R23 single-core may become relevant in CPU-bound scenarios. Flight simulators often have significant single-threaded code paths, and the i5-12400's boost clock of 4.40 GHz helps mitigate potential bottlenecks. The 12 threads provide enough parallelism for background tasks like terrain streaming and AI updates.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-12400 and AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT ranks 614th out of 1795 tested combos in Microsoft Flight Simulator. This places it in the upper third of all configurations, which is a strong result for a mid-range CPU paired with a high-end GPU. The rank reflects the balanced nature of this pairing, where neither component is severely mismatched.

Compared to the CPU's 77th percentile and the GPU's 87th percentile, the combo rank of 614/1795 (roughly the 66th percentile) suggests that the pairing is slightly less than the sum of its parts. This could be due to the CPU's single-thread performance limiting the GPU in certain scenarios, or the game's particular optimization characteristics. The data indicates that the combo outperforms the majority of tested systems, but there is room for improvement if paired with a stronger CPU.

The rank of 614 implies that there are 181 combos above it in the top third, and 1181 below it. This puts the system in the "strong but not elite" category, which aligns with the component choices. The i5-12400's 6 cores and 12 threads are adequate for most games, and the RX 6800 XT's 16 GB VRAM and 512.0 GB/s bandwidth ensure it can handle high-resolution textures and complex scenes.

One notable observation is that the combo's rank is lower than the GPU's individual percentile. This suggests that the CPU is holding back the GPU to some degree, particularly at lower resolutions where CPU overhead is more pronounced. At 1080p Low, the 152.4 FPS result is high, but the GPU could likely push even higher with a more powerful CPU.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows distinct scaling patterns across resolutions. At 1080p, the average FPS ranges from 152.4 (Low) to 85.8 (Ultra). Moving to 1440p, the range drops to 123.9 (Low) to 66.8 (Ultra). At 4K, the range further declines to 90.1 (Low) to 47.9 (Ultra).

The Low settings show the steepest drop from 1080p to 4K: 152.4 to 90.1 FPS, a 40.9% reduction. This large drop indicates that even at Low settings, the 4K resolution is heavily taxing the GPU. The Ultra settings show a relative drop of 44.2% from 1080p to 4K (85.8 to 47.9 FPS), which is a similar percentage reduction.

Medium settings drop from 117.6 FPS at 1080p to 71.1 FPS at 4K, a 39.5% reduction. High settings drop from 89.8 to 51.1 FPS, a 43.1% reduction. These consistent drops across settings suggest that resolution scaling is primarily GPU-bound, as the percentage decreases are relatively uniform.

The difference between resolutions at the same settings illustrates the GPU's workload. At 1080p High, the combo produces 89.8 FPS, which is above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. At 1440p High, it drops to 74 FPS, still playable. At 4K High, it falls to 51.1 FPS, which is below 60 FPS and indicates a need to adjust settings for 4K.

The data suggests that the GPU is the limiting factor at higher resolutions. The CPU's performance is likely sufficient up to 1440p, as indicated by the high FPS at 1080p and 1440p Low settings. At 4K, the GPU's compute and bandwidth are the primary constraints, as evidenced by the significant FPS drops across all settings.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its best results. Low settings produce 152.4 FPS average, which is the highest measured FPS in the entire dataset. Medium settings yield 117.6 FPS, High settings 89.8 FPS, and Ultra settings 85.8 FPS. The gap between High and Ultra is relatively small at 4.0 FPS, suggesting diminishing returns at the highest preset.

At 2560x1440, the performance remains strong but shows the expected decline. Low settings average 123.9 FPS, which is still very smooth. Medium settings drop to 92.7 FPS, High to 74 FPS, and Ultra to 66.8 FPS. The Ultra result is above 60 FPS, making 1440p Ultra a viable option for this combo.

At 3840x2160, the GPU is clearly stressed. Low settings produce 90.1 FPS, which is playable but not as high as the lower resolutions. Medium settings drop to 71.1 FPS, High to 51.1 FPS, and Ultra to 47.9 FPS. The 4K Ultra result is below 50 FPS, which may require settings adjustments for a smoother experience.

The data shows that the combo can handle 1080p and 1440p with ease, even at Ultra settings. For 4K, the user must choose between higher settings around 50 FPS or lower settings above 90 FPS. The Low settings at 4K (90.1 FPS) are actually higher than Ultra at 1440p (66.8 FPS), which highlights the significant impact of settings versus resolution.

The minimum and maximum FPS values are not provided in the data, so the analysis relies solely on average FPS. This average-based assessment indicates that the combo is well-suited for 1080p and 1440p gaming, and can handle 4K with adjusted settings. The overall pattern confirms that the GPU is the dominant factor in determining performance at higher resolutions, while the CPU provides sufficient support at lower resolutions.