DX11: Unigine Heaven 2.1

The Unigine "Heaven 2.1" benchmark is a free publicly available tool that grants the power to unleash the graphics capabilities in DirectX-11 for Windows 7 or updated Vista Operating Systems. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. With the interactive mode, emerging experience of exploring the intricate world is within reach. Through its advanced renderer, Unigine is one of the first to set precedence in showcasing the art assets with tessellation, bringing compelling visual finesse, utilizing the technology to the full extend and exhibiting the possibilities of enriching 3D gaming.

The distinguishing feature in the Unigine Heaven benchmark is a hardware tessellation that is a scalable technology aimed for automatic subdivision of polygons into smaller and finer pieces, so that developers can gain a more detailed look of their games almost free of charge in terms of performance. Thanks to this procedure, the elaboration of the rendered image finally approaches the boundary of veridical visual perception: the virtual reality transcends conjured by your hand.

Although Heaven-2.1 was recently released and used for our DirectX-11 tests, the benchmark results were extremely close to those obtained with Heaven-1.0 testing. Since only DX11-compliant video cards will properly test on the Heaven benchmark, only those products that meet the requirements have been included.

• Unigine Heaven Benchmark 2.1
  • GPU-Appropriate Settings: (High Quality, Moderate Tessellation, 4x AF, 2x AA)
  • Extreme Settings: (High Quality, Normal Tessellation, 16x AF, 4x AA

Heaven 2.1 GPU-Appropriate Quality Settings

Cost Analysis: Heaven 2.1 (Normal)

Test Summary: Reviewers like to say "Nobody plays a benchmark", but it seems evident that we can expect to see great things come from a graphics tool this detailed. For now though, those details only come by way of DirectX-11 video cards. Since Heaven is a very demanding benchmark tool, our entry-level video cards require more appropriate settings: moderate tessellation and lower post-processing effects. Reducing quality and effects allowed the Radeon HD 5750 to produce 17.8 FPS, which was subsequently outperformed with 23.7 FPS from the GTS 450. Trailing behind by 1.3 FPS was the Radeon HD 5770, which slips lower when compared to 27.9 FPS produced by an overclocked GTS 450. Now let's see how higher settings and SLI impact performance...

Heaven 2.1 Extreme Quality Settings

Cost Analysis: Unigine Heaven (Extreme)

Test Summary: Our 'extreme' test results with the Unigine Heaven benchmark tool appear to deliver fair comparisons of DirectX-11 graphics cards when set to higher quality levels. NVIDIA's GeForce GTS 450 1GB outperforms the Radeon HD 5770 by a mere 1.2 FPS, but that same less-expensive GTS 450 delivers a crushing advantage over the 5770 in terms of price to performance ratio. Looked at differently, the GeForce GTS 450 delivers a 7% video performance advantage while producing a 24% lead in price to performance value. Overclocked, the GTS 450 further extends its lead over the Radeon 5770 by 15%. SLI performance scaling has come a long way, and a pair of GeForce GTS 450's in SLI dominate the Radeon HD 5850 by nearly 11 FPS.

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