# Unigine Announces Valley GPU Benchmark



## btarunr (Feb 15, 2013)

Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird's-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user. 

Offering a rare chance to experience a breath of untapped, crystal clear air, Valley Benchmark allows you to encounter a morning high up in the mountains when the snow-capped peaks are just barely glittering in the rising sun. Be it flying over the vast green expanses or hiking along rocky slopes, this journey continues as long you wish. Unique in every corner, this open-space world provides a wonderfully relaxing experience under the tranquil music and sounds of nature. 



 

*DOWNLOAD:* Unigine Valley for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux


"Living in Siberia, we wanted to show how beautiful the nature is here. It is full of contrasts, and flowers can grow through the deadfall right next to brutal mountains," said Andrey Kushner, lead technical artist at UNIGINE Corp. "It was an interesting challenge to create this huge, yet detailed world. Moreover, our engine is so flexible that we could place all objects procedurally and recreate this valley with photorealistic graphics." 

*Features* 
Extreme hardware stability testing
Per-frame GPU temperature and clock monitoring
Multi-platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X
Advanced visual technologies: dynamic sky, volumetric clouds, sun shafts, DOF, ambient occlusion
64,000 square kilometers of extremely detailed, seamless terrain
Procedural object placement of vegetation and rocks
The entire valley is free to be explored in interactive fly-by or hike-through modes
User-controlled dynamic weather
Support for stereo 3D and multi-monitor configurations
Benchmarking presets
Command line automation support
Highly customizable reports in CSV format
Alongside a completely free Basic edition, Valley Benchmark provides in-depth performance reviews in the Advanced and Pro editions for hardware manufacturers, graphics driver developers, industry professionals and all individuals involved with video card stability testing. For more information, visit the product page.

*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## BigMack70 (Feb 15, 2013)

Thanks for hosting this! I really love the lighting and dynamic weather system here - looks really good. "Photorealistic" is pushing it but the lighting is definitely there.

However, the draw distances and foliage/trees need a LOT of work. This has probably the worst draw distances I've ever seen in a maxed out benchmark.

It's not even as demanding as Heaven 4.0 is, so I'm sure they could at least fix the nasty pop in issues (I wouldn't mind seeing some tesselated foliage and better AO as well  )


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## hellrazor (Feb 15, 2013)

I sure hope it looks better than that.


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## btarunr (Feb 15, 2013)

Extreme HD preset looks really good. Around 35 fps avg., on GTX 680.


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## natr0n (Feb 15, 2013)

This is a relaxing bench. After a hard day of serious benching.


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## BigMack70 (Feb 15, 2013)

natr0n said:


> This is a relaxing bench. After a hard day of serious benching.





I had high hopes for this bench and I'm pretty disappointed by it. Heaven - even Heaven 3.0 - is a nicer bench. I'm hoping they improve the visual quality with future releases. Currently the only nice looking thing is to free roam and mess with the weather/cloud/TOD lighting combos you can get


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## [H]@RD5TUFF (Feb 15, 2013)

Sounds neat, downloading it now, so I can run it.


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## Lionheart (Feb 15, 2013)

Stunning & blissful  I love it

Ran a quick benchmark as well 

Will post soon


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## Deleted member 67555 (Feb 15, 2013)

This Benchmark seems to be more relevant than Heaven imo..I see more foliage and valley views in the games I play then floating 18th century battleships loaded with everything brass and towns with cobblestone roads.....just saying


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## Jack Doph (Feb 15, 2013)

BigMack70 said:


> I'm sure they could at least fix the nasty pop in issues



What do you mean?
It runs a treat on default settings (1080p) on my lowly HD5850.
I quite like this one and, as jmcslob already mentioned, seems far more pertinent than Heaven (even if that _is_ an awesome-looking stress tester).
^^


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## BigMack70 (Feb 15, 2013)

Jack Doph said:


> What do you mean?
> It runs a treat on default settings (1080p) on my lowly HD5850.
> I quite like this one and, as jmcslob already mentioned, seems far more pertinent than Heaven (even if that _is_ an awesome-looking stress tester).
> ^^



Did you see that draw distance? The pop-in on pretty much everything is terrible. The draw distance is about the end of your nose. This bench has a nicer aesthetic than heaven, but it seems to really fall flat technically in some areas, with draw distance being the biggest one (I'm also seeing no tesselation, for example).

