3DMARK’s putting macOS, Windows, Linux, and more head-to-head with their new Steel Nomad benchmark

3DMARK Steel Nomad will soon succeed Time Spy as their most demanding non-RT benchmark

UL Benchmarks has revealed a new cross-platform gaming benchmark called 3DMARK Steel Nomad. This benchmark will act as the company’s successor for 3DMARK Time Spy as the company’s most demanding non-raytracing benchmark. Beyond that, the benchmark will support the DirectX 12, Vulkan, and Metal APIs, making the benchmark cross-platform.

A firm release date has not been revealed for 3DMARK Steel Nomad, but UL Benchmarks have released a selection of screenshot for their new benchmarking tool. At launch, the benchmark will support Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, and Android. This will allow users to test and compare a huge variety of devices. Earlier this year, UL Benchmarks released 3DMARK Solar Bay, a cross-platform benchmarking tool that features ray tracing.

Steel Nomad has been described as a “new heavy non-ray-tracing benchmark“. While ray tracing is becoming increasingly common in games, there are still plenty of titles that do not utilise this new feature. As such, a dedicated non-ray-tracing benchmark remains useful for consumers and analysts.

On Oct. 26, 2023, 3DMark turned 25 years old. Looking back, it’s amazing how far graphics have come, and we’re very excited to see what the next 25 years bring.

Now, it’s time to share a sneak peek of what’s coming next. Here are some preview screenshots for 3DMark Steel Nomad, our successor to 3DMark Time Spy. It’s been more than seven years since we launched Time Spy, and after more than 42 million submitted results, we think it’s time for a new heavy non-ray-tracing benchmark.

Steel Nomad will be our most demanding non-ray-tracing benchmark and will not only support Windows using DirectX 12, but also macOS and iOS using Metal, Android using Vulkan, and Linux using Vulkan for Enterprise and reviewers.

To celebrate 3DMark’s 25th year, the scene will feature some callbacks to many of our previous benchmarks. We hope you have fun finding them all! We’ll share more details about 3DMark Steel Nomad when it is closer to launching.

Like all new additions to the 3DMARK test suite, we expect Steel Nomad to be released as part of UL benchmarks’ existing 3DMARK software stack. At this time it us unknown how much this new benchmarking tool will cost, or exactly when it will launch.

With Steel Nomad supporting both Linux and Windows, it will be interesting to see how well this benchmark performs on OS’ when using identical hardware configurations. It will also be interesting to see how this benchmark runs on devices like Valve’s Steam Deck. As far as we are aware, this is the first 3DMARK benchmark to support Linux natively.

You can join the discussion on UL benchmarks’ new 3DMARK Steel Nomad Benchmark on the OC3D Forums.