Seasonic Signs On As Sponsor Of The Next 3DMark GPU Benchmark

Seasonic Signs On As Sponsor Of The Next 3DMark GPU Benchmark

Power supply manufacturer Seasonic has been named as a sponsor of the next 3DMark GPU benchmark, a fully path-traced test being built by benchmark developer UL Solutions to measure the performance of current and upcoming graphics hardware.

The arrangement will see Seasonic branding placed inside the benchmark application itself, putting the company’s logo in front of the audience that runs 3DMark to validate new hardware purchases and to compare results with other users.

“Seasonic has joined us as a sponsor for our upcoming next-generation fully path-traced GPU benchmark,” the UL Solutions benchmarks team confirmed in a statement.

A sponsorship built around in-app visibility

Benchmark sponsorships are a familiar arrangement in the PC hardware sector, where component vendors attach their branding to the tools used to score and rank the products they sell into.

In this case the placement sits inside the test itself rather than alongside it, which means the logo appears in a piece of software that is typically run repeatedly rather than viewed once.

“Seasonic’s logo will be displayed inside the upcoming 3DMark benchmark, where millions of gamers, tech enthusiasts, members of tech media and more will see it as they test the latest advancements in PC gaming tech,” the benchmarks team explained.

3DMark has been used as a reference point by reviewers, system integrators and overclockers for more than two decades, and its scores routinely appear in retail listings and in marketing material for prebuilt systems.

That reach is the commercial logic behind the deal. A power supply vendor does not usually feature in graphics card coverage, despite the fact that high-end GPUs have pushed system power requirements steadily upward.

Path tracing pushes the workload further

The new benchmark is described as fully path traced, a step beyond the hybrid ray tracing used in earlier 3DMark tests such as Port Royal, which layered selected ray traced effects over a conventionally rasterised scene.

Path tracing simulates the behaviour of light across an entire scene, handling reflections, shadows, global illumination and indirect lighting through a single unified model rather than through separate approximations.

The technique is significantly more demanding than hybrid approaches, which is why it has so far appeared in a limited number of shipping games and usually as an optional mode aimed at the top of the hardware stack.

It also leans heavily on upscaling and frame generation to remain playable, which places supporting silicon and machine learning acceleration alongside raw shader throughput as factors in the final result. UL Solutions has framed the test as being built to evaluate modern AI-capable hardware.

“We’ve designed it to push current and next-gen gaming hardware to their limits,” the benchmarks team wrote.

A long development cycle

The benchmark has been under development for an extended period, according to UL Solutions, which has not committed to a release window.

“This benchmark has been in the works for a long time,” the team noted, adding that the scene at the centre of the test has been built by its in-house art team.

Long lead times are common for 3DMark releases, which are generally timed to arrive alongside or shortly after new GPU architectures so that the test has hardware capable of running it at usable frame rates.

The company has not disclosed which rendering features the benchmark will require, whether it will ship as a free update to existing 3DMark installations or as a paid add-on, or how its scoring will relate to the existing test suite.

Where Seasonic fits

Seasonic manufactures PC power supplies for the consumer, gaming and enterprise markets, and is one of a small group of original design manufacturers whose platforms are rebadged and sold under other brands.

The company builds units across the ATX 3.x and PCIe 5.x specifications, categories that became a talking point after 12VHPWR connector failures on high-end graphics cards drew scrutiny to the interface between the power supply and the GPU.

Power delivery has become a more visible part of the buying decision as flagship cards have moved into higher power envelopes, dragging recommended system wattage up with them.

That trend gives a power supply vendor a reason to be present in a graphics benchmark. Users who run a path traced test to see whether their system can sustain the load are, in effect, running a stress test on the power supply at the same time.

Neither party has disclosed the financial terms of the sponsorship.

The broader picture

For UL Solutions, sponsorship revenue supports the development of tests that are distributed free or at low cost to end users while being licensed commercially to manufacturers and press.

For hardware buyers, the arrival of a fully path traced benchmark provides a standardised way to compare cards on a workload that is likely to become more common as engines adopt the technique.

Whether that comparison proves useful will depend on how closely the test tracks real game performance, a question that follows every synthetic benchmark and one that will not be settled until the software is in circulation.

Last Updated on 25 July 2026 by Nick Ross