Unigine Corp. is claiming that its Heaven demo--based on the company's proprietary Unigine engine--is the first DirectX 11-specific benchmark. This isn't the company's first benchmark entry: the Sanctuary and Tropics demos are already used in the field to test GPU capabilities. The latest demo is currently free of charge, and can be downloaded here from the official website.
According to today's press release, Heaven has native support for OpenGL, DirectX 9, 10, and 11. The demo also provides support for ATI's Eyefinity, offers a comprehensive use of tessellation technology, and even pulls its testers into a virtual world with interactive fly/walk-through modes. On a content level, the demo contains the "enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies."
"The distinguishing feature of the 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," the company said. "Thanks to this procedure, the elaboration of the rendered image finally approaches the boundary of vertical visual perception: the virtual reality transcends conjured by your hand."
The software requirements for the Windows version include .NET framework 2.0, OpenAL, and the latest stable video drivers. As for the hardware requirements, the tessellation feature requires a GPU with DirectX 11 support. The demo also requires 256 MB of memory, ATI Radeon HD 2xxx and higher, or Nvidia GeForce 7xxx and higher. For optimal performance, Unigine recommends the Nvidia 8800 and the AMD 4800 series.
Guess my Riva TNT2 card will blow up if I attempt to run this benchmark. -k
