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Basemark GPUScore: In Vitro: The first ray tracing benchmark for Android smartphones

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Aside from Apple, all major chip makers offer smartphone processors with support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing. Basemark has now published the first benchmark with the corresponding effects with the GPUScore: In Vitro. According to the first tests on a Galaxy S22, the hardware requirements are high.

Now that ray tracing support can be considered established on high-performance desktop graphics cards, the technology is slowly but surely finding its way into more and more mobile processors for smartphones. Imagination Technologies has the CXT GPU with ray tracing support, Samsung and AMD have the Xclipse 920 with RDNA 2, Arm introduced the Immortalis G715 this summer and Qualcomm recently followed suit with the Adreno 740 in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. Apple is also said to be making efforts in this direction, The Information reported in December that ray tracing was allegedly already planned for the A16, but development problems ultimately stood in the way of this plan.

GPUScore: In Vitro for Android smartphones

For the first time, a suitable benchmark for the new hardware is offered under Android with the GPUScore: In Vitro. The Finnish developers from Basemark have released the benchmark for CES 2023 and are also offering it in a free version for everyone. Benchmarks available so far, such as 3DMark or GFXBench, do not yet use ray tracing on mobile devices. In March last year, Basemark also introduced GPUScore: Relic of Life as a universal ray tracing benchmark, but the software is still only available in versions for Windows 10 and 11, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and as a Linux Flatpak. Versions for macOS, Android and iOS were also planned, but for now there is the new GPUScore: In Vitro only for Android, which uses ray tracing for reflections, while the Relic of Life also handles global illumination over it.

  1. GPUScore: In Vitro (Image: Basemark)

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GPUScore: In Vitro (Image: Basemark)

The system requirements for mobile raytracing

In order to be able to run the GPUScore: In Vitro on your own smartphone, certain system requirements must be met. This includes at least Android 12 with support for Vulkan 1.1 and newer as well as the intermediate code SPIR-V. Vulkan ray tracing and ETC2 compression must also be supported by the device, and a minimum of 3 GB of unified memory is required.

GPUScore system requirements: In Vitro
  • Android 12 and newer with Vulkan 1.1+ and SPIR-V support
  • Vulkan Raytracing support
  • 3 GB or more unified memory
  • ETC2 Compression Support

Benchmark simulates very demanding game

As the developer Basemark explains, the benchmark is intended to simulate a mobile game with very high requirements, including effects achieved using ray tracing. An interior sequence is rendered or output in a medieval setting, with a focus on lighting, shapes, details and materials, but not on great animations. The application only uses raytracing for the reflections. By default, the reflections are rendered with 60 percent of the resolution of the rest of the renderings, but 50 percent or 100 percent can also be set in the paid version of the benchmark. The following video shows the benchmark sequence in full length.

With the default setting, an average of 25 FPS should be achieved on ray-tracing-capable smartphones that will be launched in late 2022. First and foremost, this should mean devices based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and the MediaTek Dimensity 9200. ComputerBase had access to the GPUScore in advance: In Vitro and ran a series of benchmarks in different resolutions on a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (test), which also offers a GPU with ray tracing support with the Xclipse 920. Benchmarks were also planned on a Redmagic 8 Pro with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, but the gaming smartphone was stuck in customs and can only be tested in the coming weeks.

Benchmarks on Galaxy S22 Ultra with RDNA 2 GPU

The target 25 FPS refers to the standard setting in 1080p at 60 percent resolution for the ray-traced reflections. This value could not quite be achieved with a Galaxy S22 Ultra, but the installed Exynos 2200 is a bit older and higher values ​​can be expected from the younger Adreno 740 in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, at least based on the rasterizer benchmarks.

Specifically, the Xclipse 920 GPU based on AMD RDNA 2 delivered an average of 20.7 FPS, a minimum of 15.5 FPS and a maximum of 29 FPS. Significantly higher values ​​can be achieved by reducing the resolution to 720p while still using 60 percent of this resolution for the ray tracing effects: The benchmark then outputs over 40 FPS on average. However, technologies such as DLSS or FSR for output in a higher resolution are not (yet) available on smartphones. In the opposite direction with the resolutions 1440p and 2160p, the GPUScore: In Vitro hardly delivers any more practical results. Direct comparisons without ray tracing are not supported by the benchmark.

Basemark GPUScore: In Vitro

Unit: frames per second (FPS)

The benchmark offers several modes in the corporate edition, including the “Official”, which can also be found in the free version. It renders in 1080p regardless of the resolution and maximum refresh rate of the screen. This procedure is comparable to the off-screen tests of GFXBench. In official and native mode with the smartphone's native resolution, the benchmark loads its results online into Basemark's Powerboard 4.0, which is at least suboptimal for devices and software under embargo. That's why the paid version also has a custom mode that doesn't upload the results and that offers additional benchmark settings such as the resolution and RT resolution. Warm-up phases in advance and a stress test are also possible in this mode.

ComputerBase has received information about this article from Basemark under NDA. The only requirement was the earliest possible publication date.

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