AMD Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition & HD 7850 Review - Heaven 2.5 DX11

Update to the Heaven v2 demo, that has been an long-standing benchmark for many people. Though it's largely the same as the v2 demo, it does add a couple of new set pieces - particularly a new airship. This title is more demanding than the previous iteration, and adds a new tessellation options.

The Heaven demo continues to offer options for testing in DX9, DX10 and DX11 code paths. We have narrowed our testing to DX11, and are no longer testing the DX9 and DX10 code paths. The DX9 and DX10 were more CPU dependent and less of a test of the strength or weakness of the GPU. The DX11 truly stresses a GPU.

We see strong performance with the Radeon HD 7870 and HD 7850. In widescreen, the 1 GHz clock speed of the HD 7870 pulls it into second place, ahead of even the Radeon HD 7950. Both cards come out on top against the HD 6900 family. In Eyefinity, they come in a few frames under the HD 6900 family.