Microsoft Flight Simulator

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data for Microsoft Flight Simulator with the Intel Core i5-12400 and AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT shows a clear and predictable scaling pattern as resolution increases. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo produces 161.4 FPS average. Moving to 1440p Low drops that to 132.6 FPS, and at 4K Low the average falls to 95.9 FPS. That represents a 40.6% reduction from 1080p to 4K at Low settings, which indicates the GPU is becoming the dominant limiting factor as pixel count rises.

The High preset tells a similar story. At 1080p High, the average is 94.8 FPS. At 1440p High, it drops to 78.3 FPS. At 4K High, the average is 58.9 FPS. The 4K High result is just barely above the 60 FPS threshold, suggesting that this combo is right at the edge of playable performance for a smooth experience at that resolution and quality level.

Ultra settings amplify the resolution sensitivity further. The 1080p Ultra average is 88.4 FPS, 1440p Ultra falls to 71.7 FPS, and 4K Ultra lands at 55.9 FPS. This is a 36.8% drop from 1080p to 4K on Ultra. The fact that the gap between 1080p and 1440p is proportionally smaller than the gap between 1440p and 4K across all settings confirms that the RX 9070 XT's 16 GB frame buffer and memory bandwidth are being taxed heavily at higher resolutions.

The limiting component shifts with resolution. At 1080p, the CPU's single-thread performance and the game's engine overhead become more relevant, as evidenced by the relatively small FPS differences between Medium (128.0 FPS) and High (94.8 FPS) at that resolution. At 4K, the GPU's raw throughput is clearly the constraint, as even dropping from Ultra to Low only recovers 40.0 FPS at 4K, compared to a 73.0 FPS recovery at 1080p between the same two settings. The data indicates that for 4K play, users should expect to make significant quality concessions, while 1080p and 1440p provide much more headroom.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-12400 and AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT ranks 460th out of 1,795 tested combos in Microsoft Flight Simulator. This places it in the top 25.6% of all combinations tested for this game, which is a strong showing for a mid-range CPU paired with a high-end GPU.

Breaking down the components individually provides context for this ranking. The CPU sits at the 77th percentile against all CPUs in the database, with an average benchmark score of 19,850. Its nearest rivals in terms of overall CPU performance are the Intel Core i7-9700, which scores 19,831 (a 0.1% difference), and the Intel Core i5-11600K at 19,771 (a 0.4% difference). The i5-12400 is effectively tied with these older i7 and i5 parts, indicating that its 6-core, 12-thread configuration with a 2.50 GHz base and 4.40 GHz boost clock provides competitive compute throughput for simulation workloads. The slightly negative deltaPct values against the Intel Core i7-8700 (-0.2%) and AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5995WX (-0.4%) show that the i5-12400 is not a performance outlier in either direction.

The GPU is significantly stronger relative to its own field. The RX 9070 XT sits at the 82nd percentile against all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 39,647. Its nearest rivals in the database are substantially older or lower-tier products: the AMD Radeon Pro 575 (39,703, -0.1% delta), NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile (39,568, 0.2% delta), and AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 (39,879, -0.6% delta). These comparisons highlight that the RX 9070 XT's average benchmark score is roughly equivalent to products from a different era, but in actual game performance, the modern RDNA 4.0 architecture with 4,096 shading units and 16 GB of GDDR6 memory delivers results that the raw average score does not fully capture.

Given that the GPU ranks higher (82nd percentile) than the CPU (77th percentile), the combo's 460th rank out of 1,795 suggests that the CPU is the more limiting factor in this pairing. The data supports this interpretation: at 1080p Low, the combo achieves 161.4 FPS, which is likely CPU-bound in a flight simulator, while at 4K Ultra, the 55.9 FPS result is clearly GPU-bound. The overall rank reflects a balanced but slightly CPU-constrained system.

FAQ

Q: Can this combo maintain 60 FPS at 4K in Microsoft Flight Simulator?

A: At 4K High settings, the average FPS is 58.9, which is just below 60. At 4K Medium, it rises to 72.2 FPS, and at 4K Low, it reaches 95.9 FPS. Only 4K Ultra falls below 60 FPS, at 55.9 FPS average.

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in this game?