To my eyes it looks like they're using 2D sprites in some cases for their tree foliage before the 3d stuff pops in... that's just pathetic for a benchmark IMO.


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## Jack Doph (Feb 15, 2013)

BigMack70 said:


> Did you see that draw distance? The pop-in on pretty much everything is terrible. The draw distance is about the end of your nose. This bench has a nicer aesthetic than heaven, but it seems to really fall flat technically in some areas, with draw distance being the biggest one.
> 
> To my eyes it looks like they're using 2D sprites in some cases for their tree foliage... that's just pathetic for a benchmark IMO.



I just saw your system specs, so.. I guess my lowly specs can't quite see what you're referring to 
Point taken though


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## BigMack70 (Feb 15, 2013)

I am REALLY liking how the lighting can look if you free-roam and mess around with the time of day/clouds/rain/wind though. You can get some neat looking scenes from that.


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## Enmitynz (Feb 15, 2013)

here's my first run, cpu @4.5Ghz and gpus at stock...im with Bigmack on this one, had high hopes, looks kind of meh...but the free roam is nice


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## Deleted member 67555 (Feb 15, 2013)

I agree the field of view could be a little more fluid but I also see what they were doing.
They were trying to make the details appear more natural to the velocity of the camera.
But no doubt it could be done a bit more smoothly...Still though excellent benchmark.


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## RejZoR (Feb 15, 2013)

All hyper realistic and then there are rocks on the ground made out of 16 polygons. Seriously!? If this is the best way to use tessellation engine on, then they all failed misserably. Ha sno one ever told developers how to use tessellation? It's un upgrade of LOD, so whats close to you should look great, whats (very) far away should look like that 16 poly rock. Instead they churn out idiotic ammounts of polygons on that mountain on the other end of the map and leave stuff close tot he viewport ugly as hell. Makes no sense and they all freakin do this. In all games and all benchmarks.


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## Deleted member 74752 (Feb 15, 2013)




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## Fourstaff (Feb 15, 2013)

Someone port Skyrim into this please?


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## DarkOCean (Feb 15, 2013)

Fourstaff said:


> Someone port Skyrim into this please?



the first thing that came to my mind after running this.


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## iO (Feb 15, 2013)

If this thing will get a much higher draw distance, some displacement mapping and tesselation, it will be even more beautiful.
But it is already prettier and more appealing than Futuremark´s same old space benchmarks...


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## btarunr (Feb 15, 2013)




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## AlienIsGOD (Feb 15, 2013)




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## erixx (Feb 15, 2013)

this..... one............ is ............what ........ I ........wanted!

Nice screensaver: )


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## cRs (Feb 15, 2013)

Stock 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



Gpu @1050/1450Mhz 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




Cpu @4.5Ghz Gpu @1050/1450Mhz


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## Prima.Vera (Feb 15, 2013)

Here my stats, everything at default, no occ

5870 and 5870/5850 Crossfire:


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## eventide (Feb 15, 2013)

Fourstaff said:


> Someone port Skyrim into this please?



Beautiful Skyrim has been a long time in here. Just add the RealVision ENB and some other stuff according to the recommendations on the site: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/30936
It's going to look even prettier than this benchmark!


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## erocker (Feb 15, 2013)

BigMack70 said:


> Did you see that draw distance?



The "pop in" that I'm seeing is with hard shadows and with flowers/ground objects. The actual draw distance of the scenes is huge.


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## BigMack70 (Feb 15, 2013)

erocker said:


> The "pop in" that I'm seeing is with hard shadows and with flowers/ground objects. The actual draw distance of the scenes is huge.



Basically everything that's not clouds, a mountain, or a 2D sprite has nasty pop in


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## erocker (Feb 15, 2013)

BigMack70 said:


> Basically everything that's not clouds, a mountain, or a 2D sprite has nasty pop in



Yes, the two things I listed.


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## Deleted member 106413 (Feb 16, 2013)

Yes


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## devguy (Feb 16, 2013)

Demo doesn't let me run at my native 4800x900 like Heaven does (maxes out at 4096 in vertical res).  The multiple monitor option is giving me trouble.  I got around 32fps average at 1600x900 full screen on one monitor.

