Microsoft has finally released Microsoft Flight Simulator on the PC and from the looks of it, there is currently no CPU that can run the game with 60fps on High or Ultra settings. This is currently one of the most CPU-bound games on the PC, and one that it really needs a new generation of CPUs in order to shine.
In order to test the game, we used an Intel i9 9900K with 16GB of DDR4 at 3600Mhz and an NVIDIA RTX 2080Ti. We also used Windows 10 64-bit and the latest version of the GeForce driver, version 451.67.
Since we currently have a 10Mbit connection, we’ve decided to disable the Photogrammetry Texture Streaming. With it enabled, we had major streaming issues on Ultra settings. On High settings, though, everything was working fine. Still, and in order to avoid any possible network limitation, we’ve decided to disable it for this initial test.
Microsoft Flight Simulator does not come with any built-in benchmark tool. Thus, we’ve decided to take off from New York City and fly above the city. This test scenario will, theoretically, stress both the CPU and the GPU. Do also keep in mind that this is among the worst case scenarios. As such, and when flying in less populated areas, the game will run faster/better.
Now as we can see, the game scaled on all eight cores (though it stressed only one core). That’s with Hyper Threading disabled. Unfortunately, when we enabled Hyper Threading, we did not gain any performance improvements. The only way we could increase performance was by overclocking our CPU to 5.0Ghz. Still, we were nowhere close to a 60fps experience.
For the most part, Microsoft Flight Simulator was running with 30-50fps on our Intel Core i9 9900K CPU. Below you can find a screenshot of the game running on our system at 1440p/High-end settings. As you can see, our system was CPU bottlenecked, and was able to push 39fps. Both our GPU and RAM were not maxed out, and we were not limited by our network connection. It’s also worth noting that we’ve installed the game on a Samsung SSD 970 Pro NVMe.
As said, Texture Streaming was disabled in this initial test, which is why those ground textures look so blurry. With Texture Streaming, the game looks significantly better. It’s also worth noting that the game has minor performance issues on Ultra settings with systems that only have 16GB of RAM. Thus, and in order to avoid such issues, we suggest upgrading to 32GB of RAM for this particular game.
Lastly, Microsoft Flight Simulator uses DX11 instead of DX12. We don’t know why Asobo chose that API, and whether DX12 will bring any CPU performance improvements.
Our full PC Performance Analysis for Microsoft Flight Simulator will go live later this week, so stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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10 Mbit connection? What kind of a third world country are you basing this site’s operations on??
greece
lol there are rural areas in usa that have worse internet
One that attracts a cesspool of trashy people to this site *cough* s_fnx
Because there is no moderating on this site’s forum. I guess they voted against it.
Yeah, he’s degenerate trash.
I blocked him ages ago.
It sucks, right? Greece offers better network speeds only in specific regions but our area only supports 24Mbps (the actual speed of our ADSL, however, is 10Mbps and not the advertised 24Mbps). Thankfully, in 2021 we’ll move to another place that supports 50Mbps VDSL.
Vdsl only work 1km to 1.5km from the Dslam…After that go back to DSL !
Do you have cable or fiber?? I have fiber in my place and my country is the biggest shat hole in europe.. 300 mb fibre
Croatia internet sucks aswell !
No fiber at all?
nope, not fiber at all in our area. Hilarious, I know.
1GB/s here in Romania only 9 euro per month + TV cable and Wifi Box in that price LOL
I´m from a third world country and my internet is 120 Mbit.
DX11, how long are they gonna use this API
China is largest PC market – if you want sell game in China you must support DX11
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/56c9d592a33c517766df33a30781225362ed92505f507e75f5ae2d7fb5db2d26.png
Are you sure that Microsoft Flight Simulator is really appealing to chinese market ?
Right now ~69% of the comments are made by english speakers…
BTW Sp4ctro it’s quite funny to see that you have renamed your alt account John99…
That market isn’t playing a lot of demanding AAA titles I’d wager.
Spectro on his bullshit again.
They pirate OS’s anyway, plus Win7 has DX12 support.
I bet isis will use this game for training.
why dx 11 for a game that is cpu dependent?
Sloppy optimization.
The amount of objects this game draws BEGS for DX12 or Vulkan…
Releases a high poly draw count game with high res texture mapping on a single threaded API ?.
