Microsoft Flight Simulator

# CPU Role — cores, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The Intel Core i5-13400F is a Raptor Lake-S desktop processor built on Intel's 10 nm process, featuring 10 cores and 16 threads. It operates with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.60 GHz, with a TDP of 65 W. The chip includes an 80 KB L1 cache per core, 1.25 MB L2 cache per core, and a shared 20 MB L3 cache. Memory support spans both DDR4 and DDR5 across a dual-channel bus, and the CPU connects via PCIe Gen 5 with 16 lanes.

In synthetic benchmarks, the i5-13400F demonstrates strong multi-threaded capability. Its Cinebench R23 multi-core score reaches 22604, while the single-core score sits at 3191. The Geekbench multi-core result is 11068, with a single-core score of 1996. PassMark multithread performance comes in at 25032, and single-thread at 3634. The processor's 3DMark 16-thread score is 7314, while the max-thread score is 7307 — nearly identical, suggesting the chip's thread scaling plateaus quickly beyond 16 threads. The 2-thread score is 1880, 4-thread is 3459, and 8-thread is 5591, showing steady gains as more cores engage.

The CPU's percentile ranking against all processors is 77, placing it above most desktop chips. Its average benchmark score is 25292, which is nearly identical to the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS at 25284 (0% delta), the Intel Core 5 120 at 25362 (-0.3%), the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D at 25365 (-0.3%), and the AMD Ryzen 7 6800H at 25201 (0.4%). These rivals are within a fraction of a percent, meaning the i5-13400F delivers compute performance statistically indistinguishable from those parts in aggregate benchmarks.

For Microsoft Flight Simulator, the relevance of CPU performance is primarily in simulation logic, weather systems, and draw-call processing. The measured FPS data shows that at 1080p Low, the combo achieves 176 FPS, which is the highest figure across all tested configurations. At 1080p Medium, average FPS drops to 137, and at 1080p High it falls to 103. The progression from Low to Medium to High at 1080p shows a 39 FPS decline from Low to Medium, then a 34 FPS decline from Medium to High — a pattern consistent with increasing CPU load as more objects, terrain detail, and AI traffic are rendered.

The 10-core, 16-thread configuration appears well-suited to Flight Simulator's workload, as the game is known to scale across multiple cores for scenery generation and physics. The single-thread score of 3191 in Cinebench R23 indicates capable per-core performance, which matters for the game's main thread. The 77th percentile ranking suggests the CPU is not a bottleneck in most scenarios, though at lower resolutions and settings, the GPU becomes the more dominant factor.

# GPU Role — VRAM, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture using TSMC's 5 nm process, with a chip designated GB205. It packs 31,100 million transistors on a 263 mm² die. The GPU operates at a base clock of 2325 MHz and a boost clock of 2512 MHz, with memory clocked at 1750 MHz (28 Gbps effective). The memory subsystem consists of 12 GB of GDDR7 on a 192-bit bus, yielding 672.0 GB/s of bandwidth.

The shader configuration includes 6144 shading units, 192 texture mapping units, and 80 render output units. Ray tracing is handled by 48 RT cores, while 192 tensor cores support AI workloads. The GPU achieves a pixel rate of 201.0 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 482.3 GTexel/s, with FP32 performance rated at 30.87 TFLOPS. Power consumption is rated at 250 W TDP, requiring a 600 W suggested PSU and a single 16-pin connector. The card is dual-slot, measuring 245 mm in length, and connects via PCIe 5.0 x16.

In synthetic benchmarks, the RTX 5070 scores 5077 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, 172660 in Geekbench OpenCL, and 178923 in Geekbench Vulkan. PassMark G3D score is 29137, with GPU compute at 15787. The GPU's percentile ranking is 82, and its average benchmark score is 40377. The nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon Pro 580 at 40318 (0.1% delta), the AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100 at 40063 (0.8%), the AMD Radeon Pro 5300 at 40870 (-1.2%), and the NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile at 39568 (2%). These deltas are small, indicating the RTX 5070's raw compute performance is on par with those workstation-oriented parts in aggregate metrics, though gaming-specific workloads differ substantially.

For Flight Simulator, the GPU's 12 GB VRAM is a relevant consideration. The game's high-resolution textures and detailed scenery can consume significant memory at higher settings. The measured FPS at 4K Ultra is 58 FPS, which is the lowest across all tested resolutions and settings. The 4K High setting yields 61 FPS, while 4K Medium reaches 81 FPS with a minimum of 69 and maximum of 94. At 4K Low, the average jumps to 105 FPS.

