Unreal Engine 5.6 packs significant CPU and GPU performance improvements over version 5.4 of the engine, boding well for future games powered by the Epic engine.

A new comparison video shared by MxBenchmarkPC on YouTube puts the Paris Tech Demo by Scans Factory running on an RTX 5080 in Unreal Engine 5.6 and Unreal Engine 5.4 at default settings and with hardware Lumen in GPU and CPU limited scenarios side-by-side, highlighting how there are significant performance improvements in the new version of the engine in both scenarios. GPU performance is estimated to be improved by up to 25%, with the new version of the engine utilizing GPU resources better, resulting in a higher power draw as well. CPU performance, on the other hand, sees the biggest improvement in the new version of the engine, up to 35%, with more stable frametimes as well. Even in terms of image quality, Unreal Engine 5.6 brings significant improvements with more accurate Lumen lighting and higher quality Lumen reflections.

Unreal Engine 5.6 launched earlier this month, right after the annual Unreal Fest opening presentation revealed some of its central features and improvements over the previous version of the engine. Among the improvements are hardware ray tracing enhancements that boost Lumen Global Illumination performance, faster geometry streaming for smoother loading of massive static worlds, an intuitive redesign of Motion trails, and more. The launch of the new version of the engine accompanied the first public showing of a The Wìtcher IV tech demo, which served as a showcase of the features of the new version of the engine.

More information on Unreal Engine 5.6 can be found on its official website.