Wait the game is DX11??
YES man!
It is amazing to me how authors can not come up with anything better than a 12 year old descriptor.
Gaming journalists are the worst with there stupid nonsensical terminology like AAA, Zelda like, souls like, the new crysis.
I feel I get dumber very nearly Everytime I click on a gaming article.
you don’t need clicking on gaming articles for that.
Your comment has made a contribution to be sure.
I’m not sure you could get any dumber.
At least I didn’t come out of your loser mother.
This is basically asking for the manager in internet, i would name you: Karen.
Because people writing these articles started playing games during xbox360 at best.
Otherwise the title would read “the new MS Flight Simulator is the new MS Flight Simulator”.
These were always very demanding games, Microsoft used them to showcase cutting edge technologies and released them along with every new Windows. MSFS was basically a killerapp, a techdemo for every new OS release and you needed the top PC, so uncompromising these games are.
I get so annoyed the way they use terminology to sell a game, I have been disappointed by far too many Zelda likes that I have no idea what it even means. My eyes just roll back in my head now when I hear some of these empty descriptors.
I love the point you made because flight simulators were always demanding. I recall building a PC for my uncle, who was an actual pilot, in order for him to play flight simulator. These were always demanding games.
I also thought it strange to use this comparison between flight simulator and cyrsis because they are distinctly different audiences. While I’m sure their may be a small cross over audience, I do not know that many people who build out dedicated rooms to play a single game the way sim guys do with flight.
More than that my uncle was not a gamer in the slightest, he was just a pilot.
Agreed
Maybe they will implement better api down the road. This was just to get the game out and see how it does before wasting time on more improvments
They need a proper dx12 implementation
YES! A Microsoft product that doesn’t run in DX12 is a shame!
I don’t know wtf they were thinking not using their very own latest api ????
I cannot find anywhere on the internet nor youtube a review of playing this game with 16GB vs 32GB and the difference it makes and what exact settings run better with 32GB.
No one did research on that it seems..only CPU and GPU reviews
According to resource manager on max settings the game uses 20+ GBs of RAM so it will be thrashing that pagefile like mad if 16 – meaning stutter and freezes as it waits for data to swap back and forth
Yes I was playing at ultra settings 1440p with 16gb ram and it was unplayable. 15.7gb ram usage. I upgraded to 32gb ram and it solved all my stuttering and freezing and the game is now using around 18gb-25gb ram.
I have 32gb of DDR3 @ 2400mhz and twice out of three this unoptimized trash fills ALL RAM (31.5gb) …. ok, the graphics are stellar, but what pisses me off is that it only happens a few times and I don’t understand why …. same map and settings, but sometimes it fills 32 gb, other times it doesn’t! The strange thing is that sometimes it consumes “only” 17-20 gb, while other times I am forced to rage quit because consuming all the 32 gb of ram… it becomes unplayable (6-7 fps at best) I7 4790k clocked at 4.8Ghz + RTX2080 @ 1440p
that cpu is too weak for this game btw
Any 3900X results?
nope he don’t have that. He’s stuck with the 9900k 8core and making claims like modern cpu can’t handle it lol..when there’s 12 and 16 core on the market which he can’t test..because he don’t have either one of those..lawl
I’m betting isis will use this game for training.
Now there’s a band of scoundrels I haven’t heard from in a while. Maybe they extrapolated on the beheadings.
Trump’s been crushing them.
(It’s too bad that jihad depends on Muhammad and not on whatever vermin happens to be leading the charge at the time.)
For sheep like you, Ignorance has no bounds!
U sound like a re**rd who forgot his meds…plz STFU coz u sound retarded!
I quote the genocidal pedophile Muhammad, and you call that “boundless sheep ignorance.”
Allah will not be pleased.
Tf do you mean Trump? Trump has literally done nothing of relevance since coming into office
Someone’s been drinking the Democrat’s Kool-Aid.
Nah I just actually do my research unlike you
But hey why dont you tell me something he’s accomplished? Other than slowing down the drop in unemployment rate froM Obama and built like 20 miles of fence that half of it fell over
Trump has literally done nothing of relevance […] I just actually do my research
Only the illiterate, the perverse, and the deranged can claim that.
