3DMark Advanced Edition is now only $4.49 for a limited time to accompany new PCIe 4.0 feature benchmark

Announced earlier this month, home users can now run the newest benchmark on 3DMark designed to measure the bandwidth available to your GPU over the PCIe interface. The test saturates the PCIe interface by "uploading a large amount of vertex and texture data to the GPU for each frame" to illustrate the bandwidth and performance differences between PCIe 4.0 and its older generations. Note that the test will not run properly on integrated graphics, dual-GPU PCs, or external GPU enclosures.

To boost user interest in the new benchmark, UL Benchmarks will also be slashing 85 percent off the entire 3DMark Advanced Edition suite from now until July 6 for a final price of just $4.50 if purchased through Steam or the official UL website. Our testing standards here at Notebookcheck rely on a selection of 3DMark benchmarks including Ice Storm, Fire Strike, and Time Spy.

While the bandwidth advantage over PCIe 3.0 x16 is two times greater on paper, impact on real-world gaming performance remains questionable in the short term. Intel itself has shrugged off PCIe 4.0 with gaming benchmarks that show nearly the same results between PCIe 3.0 and PCIe 4.0 PCs. No laptops have been announced with PCIe 4.0 compatibility as of this writing.