3dmark Solar Bay Extreme: Raytracing Benchmark Demands Up to Five Times More Performance 17 comments
Bild: UL Benchmarks
With the 3DMark Solar Bay Extreme, the UL team behind the 3DMark is currently developing a new version of the Raytracing benchmark, which demands significantly more GPU performance and is therefore to do justice to the skills of modern mobile devices. Cross-platform reference, like the current one for Android, iOS and Windows, is planned.
The 3DMark Solar Bay is a Raytracing benchmark released in summer 2023 for mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets and notebooks. It’s not as demanding as 3DMark’s average speed for high-end PCs or in the 3DMark Steel Nomad’s rasterizer benchmark class. With the 3DMark Steel Nomad Light, the latter also has reduced branching, especially for mobile devices.
Since then, several generations of RayTracing-compatible mobile GPUs have been released, whether by AMD, Applearm, Intel, Imagination Technologies, NVIDIA or Qualcomm, which initially no longer master the new graphics effects, but have also become faster there, so that the hardware with the previous 3DMark solar array is no faster than two years ago.
Three to five times higher GPU load
UL As a 3DMark developer, the 3DMark Solar Bay Extreme is therefore planning a new version which should pay attention to this aspect and which are supposed to give mobile devices more challenges with the graphics unit capable of ray tracing. Specifically, the load on the GPU should be approximately three to five times higher than in the current version of the Solar 3Dmark array. Vulkan is used on Android, iOS Metal and Windows DirectX 12.
3dmark Solar Bay Extreme (Image: UL Benchmarks) Download image 1 of 6
Many more Raytracing effects
To achieve this, the reference will be converted into a completely new reference sequence, in which a significantly higher level of detail is offered and many more ray tracing effects are shown. In addition to the previously offered ray tracing reflections on reflective surfaces, the Solar Bay 3Dmark Extreme also incorporates RT reflections from soft and hard surfaces (rough and soft surface reflections) and RT reflections for glass with appropriate light fraction. Raytracing is also used to calculate soft shadows. Techtip is already available a number of screenshots that illustrate the new graphics quality.
The resolution, on the other hand, does not touch UL, the 3DMark Solar Bay Extreme is also rendered in 1440p, because 4K with Raytracing on mobile devices would then pull the target of UL. All ray tracing reflections visible in the benchmark also take place in the native 1440p benchmark resolution, as was said upon request.
No appointment yet
On the other hand, there is still no date for the 3DMark Solar Bay Extreme, UL didn’t even want to shorten the quarter for MWC 2025, in which a release could potentially take place this year. It is therefore only known that a new expansion stage with higher demands will follow.
THEMEN: Benchmarks Android Applications 3DMARK GAMING IOS MACOS MWC 2025 Raytracing Smartphones Windows Quelle: Eigene, UL Benchmarks
Sarah tracks innovations in smartphones, evaluating their performance, design, and key features.
