Microsoft Flight Simulator

Microsoft Flight Simulator with the Intel Core i5-14400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 delivers its most balanced experience at 1080p Medium, where the combination of 92.5 FPS and 16.3% headroom over the High preset’s 72.5 FPS shows the GPU still has reserve capacity without sacrificing visual fidelity. At 1440p, the Medium preset at 72.1 FPS becomes the sweet spot, offering smooth gameplay that aligns with the 60 FPS target while maintaining the 8 GB VRAM buffer that the Ultra preset strains at higher resolutions. The data shows that this combo is fundamentally a 1080p-to-1440p performer, with the Ultra preset at 4K dropping to 37.9 FPS, which is below the playable threshold for a flight simulator where smooth panning is critical.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows reveal a clear hierarchy: the Medium preset provides the best experience-to-performance ratio across all resolutions. At 1080p, Medium delivers 92.5 FPS, which is 27.2% faster than High’s 72.5 FPS and only 26.4 FPS behind Low’s 118.9 FPS. The jump from Medium to High costs 20 FPS at 1080p, while the jump from High to Ultra costs only 6.7 FPS, indicating that the Ultra preset’s additional graphical features are less demanding than the High preset’s core rendering changes. For 1440p users, Medium at 72.1 FPS is the recommended choice because it maintains the 60 FPS baseline with 12.1 FPS of headroom, whereas High drops to 59 FPS—technically below the 60 FPS threshold—and Ultra falls to 53.9 FPS. At 4K, no preset achieves a consistently smooth experience, but Low at 70.2 FPS is the only option above 60 FPS; Medium at 52.4 FPS and High at 40.6 FPS are progressively less viable. The Ultra preset at 4K, yielding 37.9 FPS, should be avoided entirely as the data shows it produces the lowest frame rate in the entire measurement set.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060’s 8 GB GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus with 272.0 GB/s bandwidth is the primary constraint at higher resolutions and settings. The GPU’s boost clock of 2460 MHz and base clock of 1830 MHz, combined with 3072 shading units, produce a 15.11 TFLOPS FP32 throughput that handles the game’s terrain rendering well at 1080p. However, the 4K Ultra result of 37.9 FPS versus 1080p Ultra’s 65.8 FPS demonstrates a 27.9 FPS drop when pixel count quadruples, indicating the memory bandwidth and 8 GB capacity become limiting factors. The GPU’s 66th percentile ranking among all GPUs, with its nearest rival being the AMD Radeon RX 6600M at -0.6% delta, places it in the mid-range tier where 4K Ultra is beyond its design envelope. The data suggests the RTX 4060 excels at 1080p Medium through Ultra and 1440p Medium, where the 8 GB VRAM is sufficient, but the 4K results show the memory subsystem bottleneck emerging at 3840x2160.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination ranks 1009th out of 1795 tested combos in Microsoft Flight Simulator, placing it in the 56th percentile of all tested configurations. The rank reflects a mid-pack position, which is consistent with the CPU and GPU’s individual percentiles—the i5-14400F sits in the 88th percentile of all CPUs, while the RTX 4060 is in the 66th percentile of all GPUs. The combo’s rank is dragged down by the GPU’s relative weakness compared to the CPU’s strength, meaning the RTX 4060 becomes the limiting component in most scenarios. In the measured data, the combo’s best performance is at 1080p Low with 118.9 FPS, which represents the ceiling of what this pairing can achieve, while the 4K Ultra result of 37.9 FPS shows the floor. The 1795-combo pool includes configurations with higher-tier GPUs that would achieve significantly better 4K results, but within this combo’s own data, the scaling from Low to Ultra at each resolution follows a consistent pattern of diminishing returns.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers 118.9 FPS on Low, 92.5 FPS on Medium, 72.5 FPS on High, and 65.8 FPS on Ultra. The 1080p results show a 53.1 FPS difference between Low and Ultra, with the largest single drop occurring between Low and Medium at 26.4 FPS. At 2560x1440, the numbers are 96.8 FPS on Low, 72.1 FPS on Medium, 59 FPS on High, and 53.9 FPS on Ultra. The 1440p data reveals a 42.9 FPS spread from Low to Ultra, with the Medium-to-High drop of 13.1 FPS being the most significant step. At 3840x2160, the results are 70.2 FPS on Low, 52.4 FPS on Medium, 40.6 FPS on High, and 37.9 FPS on Ultra. The 4K spread narrows to 32.3 FPS, but the absolute values are low enough that only Low approaches playability. Comparing presets across resolutions, the Medium preset at 1440p (72.1 FPS) nearly matches the High preset at 1080p (72.5 FPS), showing that the combo can trade resolution for settings with minimal FPS impact. The Ultra preset at 1440p (53.9 FPS) is 18.0% faster than the High preset at 4K (40.6 FPS), reinforcing that settings scaling is more effective than resolution scaling for this hardware.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is steepest on the Low preset, where 118.9 FPS falls to 70.2 FPS—a 48.7 FPS reduction (59.0% of the 1080p value retained). On Medium, the drop is from 92.5 FPS to 52.4 FPS, retaining 56.6% of performance. High goes from 72.5 FPS to 40.6 FPS, retaining 56.0%, while Ultra goes from 65.8 FPS to 37.9 FPS, retaining 57.6%. The consistency of these retention percentages—all between 56% and 59%—indicates that the scaling bottleneck is the GPU’s memory bandwidth rather than compute, as the RTX 4060’s 272.0 GB/s bandwidth cannot keep up with the 4x pixel count increase. The 1440p results show less degradation, with Low retaining 81.4% of 1080p performance (96.8 vs 118.9 FPS), Medium retaining 77.9% (72.1 vs 92.5 FPS), High retaining 81.4% (59 vs 72.5 FPS), and Ultra retaining 81.9% (53.9 vs 65.8 FPS). This 1440p-to-1080p retention of roughly 80% across all presets suggests the CPU is still capable at 1440p, but the larger drop to 4K pinpoints the GPU as the limiting component. The data indicates that users should stay at 1080p or 1440p to keep the GPU in its efficient operating range.

