Microsoft Flight Simulator

# Microsoft Flight Simulator with Intel Core i5-12400F + Intel Arc B570

The data reveals a combination that lands in the lower half of tested configurations for Microsoft Flight Simulator, with a combo rank of 2406 out of 2996 tested setups. This pairing of Intel's 6-core Alder Lake processor with Intel's Battlemage-generation GPU produces playable but not spectacular frame rates, and the scaling patterns across resolutions and settings tell a clear story about where the bottleneck lies. The Arc B570, with its 10 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 160-bit bus, shows distinct behavior as resolution increases, while the i5-12400F's 12 threads and 18 MB of shared L3 cache appear sufficient to keep feeding the GPU without becoming the primary constraint. What follows is a detailed examination of how this specific hardware combination behaves in one of the most demanding flight simulators on the market.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a predictable and steep decline as resolution increases from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160, but the magnitude of that drop varies significantly depending on the quality preset. At Low settings, the average frame rate falls from 86 FPS at 1080p to 69 FPS at 1440p, a reduction of roughly 20%, and then to 51 FPS at 4K, representing a further 26% decline from the 1440p figure. This means that moving from 1080p to 4K at Low settings costs 35 FPS, or about 41% of the 1080p performance — a substantial hit that indicates the GPU is being progressively more stressed as pixel count rises.

The Medium preset shows a similar pattern but with slightly different absolute values. At 1080p, the average is 67 FPS, dropping to 54 FPS at 1440p and then to 40 FPS at 4K. The percentage loss from 1080p to 4K here is approximately 40%, nearly identical to the Low preset's relative decline. However, the High preset tells a slightly different story: 50 FPS at 1080p, 41 FPS at 1440p, and 30 FPS at 4K. That represents a 40% drop from 1080p to 4K as well, but the absolute numbers are lower across the board, suggesting that the additional graphical features enabled at High are consuming GPU resources that could otherwise go toward maintaining higher frame rates.

Ultra settings produce the lowest performance at every resolution, with 48 FPS at 1080p, 39 FPS at 1440p, and 28 FPS at 4K. The scaling from 1080p to 4K here is a 42% reduction, which is consistent with the other presets. This consistency across presets — roughly a 40-42% performance penalty when quadrupling pixel count — strongly suggests that the limiting component is the GPU rather than the CPU. If the processor were the bottleneck, we would expect to see a much flatter scaling curve, particularly at higher resolutions where the CPU has more time to prepare frames. Instead, the uniform percentage drops across all settings indicate that the Arc B570's rendering throughput is what governs performance, and the i5-12400F is keeping pace without becoming a constraint.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo rank of 2406 out of 2996 tested configurations places this pairing in the bottom 20% of all tested systems for Microsoft Flight Simulator. This is a notable finding given that neither component is particularly weak in isolation — the CPU sits at the 73rd percentile among all processors in the database, and the GPU ranks at the 65th percentile among all GPUs. Yet when combined for this specific game, the pairing underperforms relative to what those individual percentile rankings might suggest.

Looking at the CPU's nearest rivals provides context for why the processor might not be the issue. The Intel Core i5-12400F has an average benchmark score of 19039, which is essentially tied with the AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS (19047, a delta of 0%), the Intel Core 3 201E (19056, -0.1%), the Intel Core i5-1335U (18982, 0.3%), and the AMD EPYC 7773X (18979, 0.3%). These deltas are all within a fraction of a percent, meaning the i5-12400F is performing exactly as expected for its class. The processor is not a weak link in this combination.

The GPU's nearest rivals show a similar story. The Intel Arc B570 has an average benchmark score of 20556, with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile at 20534 (a delta of 0.1%), the Intel Arc A750 at 20582 (-0.1%), the NVIDIA Quadro M4000M at 20480 (0.4%), and the AMD Radeon R9 M390X at 20662 (-0.5%). Again, the Arc B570 is performing within a narrow band of its competitors, so the GPU is also not an outlier in terms of raw compute capability. The low combo rank must therefore be attributed to how this specific game interacts with this hardware combination, likely due to the demands of Microsoft Flight Simulator's rendering pipeline and the Arc B570's architectural characteristics rather than any fundamental deficiency in either component.

