
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works .
(Image credit: Novaverse) Share Share by: Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Flipboard Share this article Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Unreal Engine 5 has become the bane of existence for many PC gamers over the past few years. What started as a drive to push real-time graphics toward a new generation of immersion has ended up ballooning hardware requirements to the point of absurdity. However, Epic has been making steady improvements, and the latest iteration of the engine, version 5.7, seems to be the best one yet.
Watch On YouTuber MxBenchmarkPC recently tried the 'Venice – Italian City' tech demo by Scans Factory in both Unreal Engine 5.4 and Unreal Engine 5.7, comparing the two across 1440p and 720p resolutions. They used an RTX 5080 GPU and an Intel Core i7-14700F processor for the benchmark, and the results appear very promising.
At 1440 p.m., we see an average difference of 15 FPS between the UE 5.7 and 5.4, with the former always staying ahead. This performance bump, however, came at a cost as Unreal Engine 5.7 consumed up to 1 GB of extra VRAM and system memory compared to UE 5.4 throughout the run.
The Outer Worlds with ray tracing can't hit 60FPS at paltry 540p resolution with an RTX 5090 and 9800X3D
FSR 4 modded to run on RDNA 2 GPUs improves visuals by "leaps and bounds" but carries 10-20% less FPS
Strix Halo Radeon 8060S benchmarked in games delivers butter-smooth 1080p performance
According to the OP, "GPU performance is improved by up to 25% in UE 5.7 (depending on a scene), and the 5.7 version is now better utilizing GPU resources, hence the GPU power draw is now higher." You'll see increased wattages mostly with higher-end GPUs only, as they have that extra headroom to offer.
In a CPU-limited scenario at 720p, the performance gain jumps to 35% as the UE 5.7 actually eats less RAM. This is clearly the bigger impact of UE 5.7, as MxBenchmarkPC confirms in their note, saying: "UE 5.7 offers a significant up to 35% CPU performance boost (depending on a scene) and more stable frametimes with less hitches across all scenes."
Apart from better FPS, there's a noticeable image quality improvement too, with more consistent lighting that adds to the immersion. We noticed more accurate shadows in the trees and vegetation, denser raindrops, and significantly better-looking reflections in water in certain scenes. Lumen is evidently living up to its name with this update, though its built-in denoiser is still not as good as Nvidia or AMD's solutions.
Moreover, the point of comparison, Unreal Engine 5.4, is not random here as it's notorious for being hard on GPUs, on top of having stability issues. Subsequent revisions, like Unreal Engine 5.6, have already improved upon it a lot, so a comparison between UE 5.6 and 5.7 won't look as striking — but it's great to see a step in the right direction regardless.
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/pc-gaming/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/pc-gaming/unreal-engine-5-7-brings-significant-improvements-over-the-notoriously-demanding-5-4-version-tester-claims-benchmark-shows-up-to-25-percent-gpu-performance-increase-35-percent-cpu-boost#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
- North Korean hackers stole record $2 billion in crypto in 2025, including single heist worth $1.5 billion, report claims — rogue state accounts for 60% of all r
- Score an RTX 5080 and 9800X3D pre-built for under £2,300 with this CyberPowerPC deal — save £200 on this 4K gaming PC with 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD
- NVIDIA Acquires Open-Source Workload Management Provider SchedMD
- AI surpasses 2024 Bitcoin mining in energy usage, uses more H20 than the bottles of water people drink globally, study claims — says AI demand could hit 23GW an
- Here's why HBM is coming for your PC's RAM — HBM consumes around three times the wafer capacity of DDR5 per gigabyte, as AI supercharges demand for chips and ad
Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.