Microsoft Flight Simulator

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

The measured FPS data reveals a steep and consistent decline as resolution climbs, which strongly suggests the AMD Radeon RX 570 is the primary bottleneck in this pairing. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 50.3 FPS, but stepping up to 1440p Low drops that to 37.7 FPS, a 25% reduction. The trend continues to 4K Low, where the system manages only 31.2 FPS, another 17% drop from 1440p. This scaling pattern—where each resolution tier costs roughly a quarter to a sixth of the remaining performance—points to pixel throughput as the limiting factor, not the CPU.

The RX 570’s 4 GB of GDDR5 memory and 256-bit bus provide 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth. At 4K, the game’s texture streaming demands likely exceed this capacity, causing the frame rate to collapse. For example, at 4K High, the average FPS is 14.5, which is barely playable by any standard. Even dropping to Medium at 4K only recovers to 22.3 FPS. The gap between Low and High at 4K is 16.7 FPS, whereas at 1080p the same settings gap is 19.8 FPS. This narrowing delta at higher resolutions indicates that the GPU is saturating its memory bandwidth and shading resources, leaving less headroom for quality improvements.

What is notable is that the Intel Core i7-12700KF is not the constraint here. With 12 cores and 20 threads, the CPU’s benchmark scores—including a Cinebench R23 multi-core result of 28979 and a single-core score of 4091—are far beyond what a flight simulator typically needs for physics and AI calculations. The data implies that if the GPU were swapped for a more capable part, the CPU could easily push higher frame rates, especially at 1080p where the 50.3 FPS Low result is likely CPU-bound only in specific crowded scenarios.

The 1080p to 1440p transition is particularly telling. At Medium settings, 1080p yields 38.3 FPS, while 1440p Medium drops to 29.5 FPS. This 8.8 FPS loss is proportionally similar to the Low setting drop. However, at Ultra, the gap narrows to 5.4 FPS (26.4 vs 21.0). This compression at the top end suggests that Ultra settings impose a fixed cost—likely related to draw distance and shadow complexity—that dominates regardless of resolution, further confirming that the GPU is the wall.

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

The RX 570’s specifications explain much of its behavior in Microsoft Flight Simulator. The GPU runs at a base clock of 1168 MHz and boosts to 1244 MHz, with memory clocked at 1750 MHz (7 Gbps effective). These are modest figures for a 2020-era flight sim, which is known for its photorealistic terrain and dense urban environments. The 4 GB VRAM is the most glaring limitation. At 4K Ultra, the system produces just 15 FPS, and even at 1080p Ultra it only reaches 26.4 FPS. These numbers align with the GPU’s 5.095 TFLOPS FP32 throughput, which is low compared to modern cards.

The GPU’s 32 ROPs and 128 TMUs are also relevant. Flight simulators rely heavily on texture fill rate for ground detail and alpha blending for clouds and foliage. The RX 570’s texture rate of 159.2 GTexel/s and pixel rate of 39.81 GPixel/s are sufficient for 1080p Low (50.3 FPS) but struggle when the engine increases draw calls and texture resolution. The fact that 4K Low (31.2 FPS) is still faster than 1080p Ultra (26.4 FPS) shows that settings quality has a larger impact on this GPU than raw pixel count, which is unusual and highlights the VRAM bottleneck.

Interestingly, the GPU’s nearestRivals in the database include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 and AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT, with deltaPct values of 0.2% and 0.2% respectively. This is surprising given the RX 570’s age and end-of-life status, but the average benchmark score of 30158 places it in the 74th percentile of all GPUs. The data suggests that while the RX 570 is old, its Polaris architecture still holds up in synthetic tests. However, in a real-world title like Flight Simulator, the 4 GB VRAM becomes a hard ceiling. The GPU’s 14 nm process node and 150 W TDP also indicate it was designed for a different era of gaming, one where 1080p was the norm.

The measured results show that the RX 570 can handle Low settings at 1080p (50.3 FPS) and even 1440p (37.7 FPS) reasonably well. But any attempt to enable High or Ultra settings pushes the frame rate below 30 FPS across all resolutions. The data implies that users should treat this GPU as a 1080p Low-to-Medium part for this specific game, and that any hope of higher fidelity requires a GPU with more VRAM and bandwidth.

