Yes, @Neutronux nailed it on this one. EDIT: I’ve decided to simplify my original answer to avoid causing confusion. 5.3.2 may SEEM to produce worse performance out of the box, but that is only because 5.2.1 was NOT respecting your Screen Percentage settings and was always downscaling the output.
TL;DR: 5.3.2 has excellent performance once you match the Screen Percentage settings that earlier versions were using by default. In fact, 5.3.2 has even BETTER performance than 4.27.2 at true 100% Screen Percentage. I’m currently using 5.3.2 and like it.
On older GPUs, you can use these Project settings to get the best performance:
- Dynamic Global Illumination Method: (None)
- Reflection Method: (Screen Space)
- Shadow Map Method: (Shadow Maps)
- Nanite: (Disabled) (also added r.Nanite=0 under [/Script/Engine.RendererSettings] in project’s DefaultEngine.ini)
- Anti-Aliasing Method: (Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA))
- Temporal Upsampling: (Enabled)
- Early Z-pass: (Opaque and masked meshes)
- Mask material only in early Z-pass: (Enabled)
(Those last 2 settings help with dense foliage) - Allow High DPI in Game Mode (Enabled)
- Default screen percentage mode for realtime editor viewports: (Based on display resolution)
- Default RHI: (DirectX 11)
Some additional notes showing differences between UE 5.2.1 and UE 5.3.2:
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UE 5.2.1 has much darker shadow rendering than UE 5.3.2 using the same test settings. With a few tweaks, I don’t mind the look of UE 5.3.2, and I prefer the warmer sunlight in UE5 over the way UE4 renders the same scene.
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Apparently, in UE 5.3.2, Epic changed the Camera’s default Field of View to maintain Y FOV instead of X FOV. In order to match the look of 5.2.1 (and earlier versions), inside your character’s BP, go to Camera Options, check “Override Aspect Ratio Axis Constraint” and leave “Aspect Ratio Axis Constraint” as “Maintain X-Axis FOV” as shown in this answer here.
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In UE 5.3.2, You can no longer change the Screen Percentage setting before launching a Play In Editor session, which is disappointing. However, once in a Play session, there are new handy presets you can select to quickly increase or decrease your Screen Percentage.
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To improve your viewport framerate (without launching a Play session), you can click the 3 little lines to the left of the current Camera setting, choose “Screen Percentage”, select “Custom Override”, and choose a lower value according to your preference.