Catalyst 13.2 Beta 3 drivers used on Radeon HD 7950 with stock clocks.


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## fullinfusion (Feb 16, 2013)

Yeah my 6990 and 1000Mhz /1500 mem  dont work at all on this bench!\

A patch will fix this


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## Deleted member 106413 (Feb 16, 2013)

Is there a dedicated thread where you can submit your result? I can't seem to find it anywhere.


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## Deleted member 74752 (Feb 16, 2013)

Here is the Q9550 at work...






A small bump to the cpu/gpu's -


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## Deleted member 74752 (Feb 16, 2013)

niciuffo said:


> Is there a dedicated thread where you can submit your result? I can't seem to find it anywhere.



Feel free to start one...if you want to keep up with it.


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## BiggieShady (Feb 16, 2013)

RejZoR said:


> Instead they churn out idiotic ammounts of polygons on that mountain on the other end of the map and leave stuff close tot he viewport ugly as hell. Makes no sense and they all freakin do this. In all games and all benchmarks.



More importantly, they often use only frustum culling and no occlusion culling at all, so CPU makes unnecessary draw calls for occluded objects. 
Although it is easy to integrate displacement mapping (tessellation) in LOD system, art production should be zbrush/mudbox style rather than polygon modelling - so if you don't have original object in extreme poly-count version, tessellation is not as straightforward.
Pop-ins should not exist by today's standards, I've seen LOD systems with smooth transitions (and i don't mean that pixelated dissolve shader ubisoft uses)


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## Deleted member 106413 (Feb 16, 2013)

rickss69 said:


> Feel free to start one...if you want to keep up with it.



Eheh, that's the problem  I just wanted to know if there was some kind of thread where everyone could post their scores, I am pretty sure I've seen a couple of them in various forums but I know they require a lot of work


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## patrico (Feb 16, 2013)

one of the nicest benchmarks ive seen in ages


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## bim27142 (Feb 17, 2013)

Here's mine... Beautiful indeed...


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## librin.so.1 (Feb 17, 2013)

Here's mine. On Linux 
Too bad I cannot properly bench it @ 1920x1080 without triggering a [probably a bug in the driver]. *shakes fist*
So I ran it on 1600x900 and 1280x720. "Deal with it, nerds." -Fork Parker

@1280x720




@1600x900




P.S. Yesh. Beautiful. Sux I only noticed this news post "leik, half an hour ago".


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## Prima.Vera (Feb 17, 2013)

What's up with the scores from nVidia? Even the 460s are faster than the latest 7800 cards...


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## Deleted member 74752 (Feb 17, 2013)

Prima.Vera said:


> What's up with the scores from nVidia? Even the 460s are faster than the latest 7800 cards...



Don't understand the question. The dual 7800's in post # 24 beat my 460's...all the rest of the 7800 runs are single card.


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## HammerON (Feb 17, 2013)

CPU=4.4GHz Mem=2004MHz GPU(s):1125/1375
1920x1080 one 7970:




1920x1080 two 7970's:





2560x1600 one 7970:




2560x1600 two 7970's:





All four tests report 3x GPU, but this is false.


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## Deleted member 74752 (Feb 17, 2013)

HammerON said:


> CPU=4.4GHz Mem=2004MHz GPU(s):1125/1375
> 1920x1080 one 7970:
> http://img.techpowerup.org/130217/Capture143.jpg
> 1920x1080 two 7970's:
> ...



That's odd...are they all installed in the mb and you are using jumpers to disable?


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## librin.so.1 (Feb 17, 2013)

Vinska said:


> Here's mine. On Linux
> [...]
> @1280x720
> 
> ...



For comparison, I re-ran it with the same settings on Windows in OpenGL and D3D11 modes.
As expected, D3D11 ran noticeably faster than OpenGL - OGL scored ~17% less on Windows and ~15.5% less on Linux compared to D3D11.
*wonders it that mostly the driver's or the benchmark's fault. Or both.*
*bets on the driver being less optimized for OGL.*

And alas, just like in some previous benchmarks I did, on Linux, OpenGL is faster than on Windows. Although, the gap is much smaller w/ 313.xx drivers - Windows driver IS catching up. (The gap was rather horrible before. Don't ask.)