You’re off to a great start, and it can only get better!
Continue!
So what you’re saying is that you can’t tell me even one thing Trump has accomplished?
even one thing
I was giving you time to come to your senses. Since you persist …
Lower taxes.
Trump saved the lowest class 12% on taxes. That’s a whole $150.
The reduction in benefits and welfare cost them more than they got back in taxes. In addition, tax cuts harm the country by f*king up its budget. The only ones who benefited from Trump’s tax cuts were millionaires.
Try again.
lowest class
The “lowest class” pays no income tax.
You asked for even one. I gave one. The fact that those who pay less in taxes receive less of a benefit from a tax cut doesn’t change the fact that the cut still benefits (directly and indirectly) many Americans.
There are economic problems pushing us to our doom far greater than permitting those who work to keep more of what they earn.
The National Debt, Inflation/Fiat Currency, and profligate government spending are three of them.
Obviously I’m referring to the lowest bracket that pays income tax…
And no, it does not. If the end result of the tax cut is that you spend more, it is not an accomplishment. That’s like driving 30 miles to save a penny on gas. Sure, you pay less for gas (just like Trump made a lot of people pay less for taxes) but if you spent more to get there then it cancels out the savings.
The national debt goes up when you lose income, such as for example massive tax cuts on the wealthy.
Inflation in the US over the last ten years is the lowest it’s been since the 60s.
The only profligated spending the government is doing is on the military. I’d hardly call spending on keeping people alive, healthy, fed, and not homeless profligated in any way.
If the end result of the tax cut is that you spend more […] profligated [sic]
Then there’s something else that needs fixing. Doesn’t change the fact that cutting oppressive taxation is a moral good.
It’s clear that you understand neither the National Debt nor Inflation.
What oppressive taxation? We’re the richest country in the world but are in the 5 lowest taxed countries among all first world nations dude. And the rich are taxed at a lower rate than people living in poverty. That’s what needs fixing.
You know what else is a moral good? Cutting income inequality, and redistributing the 10 billion that some people have sitting in the bank doing nothing while people starve to death or die of cancer or kill themselves because they couldn’t get therapy.
What is “morally good” about letting rich people keep more of the money that they cant possibly use in their lifetime?
Government officials’ feeding off the people is, by definition, oppressive.
Five wrongs don’t make a right.
The poor don’t pay income tax.
What do you call it when you take the fruits of others’ labor against their will? You’re another pro-slavery Democrat/Marxist.
Look at how credulous you are. “Let’s enslave ourselves because people suffer.” The Democrats need the depraved and gullible to survive. They must love you.
It is the eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, “You toil and work and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.”
No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.
Government officials are not feeding off the people. They are literally serving the people.
Do you think all countries should be tax free? How exactly do you think we would provide services like fire departments, roadways, public parks and conservation, healthcare for those who can’t afford it, etc?
The poor do pay income tax genius, anyone making above 12k does. You’re still poor if you make 13k a year.
What do I call it when you take the fruits of someone’s labor against their will? I usually call that capitalism. A worker breaking their back to make $12 an hour while the CEO makes enough in a year to pay 50 people for life sounds a lot more like slavery to me.
You’re literally the one advocating for slavery here, bending over to let your corporate overlords ram you up the rear and trying to tell me that I’m wrong.
Literally everything you are saying can be applied to the corporate fatcats who do nothing yet grow rich and indolent off the labor of the masses. “You toil and earn bread and I’ll eat it”; that’s literally the spirit of capitalism, to get to a position where someone else can do your work for you, and you can sit back and watch the money roll in.
There is no tyranny in forcing the slaveholders to pay their slaves a fair wage for the work they do. Literally no one is saying people should be paid to sit on their a*s, what is being said is that people need to be treated fairly and not taken advantage of.
How illiterate can you be?
1) I wasn’t arguing against taxation; I was arguing against oppressive taxation. When government officials have the best of everything at citizens’ expense while squandering our wealth on themselves, family members, friends, donors, and non-citizens, then that’s oppressive.
California has the highest marginal income tax rate in the nation at 13% but can neither pave a road nor keep the lights on.
2) You said, “the rich are taxed at a lower rate than people living in poverty,” which is absurd. The lowest federal income tax rate is 10% and the highest 37%.
