3DMARK Solar Bay Extreme is now available for cross-platform benchmarking

3DMARK Solar Bay Extreme is ready for heavy testing on Windows, Windows on ARM, iOS, Android, and macOS

UL Benchmarks have just released 3DMARK Solar Bay Extreme, a new benchmark that is free to all owners of 3DMARK. This new tool acts as a heavy cross-platform benchmarking tool for Windows PCs (including Windows on ARM devices), iOS, Android, and macOS. This allows users to benchmark and compare the performance of various devices and platforms.

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.

Overall, this new benchmark has 3-5x higher ray tracing loads than its predecessor. This is thanks to the benchmarks’ new ray tracing effects and their higher resolution.

An entirely new benchmarking sequence, not a simple upgrade

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 (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 integrates RT reflections with light refraction on glass surfaces. Furthermore, ray tracing is used to calculate soft shadows.

3DMARK Solar Bay Extreme is available now to all 3DMARK owners. 3DMARK is available on Steam, the Epic Games Store, and directly from 3DMARK.com. It is also available on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.

You can join the discussion on 3DMARK Solar Bay Extreme on the OC3D Forums.