UL Solutions Launches 3DMark Solar Bay, New Cross-Platform Ray Tracing Benchmark

[GFreeman]

We're excited to announce the launch of 3DMark Solar Bay, a new cross-platform benchmark for testing ray traced graphics performance on Windows PCs and high-end Android devices. This benchmark measures games-related graphics performance by rendering a demanding, ray-traced scene in real time. Solar Bay is available now for Android on the Google Play Store and for Windows on Steam, Epic Games or directly from UL Solutions.

Compare ray tracing performance across platforms
Ray tracing is the showcase technology for Solar Bay, simulating real-time reflections. Compared to traditional rasterization, ray-traced scenes produce far more realistic lighting. While dedicated desktop and laptop graphics processing units (GPUs) have supported ray tracing for several years, it's only recently that integrated GPUs and Android devices have been capable of running real-time ray-traced games at frame rates acceptable to gamers.



Built using the Vulkan 1.1 API, Solar Bay offers two new tests for ray tracing- capable hardware: a quick-to-run benchmark measuring immediate performance and a stress test that measures how device performance changes over extended periods of heavy load.

Solar Bay's ray-traced workload increases over three stages, with each section increasing linearly by 100%. Solar Bay complements our heavier ray tracing benchmarks, Port Royal and Speed Way, on PC. With Solar Bay, 3DMark has a great range of ray tracing workloads, making it an excellent way to measure how your Windows or Android device's ray tracing performance scales.

Solar Bay benchmark
Run the 3DMark Solar Bay benchmark to measure a device's ability to provide instant performance for a short period of time. This test mirrors mobile games in which the gameplay loop is a series of short bursts of activity.

Solar Bay produces four scores on completion: an overall score and three sub-scores for each ray tracing section. These scores reflect your device's frame rate in Solar Bay; the higher the frame rate, the better the score.

Solar Bay stress test
The Solar Bay stress test is a longer test that shows how a device will perform over extended periods of ray-traced gaming. It mirrors a longer session of ray-traced gaming.

This test runs the Solar Bay workload in a loop for 20 minutes, producing a chart showing how performance varies over the test. An ideal outcome is a steady set of results showing that performance is not throttled.

Detailed results page
The 3DMark app lets you immediately compare your device's result with scores from the same model or other popular devices. With its unique charts, lists and rankings, 3DMark gives you unrivaled insights into the performance of Android devices.

Available now
3DMark on Google Play Store - Free
3DMark is available as a complimentary update for the 3DMark Android app on the Google Play store. You can download the 3DMark Android app for free today.
3DMark for Windows - $34.99 (USD)
Solar Bay is included when you purchase 3DMark for Windows. 3DMark is available on Steam, the Epic Games Store or directly from UL Solutions.

For existing 3DMark owners, Solar Bay is a complimentary update. Just update to the latest version of 3DMark to unlock it.

3DMark Professional Edition
Solar Bay is available as a complimentary update for 3DMark Professional Edition customers with a valid annual license.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[mrnagant]

On Pixel 7A, says "device does not support all the Vulkan features required to run the test". So I assume it needs RT cores. Which mobile processor have RT cores?

 

[Vya Domus]

On Pixel 7A, says "device does not support all the Vulkan features required to run the test". So I assume it needs RT cores. Which mobile processor have RT cores?

I do not think it is necessary to actually have RT cores on any kind of hardware. Every vendor offers extensions for the RT features but the backend of these can be implemented however they want, so hardware acceleration is not required. Remember that GTX 1000 series could run ray tracing, it was done in software.

So I assume google simply does not offer those vulkan extensions.

 

[fec32a4de]

On Pixel 7A, says "device does not support all the Vulkan features required to run the test". So I assume it needs RT cores. Which mobile processor have RT cores?

Not sure on the requirements for physical RT cores, but Pixel 7 doesn't have them. The 7 uses G710

Current phone GPUs with RT:

-Arm Immortalis G715 (MT6985 (Dimensity 9200/9200+)
-Arm Immortalis G720 (Not sure if commercially available yet, launched in: Q2 2023)
-Qualcomm Adreno 740 (Snapdragon 8 Gen 2)

edit: Vya is absolutely correct: It was done in software. GTX 1000 series and 1660 Ti for example, which is technically part of 20 series [1660 Ti] but without RT cores.

