Unreal Engine 5.6 performance benefits showcased with Paris Demo

Unreal Engine 5.6 delivers HUGE performance gains over older versions

Unreal Engine 5.6 launched last month, and its most significant changes are its hardware optimisations and performance enhancements. Major changes have been made to Hardware Lumen, Unreal Engine 5’s hardware-accelerated global illumination system. Furthermore, the engine now features RHI render parallelisation, boosting the game’s CPU performance.

Below, we have benchmarks from MxBenchmarkPC comparing Unreal Engine 5.4 and Unreal Engine 5.6 using the Paris – Fontaine Saint-Michel demo. The video below compares the performance of both engine versions using an Nvidia RTX 5080 graphics card with Hardware Lumen (ray tracing) and Ultra settings.

At 1440p, Unreal Engine 5.6 delivers significant performance gains in GPU-limited scenarios. In one area, framerates had increased from 67 FPS to 81 FPS. That’s a 20% increase in performance. Not bad for an engine update.

At 720p, this demo is CPU-limited. Using the same settings at this low resolution, framerates in one area increased from 92 FPS to 117 FPS, a 27% increase. This test was conducted using an Intel i7 14700F CPU.

Note that Unreal Engine 5.6 doesn’t just deliver strong framerate gains. The engine also features improved lighting and shadows in many areas. These are highlighted in the video above. If developers are using Unreal Engine 5 for their projects, the performance benefits of the engine’s latest iteration make an engine version transition more than worthy of consideration. After all, these gains can help stabilise frametimes, help developers run their projects at higher resolutions, and make 60 FPS gameplay more viable on consoles.

You can join the discussion on Unreal Engine 5.6’s performance benefits on the OC3D Forums.