ATI Radeon 5850 & 5830 Review - Heaven Demo DX11

The Unigine Heaven Demo is unique in that it is the only demo which allows for the following components in one package.

• Synthetic Demo (i.e., a demo designed to "test" a system)
• Comparable tests of DX9, DX10 and DX11
• Is Hor+ (rather than limited to a few predefined aspect ratios)

The ability to compare DX9, DX10 and DX11 in the same environment allows for the unique ability to see how the different cards perform across these different comparable environments.

Both cards offer linear performance in widescreen across DX9, DX10 and DX11. They hit 30fps in DX9, and post respectable numbers in DX10 and DX11 (considering the strenuous native of the test). The cards also offer a linear performance curve in Eyefinity for DX9. Framerates for all cards (HD 5870 included) are very low.

The 5870 is barely able to run Eyefinity at max settings for DX10 and DX11, and the 5850 and 5830 are unable to run the test.

Hitting 60fps

It is not possible to hit 60fps with this benchmark on a single GPU at Eyefinity resolutions. Considering it is meant to test/tax your system, that is to be expected. Here is what I was able to achieve:

• DX9: 4800x900, 0xAA, 2xAF, low shaders - 30fps, med shaders - 25fps
• DX10: 4800x900, 0xAA, 2xAF, low shaders - 27fps, med shaders - 23fps
• DX11: 4800x900, 0xAA, 2xAF, tessellation enabled, low shaders - 20fps, med shaders - 20fps