Microsoft Flight Simulator

# Microsoft Flight Simulator — Intel Core i5-12400F + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER

This combination places 2,138th out of 3,714 tested combos in Microsoft Flight Simulator, landing in the lower-middle portion of the database. The measured frame rates show a system that can handle the sim at playable levels across most settings, but the gap between Low and Ultra presets reveals where the hardware's limits sit. The data indicates a pairing that favors resolution scaling over brute-force settings pushes, with the CPU's six-core Alder Lake architecture providing solid single-threaded performance while the GPU's 8 GB VRAM and Turing-generation compute become the primary constraint at higher visual loads.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows show a clear pattern: Medium settings deliver the best balance of frame rate and visual fidelity across all three resolutions. At 1080p, Medium produces an average of 86 FPS with a minimum of 73 FPS and maximum of 99 FPS, which keeps the sim well above the 60 FPS threshold while retaining enough visual detail for a flight simulator where terrain and cockpit readability matter. High settings at the same resolution drop to 65 FPS average, which is still playable but leaves less headroom for the frame-time spikes that flight simulators are known to produce when streaming scenery.

At 1440p, Medium again stands out with a 70 FPS average and a 59–80 FPS range. This is the strongest argument for Medium as the recommended preset: it maintains a playable experience at a resolution where the RTX 2070 SUPER's 8 GB GDDR6 buffer and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth are being exercised more heavily. Low settings at 1440p hit 89 FPS, but the visual compromise in a game that relies heavily on atmospheric detail and ground texture legibility makes that trade-off questionable. High at 1440p drops to 52 FPS, which begins to feel marginal for a sim where smooth panning is essential.

For 4K, the data tells a more constrained story. Medium produces 51 FPS average with a 44–59 FPS range, which is technically playable but sits right at the edge of comfort. Low at 4K reaches 66 FPS, and this may be the only resolution where Low is worth considering if the user insists on 4K output. However, the 37 FPS at Ultra and 39 FPS at High at 4K are below the threshold for smooth flight simulation, so Medium is the ceiling for acceptable performance at that resolution. The recommendation across all resolutions is Medium, with the caveat that 4K users should expect to accept a lower frame rate floor.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo rank of 2,138 out of 3,714 places this system in the 42nd percentile of tested combinations for Microsoft Flight Simulator. This is a mid-pack result, and the data supports that positioning: the system is not a top-tier performer, but it is far from the bottom of the field. The rank reflects a combination where neither component is the bottleneck across the board—the CPU's single-threaded score of 909 in 3dmark and 1,680 in Cinebench R23 indicate capable per-core performance, while the GPU's PassMark G3D score of 18,169 and percentile of 65 against all GPUs show a mid-range graphics solution.

Compared to the nearest rivals in the CPU database, the i5-12400F's average benchmark score of 19,039 is within 0.3% of the Intel Core 3 201E (19,056) and the AMD EPYC 7773X (19,039 vs. 18,979, a 0.3% delta), and essentially tied with the AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS (19,047). This means the CPU is performing exactly where expected for its class, with no anomalous degradation or uplift in the measured rows. The GPU's average score of 20,282 places it 1% above the NVIDIA Quadro M4000M (20,480) and 1.2% above the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile (20,534), with the Intel Arc B570 (20,556) and Arc A750 (20,582) testing 1.3% and 1.5% higher respectively. The GPU is competitive with its immediate peers but does not overperform.

The rank in this specific game is lower than the component percentiles might suggest—the CPU sits at the 73rd percentile and the GPU at the 65th percentile against all components, yet the combo ranks in the 42nd percentile of tested combos. This indicates that Microsoft Flight Simulator's demands are particularly sensitive to the combination's memory bandwidth and VRAM capacity, not just raw compute. The 8 GB VRAM and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth of the RTX 2070 SUPER are the likely limiting factors in a game that streams large texture sets.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in Microsoft Flight Simulator?

A: The measured data shows 1080p Medium at 86 FPS average, 1440p Medium at 70 FPS average, and 4K Medium at 51 FPS average. The 1440p Medium result offers the best balance of visual quality and frame rate headroom, as it stays above 60 FPS while providing more screen real estate than 1080p.

Q: Can this system handle Ultra settings at any resolution?

A: Ultra settings produce 62 FPS at 1080p, 50 FPS at 1440p, and 37 FPS at 4K. Only the 1080p Ultra result is comfortably playable; 1440p Ultra is borderline, and 4K Ultra is below the threshold for smooth flight simulation.