Settings Recommendations

Given the measured data, the most balanced experience at 1920x1080 comes from the Medium preset, which delivers an average of 67 FPS with a minimum of 57 FPS and a maximum of 77 FPS. This provides a comfortable margin above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay while still offering enhanced visual quality over the Low preset. The Low preset at 1080p achieves 86 FPS on average, which is smoother but sacrifices visual fidelity. High settings at 1080p reduce the average to 50 FPS, which is playable but may feel less fluid during demanding scenes, and Ultra drops to 48 FPS on average.

At 2560x1440, the Medium preset again appears to be the sweet spot, with an average of 54 FPS and a minimum of 46 FPS. This is below the 60 FPS target but remains playable for a flight simulator, where frame rate consistency often matters more than raw speed. The Low preset at 1440p delivers 69 FPS on average, making it the only 1440p option that comfortably exceeds 60 FPS, but it does so at the cost of reduced graphical detail. High settings at 1440p yield 41 FPS on average, and Ultra drops to 39 FPS, both of which are likely to feel sluggish in a game that demands precise visual feedback.

At 3840x2160, none of the presets achieve 60 FPS. The Low preset produces the highest average at 51 FPS, followed by Medium at 40 FPS, High at 30 FPS, and Ultra at 28 FPS. For 4K gaming, the Low preset is the only viable option if playability is the priority, but even that falls short of a smooth 60 FPS experience. The Medium preset at 4K, with its minimum of 34 FPS and maximum of 46 FPS, represents a trade-off between visual quality and performance that some users may find acceptable for a flight simulator, where the pace is slower and frame rate dips are less jarring than in fast-action genres.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured FPS dataset for this combination covers three resolutions and four quality settings, providing twelve data points that reveal the performance envelope. At 1920x1080, the full range spans from 48 FPS at Ultra to 86 FPS at Low, with Medium at 67 FPS (minimum 57, maximum 77) and High at 50 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 38 FPS, indicating that the quality presets have a profound impact on performance at this resolution.

Moving to 2560x1440, the averages are 69 FPS at Low, 54 FPS at Medium (minimum 46, maximum 62), 41 FPS at High, and 39 FPS at Ultra. The spread between Low and Ultra narrows to 30 FPS at 1440p, suggesting that the GPU is beginning to become more of a limiting factor as pixel count increases, which compresses the performance differences between settings. The Medium preset at 1440p shows a minimum of 46 FPS, which is only 7 FPS below the average of 54 FPS, indicating relatively stable frame delivery.

At 3840x2160, the averages are 51 FPS at Low, 40 FPS at Medium (minimum 34, maximum 46), 30 FPS at High, and 28 FPS at Ultra. The spread between Low and Ultra narrows further to 23 FPS at 4K, reinforcing the conclusion that the GPU's rendering capacity is the dominant constraint at this resolution. The Medium preset's range of 34 to 46 FPS shows a 12 FPS variance, which is proportionally larger than at lower resolutions, suggesting that 4K operation is pushing the Arc B570 to its limits and frame times become less consistent.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B570 is built on the Xe2-HPG architecture with the BMG-G21 chip, manufactured on a 5 nm process by TSMC with 19,600 million transistors on a 272 mm² die. It operates at a base clock of 2500 MHz and a boost clock of 2500 MHz, meaning there is no dynamic clock headroom beyond the base frequency — the GPU runs at a fixed 2500 MHz under load. The memory subsystem consists of 10 GB of GDDR6 on a 160-bit bus, delivering a bandwidth of 380.0 GB/s. This memory configuration is notable for a GPU in this class, as the 160-bit bus is narrower than what many comparable cards use, but the 19 Gbps effective memory speed helps compensate.

The shading resources include 2304 shading units, 144 texture mapping units, and 80 render output units, with 18 ray tracing cores. The pixel rate is 200.0 GPixel/s and the texture rate is 360.0 GTexel/s, while FP32 throughput is 11.52 TFLOPS and FP16 is 23.04 TFLOPS. These specifications translate into the measured performance where the GPU handles 1080p Low at 86 FPS but struggles to maintain 30 FPS at 4K Ultra. The 10 GB VRAM capacity appears sufficient for this game at these settings, as there is no evidence in the data of memory-related stutters or crashes — the minimum FPS figures at Medium settings (57 FPS at 1080p, 46 FPS at 1440p, 34 FPS at 4K) suggest stable operation without VRAM overflow.

