GPUScore Breaking Limit benchmark: cross-vendor, cross-platform, with ray tracing

Basemark is introducing a new benchmark for desktops, laptops, and handheld devices. This is a true cross-platform benchmark for premium smartphones, tablets, laptops, and low-end systems, notes the company in a new announcement. However, those with high-end systems should not ignore it either, as the company is also announcing Breaking Limit Ultra, a special version dedicated to desktops and laptops with more powerful graphics.

The Breaking Limit benchmark can run on all platforms and environments, allowing for easy comparison between low-power mobile devices and desktop systems. Basemark confirms support for Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS systems. It can also use three graphics APIs: DirectX12, Vulkan, and Metal. The non-Ultra benchmark is rendered at 1080p, while Ultra is a 4K benchmark.

Breaking Limit Benchmark, Source: Basemark

Whether looking at the Ultra or non-Ultra version, both are designed to showcase one technology in particular: ray tracing. Both benchmarks use ray-traced reflections and ray-traced shadows. The company explains that shadows of the main directional lights are ray traced, while other lights rely on shadow maps to preserve performance. Moreover, ray tracing is done at 75% of the main resolution to save performance. The Ultra benchmark adds ray-traced reflections, ground truth ambient occlusion, volumetric fog, motion blur, and temporal anti-aliasing. This benchmark is recommended for GPUs with at least 8GB of VRAM.

Breaking Limit Benchmark, Source: Basemark

Additionally, Basemark announces that the Ultra benchmark features built-in support for two upscaling tests, namely NVIDIA DLSS2 and AMD FSR2. Both use “Balanced” quality, but it is emphasized that those results cannot be compared due to quality differences and the methods both technologies use to render frames.

Although this wasn’t confirmed in the announcement, Breaking Limit is expected to be a free benchmark like all previous releases from Basemark. However, there is no release date yet.

Requirements

Breaking Limit

• Operating systems: Windows, Linux, iOS and Android
• Graphics API’s (depending on operating system): DirectX12, Vulkan1.3, and Metal 3
• Ray tracing capable GPU
• Test Modes:
  • Official: The main benchmark that uses standard settings.
  • Official Native: Uses the same content and settings as Official, but uses device’s display resolution as the rendering resolution (only available on mobile devices running on Android and iOS).
  • Custom: Uses the same content as Official, but allows users to change settings from the default ones used in Official.

Breaking Limit Ultra

• Windows devices:
  • x64 CPU
  • Windows 10 or 11
  • 8GB of RAM
  • Ray tracing-capable GPU with 8GB+ of VRAM
• Linux devices:
  • x64 CPU
  • Ubuntu 20.04 or 22.04 (other distributions may be supported, but are not tested)
  • 8GB+ of RAM
  • Ray tracing-capable GPU with 8GB+ of VRAM
• Test Modes:
  • Official: The main benchmark that uses standard settings.
  • Upscaled DLSS/FSR: Upscaled tests measure the performance of the devices using the main two upscaling techniques: AMD’s FSR2 and
  • nVidia’s DLSS2 (only available on Breaking Limit Ultra).
  • Custom: Uses the same content as Official, but allows users to change settings from the default ones used in Official.

Source: Basemark