Microsoft Flight Simulator

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

The Intel Core i7-12700K is a 12-core, 20-thread Alder Lake-S desktop processor with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz. This 10 nm part sits in the 89th percentile of all CPUs tested, with an average benchmark score of 35,684. Its nearest rivals in synthetic testing are tightly clustered: the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845 scores 35,802 (0.3% higher), the Intel Core i7-13700T scores 35,468 (0.6% lower), the Intel Core i5-14500HX scores 35,940 (0.7% higher), and the Intel Core i7-13800H scores 35,416 (0.8% lower). The performance deltas are minimal, meaning the 12700K sits at parity with its closest competition.

For Microsoft Flight Simulator, the CPU's thread count matters for the simulation's background workloads — AI traffic, physics calculations, and weather systems all consume thread resources. The 20 threads available here provide ample headroom for these tasks, and the 5.00 GHz boost clock helps with the single-threaded rendering pipeline that the flight sim leans on heavily. In Cinebench R23, this CPU posts 29,241 multi-core and 4,128 single-core scores, indicating strong per-thread performance. The 25 MB shared L3 cache is also relevant; Flight Simulator streams terrain data continuously, and a larger cache reduces the frequency of slower memory fetches during flight.

The 12700K's 3DMark thread scaling is telling: 2-thread score of 2,065, 4-thread score of 4,011, 8-thread score of 7,202, 16-thread score of 9,276, and max-thread score of 9,979. The scaling from 8 to 16 threads shows diminishing returns, which aligns with how Flight Simulator behaves — it uses a handful of heavily loaded threads rather than scaling perfectly across all cores. The PassMark multithread score of 34,404 and single-thread score of 4,013 further confirm balanced performance. In practical terms, the CPU is unlikely to be the primary bottleneck in this pairing, especially at higher resolutions where GPU load dominates.

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

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER is a Turing-architecture GPU built on TSMC's 12 nm process, featuring 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus with 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. Its base clock runs at 1470 MHz with a boost of 1650 MHz, and memory operates at 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective). The card houses 2,176 shading units, 136 TMUs, 64 ROPs, 34 RT cores, and 272 tensor cores. It posts 7.181 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and a pixel rate of 105.6 GPixel/s with a texture rate of 224.4 GTexel/s.

The GPU sits in the 63rd percentile of all tested GPUs with an average benchmark score of 19,774. Its nearest rivals are remarkably close: the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN scores 19,706 (0.3% higher), the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 scores 19,680 (0.5% higher), the NVIDIA Quadro K5200 scores 19,623 (0.8% higher), and the NVIDIA Tesla K40m scores 19,519 (1.3% higher). The RTX 2060 SUPER essentially trades blows with the RTX 2070, which is notable given the latter's higher position in the product stack.

For Flight Simulator, the 8 GB VRAM capacity is a critical factor. The game's photogrammetry and high-resolution terrain textures consume memory aggressively, and at 4K Ultra settings, the data shows the GPU struggling to maintain playable framerates. The 448.0 GB/s memory bandwidth helps with texture streaming, but the card's compute throughput — 7.181 TFLOPS — becomes the limiting factor when the simulator renders dense urban environments and complex aircraft models. The DirectX 12 Ultimate support (12_2) and Vulkan 1.4 compatibility ensure modern API access, though the measured results suggest the GPU still hits its ceiling in this title.

FAQ

Q: How does the Core i7-12700K compare to its nearest CPU rival?

A: The 12700K scores 35,684 on average, which is 0.3% behind the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845 (35,802) and 0.6% ahead of the Intel Core i7-13700T (35,468). All four nearest rivals fall within a 0.8% band, indicating near-identical synthetic performance.

Q: What is the best framerate this combo achieves at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combo reaches 103 avg FPS. Medium settings deliver 80.7 avg FPS, High drops to 58.7 avg FPS, and Ultra sits at 54.7 avg FPS.

Q: Is the RTX 2060 SUPER faster than the RTX 2070?

A: In average benchmark scores, the RTX 2060 SUPER (19,774) is 0.5% ahead of the RTX 2070 (19,680). The difference is within measurement noise, so they perform effectively at parity.

