Microsoft Flight Simulator

FAQ

Q: How does the Intel Core i5-12600KF compare to its closest rival in synthetic CPU benchmarks?

A: The i5-12600KF posts an average benchmark score of 27827, which is effectively tied with the Intel Core i9-10900K (27829, 0% delta). It also sits 0.1% behind the Intel Core i5-12600K and 0.2% behind the Intel Core Ultra 5 125H, while leading the Intel Core i7-13700H by 0.4%.

Q: What is the GPU's standing among all tested graphics cards?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT achieves an average benchmark score of 30097 and places in the 73rd percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rival is the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 at 30109 (0% delta), with the AMD Radeon RX 570 trailing by 0.2% and the NVIDIA Tesla M60 behind by 0.4%.

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

A: At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combo delivers 135.8 FPS average. Medium settings yield 107.2 FPS, High settings produce 79.2 FPS, and Ultra settings result in 78.5 FPS.

Q: How does the combo rank among all tested CPU-GPU pairings in this game?

A: The combination of the Intel Core i5-12600KF and AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT ranks 785th out of 1795 tested combos in Microsoft Flight Simulator, placing it in the upper-middle portion of the field.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between 4K Low and 4K Ultra settings?

A: At 3840x2160, the Low preset averages 81.1 FPS, while Ultra drops to 47.5 FPS. This represents a 33.6 FPS reduction, or roughly 41% lower performance when moving from the lowest to highest quality settings.

Q: Does the CPU or GPU appear to be the limiting factor at 1080p?

A: The data suggests the GPU becomes less stressed at lower resolutions. At 1080p Low, the system reaches 135.8 FPS, but moving to 1440p Low only drops to 107.4 FPS (a 20.9% decrease), indicating the CPU maintains high throughput while the GPU handles the increased pixel load.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT is built on the RDNA 3.0 architecture with the Navi 32 chip, fabricated on a 5 nm process by TSMC. The GPU carries 12 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 192-bit bus, delivering 432.0 GB/s of bandwidth. Its memory clock runs at 2250 MHz, translating to 18 Gbps effective, while the base clock sits at 1435 MHz and the boost clock reaches 2544 MHz. The card's 3456 shading units, 216 texture mapping units, and 96 raster operations pipelines are supported by 54 ray tracing cores, allowing DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) feature support.

In Microsoft Flight Simulator, the GPU's role shifts dramatically with resolution. At 1080p Low, the system produces 135.8 FPS, but the GPU is not the primary constraint — the CPU's 10 cores and 16 threads (with a 4.90 GHz boost clock) can feed frames quickly enough that the graphics card has headroom. As resolution climbs to 4K, however, the GPU's raw throughput becomes the bottleneck. The card's 35.17 TFLOPS FP32 compute and 244.2 GPixel/s pixel rate must render significantly more pixels, and the measured FPS reflects this pressure.

The VRAM allocation of 12 GB proves adequate across all tested settings, as no min-FPS data suggests memory capacity issues. The 432.0 GB/s bandwidth is particularly relevant at 4K Ultra, where the 47.5 FPS result indicates the memory subsystem and shader array are working near their limits. The GPU's 73rd percentile ranking among all GPUs, combined with its nearest rival being the RTX 5060 (0% delta in average score), positions it as a mid-range-to-upper-mid-range part that handles flight simulation's terrain and weather rendering at playable rates up to High settings at 4K.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i5-12600KF paired with the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT ranks 785th out of 1795 tested combinations in Microsoft Flight Simulator. This places the pairing in the 56th percentile of all combos — slightly above the median but far from the top-tier results achieved by flagship CPUs and GPUs. The rank reflects a balance: the CPU's 84th percentile standing (average benchmark score 27827) is stronger than the GPU's 73rd percentile, suggesting the processor has more headroom relative to the graphics card.

The CPU's synthetic performance shows it competing directly with the Core i9-10900K (0% delta) and the Core i5-12600K (-0.1% delta). In multithreaded workloads, the i5-12600KF posts a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 23444, with a single-core score of 3309. These figures indicate strong per-thread performance, which matters for flight simulators that rely heavily on single-threaded simulation logic. The GPU's Passmark G3D score of 22547 and 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 3316 position it just above the RTX 5060 (0% delta in avg score), but the combo's in-game rank shows that raw synthetic scores do not perfectly translate to flight sim performance.

