Am I likely to see much performance increase in MSFS 2020 or 2024?

Thanks!

Yes.. assuming you are not GPU bottlenecked, you will get 20-50% more performance depending on your settings, resolution, etc. 

But if you are looking to buy a new PC (and not just doing a drop-in upgrade), I would avoid Intel and go with the X3D chips - 7800x3d or 9800x3d. If you are simply upgrading your processor alone.. well then sure, the 14900k will definitely give you a boost. 

He stated the 14600K, Jonathan (not the 14900K).....or was that just a typo on your part?

My older system was an I5-13600KS with an RTX3080 12 Gig and it ran 2020 and 2024 pretty good at stock 5.1Ghz settings. You would see a nice boost from the 11600K but you'll need to change the MB too....11600K is LGA1200 and the 14600K is LGA1700.

You might want to explore other options if you are going to change out the CPU and MB.

My new system is all AMD now and I'm pretty happy with the way it runs 2020 and 2024. Was always an Intel guy but I have to admit I'm pretty impressed with the 9800X3D I have now.

 

 

 

 

Yeah, if you are going to need to get a new MOBO and RAM, I would consider AMD as well, 7800X3D.

I am on the same boat, planning to go to AMD, possibly for 9800X3D since I do VR as well.

I currently using 14600K. with 9070 XT, 64GB...this combo is still pretty strong with MSFS 2024 using inibuilds A350 with custom airports, with Frame Generation,...TAA...not so much, but oh well.... it does a decent job with Virtual Display.

MSFS2020 is not bad too incase that is what you are using...

Edited September 17, 2025Sep 17 by avistudent

9800X3D is mucho expensive, the 14600K is half the price.

Looks like your in Canada like me......Yes there's a fairly big gap in price.

I started with wanting a GPU upgrade but wasn't going to pay the huge price for an NVidia card. It worked out that I could swing the 9800X3D and RX9070XT for close

to the same price as an RTX5080.

There's nothing wrong with just doing the 14600K upgrade with a new MB, think you'll be happy with the performance.

But if you can swing a slightly larger budget I'd have a serious look at the 9800X3D.

Not sure it will help you but I had an i711700k with an GTX 1080ti, and recently upgraded to 14900k (adding a 5070ti on the way).

AMD is also a good choice nowadays as others have said here, and it’s better on power consumption I understand).

However, if you do intend to stay with Intel, I saw some very useful improvements across the board. For example I often fly the Fenix A320s from Gatwick across Europe. With my old system I could sometime barely manage 20FPS in cruise. With new system I get around 50 fps (100 with DLSS) and about 30-40+ on finals at most airports with most settings on Ultra - at 2k.

Good luck with whatever you choose. Let us all know how your experience improves as a result.

Well the biggest difference in those 2 CPUs is the core count so I would imagine if you are running the sim plus a few add-ons those additional cores could help spread the load. Overall the sim will run smoother I would imagine. How much mileage you get will depend on your other PC components such as GPU.

 

If you go for the 14th gen, my advice is to make sure the cpu is running the latest BIOS update given the reported 13/14gen CPU issues Intel has. There's still some doubt as to whether Intel has really fixed all those microcode issues.

As others have said, the AMD processors  are currently a better choice when you are building a new rig but if your invested in Intel, then making that CPU/MB swap may be easier way to go to eek out some performance gains.

 

Thanks folks and yes budget is a constraint...moving to amd also means a ram upgrade from dd4 to dd5 which is not an option. 

Yeah so update, no good mobos anymore for 14th Gen that are also ddr4.

So now got to wait for maybe amd to stop GAUGING people.

18 hours ago, Boomer said:

Yeah so update, no good mobos anymore for 14th Gen that are also ddr4.

So now got to wait for maybe amd to stop GAUGING people.

I am running a MSI Z790 Pro WiFi DDR4 on Air and have had no issues.  It is still available.  It is a LGA 1700 board (12700K).  My video card is a MSI 5070.  I see no problem with DDR4 since flight sims are about capacity and not speed for me.  No bottle necks on either end, it just runs.  With Cinebench stress test the max CPU Package temp is 77C.

On 10/9/2025 at 10:50 PM, Boomer said:

Yeah so update, no good mobos anymore for 14th Gen that are also ddr4.

So now got to wait for maybe amd to stop GAUGING people.

You never mentioned what GPU you use...

30 minutes ago, AnkH said:

You never mentioned what GPU you use...

7800xt...

So I guess you already use FSR3 frame generation, correct? Because for me this is still the gamechanger and no CPU upgrade ever will provide you with an equal FPS gain compared to framegen. Even in full CPU limited scenarios.