I’m worried. Just tested it and found EEVEE NEXT performance in 4.3 is still very poor compared to EEVEE Legacy in 4.1
EEVEE dropped in performance with the change from EEVEE Legacy to EEVEE NEXT in 4.2. Was a big thread about it: https://devtalk.blender.org/t/blender-4-2-eevee-next-feedback
I’ve been stuck in 4.1 because of that, unable to use the new features since.
Had been hoping 4.3 would see EEVEE NEXT able to deliver EEVEE Legacy performance levels, but I took it for tests and the results aren’t good:
Small scenes are ok, but in bigger scenes performance is still unreasonably slower:
(4.2 was similarly bad.)
Sustained Frames (Averaged)
Field: Scene 1: BL41: 11 seconds, BL43: 14 seconds.
Interior: Scene 2: BL43 crashes, no message, nothing.
Interior: Scene 3: BL41 19 seconds, BL43 5 minutes 3 seconds
Urban: Scene 4: BL41 15 seconds, BL43 1 minutes 27 seconds.
Startup Frame (Initial Frame)
BL43 is also much slower at startup:
Urban Scene 3: BL41 1 minute 24 seconds, BL43 5 minute 58 seconds.
Other scenes were similarly slow.
If you’re doing a single render, not a big deal. But if you’re generating a video, that adds up. It’s the difference between rendering a 1000 frame scene in 4 hours with 4.1, versus over 24 hours with 4.3. It’s just not viable.
I know I can’t stay on 4.1 forever, but what really concerns me is there’s no apparent urgency from BF to fix this:
https://devtalk.blender.org/t/blender-4-2-eevee-next-feedback (See last posts)
I’m really worried they’re never going to improve it. With Unreal 5.5 nipping at their heels, Blender should be delivering better performance, not worse.