FAQ

Q: What is the best preset for 1080p gaming with this combo?

A: The Medium preset at 92.5 FPS offers the best balance, as it is 27.2% faster than High (72.5 FPS) and only 26.4 FPS slower than Low (118.9 FPS), providing a significant visual upgrade over Low with minimal FPS sacrifice.

Q: Can this combo handle 4K Ultra settings?

A: No, the 4K Ultra result of 37.9 FPS is below the 60 FPS playability threshold, and even 4K High at 40.6 FPS fails to reach acceptable smoothness. The 4K Low preset at 70.2 FPS is the only viable 4K option.

Q: How does the RTX 4060 compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The RTX 4060’s average benchmark score of 23181 places it near the AMD Radeon RX 6600M (23321, -0.6% delta) and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti (23338, -0.7% delta), while being 0.7% ahead of the Intel Arc B580 (23021) and 0.8% ahead of the AMD Radeon 760M (22999).

Q: What is the performance difference between 1440p and 1080p on High settings?

A: At 1440p High, the combo delivers 59 FPS, which is 13.5 FPS lower than 1080p High’s 72.5 FPS. This 18.6% reduction is manageable for users with 1440p monitors, but the 1440p Medium preset at 72.1 FPS is a better choice.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor in this game?

A: The data shows the GPU is the primary limiter, especially at 4K where retention percentages drop to 56-59% of 1080p performance. The CPU’s 88th percentile ranking versus the GPU’s 66th percentile confirms the RTX 4060 is the bottleneck.

Q: What is the combo’s overall ranking among tested configurations?

A: This combo ranks 1009th out of 1795 tested combos in Microsoft Flight Simulator, placing it in the middle of the pack and reflecting the GPU’s mid-range positioning relative to the CPU’s higher-tier performance.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-14400F provides 10 cores and 16 threads with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.70 GHz, along with 20 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU’s benchmark results show strong multi-threaded performance with a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 21914 and a single-core score of 3093, while Geekbench reports 11209 multicore and 2333 single-core. In Microsoft Flight Simulator, the CPU’s role is most evident in the 1080p Low preset, where the 118.9 FPS result indicates the GPU is being fed efficiently without CPU bottlenecking. The CPU’s 88th percentile ranking, with the nearest rival being the Intel Core i7-12800H at 0% delta, shows it has ample headroom for this title. However, the data reveals that at 4K, the CPU’s performance advantage becomes irrelevant because the GPU’s 8 GB memory and 272.0 GB/s bandwidth cannot sustain high frame rates regardless of CPU capability. The 1440p results, where Medium at 72.1 FPS and High at 59 FPS are both above the 4K equivalents (52.4 and 40.6 FPS respectively), demonstrate that the CPU maintains its performance through 1440p, but the GPU becomes the decisive factor at higher resolutions. The CPU’s 65W TDP and dual-channel DDR4/DDR5 memory support are sufficient for this workload, and the data indicates no CPU-related frame drops across any of the 12 measured configurations.