Actually you can’t compare SM5 instructions with SM6 instructions because they’re different compilers with different instruction sets ( DXBC vs DXIL ). What you could do is compare UE5.0 with SM6 and UE5.1 with SM6 which I did :). Enabling SM6 in UE5.0 involves about 5 engine modifications though but it’s possible. 5.1 does appear to have “more instructions”. Actual DXIL shaders from PIX report around 1200 instructions for some simple shaders so much more than the editor reports. But r.VelocityOutputPass has been changed from 0 to 1 which means basepass shaders are beefier due to adding velocity output instructions. If you do set it to 0 like in 5.0 you end up with identical instructions for BasePass pixel shaders :).