FAQ

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

A: Based on the measured data, 1920x1080 is the only resolution where the average FPS stays above 30 for most settings. At 1080p Low, the combo hits 50.3 FPS, and at Medium it drops to 38.3 FPS. At 1440p, only Low settings (37.7 FPS) remain above 30 FPS, while 4K never exceeds 31.2 FPS even on Low.

Q: How does the RX 570’s 4 GB VRAM affect performance at 4K?

A: The 4 GB GDDR5 memory is a severe limitation at 3840x2160. The highest 4K result is 31.2 FPS on Low settings, but High and Ultra drop to 14.5 FPS and 15 FPS respectively. The memory bandwidth of 224.0 GB/s is insufficient to feed the GPU’s 2048 shading units at this resolution, causing a sharp performance cliff.

Q: Is the Intel Core i7-12700KF holding back the RX 570?

A: No, the data suggests the CPU is not the bottleneck. The i7-12700KF has a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 28979 and a single-core score of 4091, along with a passmark multi-thread score of 34092. These figures are far above what Flight Simulator needs, and the FPS scaling with resolution indicates the GPU is the limiting component.

Q: What settings preset provides the most balanced experience at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, Medium settings (38.3 FPS) offer a reasonable compromise, but Low (50.3 FPS) is the only preset that approaches smooth playability for a flight sim, where frame rate dips can be disorienting. High (30.5 FPS) is borderline, while Ultra (26.4 FPS) falls below the 30 FPS threshold.

Q: How does this combo rank against other tested configurations?

A: The combo ranks 1725 out of 1795 tested combinations, placing it in the bottom 4% of all systems. This low rank is driven by the RX 570’s limitations, as the CPU alone ranks in the 89th percentile of all CPUs, while the GPU ranks in the 74th percentile.

Q: Does the GPU’s clock speed matter for this game?

A: The RX 570’s boost clock of 1244 MHz is modest, but the data shows that clock speed is less relevant than VRAM capacity. At 1080p Low, the GPU sustains 50.3 FPS, but raising settings to Ultra drops performance to 26.4 FPS despite the same clock range. This indicates that memory bandwidth and capacity, not raw clock speed, are the primary constraints.

Settings Recommendations

For users seeking a playable experience, the measured data points to 1920x1080 with Low settings as the only configuration that consistently delivers above 50 FPS. At 50.3 FPS, this preset provides enough headroom for the game’s occasional frametime spikes, which are common in flight simulators when flying over dense terrain or approaching large airports. The Medium preset at 1080p (38.3 FPS) is a viable alternative if visual fidelity is prioritized, but it carries a 24% performance penalty compared to Low.

At 2560x1440, the options are more limited. Low settings (37.7 FPS) are playable, but Medium (29.5 FPS) and High (21.1 FPS) fall below the 30 FPS threshold that most sim enthusiasts consider minimum. The Ultra preset at 1440p (21.0 FPS) is essentially a slideshow and should be avoided. For 4K, only Low settings (31.2 FPS) approach playability, and even then, the experience will be marred by frequent stutters as the 4 GB VRAM is exhausted.

The data suggests that the best experience per the measured rows is 1080p Low, as it is the only combination of resolution and settings that maintains a frame rate above 50 FPS. Users who cannot tolerate the visual downgrade should consider 1080p Medium, which still exceeds 30 FPS and provides a more detailed cockpit and terrain. The gap between Low and Medium at 1080p is 12 FPS, which is substantial but acceptable for a game where smoothness is paramount. It is importantly High at 1080p (30.5 FPS) is only slightly above the playability line, and the marginal improvement over Medium is not worth the 20% performance loss.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo ranks 1725 out of 1795 tested combinations, placing it in the bottom 4% of all systems in the database. This is a poor result, but the ranking is almost entirely attributable to the GPU. The Intel Core i7-12700KF, when considered alone, ranks in the 89th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 35355. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i5-14400 (deltaPct 0.1%), Intel Core i7-13800H (deltaPct -0.2%), and Intel Core i9-12900HX (deltaPct 0.2%). These CPUs are all within 0.3% of the i7-12700KF’s performance, indicating that the processor is a mid-to-high-tier part.