Q: How much performance is lost when moving from Low to Ultra at 4K?

A: At 4K, the average FPS drops from 66 on Low to 37 on Ultra, a reduction of 29 FPS or approximately 44% of the Low preset's performance. This is the largest percentage drop across any resolution in the measured rows.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU more likely to be the bottleneck at 4K?

A: The data shows the GPU is the limiting factor at 4K. The CPU's single-threaded performance is strong (909 in 3dmark single-thread, 1,680 in Cinebench R23), but the GPU's average FPS falls from 66 at Low to 39 at High and 37 at Ultra, indicating the graphics card cannot maintain frame rates as settings increase at this resolution.

Q: What frame rate range can be expected at 1440p Medium?

A: The measured minimum is 59 FPS and the maximum is 80 FPS, with an average of 70 FPS. This range suggests consistent performance without severe frame-time spikes, which is important for a flight simulator where smooth camera movement is essential.

Q: How does this combo compare to the CPU's nearest rivals in real-game performance?

A: The CPU's average benchmark score of 19,039 is within 0.3% of the Intel Core 3 201E (19,056) and 0.3% above the AMD EPYC 7773X (18,979). The game's measured FPS results are consistent with this CPU performance, showing no signs of CPU-induced stalls in the frame rate data.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full settings sweep shows a clear progression: Low averages 111 FPS, Medium averages 86 FPS with a 73–99 FPS range, High averages 65 FPS, and Ultra averages 62 FPS. The jump from Low to Medium is a 25 FPS reduction, while the drop from Medium to High is 21 FPS. The gap between High and Ultra is only 3 FPS, suggesting that the Ultra preset at 1080p is not adding significant GPU load over High—the 62 FPS at Ultra is still playable, but the marginal cost of the final settings tier is minimal.

At 2560x1440, the same settings order produces: Low at 89 FPS, Medium at 70 FPS (59–80 FPS range), High at 52 FPS, and Ultra at 50 FPS. The reduction from Low to Medium is 19 FPS, and from Medium to High is 18 FPS, while High to Ultra is only 2 FPS. The 1440p data shows a compression of frame rates compared to 1080p—the spread from Low to Ultra narrows from 49 FPS at 1080p to 39 FPS at 1440p—indicating that the GPU is becoming more of a limiting factor as pixel count increases.

At 3840x2160, the measured rows are: Low at 66 FPS, Medium at 51 FPS (44–59 FPS range), High at 39 FPS, and Ultra at 37 FPS. The Low to Medium drop is 15 FPS, Medium to High is 12 FPS, and High to Ultra is 2 FPS. The 4K results show the tightest clustering of all resolutions, with only 29 FPS separating Low from Ultra. This compression suggests the GPU is hitting a hard compute or memory bandwidth ceiling at 4K, where increasing settings yields diminishing returns because the render workload is already saturating the hardware.

The Medium preset is the only one with min/max data at all three resolutions, which provides a consistent reference point: 73–99 FPS at 1080p, 59–80 FPS at 1440p, and 44–59 FPS at 4K. The minimum values at each resolution stay proportionally close to the averages, indicating stable frame pacing without severe hitches.

Resolution Scaling

The measured data shows a predictable scaling pattern: at Medium settings, the average FPS drops from 86 at 1080p to 70 at 1440p, a 19% reduction, and then to 51 at 4K, a further 27% reduction. The total drop from 1080p to 4K at Medium is 35 FPS, or approximately 41% of the 1080p value. This scaling is roughly consistent with the increase in pixel count: 1440p has 1.78 times the pixels of 1080p, and 4K has 4 times the pixels, but the frame rate does not drop proportionally—it drops less. This indicates that the system is not purely pixel-bound at Medium settings; there is some headroom in the render pipeline that absorbs part of the resolution increase.

At Low settings, the scaling is steeper: 111 FPS at 1080p, 89 FPS at 1440p (a 20% drop), and 66 FPS at 4K (a 26% drop from 1440p). The Low preset total drop from 1080p to 4K is 45 FPS, or 41% of the 1080p value—nearly identical to the Medium scaling. At High settings, the pattern shifts: 65 FPS at 1080p, 52 FPS at 1440p (a 20% drop), and 39 FPS at 4K (a 25% drop from 1440p), for a total of 26 FPS or 40% of the 1080p value.