Some PC games refuse to let you enable RT if physical RT cores are missing.

 

[dj-electric]

Neat.

 

[Zunexxx]

View attachment 309016

Neat.

Wonder how would it be compared to 4090, just to see the difference and for fun

 

[King Mustard]

Wonder how would it be compared to 4090, just to see the difference and for fun

Cross-platform 3DMark Solar Bay ray tracing benchmark released, GeForce RTX 4090 is 24.5x faster than S23 Ultra - VideoCardz.com

New Ray Tracing test from 3DMark UL Solution has released a new graphics benchmark for that will work across many platforms. Solar Bay does not aim to replace existing benchmarks like Port Royal or the recently introduced Speed Way. Those benchmarks are designed for the PC platform and high-end...

videocardz.com

 

[wolf]

Neat, works well and looks great on S23U, crazy that hardware at this wattage level can run it 'smoothly' at all.

 

[dj-electric]

Wonder how would it be compared to 4090, just to see the difference and for fun

ye shall receive

13900K + RTX 4090

This is very not desktop horsepower kind of test. Much like Night Raid, this is a low power device friendly test
Compared to Videocardz's much lower results, I can assume that at these framerates its entirely CPU and memory bottlenecked

 

[Selaya]

what honestly surprised me is ... how good it looked while being super lightweight

why can't we have games that look good w/o spamming polygons for no particular reason

 

[Zunexxx]

ye shall receive
View attachment 309028
13900K + RTX 4090

This is very not desktop horsepower kind of test. Much like Night Raid, this is a low power device friendly test
Compared to Videocardz's much lower results, I can assume that at these framerates its entirely CPU and memory bottlenecked

Hey, it's 40 times better and a galaxy s23, I will take it, lol

 

[MarsM4N]

On STEAM the update is only 115MB. Kinda crazy. Guess they're re-using a lot of the other assets for the new bench.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Galaxy Z Flip 3/Snapdragon 888, guess you'll really need a Galaxy S23/Flip 5 for this one. Something with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 perhaps.

Other hand I should make the time to try this on my RTX 4080, looks fun.

 

[gmn 17]

Hey, it's 40 times better and a galaxy s23, I will take it, lol

Here is my score on a 2080 Ti and 3960x Amd Cpu
66410

 

[Dr. Dro]

Not sure on the requirements for physical RT cores, but Pixel 7 doesn't have them. The 7 uses G710

Current phone GPUs with RT:

-Arm Immortalis G715 (MT6985 (Dimensity 9200/9200+)
-Arm Immortalis G720 (Not sure if commercially available yet, launched in: Q2 2023)
-Qualcomm Adreno 740 (Snapdragon 8 Gen 2)

edit: Vya is absolutely correct: It was done in software. GTX 1000 series and 1660 Ti for example, which is technically part of 20 series [1660 Ti] but without RT cores.

Some PC games refuse to let you enable RT if physical RT cores are missing.

I asked the UL rep on the Steam forum to confirm, stating that my Z Flip 3 could not run it and he replied:

Snapdragon 888 has no RT support, so it cannot run on that device.

Snapdragon 8 gen 2 does support, as does Exynos 2200 and latest Dimensity 9200. There will be more SoCs with support in the future.

Link to post

It seems that hardware RT acceleration is indeed required.

 

[FM_Jarnis]

Technically the test requires just Vulkan 1.1 Raytracing extension support. To be exact, following extensions and limitations:

VULKAN EXTENSIONS
VK_KHR_acceleration_structure
VK_KHR_ray_tracing_pipeline or VK_KHR_ray_query
VK_KHR_buffer_device_address
VK_EXT_descriptor_indexing

VULKAN LIMITS
maxSamplerAnisotropy >= 16
maxBoundDescriptorSets >= 8
maxDescriptorSetSampledImages >= 400

VULKAN FEATURES
samplerAnisotropy
Quad ops in fragment shaders

The driver for each platform can choose how to implement these. For phones, currently only devices that have hardware acceleration have implemented these extensions. On Windows side, NVIDIA has implemented these for 10- and 16-series, just like they implemented DXR support without hardware acceleration, so you can run this test (slowly) on those cards.

