Unigine Heaven DirectX 11 benchmark 2.5

Posted by: Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 03/04/2011 02:53 PM [ 0 comment(s) ]

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Unigine Corp announced its release of the first DirectX 11 benchmark "Heaven" that is based on its proprietary Unigine engine. The company has already made a name among the overclockers and gaming enthusiasts for uncovering the realm of true GPU capabilities with previously released "Sanctuary" and "Tropics" demos. Their benchmarking capabilities are coupled with striking visual integrity of the refined graphic art.

Heaven benchmark excels at providing the following key features:

Native support of OpenGL, DirectX 9, DirectX 10 and DirectX 11
Comprehensive use of tessellation technology
Advanced SSAO (screen-space ambient occlusion)
Volumetric cumulonimbus clouds generated by a physically accurate algorithm
Dynamic simulation of changing environment with high physical fidelity
Interactive experience with fly/walk-through modes
ATI Eyefinity support

Changes in version 2.5

* Added Professional edition
* Improved support of various GPUs
* Added support of indirect occlusion (SSDO) to simulate real-time global illumination
* Improved stability on multi-hour runs
* Fixed Windows GUI launcher compatibility issues
* Improved quality of ambient occlusion
* Fixed minor content glitches
* Added user manual
* Improved Windows installer

Professional Edition

The professional version is primarily targeted to companies, hardware reviewers and all enthusiasts who need to perform a robust and thorough GPU performance and/or stress testing in the convenient way.

Heaven Pro version features include:

* Command line automation
* Reports in CSV format
* Stress testing mode (benchmark looping)
* Technical support
* Licensed for commercial use

Hardware requirements:

The Tessellation feature REQUIRES a GPU with DirectX 11 support!
ATI Radeon HD 2xxx and higher or NVIDIA GeForce 7xxx and higher (recommended: NVIDIA 8800 / AMD 4800 series)
256 Mb of video memory

Earlier this month the company has announced full support of DirectX 11 features in its top-notch 3D middleware. Updated Unigine engine supports Windows 7 and has successfully incorporated the groundbreaking DirectX 11 capabilities, including the following core features:

Hardware tessellation
DirectCompute
Shader Model 5.0

Unigine has published the second release of Heaven Benchmark, a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on the Unigine engine. Heaven Benchmark 2.0 is more complex than the first edition, it features a heavier tessellation load, major engine optimizations, new objects, more dynamic lights, and other improvements.

Changelog:

Heavier tessellation load
Several major optimizations of the engine
Added new elaborated objects in the world
Physics-driven flags
More dynamic lights
Enhancements of some old assets
Introduced "moderate" and "extreme" tessellation modes

We also have a discussion thread open here on this technology demo slash benchmark.