Earlier this month, Epic Games released Unreal Engine 5.6. This new version of UE5 promises to offer major performance improvements. So, below you can find a comparison video between the UE5.4 and UE5.6 versions of the Paris Tech Demo.
For those unaware, Unreal Engine 5.6 brings big improvements to how it handles Hardware Ray Tracing (HWRT). These changes help make Lumen Global Illumination run faster and smoother. Thanks to these upgrades, the engine removes certain CPU problems that used to slow things down. This means game developers can now create more detailed and complex scenes while still keeping a smooth 60FPS. In simple terms, games can look better and run better at the same time.
Moreover, the team made the engine work better while playing games, especially when loading or removing parts of the game world. They added a new tool, the Fast Geometry Streaming Plugin. This helps devs put more objects into the game that don’t change, like buildings or trees. These objects now load faster and help the game keep a smooth frame rate. Also, all games made with Unreal Engine will now stream content more smoothly. This means the game will handle things like physics better, such as when items appear or disappear, so everything feels quicker and runs more smoothly.
Epic Games has also enhanced the PCG framework. As such, devs will now be able to create worlds and manage complex scenes efficiently, and with better GPU-driven performance.
Now, as we can see in the video, Unreal Engine 5.6 can significantly improve performance. In CPU-based scenarios, UE5.6 can be up to 45FPS faster than UE5.4. At the exact same settings, on the exact same PC system. So yes. UE5.6 is the real deal.
Moreover, the frametime graph seems to be smoother with UE5.6. I did not notice some spikes here and there. However, the frametime graph is not a mess as the one we get with UE5.4.
Another thing to note is that the Paris Tech Demo was simply ported to Unreal Engine 5.6 from 5.4. With more work, it could run even faster. So, this is great news for future games that will be using this latest version of UE5.
For what it’s worth, you can download this tech demo and run it yourselves. Sadly, though, this isn’t a free demo. Instead, you’ll have to at least pay a dollar to get access to it.
So, if you are not interested in running it on your PC, you can go ahead and take a look at this video. To capture this footage, MxBenchmarkPC used an Intel Core i7-14700F with 32GB of RAM and an ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 5080. To see the major performance improvements, I suggest focusing on the 720p tests.
Enjoy and stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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I think large parts of UE just plain up need re-writing. Granted Sweeny said v6 will go multithreaded, but the engine needs to be targeting above 60fps. 240 at 4K should be the norm with most monitors outputting at 120hz.
For single player games – no. it would just be a huge waste and it would hurt the graphics quality. For single player game all you need is great graphics at around 70 fps after dlss4 quality upscale so you have a good base for FG / MFG – you can easily make it into 200+ fps that way and still have amazing presentation.
or 120, but at the very very least. We shouldn't be giving leeway to laziness by resorting to scalers at every turn.
The new AI scalers are great as AA tools. They can actually make a game look better.
Personally, I use them for that reason. I have a 4090 too with 7900x and 13700k.
Ai upscalers are good in my opinion when refined as NVIDIA's. AMD is getting on board now.
Higher fps is always great…however it means nothing if there is still shader and traversal stutters so hopefully they are eliminated once and for all
Dude, this generation only cares about the numbers, even if they're fake!
So don't come here trying to find solutions, they don't want it!
THEY JUST WANT THE NUMBERS!!!!
You aint wrong lol
I hate how bad lumen denoiser looks in graphical presets recently. It is unusable bellow high, vegetation shadows in wukong and metal reflectiopns in oblivion for exemple looks horrible with lumen, the detail is basically noise from objects next to you.
Demo is free btw, you just enter 0 as the amount
I'm sure I heard John facepalm.
https://c.tenor.com/DJ69OqW5ILgAAAAd/tenor.gif
You'll never see that whole dollar again.
Will it be difficult for games already released below unreal engine 5.6 to upgrade to 5.6 like oblivion remastered?
yes, don`t count on it.
Nope, that's the problem with launching broken garbage. We'll have dozens of games that will forever remain trash, including many that haven't even released yet. 5.6 is still not ideal either, frame times suck and it's laughable how they can't even get it right in a demo that's a barebones skeleton for a game.
Only indie developers go the extra mile to properly use, and even upgrade Unreal Engine in their projects.
Look at Satisfactory, it looks and runs like butter, and the team has upgraded the engine multiple times.
RoboCop also looks and runs fine, and it was made by an indie team as well.
Big development teams are too fragmented, have barely any control over the entire project, and often fail to use Unreal Engine to its full potential.
No matter how much Epic improves the engine, they can’t fix poor decision making and lack of team cohesion.
More than team, it's management cohesion and care.
looks quite promising but hopefully the hardware lumen will get optimizations too.
In a perfect world all devs would update their games to this engine version.
It's hard to say if this is even possible since I've heard engine updates tend to break a lot of stuff such as scripts or shaders but it would be really nice if Epic made that an easier process to encourage devs to upgrade. Sadly though, we do not live in a perfect world.
in a perfect world nobody would be using unreal engine
Pretty! This has been a really wonderful post. Many thanks for providing these details.
lmao single mom coal burner spotted at 5:57 of the linked video
Yeah, tech demos. How many times have we seen tech demos show something amazing only to not have it ever be realized I an actual game?
Tech Demos show what the Engine can do, Games show how incompetent big development teams can be.
That is the difference.
Indie developers take better advantage of Unreal Engine, since they have proper teamwork and full control over the project.
Then we have kids with little to no tech knowledge saying Unreal Engine is to blame for all the issues, is the same as blaming a Bugatti for being slow when it was being used by an old lady.
Tech Demos show what the Engine can do, Games show how incompetent big development teams can be.
That is the difference.
Indie developers take better advantage of Unreal Engine, since they have proper teamwork and full control over the project.
Then we have kids with little to no tech knowledge saying Unreal Engine is to blame for all the issues, is the same as blaming a Bugatti for being slow when it was being used by an old lady.
Tech Demos show what the Engine can do, Games show how incompetent big development teams can be.
That is the difference.
Indie developers take better advantage of Unreal Engine, since they have proper teamwork and full control over the project.
Then we have kids with little to no tech knowledge saying Unreal Engine is to blame for all the issues, is the same as blaming a Bugatti for being slow when it was being used by an old lady.
Well UE does claims some ease of use. So they need to optimize to help developers.
And obviously there was improvements needed as they just stated there are in the new build.
UE5 always has room to improve just like UE4. Nothing is perfect.
It's happening boyes!
Ok idk how far they'll keep making somewhat significant performance passes, but for a moment I'll drop my pitchfork and slow clap with a stern face. Massively overdue but I'll sn*tch it.
Also, since they've partnered with CDPR and those guys are massive money printing machines, i wonder if some of their directors or executives even made it a clause for UE beforehand to cut the bullsh*t and start optimizing the BS performance for The Witcher 4 and CP 2077 2… Now that they've partnered up and even showed that fake demo, it rings possible…
Hey John… Fvck off will ye?!
Do we have any info about any game that's coming/releasing on this latest UE 5.6 engine that has already been confirmed/announced by the dev(s)?
trash engine
Does this also help improve performance with 8gb GPUs? Just wondering since things are moving faster or using less resources.