Performance question: Newer Unity versions versus Unity 3/4

The newer versions of Unity have better graphics performance than the older ones? or is just a classic case of ''more features, but more requirements too''? And theres any reson to use the older versions? sorry i'm quite new at Unity.

 

There are massive performance changes.
Just to point one, among many, probably most significant, multithreaded PhysX.

 

Thanks for the Reply Antypodish, my project is basicly a Counter Strike 1.6 Dust 2 clone, with one bot, very very low poly count, the FPS is like 3k in the scene with Unity 4.3.0, when i converted to the latest version, using the Legacy Shaders, i get something like 800 FPS, I think that I dont have suficient data to determinante wich one is better, because my scene is almost empty, is like an 90's game, i dont have much experience so is good to see what the most experts think about the Unity now

 

I am far from being Unity expert. Just hobbyist.
But if you thinking to do stuff with Unity forward onward, you would be best of grab any version of Unity from 2018.3 +.
There are not only game performance improvements, but many productivity tools. Specially profiler, which is highly critical, if you looking at performance.

And general is good to keep up with latest tech, rather than stay with dinosaurs for extinction

 

If you are new to Unity you pretty much have no reason to use anything but the latest/greatest other than running the same version for some older tutorials.

 

Newer versions of Unity are faster in every capacity, as well as being smaller. Just flat out better. For supporting really old devices though, the requirement to code your own simple shaders hasn't changed. This advice was true for 3.x.

For everyone using relevant devices (any device in the last few years) will be better off with modern Unity.

Unity is probably at least twice as fast as 3.x and 4.x was, and probably hundreds of times faster with ECS/Burst/Jobs/DOTS/HPC# and much faster than Unity 5.

Upgrade if it's an option for your team, but carefully watch your shaders. If performance is the key try LWRP and make sure you are sensible with post effects.

Remember, even modern Unity is suitable for tiny bespoke hardware that runs on crappy little things with Tiny etc.

 

Also, there is lots of new graphical stuff, including shader graphs, and post processing, suitable for simple projects and even prototypes.

 

Oh and the free license changed with Unity 5. In 4 and earlier the engine was somewhat crippled with things like no shadow support unless you bought Pro. With Unity 5 the free license the biggest thing you can't do is remove the Unity splash screen from your game's startup.

 

And the splash screen changed to a much nicer system from a late version of 5 onwards.