Even if you meant actual income tax paid, you’re still lost; Jeff Bezos with all of his accounting tricks still has an annual salary of $82,000, a taxable income of $70,000, and an income tax of $11,000. (Fix that.)
Someone with an annual income of $13,000 has a taxable income of $600, which means a federal income tax of $60.
Way to go, Ernst & Young.
3) Capitalism is nothing more than economic freedom. Two people agree to exchange services and benefits freely. Voluntarily.
(You do it too; don’t pretend that you tell your employer that he’s paying you too much.)
If someone wants to earn more, then they’ve got to make themselves more valuable to someone with resources. Being ignorant, untalented, and lazy are not qualities for which anyone wants to pay, even you.
The truth is that you’re defending Marxism/Communism/Socialism, the lazy and murderous man’s way of getting his fellow citizens to enslave themselves and feel good about it.
America doesn’t have oppressive taxation, so shut up about it. I’m talking about the real world, not your fantasy land.
I never said the rich got taxed less, I said they got taxed at a lower rate. And you’re calling me illiterate?
Capitalism is not economic freedom. Capitalism’s end stage is oligarchal control over the economy and workers forced to take whatever jobs they can to support their families because otherwise they’ll starve.
I don’t “voluntarily” work for my wage, I would much rather be making more, but since I cannot take time off from work to continue schooling nor do I have the money to do so, I’m stuck, like most people in America.
You are literally sitting here acting like companies will just hand you money because you’re a good worker and that’s bullshit. Your income has nothing to do with skill at the job, your income has to do with how many a**es you can kiss, who you know, and how much you can lie about your capabilities. There’s a reason manager across the board are related to people higher up and almost wholly incompetent yet they get paid 4x what people who actually work for a living make.
You’re absolutely delusional dude. Why don’t you tell me how much you make and what you do? What’s your success story?
America doesn’t have
So, you want no readers. Good day, then.
America’s tax rates are in the bottom five of first world countries buddy. Educate yourself.
60 years ago the tax rate on the top bracket was 70-80%. Now it’s 37%.
Are you purposely being ignorant or are you just too dumb to do basic math?
ignorant […] dumb
(That’s ironic.)
Who are you to decide how much of the fruits of a man’s labor he should be allowed to keep? The idea that, “It used to be worse,” or, “It’s worse somewhere else,” is absurd.
A nation’s having a parasitical class feeding on its people is good for the people, is that it?
A little slavery’s good, right? Right?
Credulous tool.
https://www.dsogaming.com/pc-performance-analyses/microsoft-flight-simulator-is-the-new-crysis-current-gen-cpus-unable-to-offer-60fps-on-high-ultra/#comment-5082710870
Trumps been handing all our bases and territory to Putin
Can you name one base or territory Trump actually handed to Putin?
Off the top of my head? Kobani airbase is one.
“it really needs a new generation of CPUs in order to shine”
“we suggest upgrading to 32GB of RAM for this particular game”
Or maybe the game is in dire need of effective optimisation given that the same dev’s previous game, A Plague Tale: Innocence, also run abysmally at higher settings.
It seems as though the publisher, Xbox Game Studios (formerly Microsoft Studios), has once more dropped the ball by not having enforced effective QA testing prior to release.
Well there is such gap between the recommended specs and the result obtained by an i9 9900k…
That’s laughable,
Being surprised in 2020 that a flight sim needs 32 GBs of RAM
Or maybe you are obnoxiously annoying!
Too bad we can’t make polls.
Winner of bad optimization for August 2020:
Horizon Zero Dawn or Flight Simulator 2020?
Dude…. flight simulator is just demanding. You guys think that everything that doesn’t runs at 400fps 8k its not well optimized.
Laying a Bing maps texture on the ground and rending open empty space with clouds really shouldn’t be that demanding
It forced me to finally upgrade from my 2500K to a 1200 socket intel system. Got my z490 motherboard in today, will likely buy 10700k i7 next. I was able to play it on my 2500k but had to turn down the level of detail from 100 to 10 for both objects and some other option. It still looks somewhat nice though, but it was on medium. Kills my computer otherwise if i attempt anything higher. This is also the reason probably why no helicopter exists, you’re gonna need a monster of a pc to enjoy the scenery up close with something like a helicopter. I would say this is Crysis x10 in terms of it being the new benchmark because of how high you can take these settings. Im building my PC from scratch which I also have never done, i usually salvage parts, but ditching it all for a complete new build, tossing my 1070 and ssds as a backup or something. I literally started in the city i now live and backtracked to where i grew up, still surprised how i managed to find it, kind of lucked out.
as you can see im very excited.
