Microsoft Flight Simulator

# Microsoft Flight Simulator with Intel Core Ultra 5 245 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090

The pairing of Intel's Core Ultra 5 245 with NVIDIA's RTX 4090 produces a fascinating dataset in Microsoft Flight Simulator, where the GPU's raw power meets a CPU that ranks in the 90th percentile among all processors. The measured frame rates across three resolutions and four settings tiers reveal a system that is heavily GPU-bound at higher resolutions but shows signs of CPU limitation at 1080p, particularly at lower settings where the RTX 4090's headroom is exposed. This analysis digs into the numbers to understand where the bottleneck lies and what the data implies about this specific combination for flight simulation enthusiasts.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is dramatic and tells a clear story about the limiting component. At Low settings, the average FPS falls from 233 at 1920x1080 to 188 at 2560x1440, then plunges to 138 at 3840x2160. That represents a 40.8% reduction from 1080p to 4K at Low settings, which is a substantial hit but not as severe as one might expect given the RTX 4090's capabilities. The pattern continues at Medium settings, where averages drop from 181 at 1080p to 146 at 1440p and then to 108 at 4K — a 40.3% decrease between the extremes. High settings show 136 FPS at 1080p, 110 at 1440p, and 81 at 4K, a 40.4% decline. Ultra settings follow the same trajectory: 130 at 1080p, 105 at 1440p, and 77 at 4K, representing a 40.8% reduction.

The consistency of these percentage drops across all four settings tiers — hovering right around 40% from 1080p to 4K — suggests that resolution scaling is uniform regardless of graphical complexity. This uniformity implies the GPU is the primary scaling factor, as CPU load from resolution changes is minimal in this game. However, the absolute FPS values at 1080p reveal something important: at Low settings, the system produces 233 FPS, which is remarkably high for a flight simulator. The fact that Ultra settings at 1080p only reach 130 FPS — a 44.2% drop from Low — indicates that the GPU is still doing substantial work even at lower resolutions. The data suggests that at 1080p, the system approaches a CPU ceiling around 233 FPS, as the RTX 4090 would likely push far higher in a purely GPU-bound scenario. This becomes more evident when comparing the 1080p-to-1440p scaling: at Low settings, the drop is 19.3% (233 to 188), while at Ultra it's 19.2% (130 to 105). These similar ratios across settings indicate that the CPU bottleneck at 1080p is relatively consistent.

GPU Role

The RTX 4090 brings substantial resources to this matchup: 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus, delivering 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth. The GPU's clock speeds are 2235 MHz base and 2520 MHz boost, with memory running at 1313 MHz (21 Gbps effective). These specifications translate to a PassMark G3D score of 38194, placing the GPU in the 88th percentile of all graphics cards. The VRAM capacity is particularly relevant for Microsoft Flight Simulator, which is known for loading extensive terrain and aircraft data; 24 GB ensures that texture streaming at 4K Ultra settings would not hit memory capacity limits. The data shows that at 4K Ultra, the system still manages 77 FPS average, which is respectable for a simulator of this complexity.