The results:

@1280x720:
In OGL:



In D3D11:




@1600x900
In OGL:



In D3D11:
*Link; thumb broken*

P.S. I don't even know why I am actually posting those, knowing that most of You probably !care about this completely.


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## BigMack70 (Feb 17, 2013)

Vinska said:


> For comparison, I re-ran it with the same settings on Windows in OpenGL and D3D11 modes.
> As expected, D3D11 ran noticeably faster than OpenGL - OGL scored ~17% less on Windows and ~15.5% less on Linux compared to D3D11.



Don't you mean DirectX 11?


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## Easo (Feb 17, 2013)

Please dont bash it so hard, I am sure they will fix it. Its still very very pretty.
If they dont, go ahead, i will join you with pitchfork.


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## librin.so.1 (Feb 17, 2013)

BigMack70 said:


> Don't you mean DirectX 11?



*NO.*
Read this:


Vinska said:


> [...]
> /* meanwhile... */
> To some of You: please, stop saying "DirectX" when it comes to graphics only. DirectX is an API that supplies a very wide range of services. Including, but not limited to: input, sound, networking, graphics, AV decoding, and so on. And the part that deals with graphics is Direct3D. Thus, when talking about the graphics portion of DirectX, please, say "Direct3D".
> [sarcasm]...unless maybe Your GPU can do hardware acceleration on mouse input, for example. Which is part of DirectX, but not part of Direct3D.[/sarcasm]


(yes, I am quoting myself )


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## MetalRacer (Feb 17, 2013)

Here are two runs I made for comparison, it looks like CPU clocks and thread count makes little difference in final score.

4.5 ghz HT off.






4.8 ghz HT on.


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## Shihab (Feb 17, 2013)

Sry for low res pic.



Vinska said:


> P.S. I don't even know why I am actually posting those, knowing that most of You probably !care about this completely.



Give it a couple of years, everyone will 

I see that the minimum FPS is slightly better on the Linux side while the max goes the other way around. More love for Pilediver on the _free_ side?


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## librin.so.1 (Feb 17, 2013)

Shihabyooo said:


> Give it a couple of years, everyone will
> 
> I see that the minimum FPS is slightly better on the Linux side while the max goes the other way around. More love for Pilediver on the _free_ side?



Indeed.
Benchmarks I did (unpublished publicly) shows both Bulldozer and Piledriver get much more love under Tux' wing. And as *better not tell who* commented, that this is also related to microcode issues that are taken care of while on Linux, along with the "usual" Win7 scheduling issues. Also, there's one more possible BD&PD-related issue on Windoze I'd better not speak about.

P.S. On Win7, CPU scheduling is simply horrible when it comes to switching between active tasks.


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## BigMack70 (Feb 17, 2013)

Vinska said:


> *NO.*
> Read this:
> 
> (yes, I am quoting myself )



I think you may need to fix your sarcasm detector.


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## HammerON (Feb 17, 2013)

rickss69 said:


> That's odd...are they all installed in the mb and you are using jumpers to disable?



Yes all three are installed on the mb. I was using CCC to disable. I should have taken screenshots of Afterburner with each run. It reflected that I was running only one or two cards...


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## Pandora's Box (Feb 17, 2013)

3600x1200 is using the Extreme HD preset, had to go into custom to make it work in fullscreen


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## t77snapshot (Feb 18, 2013)

AlienIsGOD said:


> http://img.techpowerup.org/130215/Capture116.png



I like how your first 2 tabs are completely related to your username.  Nice score too.


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## Widjaja (Feb 20, 2013)

12.11 beta 11 with CAP 2.





Same settings but with 13.2 beta 6 drivers.


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## oldDirty (Apr 4, 2013)

Hi all.
I have a small Problem with my Valley bench.
Today i received my 2. 7970, lucky boy. ^^
Ok befor setting it to CF i want testing it, everything fine etc.
Now i start valley bench like every time before but it leave me now a error message;




After that ( confirm or exit no matter ) a window appears and start valley in a frame with 1280x720 i guess. When it running than the valley bench i can switch back to 1920x1200 and AA.




I do reinstall valley but the problem still continues.
:confused


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