Unreal Engine 5.6 outperforms 5.4 with up to 30% faster frame rates and improved lighting

[Cal Jeffrey]

Bottom line: Epic's latest version of Unreal Engine is making waves with substantial performance improvements and visual enhancements that address long-standing engine issues. Direct comparisons against Unreal Engine 5.4 show at least a 30-percent increase in performance, especially in CPU-limited scenarios.

The findings come from tests by the YouTube channel MxBenchmarkPC (above), which put the Paris tech demo by Scans Factory (below) through its paces. Running on a system equipped with an RTX 5080 GPU and a Core i7-14700F CPU at multiple resolutions, the demo provided direct, side-by-side comparisons between versions 5.4 and 5.6.

In GPU-limited scenarios at 1440p and 4K, Unreal Engine 5.6 delivered roughly 22 percent higher frame rates than version 5.4. The gains were even more pronounced in CPU-limited runs at 720p, where frame rates jumped by as much as 30 percent. Tom's Hardware also reported a 17 percent drop in average CPU usage across all 16 threads of the Core i7-14700F, pointing to meaningful optimizations in the engine's rendering pipeline.

Version 5.6 brings noticeable visual improvements. MxBenchmarkPC observed more refined lighting and reflections under Lumen global illumination, while Tom's highlighted darker interior spaces with added shadowing that made the scene feel more grounded and realistic. By comparison, version 5.4 appeared flatter and more "gamified," especially indoors.

Epic Games teased these upgrades earlier this month at its Unreal Fest keynote, crediting better hardware-accelerated ray tracing and a new Fast Geometry Streaming plugin that speeds up rendering in expansive worlds. These features shift much of the lighting and asset streaming work onto modern GPUs, improving visual fidelity and smoothing out the frame-time spikes that have often caused stuttering. This optimization is especially significant for games leveraging Unreal Engine's Lumen global illumination system. By offloading more work to the GPU and reducing CPU bottlenecks, Unreal Engine 5.6 is better equipped to hit 60 FPS targets on modern consoles and high-end PCs.

While Epic Games upgraded Fortnite to Unreal Engine 5.6 earlier this month, no other major commercial games have implemented it yet. However, the updated engine shows substantial promise. The company showcased a Witcher IV tech demo running at a stable 60 FPS with full ray tracing enabled on the PlayStation 5 – a notable milestone for real-time rendering on current-gen hardware.

With version 5.6 now publicly available, developers can begin incorporating these optimizations into their projects. Whether this version finally rids Unreal Engine of its infamous stuttering issues remains to be seen, but the numbers – and the visuals – are promising.

Permalink to story:

Unreal Engine 5.6 outperforms 5.4 with up to 30% faster frame rates and improved lighting

 

[Axiarus]

Ill believe it when I see it.

 

[godrilla]

It took update version 5.6 ( almost end of engine improvement cycle with talks about Unreal Engine 6 by Epic) To start offering new projects with more efficient code features set.
Anyone have an updated list of supported projects in the pipeline or any released titles retrofitting launch and current Unreal engine to 5.6 besides the Witcher 4 and Fortnite?
The benefactors were obviously hardware vendors with brute forced compute capable hardware. 9800X3D at 5.425 ghz and 5090 at 3.ghz for a stutter palatable experience anyone?

 

[AbbyNormal]

I know that you have to parrot press releases, but does it have to be something that is obviously false?

That engine is just lipstick on a pig and there is no saving it. Can every company agree to pick an opensource game engine to contribute to already? It's amazing how they just ignore what has worked best for companies in all the other tech sectors.

 

[godrilla]

I know that you have to parrot press releases, but does it have to be something that is obviously false?

That engine is just lipstick on a pig and there is no saving it. Can every company agree to pick an opensource game engine to contribute to already? It's amazing how they just ignore what has worked best for companies in all the other tech sectors.

At this point if Epic wanted to build back bridges earn back consumer trust, they would have to provide resources to all those failed projects due to performance and quality of product/service. It's not like brute force is getting cheaper either and thus their potential consumer base is shrinking due to brute forced requirements. Imagine all those developers that lost jobs because of poor optimizations was an afterthought.

 

[Porkous]

Pretty amazing graphics and really wonderful.

I wonder if this precedent would create a state of "aesthetic fatigue", Ennui, or weary detachment, that the world is encapsulated in, a sense of lack of meaning and deep melancholy, for new experiences fading with new substance.

Most of the fun we had was steaming from our imagination completing the way we played what we loved. Bringing so much eye candy would create a surplus beyond what our brains want to imagine?

Definition: A feeling of melancholy and world-weariness caused by the realization that the world cannot satisfy the mind or heart.

 

[DrSuess]

Does anyone know how often this engine updates actually make it into the patches of released games? I don't think many of them do unless they are fixing some game breaking issues.

 

[Gravitytr1]

Pretty amazing graphics and really wonderful.

I wonder if this precedent would create a state of "aesthetic fatigue", Ennui, or weary detachment, that the world is encapsulated in, a sense of lack of meaning and deep melancholy, for new experiences fading with new substance.

Most of the fun we had was steaming from our imagination completing the way we played what we loved. Bringing so much eye candy would create a surplus beyond what our brains want to imagine?

I agree. We are definitely overstimulated, and it's definitely addictive.

And that word and definition fits with the concept of the Fitrah, an innate disposition of every human since birth (scientifically studied on babies and adults) to believe in and need to worship one God. No amount of worldly objects behaviors or similar will ever fulfill a person.

 

[farhad1988]

Mark my words—this UE won't last long. It's unoptimized and only shows what a modern GPU can do at peak performance, which has no practicality.UE is just passing it's honeymoon periods