Unreal Engine 5 Tech Demo Was As GPU-Intensive As Fortnite On Consoles, Says Epic

While there’s been a lot of news to kind of take the focus away from it, the tech demo for the Unreal Engine 5 on PlayStation 5 dropped a lot of jaws when it was revealed in May. While a few next generation titles had been shown before, it was really the first time we got a glimpse of what a full engine will look like for the upcoming generation. While a lot has been talked about in regards to SSDs, this time around it’s the usage of the GPU that Epic is talking about.

Speaking to PC Games N, VP of Engineering for Epic Games, Nick Penwarden, said that the time spent rendering geometry for that demo is the same as what it was rendering Fortnite, which is incredible when you consider the fidelity of the demo. To be specific, he said, “I can say that the GPU time spent rendering geometry in our UE5 demo is similar to the geometry rendering budget for Fortnite running at 60fps on consoles.”

In a nutshell, what that could mean is that well-optimized titles can potentially run easier on older hardware. We do know that Unreal 5 will support all current hardware as well as mobile devices, so it makes a lot of sense that this potential for scalability is there. And it goes without saying, but obviously there’s a lot of potential for the new, more modern hardware to strive for as well.

Much like all discussions about these parts, it’s all vague and theoretical until developers put it in practice, and the GPU, like the SSD, is one part of a whole, though the GPU does generally have a significant impact on performance. Either way, it definitely is an exciting time for gaming on the tech side of things.