A: The data shows that 1440p provides a strong balance. At 1440p High, the average is 78.3 FPS, and at 1440p Ultra, it is 71.7 FPS. Both are comfortably above 60 FPS, unlike 4K High which sits at 58.9 FPS.

Q: How much performance is lost when going from 1080p to 4K?

A: At Low settings, FPS drops from 161.4 at 1080p to 95.9 at 4K, a 40.6% reduction. At Ultra settings, the drop is from 88.4 to 55.9, a 36.8% reduction.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU more responsible for limiting performance?

A: The GPU ranks at the 82nd percentile while the CPU ranks at the 77th percentile. The measured FPS scaling suggests the CPU limits at 1080p (161.4 FPS at Low) and the GPU limits at 4K (55.9 FPS at Ultra).

Q: How does the i5-12400 compare to its nearest CPU rivals?

A: Its average benchmark score of 19,850 is within 0.4% of the Intel Core i5-11600K (19,771) and within 0.1% of the Intel Core i7-9700 (19,831). It is effectively tied with both.

Q: What is the FPS difference between Low and Ultra settings at 1440p?

A: At 1440p Low, the average is 132.6 FPS. At 1440p Ultra, it drops to 71.7 FPS. This is a 45.9% reduction in average FPS when moving from the lowest to the highest preset.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a complete picture across three resolutions and four settings presets.

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its highest frame rates. Low settings produce an average of 161.4 FPS. Medium settings drop to 128.0 FPS. High settings yield 94.8 FPS. Ultra settings produce 88.4 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium is 33.4 FPS, while the gap between High and Ultra is just 6.4 FPS, indicating diminishing returns at the top end.

At 2560x1440, the averages are 132.6 FPS for Low, 104.4 FPS for Medium, 78.3 FPS for High, and 71.7 FPS for Ultra. The spread from Low to Ultra is 60.9 FPS. Notably, the difference between High and Ultra narrows to 6.6 FPS, mirroring the 1080p pattern where the Ultra preset costs relatively little additional performance over High.

At 3840x2160, the averages are 95.9 FPS for Low, 72.2 FPS for Medium, 58.9 FPS for High, and 55.9 FPS for Ultra. The total spread from Low to Ultra is 40.0 FPS. At this resolution, High and Ultra are only 3.0 FPS apart, which suggests that the GPU is saturated and the additional visual fidelity of Ultra comes at a minimal frame rate cost.

The resolution scaling from 1440p to 4K is steeper than from 1080p to 1440p. At High settings, 1080p to 1440p costs 16.5 FPS, while 1440p to 4K costs 19.4 FPS. At Low settings, the respective costs are 28.8 FPS and 36.7 FPS. This pattern is consistent with a GPU that has ample memory capacity (16 GB) but is increasingly bandwidth-limited as pixel count grows.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT is the dominant performance driver in this combo at higher resolutions. Its 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 644.6 GB/s of bandwidth, which is sufficient for Microsoft Flight Simulator's large texture datasets at 4K. The measured FPS data confirms this: at 4K Ultra, the combo still averages 55.9 FPS, which is only 32.5 FPS below the 1080p Ultra result of 88.4 FPS.

The GPU's clock behavior is notable. The base clock is 1660 MHz, the game clock is 2400 MHz, and the boost clock reaches 2970 MHz. The memory operates at 2518 MHz, which translates to 20.1 Gbps effective. These clocks, combined with 4,096 shading units, 256 TMUs, and 128 ROPs, produce 48.66 TFLOPS of FP32 performance. The pixel rate of 380.2 GPixel/s and texture rate of 760.3 GTexel/s are directly relevant to how quickly the GPU can fill the screen and apply textures in a visually dense flight simulator.

The GPU's benchmark profile shows a strong Passmark G3D score of 26,795 and a Geekbench Vulkan score of 184,026. Its 82nd percentile ranking against all GPUs places it ahead of the CPU's relative standing. The nearest GPU rivals in the database are the AMD Radeon Pro 575 and AMD Radeon Pro 575X, with scores of 39,703 and 39,836 respectively, representing deltas of -0.1% and -0.5% against the RX 9070 XT's 39,647 average. These are workstation-class products, and the fact that the RX 9070 XT matches them in aggregate benchmarks while delivering modern feature support (DirectX 12 Ultimate, Vulkan 1.4) explains why it performs so well in a current game like Microsoft Flight Simulator.

