UL’s 3DMark Gets New Benchmarks For Ray Tracing & Always Connected PCs

3DMark is doing its annual benchmark refresh and moving in the expected direction of including a new ray tracing benchmark, built on top of Microsoft’s DirectX RT API. To cater to more mainstream systems, another new benchmark, Night Raid, will be built around testing integrated graphics processors, low power devices, and always connected PCs.

The new ray tracing benchmark does not have a name as of yet, and is simply referred to as the ‘Ray Tracing Benchmark’ for the time being. It builds off of a previous announcement when UL released a teaser of the Time Spy demo with ray tracing effects enabled. The rather impressive demo was not an official benchmark though, so it could not be tested. The official ray tracing benchmark is expected to be released some time later this year.

You can watch a short video of what to expect in the new test, and see the graphical effects that are going to be used. The most obvious effect that will be stressed, is heavy use of reflections (they’re pretty much everywhere). The ship during the docking sequence shows a full environment reflection, complete with small amounts of warping and refractions. It likely makes use of global illumination too, but beyond that, it’s hard to tell what else will be shown (since there will be more to the test sequence in the live version).

3DMark Night Raid will be for testing low-power systems. Laptops, all-in-one tablets, and more importantly, Always Connected PCs, the ARM-based Windows 10 laptops. While such devices are not really used for the big-budget AAA game titles we’re accustomed to on desktops, more mobile focused games are still popular (just look at the various App stores).

The ARM-based systems would require a proper, purpose-built benchmark. While they can emulate x86 instructions, they are not real-time. As such, gaming on such devices can be rather problematic. As the platform matures, gaming should be possible, so UL is trying to get its foot in the door to help prepare purchasers of what to expect with a more purpose-built game (such as one built around UWP).

Night Raid is due out in a couple of weeks, at the beginning of October, but we’ll have to wait a bit longer for the ray tracing benchmark.