The “Kepler” Rides Out – The Benchmarks.
Test 8 – Unigine “Heaven” Benchmark.
And so to a grandstand finish with our old favourite, the Unigine “Heaven” spectacular! Each loop was completed in DirectX 11 mode with shaders set to “high”. Tests were conducted first with “normal” , then “extreme” tessellation enabled.
In the “normal” test, the 680 exhibits gains over the 580 in line with those we have witnessed thus far (typically between 25 and 40%) while the 6990 returns with a bang and manages to edge out Nvidia’s new boy in singles competition. A pair of 680’s closes the gap on two 6990s in Crossfire, with the latter proving a little stronger when quality is increased. Three 580s finish ahead of two 680s, though the margin is far from considerable while a third 680 provides a respectable speed bonus, even at the lowest resolution, a testament to the challenge this benchmark contines to offer the GPU.
Not as impressive as AVP but certainly better than Batman! Good showing from the 6990s, especially considering the scaling issues dual GPU cards have suffered in the past. For the Nvidia cards, the sweet spot for a well balanced cocktail of value and performance is once again two way SLI but a triplet in either case does not go unnoticed.