The 53,900 million transistors on a 357 mm² die at a 4 nm process node from TSMC represent a dense, efficient design. The GPU's TDP of 304 W and suggested 700 W PSU indicate that power delivery is not a constraint for this pairing. The 64 RT cores support ray-traced effects, though the measured FPS data in the FACT PACK does not specifically isolate ray tracing performance.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400 provides the computational foundation for this combo, and its role becomes more apparent at lower resolutions where the GPU is not the bottleneck. With 6 cores and 12 threads, a base clock of 2.50 GHz, and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz, this Alder Lake-S processor delivers solid single-threaded performance, which is critical for flight simulation physics and flight model calculations.

The CPU's benchmark data shows a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 15,935 and a single-core score of 2,249. The Passmark single-thread score is 3,456, and the multithread score is 18,747. The 3DMark single-thread score is 910, while the max-thread score is 5,890. These scores indicate that the CPU's 18 MB of shared L3 cache and 1.25 MB L2 cache per core are sufficient to feed the GPU at 1080p, where the combo achieves 161.4 FPS at Low settings.

The CPU's 77th percentile ranking against all CPUs places it just below the GPU's 82nd percentile. Its nearest CPU rivals are older or comparable parts: the Intel Core i7-9700 (19,831 average, 0.1% delta), Intel Core i5-11600K (19,771, 0.4% delta), Intel Core i7-8700 (19,894, -0.2% delta), and AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5995WX (19,928, -0.4% delta). These near-identical average scores, all within 0.4% of each other, suggest that the i5-12400 is a known quantity in terms of compute performance.

The 65 W TDP and support for both DDR4 and DDR5 memory give this CPU flexibility, though the FACT PACK does not specify which memory type was used in the measured FPS tests. The CPU's PCIe Gen 5 support with 16 lanes ensures that the GPU's PCIe 5.0 x16 interface is not bandwidth-limited. The integrated UHD Graphics 730 is present but irrelevant for gaming when a discrete GPU is installed.

In Microsoft Flight Simulator specifically, the CPU's role is evident in the scaling pattern. At 1080p Low, the 161.4 FPS result is likely near the CPU's limit for this game's simulation thread. The fact that 1440p Low only drops to 132.6 FPS (a 17.8% reduction) while 4K Low drops to 95.9 FPS (a 40.6% reduction from 1080p) indicates that the CPU can maintain high frame rates until the GPU becomes fully saturated at 4K.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data provides clear guidance for optimizing the experience with this combo. For users targeting a smooth 60 FPS baseline, the 1440p High preset is the sweet spot: it delivers 78.3 FPS average, which provides a comfortable margin above the 60 FPS threshold. The 1440p Ultra preset is also viable at 71.7 FPS, so the additional visual fidelity of Ultra is worth considering if the user prioritizes image quality over frame rate headroom.

At 1080p, the Medium preset at 128.0 FPS is excessive for most displays, but it provides ample headroom for high-refresh-rate monitors. The High preset at 94.8 FPS is the recommended choice for 1080p gaming, as it balances visual quality with a frame rate that exceeds 90 FPS. The Ultra preset at 88.4 FPS is only 6.4 FPS slower than High, so users with capable displays can opt for Ultra without significant penalty.

At 4K, the situation is more constrained. The High preset at 58.9 FPS is just below the 60 FPS target, which may result in occasional stutters on fixed-refresh displays. The Medium preset at 72.2 FPS is the better choice for 4K, as it provides a 13.3 FPS margin over High while still offering reasonable visual quality. The Ultra preset at 55.9 FPS is playable but likely to feel less smooth. The Low preset at 95.9 FPS is only recommended for users who prioritize frame rate above all else, as the visual compromises in a flight simulator are substantial.

The data suggests that the most consistent experience across all resolutions is achieved by avoiding Ultra settings when the GPU is the limiting factor. The difference between High and Ultra at 4K is only 3.0 FPS, which means that users who want the best visuals can enable Ultra at 4K without sacrificing much performance. However, for the best overall experience, the 1440p High preset at 78.3 FPS offers the best combination of visual fidelity, smoothness, and headroom for demanding scenes like crowded airports or complex weather systems.