H.A.W.X. 2 DX11 Benchmark Results

H.A.W.X. 2 has been optimized for DX11 enabled GPUs and has a number of enhancements to not only improve performance with DX11 enabled GPUs but also greatly improve the visual experience while taking to the skies.

• Level maps are 128 Km per dimension creating a level area of 16384 Km².
  All of the terrain in this area is rendered using a powerful tessellation implementation.
• The game uses a hardware terrain tessellation method that allows a high number of detailed triangles to be rendered entirely on the GPU when near the terrain in question. This allows for a very low memory footprint and relies on the GPU power alone to expand the low res data to highly realistic detail.
• Quad patches with multiple displacement maps aim to render 6-pixel-wide triangles typically creating 1.5 Million triangles per frame not including planes, trees, and buildings!
• The game uses bi-cubic height filtering and fractal noise to give realistic detail at this grand scale. The wavelength and amplitude of the fractal noise is carefully tuned for maximum realism on each level working with the complex tessellation shaders to ensure highest level detail without cracks in the terrain surface.
• These factors make H.A.W.X. 2 the perfect title for benchmarking the current and future generation of DX11 enabled GPUs.
  

The H.A.W.X.2 benchmark test is not quite the tessellation monster that Unigine Heaven is. It is supposed to represent an actual game, after all. However, the developers have taken full advantage of the DirectX 11 technology to pump up the realism in this new title. The scenery on the ground in particular is very detailed and vividly portrayed, and there's a lot of it that goes by the window of the F-22 Raptor that is your point of view. The blue sky, not so much....

The enhanced ability of the newest GPU designs to handle tessellation is quite evident here. The HD 5870 is a dog in this test, compared to the smaller, cheaper Radeon HD 6870. This benchmark was launched by NVIDIA, and AMD had limited access during development, so the early test results unfairly favored the Green Team. Fast forward to the latest driver release from AMD, and now the HD 6870 comes out to play with all its equipment on. The GTX 480 ends up on the top of the pile in this test by shear muscle mass, but the two new kids on the block do a decent job for less money.

Let's take a look at another DX11 benchmark, a fast-paced scenario on a Lost Planet called E.D.N. III. The dense vegetation in "Test A" is almost as challenging as it was in Crysis, and now we have tessellation and soft shadows thrown into the mix via DirectX 11.

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