Gray Zone Warfare Showcases Unreal Engine 5.5 Performance Improvements

Despite Epic’s promotion of Unreal Engine 5’s impressive features and visuals, many games built with it are unfortunately known for running poorly.

It’s debatable whether Gray Zone Warfare‘s reputation for impressive visuals but poor performance is truly deserved, and whether the issue lies with the Unreal Engine 5 itself, overly ambitious game design, or a lack of optimization. However, it’s become a prime example of a game that looks fantastic but runs poorly on UE5.

The game had a rocky start when it launched in early 2024, but it’s gotten much better thanks to significant updates that addressed bugs, added new features, and boosted performance. While it’s now playable, performance still isn’t great on older or less powerful computers.

Madfinger Games is addressing concerns about the game’s performance issues with the new 0.3.5.0 update. This improvement is also expected to positively impact the overall perception of Unreal Engine 5.

Gray Zone Warfare 3.5.0 Shows UE5.5 Performance Potential

The latest update for Gray Zone Warfare has been thoroughly tested by players in the beta program, and both the developers and testers are pleased with the results.

Madfinger Games reports that updating to Unreal Engine 5.5 will reduce the strain on your computer’s processor thanks to a new rendering method. This update also makes the game more efficient, using about 400MB less video memory (VRAM) and 2GB less system RAM on all devices.

This chart illustrates approximate frame rate gains in the Tiger Bay mall area, a location that used to severely impact performance – even on my setup with an RTX 4060 and Ryzen 5 5600X.

PC 0.3.4.0 0.3.5.0
Low-End 30 FPS 40 FPS
Mid-Range 40 FPS 60 FPS
High-End 60 FPS 90 FPS

More insightful is a comparison of player performance, shown as a heatmap, between the live game (1765 players) and the 0.3.5.0 test build (1553 players).

The map displays players’ computer configurations and their corresponding frame rates (FPS) during gameplay. While some areas still show lower FPS, around 20, the biggest improvement is that most of the map now consistently achieves around 60 FPS, a significant increase from the previous 40 FPS.

Gray Zone Warfare features a massive 42 square kilometer map filled with AI characters and a huge number of trees. This makes it demanding on computer hardware, but a recent upgrade to Unreal Engine 5.5 has significantly improved performance. This improvement is encouraging for other games that are currently having trouble maintaining smooth frame rates.

This is great news for fans of STALKER 2, as the game is scheduled to be updated to Unreal Engine 5.5.6 early next year, after a difficult initial release.

Gray Zone Warfare is now available on Steam and has received ‘Mostly Positive’ reviews from players, despite having a somewhat mixed initial reception.

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2025-11-05 16:09