Unreal Engine 5.6 update on track to deliver up to 30% more performance in games

Unreal Engine 5 powers some of the biggest games being released today, and its tech is set to power some of the biggest titles on the horizon, such as Mafia: The Old Country, Borderlands 4, The Outer Worlds 2, and The Witcher 4. As impressive as Unreal Engine 5 games look, with advanced features that can render stunningly detailed open worlds with ray-tracing, Epic Games' latest engine technology isn't perfect.

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Stable performance has been an issue with several UE 5-powered games on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. There have been widespread reports of stuttering and other problems with major Unreal Engine 5-powered games, alongside the need for powerful GPU hardware on PC just to meet the recommended specs.

There's room for improvement; this is where Unreal Engine 5.6 enters the picture. This recent major update to the engine is all about performance. According to Epic Games, Unreal Engine 5.6's updates allow consoles like the PS5 and high-end PCs to achieve a stable 60 FPS with hardware ray-tracing. It's a bold claim that looks like it might be true.

MxBenchmarkPC on YouTube, a popular benchmarking and performance channel, recently debuted a new video showcasing Unreal Engine 5's Paris tech demo on a GeForce RTX 5080 in 1440p and 4K. The key is to see the tech demo run in Unreal Engine 5.4 and the brand-new Unreal Engine 5.6 form. As the tech demo relies on UE technology like Lumen Global Illumination to render its photorealistic environments, it's an excellent showcase for the potential of Unreal Engine's latest update.

Running in 1440p, we see that Unreal Engine 5.6 is up to 22% faster than 5.4, with a smoother overall graph. The system used to benchmark also includes an Intel Core i7-14700F CPU, and in a CPU-limited 720p test, we see Unreal Engine 5.6 perform up to 30% faster than 5.4. This shows that Unreal Engine 5.6 optimizes performance across the GPU and CPU, which is fantastic.

The video also provides some image quality comparisons, which favor the newer Unreal Engine 5.6 regarding shadow and overall lighting quality.

It's impressive and a potential turning point for the engine and its critics. The only drawback is that Unreal Engine 5.6 is brand-new, so it might take a while to filter down to actual games you can play. It's rare for developers to make fundamental changes to a game's core engine technology later in the development cycle, so Unreal Engine 5.6-powered titles might not arrive until 2026.