The 785th rank of 1795 combos means roughly 56% of tested pairings outperform this configuration. This is not a top-tier result, but it is respectable for a mid-range setup. The data indicates that the combination is well-matched — neither component dramatically outclasses the other in this specific title, as evidenced by the FPS scaling across resolutions (detailed below). The rank also implies that users with higher-end GPUs like the RTX 5070 Mobile (which the RX 7700 XT leads by 0.6% in avg score) may see better results in this simulator, but the difference would be modest.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its highest frame rates. Low settings produce 135.8 FPS, which is ideal for high-refresh-rate monitors. Medium settings drop to 107.2 FPS, still comfortably above 100 FPS. High settings yield 79.2 FPS, and Ultra settings are nearly identical at 78.5 FPS. The small gap between High and Ultra (0.7 FPS) suggests that Ultra's additional visual effects are not heavily taxing at this resolution, or that the CPU is beginning to limit the frame rate.

Moving to 2560x1440, the resolution increase takes a measurable toll. Low settings average 107.4 FPS, a 28.4 FPS drop from 1080p Low. Medium settings produce 84.4 FPS, high settings reach 62.2 FPS, and Ultra settings manage 63.2 FPS. Notably, Ultra (63.2 FPS) slightly outperforms High (62.2 FPS) at 1440p — a 1 FPS difference that could be due to measurement variance, but it indicates that the GPU is not the sole limiter at these settings. The scaling from Low to Ultra at 1440p shows a 44.2 FPS drop (from 107.4 to 63.2), a 41% reduction.

At 3840x2160, the GPU becomes the clear bottleneck. Low settings average 81.1 FPS, which is still playable, but Medium drops to 60.8 FPS, High to 45.9 FPS, and Ultra to 47.5 FPS. The 4K Ultra result of 47.5 FPS is slightly higher than 4K High's 45.9 FPS, again suggesting the settings are not perfectly linear in their demands. The spread from Low to Ultra at 4K is 33.6 FPS (81.1 to 47.5), representing a 41% performance penalty for the highest quality preset.

Across all resolutions, the pattern is consistent: the gap between Low and Ultra narrows as resolution increases. At 1080p, the Low-to-Ultra delta is 57.3 FPS; at 1440p it is 44.2 FPS; at 4K it is 33.6 FPS. This is the classic signature of a GPU-bound scenario at higher resolutions, where the graphics card's workload dominates and setting changes have proportionally less absolute impact.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K reveals which component limits performance. At Low settings, the progression is 135.8 FPS (1080p) → 107.4 FPS (1440p) → 81.1 FPS (4K). The 1080p-to-1440p drop is 28.4 FPS (20.9%), and the 1440p-to-4K drop is 26.3 FPS (24.5%). This scaling is nearly linear with pixel count (1440p has 1.78x the pixels of 1080p, and 4K has 2.25x the pixels of 1440p), indicating the GPU is the primary limiter even at Low settings.

At Ultra settings, the scaling is steeper in percentage terms: 78.5 FPS (1080p) → 63.2 FPS (1440p) → 47.5 FPS (4K). The 1080p-to-1440p drop is 15.3 FPS (19.5%), and the 1440p-to-4K drop is 15.7 FPS (24.8%). The consistent ~20-25% drops per resolution step suggest the GPU's shading and memory bandwidth are scaling predictably with pixel count, with no sudden cliff that would indicate a VRAM capacity issue.

The fact that 1080p Ultra (78.5 FPS) is nearly identical to 1080p High (79.2 FPS) — a difference of just 0.7 FPS — points to the CPU becoming a co-limiter at lower resolutions with high settings. The i5-12600KF's single-thread performance (Cinebench R23 single-core score of 3309, 3DMark single-thread score of 1016) is strong, but flight simulation's complex weather, AI traffic, and physics calculations can still create a ceiling. The CPU's 84th percentile ranking and its near-parity with the Core i9-10900K suggest it is not a weak link, but the data implies that at 1080p, the GPU has enough headroom that the CPU's frame pacing becomes noticeable.

Conversely, at 4K, the GPU's 12 GB memory and 432.0 GB/s bandwidth are fully engaged. The 4K Low result of 81.1 FPS shows that even with reduced graphical complexity, the GPU must process four times the pixels of 1080p. The 4K Ultra result of 47.5 FPS is just below the 60 FPS threshold that many users target, meaning this combo is best suited for 1080p and 1440p gaming in Microsoft Flight Simulator, with 4K reserved for High settings at most if smoothness is prioritized.