Basemark has just released its latest ray tracing benchmark called Breaking Limit which can be used to evaluate GPU performance across various devices including PCs running NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel GPU hardware.
NVIDIA Remains The King of The Hill In Basemark Breaking Limit Ray-Tracing Benchmark While AMD Passes Ampere RT Performance
There aren't a whole lot of ray-tracing-specific benchmarks out there. The ones that come to mind are 3DMark and its various RT evaluation benchmarks. Now, Basemark has rolled out its latest and cross-platform "Breaking Limit" benchmark which not only supports a wide range of high-end GPU hardware but can also be tested on various devices such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops.
Basemark's Breaking Limit benchmark has two modes, a standard one and an Ultra mode is best suited to high-end GPUs on desktop PCs while the standard mode is made for the rest of the platforms including entry-level PCs. The best part is that the benchmark comes with support for FSR (AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution) & DLSS (NVIDIA Deep Learning Super Sampling) support. It also features compatibility in both DirectX 12 and Vulkan APIs.
Breaking Limit comes with two distinct workloads: Breaking Limit and Breaking Limit Ultra. Breaking Limit is ideal for comparing mobile devices, laptops, and desktops equipped with ray tracing supporting GPUs. Breaking Limit Ultra features an exceptionally demanding workload designed specifically for desktops with high-end GPUs. It also includes performance evaluation tests for the most known AI upscaling techniques: FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) and DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling).
The benchmark is free to download and you can grab it at this link to try it yourself and see how your hardware fares. We tested a few graphics cards of our own for now and found the results to be rather interesting.
Basemark Breaking Limit Ultra (Vulkan)
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 OC Results:
Our observation reveals that the Vulkan APU provides the best score in each respective benchmark but when DirectX 12 API is enabled, the benchmark yields a higher performance increase, usually in the 90%+ range whereas in Vulkan, this performance uplift is around +87%. Comparing DLSS2 with FSR2, DLSS2 leads in offering higher native and upscaled performance across all metrics versus the FSR2 algorithm. It will be interesting to see how the benchmark scales once frame-gen is added. It'll also be nice to see XeSS support in future updates.
