2017 Macbook pro 15 Unity performance

Hi everyone, i am going to buy 2017 Macbook pro 15 which is have radeon 560 graphic card but i dont know enough about Macbook pro unity performance.I just want to develop game on unity and make some modelling on photoshop and blender.Can you give me information about this.How is performance on unity for macbook?

 

Performance is completely dependent on the game being developed. Unity itself will run off of just about anything but once you introduce a project that changes to whatever requirements the project itself will have. At best you can only estimate the performance by looking at the requirements of games similar to what you want to create.

Keep in mind the editor itself will take a portion of your performance and the game won't be in a fully optimized state till near the end of development. What will run smoothly at launch on one device won't necessarily run smoothly while in development.

 

It works just fine for mobile and a lot of game types. If you are doing vr or graphics intensive desktop games, it will struggle. You can offset that with an eGPU, then it will just depend on the card you pick. Make sure the one you get is maxed on memory, as you can't upgrade after the fact. But as @Ryiah pointed out, it depends on what you are going to do with it.

 

When I used blender and eevee on my macbook pro the cpu was cooking big time so I got shot of blender and unity.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/blender-2-8-released.719690/

It's not a good idea to cook your laptop all the time. OC you could be doing very very simple 3D modelling.

Photoshop or (affinity photo) which is better IMO is fine though.

 

Thanks to all replies.I understand if i compare with windows, its not good idea working on big project with mac pro.I can only work on mobile games and some small things.Am i right? If so which laptop do you suggest for unity and some blender projects?

 

A Mac Pro is a completely different story than a MacBook Pro. It's not a difference between Windows and Mac, it is MacBook Pro is a portable/laptop, it is not as powerful as a desktop. With few exceptions, you will find the same issues with Windows laptops (though there are some seriously beefy Windows ones). On a MBP, you can do huge games/projects, no problems. But once you venture into VR or very graphics intensive games, you want/need to be able to run your project on something that is similar to the deployment target. If your game relies on huge terrain, massive textures and requires the latest video card, building it on a laptop will be challenging (without a GPU). The other consideration is if you use 3ds Max, there is no Mac version for that and it runs terribly on VM.

 

strange, thought I replied here.
If you do not need to build for ios/osx you are better of with a PC.

 

Definitely not true. There are crappy PC laptops and great ones, you can easily buy a generic windows laptop that way underperforms a MBP, and you can buy one that outperforms it as well. If your preference and/or workflow is Mac than getting windows definitely isn't a "better" choice.

We don't do holy wars here, over engines/tools/software. Stay on topic.

 

I like the idea of having one device to do everything. My macbook pro which i upgraded from the mini is good enough to do anything non cpu intensive, however running a game engine or blender is going to cook your cpu and that's bad as the cooling going on inside the macbook pro is terrible. As soon as the internal fan starts whirring I get worried and close down my processes - I actually don't do any unity or blender work anymore on it now. eGPUs are massively expensive and have bottlenecks. Honestly I was thinking about getting one with a 2080Ti card. The small form factor is appealing to me, I don't know if I can stomach having a tower again.

Mac works for me ATM. The macbook pro is ultra thin and has the stuff i need - i can throw it in my backpack and move around. Also I use Affinity suite, xcode, android studio and flutter.

However, for heavy 3D work that is future proofed like dxr raytracing and stuff, I personally feel a PC is way better value for money - just you can't throw it in your backpack. Although this guy is using the NUC uniquely

I thought this site is decent for building custom PCs

https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/

 

You might want to have it looked at and make sure you have things updated. My production machine runs at least 2 copies of Unity, PS, AI, Blender & Maya (stupid Blender single missing feature) as well at least 3 servers (virtualized). And the support stuff like Affinity/Sketch/tools. The lid is closed and using an external 5k monitor. (the laptop is on a glass plinth to disperse heat) It does get a bit slow with PS/AI unless I am using an eGPU. But it shouldn't be crashing. Mine only gets too hot if I use a VM running Windows and doing Unity build on top that. (not because of windows, the VM software doesn't communicate well enough with the hardware).

 

If you prefer mac or at any point in future may want to release on iOS or OSX then you will want to get a mac.

If you do, I recommend a new mac mini. They are incredibly powerful for such a small cheap portable bit of kit!


Dont do what I did and buy a macbook thinking you want to make iOS games, then scope out your project and realise its not for iOS, sell your macbook and then decide again that perhaps you want iOS capability and find yourself BUYING ANOTHER MAC.