In contrast, the RX 570 ranks in the 74th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 30158. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 (deltaPct 0.2%), AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT (deltaPct 0.2%), NVIDIA Tesla M60 (deltaPct 0.6%), and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Mobile (deltaPct 0.8%). The fact that the RX 570 is within 1% of these modern cards in synthetic benchmarks is misleading, as the 4 GB VRAM severely hampers real-world performance in memory-intensive titles like Flight Simulator.

The ranking disparity between CPU and GPU creates an unbalanced system. The i7-12700KF is capable of driving much faster GPUs, and the data implies that pairing it with a modern graphics card would move the combo from the bottom 4% to somewhere in the top half of the database. The current rank of 1725 is a clear indication that the GPU is the system’s Achilles heel, and users should not interpret this ranking as a reflection of CPU performance.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a comprehensive view of the combo’s performance across three resolutions and four settings presets. At 1920x1080, the results are as follows: Low averages 50.3 FPS, Medium averages 38.3 FPS, High averages 30.5 FPS, and Ultra averages 26.4 FPS. This represents a 47% drop from Low to Ultra, which is significant but not as severe as at higher resolutions.

At 2560x1440, the average FPS values are: Low at 37.7 FPS, Medium at 29.5 FPS, High at 21.1 FPS, and Ultra at 21.0 FPS. The drop from Low to Ultra is 44%, slightly less than at 1080p. Notably, the difference between High and Ultra at 1440p is just 0.1 FPS, suggesting that Ultra settings do not add meaningful visual quality for the performance cost.

At 3840x2160, the results are: Low at 31.2 FPS, Medium at 22.3 FPS, High at 14.5 FPS, and Ultra at 15 FPS. The Ultra setting is actually 0.5 FPS faster than High, which is within the margin of error but indicates that the GPU is so heavily bottlenecked that settings differences become negligible. The 4K Low result of 31.2 FPS is the only 4K configuration that exceeds 30 FPS, and it does so narrowly.

The data reveals a consistent pattern: the performance gap between Low and Ultra widens as resolution increases. At 1080p, the gap is 23.9 FPS; at 1440p, it is 16.7 FPS; at 4K, it is 16.2 FPS. This suggests that at higher resolutions, the GPU is so constrained that even reducing settings cannot fully compensate for the pixel count. The 4K High result of 14.5 FPS versus the 4K Low result of 31.2 FPS shows that Low settings do provide a 2.15x improvement, but the absolute numbers remain too low for acceptable gameplay.

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

The Intel Core i7-12700KF is a 12-core, 20-thread processor based on the Alder Lake architecture, with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz. Its 25 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel memory support for DDR4 and DDR5 provide ample bandwidth for modern workloads. In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU achieves a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 28979 and a single-core score of 4091, placing it in the 89th percentile of all CPUs.

In Microsoft Flight Simulator, the CPU’s role is primarily to handle the game’s complex flight physics, AI traffic, and world-building logic. The game is known to be more CPU-intensive than typical shooters, but the i7-12700KF’s performance data suggests it is more than sufficient. The 3dmark 16-thread score of 9282 and 2-thread score of 2065 indicate strong multi-threading capabilities, while the single-thread score of 1043 shows good per-core performance. These figures are critical because Flight Simulator often relies on a single main thread for simulation logic, and the i7-12700KF’s 5.00 GHz boost clock ensures that thread is well-served.

The data implies that the CPU is not the limiting factor in any of the measured FPS results. The scaling from 1080p to 4K shows a clear GPU bottleneck, and the FPS drops are consistent with what would be expected from a GPU with 4 GB VRAM and 5.095 TFLOPS. The CPU’s nearest rivals—the Intel Core i5-14400, i7-13800H, i9-12900HX, and i5-13600T—all have deltaPct values within 0.3% of the i7-12700KF’s average score. This tight grouping suggests that the CPU is a well-balanced part, but its performance headroom is wasted when paired with the RX 570.

The passmark multi-thread score of 34092 and floating-point math score of 87449 further reinforce that the CPU excels at the type of parallel calculations that flight simulators require for terrain streaming and weather simulation. However, the measured FPS data shows no scenario where the CPU becomes the bottleneck—even at 1080p Low (50.3 FPS), the frame rate is likely GPU-limited, as the RX 570’s 4 GB VRAM and 224.0 GB/s bandwidth are the obvious constraints. Users upgrading the GPU would likely see immediate FPS gains, while keeping the CPU unchanged.