Unreal Engine’s new 5.6 update is the performance upgrade we’ve been waiting for
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Someone has gone to the trouble of showcasing the kind of performance changes Epic’s new engine update can provide for games that utilize it. MxBenchmarkPC runs a benchmark comparing Unreal Engine 5.4 and 5.6 side by side to assess the impact of the update on framerate and overall visual quality.
Having released the 5.6 Unreal Engine update at the beginning of the month, it introduced numerous features and upgrades that creators can now utilize. One of which is the performance target it now introduces, with the promise to provide a stable 60 FPS on current generation consoles.
Unreal Engine 5.4 vs 5.6 results
Stable 60 FPS is one of the things this video demonstration showcases. Utilizing the Paris Tech Demo, it brings part of the city to life on Unreal Engine 5. With a rather powerful set of hardware, MxBenchmarkPC compares the two versions, and 5.6 manages to achieve around an 18% improvement over 5.4 in 1440p and a graphics card-heavy scenario, and a 32% improvement at 720p, which is more CPU-limited.
Unreal Engine 5.4 vs 5.6 performance road, Source MxBenchmarkPC, YouTube
Unreal Engine 5.4 vs 5.6 performance tree, Source MxBenchmarkPC, YouTube
Unreal Engine 5.4 vs 5.6 performance buildings, Source MxBenchmarkPC, YouTube
With a growing number of game developers making the switch to Unreal Engine, including the upcoming The Witcher 4, it’s important that it gets some performance upgrades. Poor performance in unoptimized titles means the blame is often shifted to the UE itself, fairly or not, so these direct engine improvements are more than welcome.
Test setup and results
For the benchmark, the YouTuber is using an RTX 5080 with an Intel Core i7 14700F. It also enables Nanite and Hardware Lumen ray tracing while running at ultra graphics settings to push the photorealistic demo and hardware to the limits.
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In the 1440p scenario, this results in an average framerate of around 66 FPS for v5.4, while v5.6 achieves 78 FPS. Reducing it to 720p to meet the CPU limit, the improvement is significantly more impressive, as it jumps from around 88 FPS to 116 FPS. That is one of the main upgrades Epic said it is bringing to the engine, eliminating the CPU bottlenecks to make it a lot more playable.
Alongside the enhanced ray tracing, and with that, the quality of the lighting improves, so does the framerate. This excites us for the games coming out in the future, as it allows us to use this technology without requiring ridiculously high system requirements, while also playing at a much better framerate.
Unreal Engine 5.4 vs 5.6 performance video
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