God damn myself. God damn. I just dont know how to help myself sometimes.

 

I like variety, My primary machines are two MBPs with external uhd monitors, and an eGPU that is usually on the work lappy. I have a mini that works as a media server, file server, repo and general home server. I have a window box that is primarily for gaming and VR, but it has Unity installed and can function as a build server or for occasional Windows only apps. If I need more Windows, (or even Linux) I have boot drives for the MPBs to boot into a alt OS if needed. I likes electronics.

 

Wooah, that's insane, so you have 3 virtualised servers running on Parallels, two copies of unity, blender and maya on your macbook pro? Honestly, I have the software up-to-date and any 3D stuff including running simple steam games starts cooking my processor. I don't do any 3D stuff or game dev on my lappy at all now.

This is my setup.

Spoiler

And I've got one of these to boost my port connections plus a 250GB micro SD card, well worth the money considering a single usb to usbc mac connector from the mac store costs £20-30 alone.

https://www.amazon.com/ODOMY-MacBoo...rds=mac+odomy&qid=1567587773&s=gateway&sr=8-1

 

I really want to get myself a powerful windows tower with a 2080Ti but it is honestly just for playing around with. So prolly won't bother.

 

I heard good things about the new mac-mini, I have the model before, you know, the one that got slated because the specs were worse than the model before that. Still don't like how you can't upgrade on the mini, but I suppose apple have their monetisation reasons for that

 

You can upgrade ram, which is about as much as you can upgrade on a macbook anyway.

Im pretty sure you can connect an eGPU to them too, if you get the new one.

 

I have a HTPC with a chassi from Streacom, looks thousand times better than the mini and perform better.


Complete passive too

 

Yeah but can you run and deploy iOS apps on it

 

If you buy comptible hardware you can run Macos on it, aka hackingtosh! (it's like having a Ferrari and putting in a moped engine though )

Edit: but like I said in orginal post, if you build for ios/macos that a valid reason for choosing them. If you don't build for macos it's better to go with a PC. And a desktop workstation if you can, laptops are often a pain to work on because editor do use lots of resources. Our game takes about 60 gigabytes including library cache and it's no fun loading it on my i7 asus laptop

 

That I didn't know, I know the model I have / had the memory soldered to the board and even swapping out the harddrive to a SSD was more technical than it should have been. I remember the star screw driver kit set me back £50 and in the end I gave up in case I messed it up and voided the warranty.

 

Nah they did a full break down about hackingtosh and why it's not worth it because the software updates didn't work at all properly. In the end they just concluded if you want to stay up-to-date with little to no issues, it was better just to get an actual mac.

 

That being said you might be able to run mac via a VM. . . but then again never tried connecting a physical iOS phone via a vm for deployment though apparently it is possible.

https://nanocosmo.wordpress.com/2019/03/26/deploying-apps-to-an-ios-device-without-a-mac/

 

Move the hardware to a streacom then and get rid of that awful Mac mini chassi a media PC should be 19" rack width so it goes well with the rest of the hifi equipment

 

How much did the Streacom set you back in cost?

 

Around 300 USD if not mistaken, probably cheaper in countries with more sensible taxes

Edit: perfect fit in my media shelf (ignore cable on wall its gone)

 

Living the dream, where are your drones though? P.S Thread hijack going down.

 

Yeah, maybe back to topic

My 5 cents are, if you are not baking light and doing every day crunching a laptop with 4 cores minimum is fine (so no i5 with 2 cores). But you will experience some slowdowns if project is bigger. If you bake light etc. Go for a AMD 3950x thats around the corner.

edit: and 16 gigs if you can

 

The only baking I do now is in the kitchen . . . sorry couldn't help myself.

 

Still not true. It is better to use Windows if you prefer to use Windows. There are many, many reasons professional game developers prefer to use a Mac, particularly on the art side, but also it is a popular choice for engineers. You don't need a PC to make Windows/Linux/Consoles. Cheap hardware isn't key driver for everyone. "Better" isn't limited to low-cost hardware. Folks have different standards for quality in their tools.

 

I'll agree with zombiegorilla. I've used both macs and PC's and once you get used to the mac, it's pretty great. Also Logic X is pretty dope as well. I'm an engineer and although i don't spin up a ton of VM's i do alot with docker containers and swarms. I think if your worried about your mac overheating. i would try to invest in a eGPU