Following the launch of Nvidia’s RTX Spark platform at Computex, UL Solutions has updated several of its 3DMark benchmarks to offer native support for Windows on Arm. Although the RTX Spark platform will launch in a limited number of laptops in June and has yet to prove itself as a viable solution for workers and gamers, its powerful RTX GPU can at least be put through its paces with synthetic ray tracing benchmarks. How it compares to alternatives like Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and second-generation options remains to be seen.
For over 25 years, 3DMark benchmarks have been among the most prominent for testing gaming performance across many generations of hardware. Over the years, they’ve evolved to support new technologies, and though they don’t push visual boundaries like they once did, they’re still incredibly taxing on even the best hardware, making them a useful way to gauge how good new GPUs are.
Credit: UL Solutions
In the case of the Blackwell GPU at the heart of the RTX Spark, it can now be used to run these kinds of demanding tests. Port Royal targets DirectX ray tracing performance, while Speed Way focuses on DirectX 12 Workloads with ray tracing. Alongside these tests, UL Solutions also added native Arm support to its Mesh Shader, Sampler Feedback, DirectX Raytracing, PCI Express, and VRS benchmarks.
Until now, it was possible to run these tests on Arm hardware like Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and Plus chips, but they had to go through a translation layer, which is far from ideal for a benchmark that is supposed to test performance. Users can now switch between emulation and native modes, giving them an idea of the performance loss they can expect with non-native apps.
Nvidia claims its new N1 platform can run any software ever created. That probably means through emulation, but it is supposed to offer better native app support than other Arm platforms. Time will tell as supporting laptops and desktops launch in the coming months, but as they do, we’ll be better able to bench them to see how they can perform following this update.
