Is it normal for Unreal Engine 5.0-5.1 to use 2 GB of video memory by default?

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Hello!

I was experimenting with the new Unreal Engine 5.1, and previously 5.0. Both times I get decent performance but I noticed in contrast to UE4 versions, the engine uses more resources, especially video memory, just in IDLE, without anything running. Is this normal, from a design behaviour?

Could someone point me to the changes which force the editor to be so resource intensive by default now for simplistic scenes, or what changed engine wise to make the code use so much VRAM?

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Unreal Engine 5 has several new features and improvements that may contribute to increased resource usage, particularly in terms of video memory usage. Some of the changes that could be causing this include:

  • The new Nanite virtualized geometry feature, which allows for highly detailed and complex geometry to be rendered in real-time. This feature can consume a large amount of video memory, especially for large and detailed scenes.
  • The new Lumen global illumination system, which is designed to provide more realistic lighting and shadows. This feature can also consume a significant amount of video memory, especially when using high-quality settings.
  • The new Temporal Upscaling feature, which allows for more detailed and realistic textures to be rendered in real-time. This feature can also consume a large amount of video memory, especially when using high-quality settings.
  • The engine has improved the texture streaming and texture quality overall, which results in higher video memory usage.
  • The engine also has a new feature called “Scene Layers” which is a way of organizing and managing large scenes in the editor, which can also increase the video memory usage.

All of these features are designed to improve the visual quality and performance of the engine, but they do come at the cost of increased resource usage, especially in terms of video memory. Keep in mind that the engine will consume more resources when running in the editor than when running a packaged build.

It’s worth noting that the new features in UE5 are designed to be highly configurable, and you can adjust the settings to balance performance and visual quality.

You can try to reduce the video memory usage by disabling some of the features that you don’t need or by decreasing their quality settings.

I hope this helps, and let me know if you have any other questions.

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Ah, yes this is exactly what I was interested in knowing. Thank you. I know how to proceed forward to optimize my builds.

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