The RTX 5070's memory bandwidth of 672.0 GB/s appears sufficient for the game's demands at 4K, but the drop from Medium to Ultra at 4K (81 to 58 FPS, a 23 FPS decline) suggests that the Ultra preset imposes significant additional load — likely from higher shadow quality, volumetric clouds, and anisotropic filtering — that stresses both the GPU compute and memory subsystems. The boost clock of 2512 MHz provides the headroom needed to maintain playable frame rates, though the 4K Ultra result indicates the card is nearing its limits at the highest settings.

# Resolution Scaling — how FPS drops from 1080p to 4K and what it says about the limiting component

Examining the measured FPS across resolutions reveals a clear pattern of GPU-bound scaling at higher settings and CPU-bound behavior at lower settings. At Low settings, the average FPS goes from 176 at 1080p to 142 at 1440p to 105 at 4K. This represents a 19.3% drop from 1080p to 1440p, and a 26.1% drop from 1440p to 4K. The total scaling from 1080p to 4K is a 40.3% reduction in frame rate.

At Medium settings, the progression is 137 FPS at 1080p, 110 FPS at 1440p, and 81 FPS at 4K. The percentage drops are 19.7% from 1080p to 1440p and 26.4% from 1440p to 4K, closely mirroring the Low settings scaling. The total reduction from 1080p to 4K is 40.9%. This near-identical scaling pattern between Low and Medium suggests that neither setting is introducing a disproportionate bottleneck; the GPU is scaling as expected with pixel count.

At High settings, the numbers are 103 FPS at 1080p, 83 FPS at 1440p, and 61 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 19.4%, and from 1440p to 4K is 26.5%, with a total reduction of 40.8%. This consistency across Low, Medium, and High indicates the GPU is the primary limiting component in all three presets. The fact that scaling percentages are nearly identical regardless of settings suggests that the RTX 5070's fill rate and shading throughput scale predictably with resolution.

At Ultra settings, the pattern shifts: 98 FPS at 1080p, 79 FPS at 1440p, and 58 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 19.4%, and from 1440p to 4K is 26.6%, with a total of 40.8%. The Ultra preset follows the same scaling behavior as the other settings, reinforcing that resolution is the dominant factor in performance degradation.

The consistency of these scaling percentages — all hovering around 40% total reduction from 1080p to 4K — strongly indicates a GPU-limited scenario across all settings. If the CPU were the bottleneck, the scaling would show larger relative drops at lower resolutions (where the CPU is already saturated) and smaller drops at higher resolutions (where the GPU becomes the limiter). Instead, the uniform scaling suggests the i5-13400F is providing adequate headroom, and the RTX 5070's performance scales cleanly with pixel count.

The largest absolute FPS difference between 1080p and 4K occurs at Low settings (71 FPS), while the smallest is at Ultra (40 FPS). This is expected: at Low settings, the GPU has more headroom to work with, so the pixel-count penalty is larger in absolute terms. At Ultra, the GPU is already heavily loaded even at 1080p, so the additional resolution penalty is comparatively smaller.

# Measured FPS Breakdown — resolution by resolution, settings by settings, exact numbers

At 1920x1080, the RTX 5070 paired with the i5-13400F delivers its highest frame rates. Low settings produce an average of 176 FPS, making this the fastest configuration tested. Medium settings yield 137 FPS on average, with a minimum of 116 FPS and a maximum of 157 FPS. High settings drop to 103 FPS average. Ultra settings produce 98 FPS average. The spread from Low to Ultra at 1080p is 78 FPS, showing that the Low preset nearly doubles the Ultra frame rate.

At 2560x1440, the performance envelope tightens. Low settings average 142 FPS. Medium settings produce 110 FPS, with a minimum of 94 FPS and a maximum of 127 FPS. High settings average 83 FPS. Ultra settings average 79 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 63 FPS, a narrower gap than at 1080p, reflecting the increased GPU load at higher resolution.

At 3840x2160, the RTX 5070 is pushed hardest. Low settings average 105 FPS. Medium settings produce 81 FPS, with a minimum of 69 FPS and a maximum of 94 FPS. High settings average 61 FPS. Ultra settings average 58 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 47 FPS, the smallest of all resolutions, indicating that the GPU is approaching its limits even at Low settings.

Looking at the Medium preset specifically, which is the only setting with min/max data across all three resolutions, the 1080p min of 116 FPS exceeds the 1440p average of 110 FPS. Similarly, the 1440p min of 94 FPS is below the 4K average of 81 FPS but above the 4K min of 69 FPS. This shows that the frame time variance grows with resolution — the gap between min and max at 1080p is 41 FPS, at 1440p it is 33 FPS, and at 4K it is 25 FPS. The narrowing gap suggests that at higher resolutions, the GPU is more consistently saturated, reducing the variance that comes from less-demanding scenes.

The Ultra preset at 4K (58 FPS) is the only configuration that falls below 60 FPS, which is often considered the threshold for smooth gameplay. The High preset at 4K (61 FPS) just clears it, making it the highest quality setting that maintains playable frame rates at 4K.

