3DMARK Solar Bay Extreme Benchmark revealed with 5x higher Raytracing loads

3DMARK Solar Bay is getting an “Extreme” update, and it heavily focuses on ray tracing

UL Benchmarks has revealed a new version of their 3DMARK Solar Bay benchmark (via Computerbase.de), and it pushes ray tracing hard. 3DMARK Solar Bay Extreme is due to release later this year, and it reportedly has 3-5x higher ray tracing loads than its predecessor. This reflects the higher levels of GPU and ray tracing performance that modern mobile devices possess.

3DMARK Solar Bay was released in 2023. It focuses on mobile devices, including those running on Android, iOS, and Windows. The benchmark supports the Vulkan API on Android, Metal on Apple devices, and DirectX 12 on Windows. This new “Extreme” benchmark variant will further challenge mobile devices, pushing manufacturers to achieve higher levels of graphics performance.

With its broad levels of device support, this tool can test GPUs from AMD, Apple, Intel, ARM, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and others.

An entirely new benchmarking sequence

Solar Bay Extreme isn’t just a higher-resolution form of UL Benchmarks’ original Solar Bay test. This time, the UL team has created an entirely new benchmark sequence. The sequence is more detailed, uses more ray tracing effects, and runs at a higher screen resolution of 1440p.

The original Solar Bay just used ray tracing for reflections on reflective surfaces. This new tool now uses ray-traced reflections on both rough and soft surfaces, and integrated RT reflections with light refraction on glass surfaces. Furthermore, ray tracing is used to calculate soft shadows.

UL Benchmarks has not revealed the release date of their new Solar Bay Extreme benchmark. However, we can expect it to launch sometime this year.

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