The GPU's role becomes more apparent when examining the settings scaling at each resolution. At 4K, the difference between Low (138 FPS) and Ultra (77 FPS) is 44.2%, showing that graphical settings have a major impact on GPU workload. This is expected given the RTX 4090's architecture — Ada Lovelace with 16384 shading units, 512 TMUs, and 176 ROPs, capable of 82.58 TFLOPS FP32 performance. The GPU's texture rate of 1,290.2 GTexel/s and pixel rate of 443.5 GPixel/s are directly relevant to a game like this, which renders vast landscapes with high-detail textures. The measured results indicate that at 4K, the GPU is the clear limiting factor at all settings, as even at Low the system only reaches 138 FPS, far below the 1080p Low result of 233 FPS. This suggests the GPU's rendering pipeline at 4K is the bottleneck, not the CPU or memory bandwidth.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured rows, the data provides clear guidance on which preset offers the best experience. At 1920x1080, the High preset delivers 136 FPS average, which is only 4.4% lower than the Ultra preset's 130 FPS but 24.9% lower than Medium's 181 FPS. The jump from Low (233 FPS) to Medium (181 FPS) represents a 22.3% performance cost, while the jump from Medium to High costs another 24.9%. The step from High to Ultra is modest at 4.4%, suggesting that Ultra at 1080p provides the best visual fidelity per frame cost — only 6 FPS difference from High. At 2560x1440, the pattern shifts: High (110 FPS) and Ultra (105 FPS) are within 4.5% of each other, while Medium (146 FPS) is 32.7% faster than High. The Medium preset at 1440p offers 146 FPS, which is well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, making it the sweet spot for high refresh rate monitors. At 3840x2160, all presets remain playable: Low (138 FPS), Medium (108 FPS), High (81 FPS), and Ultra (77 FPS). The Medium preset at 4K provides 108 FPS, which is 40% faster than Ultra and still visually rich for flight simulation. Given that the game is a simulator where visual detail matters for immersion, the data suggests that at 4K, Medium offers the best balance — 108 FPS with only a 23.1% reduction from Low's 138 FPS. At 1080p and 1440p, Ultra is viable with 130 and 105 FPS respectively, making it the recommended preset for those resolutions if visual quality is paramount.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of Intel Core Ultra 5 245 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 ranks 67th out of 2996 tested combos in Microsoft Flight Simulator, placing it in the top 2.2% of all configurations. This is an impressive ranking, though notably, the CPU's average benchmark score of 48995 places it in the 90th percentile among all CPUs, while the GPU's 60347 average score is in the 88th percentile. The combo rank of 67 suggests that the pairing is well-balanced for this game, but it also implies that many other combinations — likely with higher-end CPUs — achieve better results. The CPU's nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5755G (avg score 49196, delta -0.4%), AMD Ryzen 9 7900 (avg score 49228, delta -0.5%), Intel Xeon Gold 5318H (avg score 48698, delta 0.6%), and Intel Core i5-14600K (avg score 48618, delta 0.8%). These deltas are tiny, all within 1.3% of the Core Ultra 5 245's score, indicating that the CPU is competitive with these alternatives in synthetic benchmarks. The GPU's nearest rivals show a different story: Intel Arc Pro A60 (avg score 60326, delta 0%), AMD Radeon Pro Vega 48 (avg score 60140, delta 0.3%), AMD Radeon Pro W6600M (avg score 61896, delta -2.5%), and AMD Radeon PRO V710 (avg score 58657, delta 2.9%). The RTX 4090's score is essentially tied with the Arc Pro A60 and Pro Vega 48, yet the measured FPS in this game are far higher than what those workstation-class GPUs would likely achieve, underscoring that synthetic scores don't always translate to real-world gaming performance.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 245 is a 14-core, 14-thread processor based on Arrow Lake architecture, built on a 3 nm process at TSMC with 17,800 million transistors on a 243 mm² die. It runs at a base clock of 3.50 GHz and boosts to 5.10 GHz, with a 65 W TDP. The CPU's cache hierarchy includes 192 KB L1 per core, 3 MB L2 per core, and 24 MB shared L3. Memory support is DDR5 with dual-channel configuration and 102.4 GB/s bandwidth, plus ECC support. In Microsoft Flight Simulator, the CPU's role is critical for physics calculations, AI traffic, and flight model updates, but the measured data suggests that it's not the primary bottleneck except at 1080p Low settings. The CPU's Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 32924 and single-core score of 4648 indicate solid performance, with the single-core result being particularly relevant for a game that often relies on a few heavily loaded threads. The PassMark single-thread score of 4394 reinforces this, showing strong per-core performance. However, the 1080p Low result of 233 FPS appears to be near the CPU's practical limit in this game, as the RTX 4090 would likely produce far higher FPS if the CPU could keep up. At 4K, the CPU's influence diminishes — the difference between Low (138 FPS) and Ultra (77 FPS) at 4K is 44.2%, which is nearly identical to the 44.2% difference at 1080p, suggesting that at 4K, the GPU is fully saturated and the CPU has headroom to spare. The CPU's 90th percentile ranking among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 48995, places it just behind the Ryzen 9 7900 and Ryzen 7 PRO 5755G in synthetic tests, but within a tight margin of 0.5% or less.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers its highest frame rates across all settings. Low settings produce an average of 233 FPS, Medium yields 181 FPS with a minimum of 154 and maximum of 208, High reaches 136 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 130 FPS. The Medium preset's measured range of 154-208 FPS shows a 54 FPS spread, indicating some frame pacing variance even at this resolution. At 2560x1440, the averages drop uniformly: Low hits 188 FPS, Medium averages 146 FPS with a range of 124-168, High delivers 110 FPS, and Ultra achieves 105 FPS. The 1440p Medium range of 44 FPS is tighter than at 1080p, suggesting more consistent frame delivery as the GPU takes on more load. At 3840x2160, the results are: Low averages 138 FPS, Medium averages 108 FPS with a range of 92-124, High reaches 81 FPS, and Ultra delivers 77 FPS. The 4K Medium range of 32 FPS is the narrowest of any resolution, indicating that at this resolution, the system achieves the most stable frame pacing. The step-down pattern across resolutions is consistent: moving from 1080p to 1440p costs roughly 19-23% performance depending on settings, while moving from 1440p to 4K costs another 26-27%. The total 1080p-to-4K reduction is consistently around 40-41% across all settings, which is a remarkably uniform scaling pattern. Notably, the Ultra preset at 1080p (130 FPS) is nearly identical to the Ultra preset at 4K Low (138 FPS), highlighting how resolution and settings trade-offs can produce similar outcomes. The minimum FPS data points, available only for Medium settings, show that at 4K the system never drops below 92 FPS, which is well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth flight simulation — this is a meaningful data point for users concerned about stuttering during complex scenes.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo at Ultra settings?

A: At 1920x1080, Ultra delivers 130 FPS average; at 2560x1440, it produces 105 FPS; at 3840x2160, it achieves 77 FPS. All are above 60 FPS, but 1080p offers the highest headroom for high refresh rate displays.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its closest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The Intel Core Ultra 5 245 has an average benchmark score of 48995, which is 0.4% lower than the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5755G (49196), 0.5% lower than the AMD Ryzen 9 7900 (49228), 0.6% higher than the Intel Xeon Gold 5318H (48698), and 0.8% higher than the Intel Core i5-14600K (48618).

Q: Which settings preset at 4K provides the most consistent frame delivery?

A: At 3840x2160, the Medium preset has a measured range of 92-124 FPS (32 FPS spread), which is the narrowest range of any resolution tested, indicating the most stable frame pacing.

Q: Is the GPU or CPU the limiting factor at 1080p Low settings?

A: The 233 FPS average at 1080p Low appears to be near the CPU's practical limit, as the RTX 4090 would likely produce higher frame rates if the CPU could feed it faster, given the GPU's 88th percentile ranking.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested configurations?

A: This combination ranks 67th out of 2996 tested combos in Microsoft Flight Simulator, placing it in the top 2.2% of all configurations tested.

Q: What is the GPU's memory bandwidth and how does it relate to the game?

A: The RTX 4090 has 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus with 1.01 TB/s bandwidth, which supports the high-resolution texture streaming in Microsoft Flight Simulator without memory capacity constraints.