NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB graphics card review

Unigine Heaven tessellation

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 GTX 560 Ti gives the 460 a spanking at every resolution, and it ekes ahead of the more-expensive Radeon HD 6950 card once greater levels of tessellation are thrown in.

Here's how three select cards - GTX 460, HD 6870, and HD 6950 - compare to the GTX 560 Ti's performance, evaluated here at the moderate settings.