Breaking Limit: A New Ray Tracing Benchmark Offers Familiar Results

A new ray tracing benchmark, "Breaking Limit" from Basemark, has arrived, offering a comprehensive cross-platform test for both desktop and mobile devices. The benchmark assesses the performance of graphics cards in rendering complex scenes using ray tracing, a technology that simulates realistic lighting and reflections.

Breaking Limit consists of two primary tests, Ultra and Cross-platform, with distinct settings for resolution, shadow casting lights, and VRAM usage. The Ultra test, in particular, showcases the capabilities of ray traced global illumination and full-scale reflections.

The benchmark results mirror the well-established hierarchy of ray tracing performance among GPUs. Nvidia's cards consistently outperform their counterparts from AMD and Intel, emphasizing their leadership in this domain. This is particularly evident in scenarios where ray tracing is heavily emphasized, as seen in Breaking Limit Ultra.

Despite the familiar ranking, the benchmark highlights the importance of compute shaders in ray tracing performance, a crucial factor in the strong showing of Nvidia's Ada Lovelace and AMD's RDNA 3 architecture.

While Breaking Limit offers a valuable tool for evaluating ray tracing across different platforms, its visual presentation falls short of other benchmarks like 3DMark. The relatively small size of the benchmark, at less than 1GB, limits its visual impact.

Despite its limitations, Breaking Limit serves a distinct purpose as a comprehensive cross-platform test, providing a rigorous assessment of ray tracing performance on various devices. The benchmark's free download for non-commercial use makes it an accessible option for anyone seeking to test the ray tracing capabilities of their hardware.