Microsoft Flight Simulator

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data for Microsoft Flight Simulator with the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K and AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT shows a clear pattern of resolution-driven performance scaling. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combination produces 127.2 FPS, while at 3840x2160 with the same preset, the average drops to 72.7 FPS. That represents a 42.9% reduction in frame rate when moving from 1080p to 4K at Low settings, indicating that the GPU is the primary limiter at higher resolutions, as expected in a flight simulator with heavy terrain rendering.

The scaling pattern becomes more pronounced at higher settings. With the High preset, the 1080p result is 74.3 FPS, which falls to 56.4 FPS at 2560x1440 and then to 41.2 FPS at 3840x2160. This is a 44.5% drop from 1080p to 4K, which is slightly steeper than the Low preset's decline. The Medium preset shows an even larger relative decrease: 97.5 FPS at 1080p, 81.3 FPS at 1440p, and 55 FPS at 4K, a 43.6% reduction from the lowest to highest resolution. The Ultra preset behaves similarly, with 72.2 FPS at 1080p, 54 FPS at 1440p, and 41.4 FPS at 4K.

The fact that the 4K Ultra result (41.4 FPS) is nearly identical to the 4K High result (41.2 FPS) suggests that the GPU is saturating its compute capacity at this resolution, and additional graphical fidelity from the Ultra preset does not meaningfully change the frame rate. Conversely, the 1080p Ultra result (72.2 FPS) is close to the 1080p High result (74.3 FPS), implying that the CPU has enough headroom to feed the GPU at lower resolutions, but the GPU becomes the bottleneck as pixel count rises. The data indicates that the RX 6750 XT is the limiting component at 4K across all settings, while at 1080p the CPU still has reserve capacity.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT is a RDNA 2.0 architecture part built on TSMC's 7 nm process, with a die size of 335 mm² and 17,200 million transistors. Its base clock is 2150 MHz, the game clock is 2495 MHz, and the boost clock reaches 2600 MHz. The memory subsystem consists of 12 GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 432.0 GB/s. The GPU has 2560 shading units, 160 texture mapping units, 64 render output units, and 40 ray tracing cores. Its peak FP32 throughput is 13.31 TFLOPS, with a texture rate of 416.0 GTexel/s and a pixel rate of 166.4 GPixel/s.

In the benchmark hierarchy, this GPU sits at the 79th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 35327. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 5600M (0.2% higher), the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Mobile (0.3% lower), the AMD Radeon 880M (0.9% lower), and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 (1.3% lower). This places the RX 6750 XT in a competitive band where small percentage differences separate it from both mobile and desktop parts.

The VRAM capacity of 12 GB is relevant to Microsoft Flight Simulator's large texture sets and detailed scenery. At 4K Ultra, the measured 41.4 FPS suggests that the GPU is both memory-bandwidth and compute constrained. The 432.0 GB/s bandwidth is sufficient for 1080p and 1440p at most settings, but the 4K results show a tight clustering between High (41.2 FPS) and Ultra (41.4 FPS), indicating that the GPU's shading units and ROPs are the limiting factor rather than memory capacity alone. The boost clock of 2600 MHz is relatively high for a mid-range part, yet the data shows that even at 1080p Ultra the frame rate stays at 72.2 FPS, which is below the 100 FPS threshold that some users might target.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265K is a 20-core, 20-thread processor from the Core Ultra Series 2, based on the Arrow Lake-S architecture. It has a base clock of 3.90 GHz and a boost clock of 5.50 GHz. The cache hierarchy includes 192 KB of L1 per core, 3 MB of L2 per core, and 30 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU uses a 3 nm process from TSMC, has a die size of 243 mm², and contains 17,800 million transistors. Memory support is dual-channel DDR5 with a bus bandwidth of 102.4 GB/s.

In synthetic benchmarks, this CPU achieves a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 50009 and a single-core score of 7060. The PassMark multi-thread score is 58838, with a single-thread score of 4904. The CPU sits at the 97th percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 79102. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core Ultra 7 265KF (0.2% lower), the Intel Core i9-14900KF (0.2% lower), the Intel Core i9-14900K (0.9% lower), and the AMD EPYC 7413 (1.2% lower). This indicates that the 265K is effectively at parity with the top desktop processors from the previous generation, with deltas of less than 1% in most cases.

For Microsoft Flight Simulator, the CPU's role is primarily in physics simulation, flight model calculations, and draw call dispatch. The measured FPS at 1080p Low (127.2 FPS) shows that the CPU can drive the GPU well above the 100 FPS mark when the GPU is not heavily loaded. However, the 1080p Ultra result (72.2 FPS) is only slightly lower than the 1080p High result (74.3 FPS), which suggests that the CPU is not the bottleneck even at the highest settings. The fact that the 4K Ultra (41.4 FPS) and 4K High (41.2 FPS) are nearly identical reinforces that the CPU has ample headroom; the GPU is clearly the limiting component at higher resolutions.