# How This Combo Ranks — use comboRankInGame vs other tested combos

The combination of the Intel Core i5-13400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 achieves a rank of 729 out of 3714 tested combos in Microsoft Flight Simulator. This places the combo in the top 19.6% of all configurations tested, which is a strong showing given the breadth of hardware combinations evaluated.

The rank of 729 means that roughly 2985 other combos performed worse, while 728 performed better. The percentile position suggests this pairing sits comfortably in the upper tier of gaming systems for this title. Given that the CPU ranks in the 77th percentile and the GPU in the 82nd percentile individually, the combined rank of 729 out of 3714 (80.4th percentile) is slightly lower than either component's individual percentile, indicating a minor efficiency loss when paired together — likely due to the CPU's 10-core configuration not fully saturating the RTX 5070 at lower resolutions.

The gap between the combo rank and the GPU's individual percentile (82nd) suggests that in some scenarios, particularly at 1080p Low where the CPU's threading limits might surface, the i5-13400F prevents the RTX 5070 from reaching its full potential. However, the measured FPS data shows that even at 1080p Ultra (98 FPS) and 1440p Ultra (79 FPS), the combo maintains high performance, so this limitation is not severe.

Compared to the nearest rival components, the i5-13400F's average benchmark score is nearly identical to the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS (0% delta), and the RTX 5070's average score is within 2% of its closest rivals. This means the combo's rank is largely determined by how the two components interact in Flight Simulator's specific workload, rather than by raw aggregate performance. The data indicates that the RTX 5070's 12 GB VRAM and 672.0 GB/s bandwidth are well-matched to the i5-13400F's 20 MB L3 cache and dual-channel memory support for this title.

# Settings Recommendations — which preset gives the best experience per the measured rows

Based solely on the measured FPS data, the optimal settings depend on the target resolution and desired frame rate.

At 1920x1080, all four presets exceed 60 FPS, with the lowest being Ultra at 98 FPS. Since even the most demanding preset clears the 60 FPS threshold by a wide margin, Ultra settings are fully viable at this resolution. The 98 FPS average at Ultra is only 5 FPS lower than High (103 FPS), making Ultra the clear recommendation for 1080p users who prioritize visual quality without sacrificing smoothness. The Medium preset at 137 FPS offers a min of 116 FPS, which is still high, but the visual trade-off is significant.

At 2560x1440, Ultra averages 79 FPS, which is above 60 FPS and offers good headroom. High averages 83 FPS, only 4 FPS higher. Given the small difference, Ultra is again the recommended preset at 1440p, as it provides the best visual experience while staying comfortably above playable thresholds. The Medium preset at 110 FPS is available for users with high-refresh-rate monitors, but the jump from Medium to Ultra is only 31 FPS, while the visual improvement is substantial.

At 3840x2160, the situation changes. Ultra averages 58 FPS, which falls below the 60 FPS threshold. High averages 61 FPS, barely clearing it. Medium averages 81 FPS, offering a significant margin. For 4K users, the recommendation is High settings, which provides the best balance of visual fidelity and playable frame rates. The 3 FPS difference between High and Ultra is negligible in terms of smoothness, but High is more likely to maintain consistent frame pacing given the 4K Ultra result is the lowest measured. Medium at 81 FPS is a strong alternative for users who prioritize frame rate over maximum visual quality, especially with the min of 69 FPS providing a safety margin.

Across all resolutions, the Low preset is not recommended for this combo, as it sacrifices significant visual quality for frame rates that exceed 100 FPS even at 4K — diminishing returns that do not justify the visual downgrade.

# FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS this combo achieves in Microsoft Flight Simulator?

A: The highest average FPS is 176, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings.

Q: Does this combo maintain 60 FPS at 4K Ultra settings?

A: No, the 4K Ultra preset produces an average of 58 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold. The 4K High preset averages 61 FPS, just clearing it.

Q: How does the i5-13400F compare to its closest rival in aggregate benchmarks?

A: The i5-13400F's average benchmark score is 25292, which is identical to the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS at 25284 (0% delta) and within 0.4% of the AMD Ryzen 7 6800H at 25201.

Q: What is the combo's rank among all tested configurations?

A: The combo ranks 729 out of 3714 tested combos in Microsoft Flight Simulator, placing it in the top 19.6% of all configurations.

Q: What is the minimum FPS recorded at 1440p Medium settings?

A: The minimum FPS at 2560x1440 Medium settings is 94 FPS, with an average of 110 FPS and a maximum of 127 FPS.

Q: How much VRAM does the RTX 5070 have, and what is its memory bandwidth?

A: The RTX 5070 has 12 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 192-bit bus, providing 672.0 GB/s of bandwidth.