Bench-a-Thon is back, and it feels good to fire up a community showdown after nearly nine years. Our comment section has always been the heart of the site, and this event is all about celebrating the builders, tweakers, and overclockers who make it pulse.
Credit where it’s due: the original Bench-a-Thon idea came from long-time community member Geno, aka Genogerian Progerian. The goal has always been simple and fun—give everyone a place to compare performance, trade tips, and flex those rigs. With how far hardware has come, this is the perfect moment to bring it back.
This round is focused on 3DMark Solar Bay Extreme, the latest from UL Benchmarks. It runs on native APIs like DirectX 12 in Windows and is tuned for ray tracing workloads, making it a strong indicator of how your system might handle modern PC games. Over the past decade, GPUs have evolved well beyond traditional rasterized graphics, leaning hard into ray tracing and AI-accelerated tasks. Time to see what that translates to in real-world performance.
How to join the 3DMark Solar Bay Extreme Bench-a-Thon:
– Open 3DMark and select Solar Bay Extreme.
– Do not change any settings; run the benchmark at default.
– Post your validation link in the comments so everyone can verify and compare.
– Include your CPU and GPU overclock details if applicable, especially if the automatic readout is off. A screenshot is preferred.
– Multiple submissions are not just allowed—they’re encouraged. Tweak, rerun, repeat.
Testing, testing—Hassan dropped a quick early score on an RTX 5090 with the CPU and other settings at default. Consider that your cue to jump in and raise the bar.
The idea here is friendly competition. This is your chance to show off your setup, keep the focus on performance, and turn the comments into a leaderboard worth scrolling. Fire up Solar Bay Extreme, share your best runs, and enjoy the Bench-a-Thon.
