Tessellation performance
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.
Tessellation performance has improved in the Radeon 6000-series GPUs. The HD 6850 pair, scaling perfectly, are faster than HD 5850s when judged at higher resolutions. What's interesting to note is that pairing up the new GPUs provides better performance than the world's fastest card - the Radeon HD 5970 2,048MB, currently still retailing for £400-plus.
Still, the GeForce cards have a slightest edge, cranking up single-card performance by almost 90 per cent.
