Make your mini gaming PC GPU sweat with 3DMark's new ray tracing benchmark

A new mini gaming PC benchmarking tool has just been released, and it's designed to push your hardware to its limits. Featuring five times the ray tracing demands of its predecessor, the new 3DMark Solar Bay Extreme benchmark tool is now free for all 3DMark users who want to thoroughly test the performance of devices with integrated GPUs, including mini PCs, handhelds, and budget gaming laptops.

Running at 1440p with some seriously demanding special effects, this 3DMark tool will push PC games hardware to its limits. That said, developers UL Benchmarks have designed this tool for "lightweight" devices, so you don't necessarily need a top spec GPU from our best graphics card guide to have any hope of running it properly.

3DMark Solar Bay Extreme testing runs for one minute and works by measuring your GPU's performance using ray tracing. A space scene is generated with a complex set of reflections and shadows, with 3DMark measuring how your device responds under such a heavy load.

3DMark is one of the elite-level tools available for synthetic benchmark testing on gaming PCs, and we've used its Time Spy benchmark ourselves for GPU testing in the past. You can use this new tool to test out your GPU's capabilities fresh, or as a stress test, checking to see how well your hardware performs, and whether that integrated GPU is genuinely up to the job of ray tracing.

On high-end hardware, however, this test isn't going to be much of a struggle. For example, we tested it ourselves on a gaming PC with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090, where it managed an average of 254fps. We'd expect to see it have a much tougher fight on a mini PC like the Geekom A6, for instance, which has a much slower integrated AMD Radeon 680M gaming GPU, as our Geekom A6 review explains.

If you're a 3DMark user, you can start using Solar Bay Extreme today, with UL recommending it for handhelds, gaming laptops, and lower-end gaming PCs with integrated GPUs. It's also available for high-end smartphones running Android and iOS, as well as recent Macs.

Looking for a small-sized rig to play your favorite games? Our best mini gaming PC guide has some great options from which to choose, and if you're a 3DMark user, this new benchmark tool will be a great way to test it out once it arrives.

Got your own testing tips to share? Start up a conversation in our Discord server to get the test talk flowing with staff and other readers.