Q: How does the combo perform at 4K Ultra settings?

A: At 3840x2160 Ultra, the average framerate is 33.7 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold. High settings at 4K yield 34.1 FPS, Medium 47 FPS, and Low 55.5 FPS.

Q: What is the CPU's single-thread performance relative to its multi-thread score?

A: The 12700K achieves 4,128 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 29,241 in multi-core, representing a roughly 7:1 multi-to-single ratio that reflects efficient 12-core scaling.

Q: Does the GPU's VRAM capacity limit performance in this game?

A: The 8 GB GDDR6 buffer with 448.0 GB/s bandwidth handles the game's textures, but the GPU's 7.181 TFLOPS compute becomes the bottleneck at higher settings, as evidenced by the steep FPS drops from Low to Ultra across all resolutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo shows clear scaling across settings. Low averages 103 FPS, which is a smooth experience for flight simulation. Medium drops to 80.7 FPS, still comfortable. High falls further to 58.7 FPS, nearing the edge of acceptable smoothness. Ultra bottoms out at 54.7 FPS, showing that the RTX 2060 SUPER's compute limits surface even at 1080p when the game's full visual feature set is enabled.

Moving to 2560x1440, the pattern holds but with lower absolute numbers. Low settings deliver 77.9 FPS, a strong result for 1440p. Medium produces 64.1 FPS, maintaining playability. High drops to 47.1 FPS, which begins to feel sluggish for a sim requiring precise control. Ultra sits at 44.8 FPS, a marginal 2.3 FPS below High — the GPU is clearly struggling with the added resolution and settings load.

At 3840x2160, the results become marginal. Low settings yield 55.5 FPS, just above the 60 FPS line. Medium reaches 47 FPS, High drops to 34.1 FPS, and Ultra falls to 33.7 FPS. The delta between High and Ultra at 4K is only 0.4 FPS, suggesting the GPU has hit a hard compute wall — increasing settings from High to Ultra no longer meaningfully changes the framerate because the card is saturated. The gap between Low and Medium at 4K (8.5 FPS) is also compressed compared to 1080p (22.3 FPS), indicating that resolution scaling has a larger impact than settings scaling on this card.

The data reveals a consistent theme: the RTX 2060 SUPER is the limiting factor in this pairing. Across all resolutions, Low to Medium settings provide the largest FPS headroom, while High and Ultra settings compress performance differences. The CPU's 20 threads and 5.00 GHz boost never appear to bottleneck the GPU, even at 1080p Low where 103 FPS is achieved.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of Intel Core i7-12700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER ranks 1,286 out of 1,795 tested combos for Microsoft Flight Simulator, placing it in the 28th percentile from the top. That means roughly 509 combos outperform it and 509 fall below — it sits squarely in the lower-middle tier of the database.

Interpreting this rank requires context. The CPU is a high-end desktop part (89th percentile among all CPUs), but the GPU is a mid-range card from the previous generation (63rd percentile among all GPUs). The combo rank of 1,286 reflects the GPU's relative weakness in a game that scales heavily with graphics hardware. Flight Simulator's measured FPS data confirms this: at 1080p Low, the combo hits 103 FPS, but at 4K Ultra, it drops to 33.7 FPS. The CPU's strong single-thread performance (4,128 in Cinebench R23) and 20 threads ensure the sim's simulation layer runs smoothly, but the GPU's 7.181 TFLOPS cannot sustain high framerates at demanding settings.

The rank of 1,286 out of 1,795 also tells us that this pairing is more than 500 positions below the median combo. That's a significant gap, driven almost entirely by the GPU's position in the market. The RTX 2060 SUPER's nearest rivals — GTX TITAN, RTX 2070, Quadro K5200, and Tesla K40m — all sit within 1.3% of its average score, meaning the GPU is competitively positioned for its tier but that tier is simply not high enough for a top-half ranking in this simulator. Users chasing higher ranks would need a GPU with more compute throughput, as the CPU's 89th-percentile standing leaves ample headroom for a stronger graphics card to push this combo higher.