Your 1st mistake was getting a Intel 1200 socket cpu only 10cores.. Should of gotten a ryzen 3900x or 3950x..or wait for 4900x lol
i will never buy amd products.
That’s cool, to each his own. ????
Microsoft Flight Simulator, like all the topics i despise in a single sentence
I would have thought the game would run like butter. Just laying map data on basic geometry/shapes. Sounds poorly optimized (*DX 11 COUGH COUGH*)
Oh yeah, this is where my 3900x rips the 9900k apart. Do you even core bro?
10,000% this.
News at 11: somebody who has never played the series before finds out that MS Flight Simulator is a very demanding game.
I’ve got an Ryzen 3950x, 32Gb of ram and Rtx 2080 Ti. Internet speed 60M. Nothing can stop me!
3950 eats flights Sims lunch. This article is such trash.
All those beautiful 4k screenshots over the last year, hopefully the game someday will match those. I’ll probably be worm food by then but one can hope.
Windows 7 hit end of life in January this year buddy. And 8.1 is on Extended Support and goes end of life in 2013. Why would you expect them to provide support for a dead OS and another OS that no one uses? 8.1 is used by 3% of PC users
MCC launched in December 2019, aka before it went dead.
DOOM Eternal is not a first party Microsoft game, and doesn’t support 8.1.
Cyberpunk is not a first party Microsoft game. And Projekt Red has not released system requirements for Cyberpunk, so now you’re just making things up.
And no, 7 support is not a guarantee of 8.1 support. I worked for Dell for 2 years, one of the common problems we had was people who had 7 and upgraded to 8.1 and sh*t stopped working. There’s a reason nobody uses it.
It’s not an “artificial cripple”. It’s an 11 year old operating system. Microsoft’s OSes have ALWAYS had a 10-12 year support cycle. Hell, Win 98 only got an 8 year cycle and ME got 6.
Windows 10 is not unstable. I’ve been using it for 6 years and the only crashes I got were due to my graphics card overheating.
Honestly it sounds like you don’t know anything about computers other than Microsoft Bad
“it really needs a new generation of CPUs in order to shine”
“we suggest upgrading to 32GB of RAM for this particular game”
uhmmmm how about NO!
Why on earth you will be using so much ram not even Star Citizen uses that much
wow, they were not kidding, I just tried this game on my PC and laptop, I barely get stable 30 fps. this game is terribly optimized.
Even when setting everything to lowest setting, the game still hogs
its really not terribly optimized. its the lod setting for objects/terrain, once you turn it down you can get good frames even on an old 2500k. there is a tutorial out there, but changing mainly two settings, which are terrain detail lod and objects level of detail in the game drastically either increases or decreases frames. when you have that many objects/terrain with high quality it kills frames, its why modern cpus do so much better. you can argue they could have used an entire different engine completely and gotten better performance, but im guessing this is not something they can remedy by simply having better code with the existing game. it makes sense, what other game has that many buildings/objects all at once and you are flying through them? not many i would assume. what also drops frames is downloading all the data, downloading regions prior helped this as well. also 16gb is not enough, already maxed that out.
Josh, what in the world are you talking about “any current CPU”?
The 9900 benchmarks around 19.5k.
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html
A Ryzen 3800 benchmarks almost 30% higher than your 9900.
And high end ($2k) procs benchmark double or triple what the 9900 hits.
Maybe you can’t run it on a 9900, but I’d imagine a Xeon or a Threadripper would be much more competitive there.
Curious how it will run on my 1950x with 1080ti? I will wait until all this public beta testing is done and they finish the game.
Who ever wrote this article is an idiot . Its not about cpus not being fast enough this game/sim is horribly optimized its not even using the cpu properly my 16 threaded Ryzen is only using about 30% of its power and gpu is not even 70% used on average .