UL, the company behind the popular graphics benchmarking tool, 3DMark, has officially released the first teaser trailer of its next-gen path tracing benchmark. Turns out, the benchmark was actually being demoed on the show floor at Computex 2026, with the company announcing its existence the week of.
The video teaser was obtained by German tech portal, ComputerBase. A side note is that Thermal Grizzly is one of the first sponsors of this new 3DMark benchmark.
The new test comes nearly a year after its last update, which was Solar Bay Extreme, although that is just an updated version of the Solar Bay test, which debuted back in 2023. While still unnamed, the next-generation GPU test is expected to bridge the gap between the current level of graphics fidelity.
As for what is to be expected, the next generation 3DMark test will use fully path-traced lighting and will also support AI upscaling and frame generation from all major GPU brands. Honestly, it’s not a long list, but we’ll spell it out for you: NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel, as all three brands manufacture GPUs.
UL is clearly promoting its 3DMark as the test that will push current generation GPUs to the bleeding limit, and at 4K resolution. To that end, the company has said that a native 4K mode is in the works, but also did not provide a clear release date for it. To that end, UL has said that it will share more details about the benchmark in the coming months. For now, we’ll just have to contend with the teaser trailer.
3DMark first released in 1998 as 3DMark99, with UL rebranding the benchmark suite simply as 3DMark in 2013. In 2019, UL released Port Royal, the first graphics test to benchmark GPUs capable of ray tracing. In 2024, Steel Nomad was launched, which is the direct successor to Time Spy.
(Source: Computer Base, Videocardz)
