Benchmark: Unigine Heaven 2.1
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 1,920x1,200 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.
As expected, Sapphire's pre-overclocked card has the beating of a stock ARES.
ASUS's card requires an end-user overclock to outpace the TOXIC, and though there's plenty of headroom for that, there's little to choose between the cards; they're both very quick.
