We challenge all desktops’ graphics with a quartet of animations or gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark test suite. Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K) use the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. Steel Nomad’s regular and Light subtests focus on APIs more commonly used for game development, like Metal and DirectX 12, to assess gaming geometry and particle effects. We then turn to Solar Bay to measure ray tracing performance in a synthetic environment. This benchmark pushes 3D scenes with increasingly intense ray-traced workloads at 1440p.
Our real-world gaming testing comes from the in-game benchmarks of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and F1 2024. These three games—all benchmarked at full HD (1080p or 1200p), 2K (1440p or 1600p), and 4K (2160p) resolution—represent competitive shooter, open-world, and simulation games, respectively. Each game runs at high detail or the highest available settings: Extreme for Call of Duty, Overdrive for Cyberpunk, and Ultra High for F1 24.
We run the Call of Duty benchmark at the Extreme graphics preset on desktops. Because the test can produce triple-digit frame rates even on low-end PCs, this approach promotes sensible results to evaluate high frame-rate performance. Our Cyberpunk 2077 test settings aim to push PCs to their limit, so we run it on the all-out Ray Tracing Overdrive preset without DLSS or FSR. Finally, F1 2024 represents our DLSS effectiveness test (or FSR on AMD systems), demonstrating a GPU’s capacity with these frame-rate-boosting and upscaling technologies.
The Velocity Micro Raptor Z55a is simply a fantastic gaming machine. Our testing found it on par with Falcon Northwest’s FragBox, a super-compact gaming rig that costs nearly $1,500 more, either edging out or close behind it across the 3DMark suite of synthetic 3D rendering tests.
The RTX 5090 inside the Raptor is overkill for casual or mainstream gaming, posting triple-digit frame rates without DLSS upscaling or frame generation at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K resolutions. We should say overkill for most, maybe, as the maxed-out 4K Cyberpunk 2077 results do demonstrate that the peak of PC gaming demands the card and then some. Of course, if you’re looking to save a little money, consider a configuration with the RTX 5080 if you’re OK not sitting at the bleeding edge of the hobby.