The 20-thread configuration with 30 MB of L3 cache is well-suited to the game's multi-threaded scenery loading and AI traffic simulation. The boost clock of 5.50 GHz provides strong single-thread performance for the main game loop, which is often the critical path in flight simulators.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average FPS values are as follows: Low settings produce 127.2 FPS, Medium produces 97.5 FPS, High produces 74.3 FPS, and Ultra produces 72.2 FPS. The gap between High and Ultra is only 2.1 FPS, which is within the margin of run-to-run variance, indicating that the Ultra preset's additional effects do not significantly impact performance at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the average FPS values are 102 FPS for Low, 81.3 FPS for Medium, 56.4 FPS for High, and 54 FPS for Ultra. The transition from Low to Medium costs 20.7 FPS, while the transition from High to Ultra costs only 2.4 FPS. This suggests that the Medium preset provides a balanced point where the GPU is still able to maintain comfortable frame rates.

At 3840x2160, the average FPS values are 72.7 FPS for Low, 55 FPS for Medium, 41.2 FPS for High, and 41.4 FPS for Ultra. The difference between High and Ultra is negligible (0.2 FPS), and the gap between Medium and High is 13.8 FPS. The Low preset at 4K is the only configuration that achieves above 60 FPS, while the Medium preset just misses that threshold at 55 FPS.

The overall combination rank in this game is 894 out of 1795 tested combinations, placing it in the upper half of all tested hardware pairings. The data is marked as measured, meaning it comes from actual benchmarking rather than estimation.

FAQ

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

A: The data shows that 1920x1080 is the only resolution where all settings presets achieve at least 72.2 FPS. At 2560x1440, only Low and Medium presets exceed 81 FPS, while at 3840x2160, only Low reaches above 72 FPS.

Q: How does the Ultra preset compare to High at 4K?

A: The Ultra preset at 3840x2160 produces 41.4 FPS, which is nearly identical to the High preset's 41.2 FPS. The 0.2 FPS difference is negligible, suggesting that the GPU is saturated and the Ultra preset's extra effects cost almost no additional performance.

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

A: At 1920x1080 Low, the system achieves 127.2 FPS, which indicates the CPU has significant headroom. The small gap between High (74.3 FPS) and Ultra (72.2 FPS) suggests that the GPU is beginning to limit performance even at 1080p, but the CPU is not the primary constraint.

Q: What is the performance difference between 1440p and 1080p at Medium settings?

A: The Medium preset at 2560x1440 produces 81.3 FPS, while at 1920x1080 it produces 97.5 FPS. This is a 16.2 FPS difference, or approximately a 16.6% reduction when moving from 1080p to 1440p.

Q: How does this GPU compare to its nearest rival in benchmark scores?

A: The RX 6750 XT's average benchmark score is 35327. Its closest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 5600M, scores 0.2% higher, while the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 scores 1.3% lower. The differences are small, placing the RX 6750 XT in a tight competitive band.

Q: What is the highest FPS recorded in the measured data?

A: The highest average FPS is 127.2, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings. The second-highest is 102 FPS at 2560x1440 with Low settings, and the third is 97.5 FPS at 1920x1080 with Medium settings.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data indicates that the optimal settings depend on the target resolution. For 1920x1080, the High preset at 74.3 FPS offers a good balance between visual quality and smoothness, while the Ultra preset at 72.2 FPS provides only a marginal visual gain for a 2.1 FPS loss. The Medium preset at 97.5 FPS is the best choice for users who prioritize frame rate, as it stays well above 90 FPS while still maintaining reasonable visual fidelity.

At 2560x1440, the Medium preset at 81.3 FPS is the recommended starting point, because the High preset drops to 56.4 FPS and Ultra to 54 FPS, both of which are below the 60 FPS threshold that many users consider acceptable for a flight simulator. The Low preset at 102 FPS is an alternative for those who want maximum smoothness, but it sacrifices significant visual detail.

At 3840x2160, the situation is more constrained. The Low preset at 72.7 FPS is the only configuration that clears the 60 FPS mark. The Medium preset at 55 FPS is playable but has occasional dips below 60 FPS. The High and Ultra presets, at 41.2 and 41.4 FPS respectively, are only suitable for users who prioritize visual fidelity over frame rate and are willing to accept a simulation-like experience with lower smoothness.

The data shows that the Ultra preset provides almost no measurable benefit over High at both 1440p and 4K, with differences of 2.4 and 0.2 FPS, respectively. Therefore, the High preset is the more sensible choice for users who want the highest visual quality without the negligible performance penalty of Ultra. Conversely, the Medium preset offers the best frame rate-to-quality trade-off across all three resolutions, with the exception of 4K where Low is the only preset that maintains smooth performance.

For this hardware combination, the recommended settings are: 1920x1080 High for a balanced experience, 2560x1440 Medium for a good compromise, and 3840x2160 Low for playable 4K performance. Users who prioritize frame rate over visuals should select Medium at 1080p (97.5 FPS) and Low at 1440p (102 FPS).