The Ultra preset shows the most compressed scaling: 62 FPS at 1080p, 50 FPS at 1440p (a 19% drop), and 37 FPS at 4K (a 26% drop), totaling 25 FPS or 40% of the 1080p value. The consistency of these percentage drops across all four settings presets—all falling between 40% and 41% total reduction from 1080p to 4K—suggests that resolution scaling is governed by a single limiting factor. The RTX 2070 SUPER's 8 GB VRAM and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth are the likely candidates, as the frame rate reduction tracks closely with the memory bandwidth demands of higher resolutions rather than with compute-bound rendering.

The fact that the percentage drop is nearly identical at Low and Ultra settings indicates that the bottleneck is not settings-dependent. Even at Low, where the GPU is doing less work per pixel, the 4K frame rate of 66 FPS shows the same proportional loss as Ultra's 37 FPS. This points to a memory subsystem limit rather than a shader or texture unit limit.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400F brings 6 cores and 12 threads from the Alder Lake architecture, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. The 3dmark single-thread score of 909 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1,680 indicate strong per-core performance, which is critical for Microsoft Flight Simulator's main thread that handles flight dynamics and scenery loading. The multi-threaded scores—5,912 in 3dmark max threads, 12,380 in Cinebench R23 multicore, and 19,433 in PassMark multithread—show that the CPU has ample headroom for background tasks, but the game's frame rate data does not suggest CPU limitation.

The evidence for the CPU not being the primary bottleneck comes from the resolution scaling analysis. If the CPU were limiting, the frame rates would stay flat across resolutions at the same settings, but the data shows significant drops from 1080p to 4K at every settings tier. The 4K Medium average of 51 FPS versus the 1080p Medium average of 86 FPS demonstrates that the GPU is the scaling factor, not the CPU. The CPU's 65 W TDP and dual-channel memory support (DDR4 and DDR5) provide adequate bandwidth for the game's streaming requirements, and the 18 MB shared L3 cache helps with scenery data locality.

The CPU's benchmark profile places it in the 73rd percentile against all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 19,039. Its nearest rivals—the AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS (19,047, 0% delta), Intel Core 3 201E (19,056, -0.1% delta), Intel Core i5-1335U (18,982, 0.3% delta), and AMD EPYC 7773X (18,979, 0.3% delta)—all score within a 0.3% band, confirming that the i5-12400F is performing exactly at its expected level. In Microsoft Flight Simulator, the CPU's job is to feed the GPU with draw calls and process physics, and the frame rate data shows no stalls or anomalies that would indicate CPU struggles.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER is built on the Turing architecture with 2,560 shading units, 160 TMUs, and 64 ROPs, along with 40 RT cores and 320 tensor cores. The base clock of 1605 MHz and boost clock of 1770 MHz, combined with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus delivering 448.0 GB/s bandwidth, define the GPU's capabilities. The PassMark G3D score of 18,169 and 3dmark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1,651 place it in the 65th percentile against all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 20,282.

The GPU's role in this game is the dominant factor in the measured frame rates. The VRAM capacity of 8 GB is the most likely limitation at higher settings and resolutions, given that Microsoft Flight Simulator streams large texture sets for terrain and aircraft. The resolution scaling analysis shows that frame rates drop proportionally with pixel count at all settings, which is consistent with a memory bandwidth constraint rather than a compute limit. The 448.0 GB/s bandwidth is sufficient for 1080p and 1440p at Medium settings, but at 4K the same bandwidth must serve four times the pixels, and the frame rates at 4K High (39 FPS) and Ultra (37 FPS) show the GPU running out of memory throughput.

The GPU's nearest rivals—the NVIDIA Quadro M4000M (20,480, -1% delta), NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile (20,534, -1.2% delta), Intel Arc B570 (20,556, -1.3% delta), and Intel Arc A750 (20,582, -1.5% delta)—all score slightly higher in synthetic benchmarks, yet the measured game performance shows this GPU holding its own at 1080p and 1440p. The 8 GB VRAM and 256-bit memory bus are the defining characteristics for this game; the data shows that the GPU's compute capabilities (9.062 TFLOPS FP32) are not the limiting factor, as the frame rates do not collapse when settings increase at the same resolution. Instead, the uniform percentage drop across resolutions points to the memory subsystem as the constraint that will prevent this combo from reaching high frame rates at 4K.