Official MSFS 2024 system requirements (minimum, recommended, and max settings)

FS2024 system requirements / “will my 3090 run MAX?”

Hi Alan — the honest snag here is there aren’t any official MSFS 2024 “minimum / recommended / max” PC specs in your post for me to quote back to you, and I don’t want to muddy the waters by guessing or repeating rumor/speculation.

What I can do is help you sanity-check your current rig and what typically changes between sim versions, so you can make a safe call once you’ve got the official spec sheet in front of you.

Reality check on your current hardware
Your GPU (3090 FE) is still a very strong card for flight sim workloads. The two things that usually decide whether “MAX” stays “MAX” from one sim release to the next are:

• CPU main-thread headroom (especially if you crank traffic, complex airports, and glass cockpits)
• VRAM and overall memory bandwidth (3090’s VRAM usually helps here)

If MSFS 2020 is truly “flawless” for you at MAX today, you’re starting from a good place. That said, “MAX” is never a single thing in MSFS — things like Terrain LOD / Object LOD, traffic, and resolution can move performance more than most other sliders.

Practical way to approach it once you install FS2024
When you do make the jump, I’d test in a controlled way rather than trusting the preset:

1. Start with the same resolution you use in MSFS 2020 and the “Ultra/Max” preset (whatever 2024 calls it).
2. Fly a repeatable test scenario:
   • Same aircraft you normally fly
   • A heavy airport area + a rural area (two quick hops)
   • Same time of day / weather style (live weather can vary too much)
3. If you see stutters, drop only the big hitters first:
   • Terrain LOD / Object LOD
   • Traffic (AI/ground/road/boats)
   • Cloud quality (if you fly in heavy overcast)
4. Then fine-tune from there rather than abandoning “MAX” entirely.

A couple targeted questions so I can answer precisely
If you reply with these, I can give you a much more concrete “yes/no and why” for your specific setup:

• Which exact i9 model is it? (Example: i9-9900K, i9-10900K, i9-12900K, etc.)
• How much system RAM do you have (32GB/64GB?), and is MSFS installed on an SSD or NVMe?
• What resolution are you running (1080p/1440p/4K) and are you using VR?
• When you say “MAX settings” in MSFS 2020 — what are your Terrain LOD / Object LOD values and what FPS are you typically seeing?

Also, if you’ve got the official FS2024 requirements text (or a screenshot of it), paste it here and I’ll break it down line-by-line against your i9/3090 so you know exactly where you stand.

Re: “There must be guideline requirements… it doesn’t have to be official”

Alan, I hear you — you’re basically asking “give me a ballpark so I know if I’m wasting my time.” The problem is that once I post a made-up “min/recommended/max” table (even with a big disclaimer), it gets repeated as fact and people start spending real money off it. I’ve watched that happen too many times on these forums.

What I can do (and it’s actually more useful for MSFS than a generic spec list) is give you a practical guideline for what decides whether you keep “MAX/Ultra” in a new MSFS generation, and how to sanity-check your i9/3090 against it.

1) What “MAX” is usually limited by in MSFS
In MSFS 2020 (and almost certainly 2024), the “Ultra/Max” preset is not the whole story. The sim typically hits a wall in one of these areas:

• CPU main thread (the #1 reason “MAX” doesn’t feel max)
  • big airports, dense photogrammetry, glass cockpit aircraft, lots of AI/ground traffic
• GPU + VRAM
  • 4K, high render scaling, heavy clouds/overcast, ultra textures
• RAM + storage
  • smoothness/stutters, scenery streaming, long pauses (SSD/NVMe matters here)

Your 3090 FE is still a beast on the GPU/VRAM side. So the deciding factor for “same MAX as 2020” is usually: which exact i9, what resolution you run, and how aggressive your LOD/traffic sliders are.

2) A “guideline tier” that won’t pretend to be an official spec sheet
This isn’t a requirements chart — it’s the way I’d sanity-check a rig for “high/ultra” expectations in a modern MSFS-style sim:

• For high/ultra at 1080p or 1440p
  • strong modern i7/i9 or Ryzen 7-class CPU
  • 32GB RAM
  • SSD/NVMe install
  • upper-mid to high-end GPU
• For ultra at 4K
  • top-tier GPU (your 3090 is in this bracket)
  • plus a CPU with strong single-core/main-thread performance
  • 32GB+ RAM
• For “maxed LOD + heavy traffic at big hubs”
  • even high-end rigs often need to trim Terrain LOD/Object LOD and/or traffic a notch for smoothness

So: you’re already “good on GPU.” Whether you keep “MAX everywhere” depends mainly on the CPU generation and your “MAX” sliders (LOD + traffic + resolution).

3) If you want the quickest real answer: tell me these 4 things
If you post the following, I can give you a straight “yes, likely / yes, but with caveats / you’ll probably need to tune X” based on how MSFS actually behaves:

• Exact i9 model (example: i9-9900K vs i9-10900K vs i9-12900K etc.)
• RAM amount (32GB/64GB) and whether the sim is on SSD or NVMe
• Your resolution (1080p/1440p/4K) and whether you use VR
• In MSFS 2020: your Terrain LOD + Object LOD values, and typical FPS at a busy airport

If you can, also tell me what you consider “flawless” (locked 60? 40? “no stutters”?), because that changes what “same max settings” really means in practice.