Benchmark: Unigine
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.
No surprises here, the Gigabyte card is once again on par with KFA2's pre-overclocked GTX 460 and within touching distance of the high-end GTX 470.
AMD's 6000-series cards show an improvement in tessellation throughput, but NVIDIA still has the edge.
