Microsoft Flight Simulator

The data for Microsoft Flight Simulator with the Intel Core i7-12700KF and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti reveals a configuration where the graphics subsystem is the dominant constraint across all tested settings. The measured frame rates are consistently low, indicating that this pairing, while featuring a high-end processor, is severely limited by the GPU’s capabilities in this simulation. The combination ranks 1773rd out of 1795 tested combos, placing it in the bottom 1.2% of all tested configurations for this game, which underscores a fundamental performance bottleneck.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is sharp and consistent, demonstrating that the GPU is the primary limiting factor. At 1080p High settings, the combination produces an average of 20.9 FPS. Moving to 1440p High reduces this to 17.6 FPS, a decrease of 3.3 FPS. At 4K High, the average falls to 11.4 FPS, which is a 45% reduction from the 1080p result. This scaling pattern indicates that as the pixel count increases, the GPU’s workload expands, and its limited throughput (2.138 TFLOPS FP32) cannot keep pace.

The data shows a steeper relative drop between 1440p and 4K than between 1080p and 1440p. For example, at Medium settings, the frame rate goes from 30.8 FPS at 1080p to 24.5 FPS at 1440p (a 6.3 FPS drop), and then to 19.8 FPS at 4K (a 4.7 FPS drop). While the absolute delta is slightly smaller at higher resolutions, the percentage loss is significant. This suggests that the GPU’s memory bandwidth of 112.1 GB/s and its 4 GB VRAM capacity are being saturated, causing the frame rate to collapse as texture and geometry data exceeds the available resources.

At Low settings, the pattern is similar but with higher absolute numbers. The 1080p Low average is 37.5 FPS, which drops to 31.9 FPS at 1440p and 24.4 FPS at 4K. The 4K Low result is still below the 1080p Ultra result of 23.3 FPS, which highlights that even at the lowest quality preset, the resolution is the dominant penalty. The data indicates that the GPU’s pixel fill rate (44.54 GPixel/s) and texture rate (66.82 GTexel/s) are insufficient for 4K workloads in this game, regardless of the quality settings.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo ranks 1773rd out of 1795 tested combinations for Microsoft Flight Simulator. This places it in the 1.2 percentile of all tested combos, meaning that 1772 other configurations deliver better performance. The rank is a clear indicator that this pairing is not suited for this game, as it falls far behind the vast majority of tested systems. The CPU itself is not the issue; the i7-12700KF has an average benchmark score of 35355 and ranks in the 89th percentile of all CPUs. The problem is the GPU, which has an average benchmark score of 5316 and ranks in the 30th percentile of all GPUs.

The GPU’s nearest rivals in the benchmark database include the NVIDIA GeForce 930A (average score 5317, 0% delta), the NVIDIA GeForce 940M (average score 5297, 0.4% delta), the AMD Radeon R7 240 (average score 5280, 0.7% delta), and the AMD Radeon R7 M445 (average score 5361, -0.8% delta). These are all entry-level or mobile-class parts, and the GTX 1050 Ti sits right among them. This positioning confirms that in the context of this simulation, the GPU is performing at a level comparable to those very low-end parts, which explains the poor combo rank. The CPU’s nearest rivals, such as the Intel Core i5-14400 (average score 35336, 0.1% delta) and the Intel Core i9-12900HX (average score 35289, 0.2% delta), are far more capable, but their potential is wasted in this pairing.

GPU Role

The GTX 1050 Ti is the clear bottleneck. Its specifications—4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus with 112.1 GB/s bandwidth—are modest by modern standards. The GPU’s base clock is 1291 MHz with a boost of 1392 MHz, and it has 768 shading units, 48 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. These resources are insufficient for the demands of Microsoft Flight Simulator, which is known for rendering vast landscapes and complex scenery. The measured FPS values across all resolutions and settings confirm this: the highest average FPS recorded is 37.5 at 1080p Low, and the lowest is 11.4 at 4K High.

The GPU’s memory capacity is also a concern. With only 4 GB of VRAM, the card is likely to exceed its memory limit at higher resolutions and quality presets, leading to texture swapping and stutter. The data shows that at 1080p, the difference between Low and Ultra is 14.2 FPS (37.5 vs 23.3), which is a significant range but still low in absolute terms. At 4K, the difference between Low and Ultra is 11.4 FPS (24.4 vs 13), indicating that the GPU is struggling to maintain playable frame rates even at the lowest settings. The GPU’s compute performance is also limited, with a Passmark G3D score of 6340 and a DirectX 12 score of 26, which places it far below the thresholds needed for smooth simulation gameplay.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a detailed picture of the performance envelope. At 1080p, the results are: Low 37.5 FPS, Medium 30.8 FPS, High 20.9 FPS, and Ultra 23.3 FPS. The Ultra setting is slightly higher than High, which is an anomaly likely due to specific rendering paths, but both are below 24 FPS, which is not a playable experience for most users. At 1440p, the numbers fall to: Low 31.9 FPS, Medium 24.5 FPS, High 17.6 FPS, and Ultra 19.8 FPS. The 1440p Ultra result is higher than 1440p High, again showing a non-linear relationship between settings, but the overall trend is a clear decline.

At 4K, the results are: Low 24.4 FPS, Medium 19.8 FPS, High 11.4 FPS, and Ultra 13 FPS. The 4K Low result is the only one that approaches a marginally playable frame rate, but it is still below the 30 FPS target that most action games require. The data indicates that the GPU cannot handle 4K in this game, even at the lowest settings. The difference between 1080p Low and 4K Low is 13.1 FPS, which is a 35% drop. The difference between 1080p Ultra and 4K Ultra is 10.3 FPS, which is a 44% drop. This consistency suggests that the resolution is the primary driver of performance loss, with the GPU’s fixed resources being spread thinner as pixel count increases.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700KF is a powerful processor that is not the limiting factor in this configuration. It has 12 cores and 20 threads, with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz. Its benchmark scores are strong: Cinebench R23 multicore is 28979, single-core is 4091, and Geekbench multicore is 13596. The CPU’s percentile rank of 89 indicates that it outperforms 89% of all tested CPUs. In Microsoft Flight Simulator, which is known to be CPU-intensive for physics and scenery calculations, this processor provides ample headroom. However, the measured FPS shows that this headroom is never utilized because the GPU is saturated.

The CPU’s nearest rivals, such as the Intel Core i5-14400 (0.1% delta) and the Intel Core i9-12900HX (0.2% delta), are similar in performance, but none of them can compensate for the GPU’s limitations. The data suggests that even if the CPU were overclocked (it has an unlocked multiplier), the frame rates would not improve because the GPU is the bottleneck. The CPU’s large L3 cache of 25 MB shared and high single-thread performance (Passmark single-thread score of 3984) are irrelevant when the GPU cannot deliver frames fast enough. In this pairing, the CPU’s role is to feed the GPU with geometry and draw calls, but the GPU’s low throughput (2.138 TFLOPS) and small memory bus (128-bit) mean that it cannot process the data quickly enough to turn the CPU’s calculations into rendered frames. The result is a system that is overwhelmingly GPU-bound, with the CPU sitting idle waiting for the GPU to catch up.