The GPU's benchmark scores provide additional context. In PassMark G3D, it scores 14195, while in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 it achieves 2649. Geekbench OpenCL returns 83514 and Vulkan 96844. The PassMark DirectX scores show 118 for DX11, 72 for DX12, and 164 for DX9, which is an unusual pattern where older API versions score higher than newer ones, potentially indicating driver optimization differences. The GPU's average benchmark score of 20556 places it at the 65th percentile overall, with nearest rivals including the RTX 3070 Mobile and Arc A750.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor from the Core 12th Gen series, built on the Alder Lake-S architecture using Intel's 10 nm process. It has a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz, with a TDP of 65 W. The cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 1.25 MB of L2 per core, and 18 MB of shared L3 cache. The processor supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory in dual-channel configuration and connects via PCIe Gen 5 with 20 lanes from the CPU. The die size is 163 mm², and the processor uses the Intel Socket 1700.

In synthetic benchmarks, the i5-12400F shows strong multi-threaded performance for a 6-core part. Cinebench R23 multi-core scores 12380, while single-core reaches 1680. Cinebench R20 yields 6980 multi-core and 985 single-core, and R15 produces 1759 multi-core and 244 single-core. Geekbench multi-core is 9472 with single-core at 1964. The 3DMark thread scaling shows 1699 for 2 threads, 3067 for 4 threads, 4779 for 8 threads, and 5895 for 16 threads, with a max-thread score of 5912 and single-thread at 909. This scaling pattern — from 1699 at 2 threads to 5912 at max threads — indicates that the processor continues to gain performance as thread count increases, but the gains diminish beyond 8 threads, suggesting that 12 threads are sufficient for most workloads.

For Microsoft Flight Simulator, the CPU's role appears to be supportive rather than limiting. The measured FPS scaling across resolutions is consistent with GPU-bound behavior, and the processor's strong single-thread performance (1680 in Cinebench R23 single-core, 3481 in PassMark single-thread) ensures that game logic and draw call processing are handled efficiently. The 18 MB of shared L3 cache provides ample space for the game's data working set, and the 65 W TDP indicates that thermal throttling is unlikely to be a concern in a standard desktop configuration. The CPU's percentile ranking of 73rd among all processors, with an average benchmark score of 19039, confirms that it is a capable mid-range part that does not hold back the Arc B570 in this application.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combination to maintain 60+ FPS?

A: At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combination achieves 86 FPS on average, which is the only tested configuration that comfortably exceeds 60 FPS. The Medium preset at 1080p delivers 67 FPS on average, also above the 60 FPS threshold, but the minimum of 57 FPS suggests occasional dips below that level.

Q: How does the Arc B570's performance compare to its nearest GPU rivals?

A: The Arc B570 has an average benchmark score of 20556, which is 0.1% above the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile (20534) and 0.1% below the Intel Arc A750 (20582). It also outperforms the NVIDIA Quadro M4000M by 0.4% and trails the AMD Radeon R9 M390X by 0.5%.

Q: Is the i5-12400F a bottleneck for the Arc B570 in this game?

A: The data suggests no. The consistent 40-42% performance drop from 1080p to 4K across all settings presets indicates GPU-bound behavior. If the CPU were the bottleneck, the scaling would be much flatter, especially at higher resolutions where the GPU has more time to render each frame.

Q: What is the expected frame rate at 1440p with Medium settings?

A: The measured average is 54 FPS, with a minimum of 46 FPS and a maximum of 62 FPS. This places the experience below the 60 FPS target but within a playable range for a flight simulator, where smoothness and consistency are more important than high frame rates.

Q: How much VRAM does the Arc B570 have, and does it affect performance in this game?

A: The Arc B570 has 10 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 160-bit bus with 380.0 GB/s bandwidth. The measured minimum FPS values at Medium settings (57 FPS at 1080p, 46 FPS at 1440p, 34 FPS at 4K) show stable frame delivery, indicating that the 10 GB capacity is sufficient for this game at the tested settings without memory-related performance degradation.

Q: What is the combo's overall ranking among tested systems for Microsoft Flight Simulator?

A: This combination ranks 2406 out of 2996 tested combos, placing it in the bottom 20% of all tested configurations. This is notable because both the CPU and GPU sit at respectable percentiles individually (73rd and 65th, respectively), suggesting that this specific game's demands are particularly challenging for this hardware pairing.