Recently the first DirectX 11 graphics test appeared, dubbed Unigine Heaven. In lack of games supporting Microsoft’s new graphics API it becomes an interesting tool for investigating the advantages, both performance and image quality, over the older DirectX 10. This is exactly what HardOCP has done where it has tested AMD’s Radeon HD 5800/5700 series in Unigine Heaven to investigate the effect and support for Tessellation.
The good news is that Tessellation can make a big difference to details in games, which is also clearly shown by the pictures below.
The bad news is that Tessellation, as expected, doesn’t come free. AMD’s new DX11 graphics cards performance better with the DX11 support activated than compared to DX10, but if you add Tessellation to that performance drops significantly. In the end it will be up to each his own if the improved details is worth the loss of performance, which it in our opinion is as long as the game is still playable.
We can’t help wondering if the details without Tessellation can be improved even without the DirectX 11 technology. At the same time Unigine probably uses a higher level of Tessellation than most games will. All in all it leaves us wanting for more and especially games that take advantage of the technology to the fullest.
:: Unigine Heaven Benchmark with DX11 Tessellation