Future phone firmware/GPU driver updates could, in theory, add the required feature support even for devices that do not have hardware acceleration. This is up to the SoC vendors. Not sure how phone hardware would handle such an implementation - I would expect it to be very slow.

Also note that this is primarily a test for mobile devices. While it scales even up to a RTX 4090 (when paired with a very fast CPU) and care was taken to try to ensure that it is not CPU-bottlenecked on current hardware, the performance difference between, say, Snapdragon 8 gen 2 and a RTX 4090 is so massive that any multipliers of performance you may list out of that are only a rough figure and there is inevitably more variance between runs on high end hardware with a relatively lightweight test like this. RT load was also designed to be appropriate for mobile devices, so it is far lower than, say, in Speed Way or Port Royal. This means that for example performance difference between current NVIDIA and AMD hardware is less than in a heavier test.

Edit: Also, yes, the test is only 115MB. Care was made to minimize filesize as this is a mobile device test and you probably would want to avoid having to download a gigabyte-sized test to a phone. Assets are mostly new and it does not use files from other tests on Windows.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Technically the test requires just Vulkan 1.1 Raytracing extension support. To be exact, following extensions and limitations:

VULKAN EXTENSIONS
VK_KHR_acceleration_structure
VK_KHR_ray_tracing_pipeline or VK_KHR_ray_query
VK_KHR_buffer_device_address
VK_EXT_descriptor_indexing

VULKAN LIMITS
maxSamplerAnisotropy >= 16
maxBoundDescriptorSets >= 8
maxDescriptorSetSampledImages >= 400

VULKAN FEATURES
samplerAnisotropy
Quad ops in fragment shaders

The driver for each platform can choose how to implement these. For phones, currently only devices that have hardware acceleration have implemented these extensions. On Windows side, NVIDIA has implemented these for 10- and 16-series, just like they implemented DXR support without hardware acceleration, so you can run this test (slowly) on those cards.

Future phone firmware/GPU driver updates could, in theory, add the required feature support even for devices that do not have hardware acceleration. This is up to the SoC vendors. Not sure how phone hardware would handle such an implementation - I would expect it to be very slow.

Also note that this is primarily a test for mobile devices. While it scales even up to a RTX 4090 (when paired with a very fast CPU) and care was taken to try to ensure that it is not CPU-bottlenecked on current hardware, the performance difference between, say, Snapdragon 8 gen 2 and a RTX 4090 is so massive that any multipliers of performance you may list out of that are only a rough figure and there is inevitably more variance between runs on high end hardware with a relatively lightweight test like this. RT load was also designed to be appropriate for mobile devices, so it is far lower than, say, in Speed Way or Port Royal. This means that for example performance difference between current NVIDIA and AMD hardware is less than in a heavier test.

Edit: Also, yes, the test is only 115MB. Care was made to minimize filesize as this is a mobile device test and you probably would want to avoid having to download a gigabyte-sized test to a phone. Assets are mostly new and it does not use files from other tests on Windows.

Glad to see you here! Thanks for clarifying the specific requirements

 

[agent_x007]

Technically the test requires just Vulkan 1.1 Raytracing extension support. To be exact, following extensions and limitations:

VULKAN EXTENSIONS
VK_KHR_acceleration_structure
VK_KHR_ray_tracing_pipeline or VK_KHR_ray_query
VK_KHR_buffer_device_address
VK_EXT_descriptor_indexing

VULKAN LIMITS
maxSamplerAnisotropy >= 16
maxBoundDescriptorSets >= 8
maxDescriptorSetSampledImages >= 400

VULKAN FEATURES
samplerAnisotropy
Quad ops in fragment shaders

The driver for each platform can choose how to implement these. For phones, currently only devices that have hardware acceleration have implemented these extensions. On Windows side, NVIDIA has implemented these for 10- and 16-series, just like they implemented DXR support without hardware acceleration, so you can run this test (slowly) on those cards.

Titan V doesn't support it (it errors out when loading screen is meant to be)
I think hardware RT acceleration is required or "DirectX 12 Ultimate" GPU.
Which makes both GTX 1000 and GTX 1600 series unsupported (the same requirements as Speed Way benchmark).
I added AIDA64 report with what is supported on my card.