Unigine Heaven tessellation benchmark
Hardware-based tessellation is a cornerstone of DirectX 11. The ability to efficiently generate massive geometry and then to apply what's known as a displacement map makes it a tasty technique for adding complexity and detail to a scene without a huge computational cost.
Unigine's Heaven 2.1 benchmark tests the ability of DX11 GPUs to provide varying levels of tessellation and extra in-benchmark detail.
Here's the standard benchmark run at 1,920x1,080 with 4x AA and 16x AF. Hover your mouse over the picture to see the difference between no tessellation and moderate tessellation.
We ran the DX11 cards through the benchmark/tessellation test at all four settings; disabled, moderate, normal and extreme.
The benchmark runs better on NVIDIA hardware, evinced by the GTX 460 768MB matching a Radeon HD 5870 1,024MB card at the highest setting.
Upgrades to the Radeon 6000-series' tessellation throughput is shown by the HD 6850 being competitive with the more-expensive HD 5850 at all resolutions, and the HD 6870 finally overtakes the HD 5870 in the extreme test.
