Best computer setup for Unity

I am using Unity on a 2011 Macbook Pro...and it is not good.
I have bought some assets that bring Unity to around 5fps.

I am thinking about buying a PC and wonder what a good setup could be, that is reasonably priced but also give me the visual horsepower and FPS.

Thanks

 

One that works.

 

Wow thanks for the incredible insight. Deep. You are from the prairies...

 

A 2011 macbook pro should be a decent unity box (quad core i7 with a Radeon 6750) . Are you running it on the integrated Intel chip or something? Anything that will take it to it's knees will perform poorly on the majority of users systems.

Anyway, if you're just interested in massive framerate, and not interested in who else could play your game, then any generic PC box, with a GTX 760 or above should be both cheap and usable.

But, fwiw, you can't just buy a bunch of assets and put them all in to a scene. Game making is all about compromises.

 

Thanks for the great info. I hear ya. Just trying to get something that runs with a better GPU.
BTW you have some great shaders!!!
Here is a screencap of my config. And it is older than I thought...

 

No problem! Don't hate on the Prairies.

EDIT: Wow, GT 330m isn't very good. And 17" lol. I'd suggest selling your huge laptop and getting an imac or something.

 

Thanks! Also, I agree the 2010 model is a little too old for PC development now (about half the speed of the 2011). I'd recommend getting at least 16gb RAM and a quad core i7. If you can spare the extra cash, then an SSD boot drive is great also. But stay away from OCZ, I've had nothing but trouble with the OCZ Vector (though it's supposedly fixed).

 

I have been looking at these:
http://www.kakewalk.se/computer-builds/

 

That would work, but the components on that list are all the older models. i'd recommend to go with the middle one, but get the current years graphics, cpu, etc.

 

The GT330 is what's killing it.

My desktop is a Core 2 Duo 3.0GHz, with 8GB DDR2-1000, GeForce 550Ti, and a Kingston 128GB SSD. It ran Unity just fine. In fact it's pretty fast.

My laptop is an Asus G75VX. Intel i7-Q3630QM, 12GB DDR3, GeForce 670MX. Only thing that makes it slow is I didn't order the SSD.

So... get something with a better video card.

 

http://unity3d.com/unity/system-requirements

anything above that will run unity. depends on what you're trying to push. get the nicest video card you can afford lol

 

Mac book pro's are nice if you want ios and a mobile development platform.

 

This. Especially with pre-built computers/laptops. Get a good graphics card and everything else will follow suit.
Good site for laptops: http://www.notebookcheck.net/

I don't think Unity can use more than ~3 GB. (as it's not 64-bit). Still, 16GB seems like massive overkill to me, even ignoring that aspect.

 

I have a PC i'm building soon, if your able to build one I would highly suggest it, just upgrade the parts you want.
http://pcpartpicker.com/user/chrisall76/saved/1ZSp

 

The editor itself cannot use more than 4GB of RAM. Beast (the light mapper in unity) is a separate 64 bit process, and can use all that RAM. In addition, the OS and it's caches, and all the other apps you run are using RAM as well. I have 16GB in my machine, and I am running unity and my browser right now. I have 6GB of free memory.

 

When I run Blender, Unity, Photoshop, Chrome and all my side apps(dropbox, puush, skype) I have around 6-10gb free.

 

I'm considering this setup myself: http://www.msi.com/product/nb/GE40-2OC-Dragon-Eyes.html#overview

 

Thanks a lot guys for all of the info. Much appreciated.
Am looking at the kakewalk setup, so I can run dual boot. I use Logic Pro X and some other OSX based apps.

 

I can do that no problem with a mere 4 GB total.

Specs are:
Windows 7,
2.4 ghz i3 370m,
ATI 5650m [Read: Underclocked desktop 5570]).

7 GB of memory usage from a browser seems like an awful lot.

 

Wouldn't it depend on the game your are making?

 

Well, if you can spare the cash, definitely build an AMD/NVIDIA gaming beasty.
My specs:
8GB RAM
8 core 4.2GHZ AMD FX 8350(don't believe the hate over this one, I EASILY outperform CPU oriented tasks vs my bud's intel flagship chip)
2x NVIDIA 660ti 2GB SLI
128GB Samsung 840 PRO SSD
1TB 7500rpm WD Black HDD
4x 1920x1080 23' monitors
Windows 8 Pro

Of course this was quite expensive.. but really, it's absurdly fast for Unity, and the quad monitors help tremendously with productivity, especially since Unity happily puts it's windows on different monitors . If you can afford the investment, I recommend going for this.

 

I would go with a single high end card over dual low end cards, and I say Intel processors are the only way to go.

 

Thinking that the best option for me instead of a desktop is going with a laptop.

Was thinking along something like this; which should run unity fine I would think.

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/ideapad/y-series/y500/

 

If you dont mind it running slowly because your caches are small or nonexistant and most of your ram usage is in your swapfile, and you dont care if you take hours to lightmap large levels of course. 16gb is cheap nowadays, its a good thing to have.

 

I've never really had much of a problem. Seems to run perfectly fine for me. Maybe because I haven't experienced anything better. *shrugs.*

 

One of the best upgrades for productivity in Unity is a second monitor.

Makes an amazing difference to have the game window on it's own screen, with the editor (or debugger) on the other. I'd really struggle to be productive in Unity with only one screen. I don't know how people manage to get anything done on a laptop with a single medium-resolution screen!

 

I have found out in practice that 8GB ram and this new hybrid harddisk (ssd+hdd) that comes with iMac makes your life lot easier when working with unity. Previous iMac i had, has better processor but only 4G ram and normal hdd. Huge difference opening projects, importing assets etc and i believe its because ssd partition, and more ram of course makes big difference if you need to use photoshop or any other software that needs some ram.

 

Intel Core i5 4670K > FX 8350

Intel is the way to go.

 

Of course an Apple fanboy would say so.

Honesty it depends on the users needs. I do a lot of compression/decompression so I went with the AMD for the extra cores. Runs smooth as butter no matter how many processes are going on.

Ive also had an Intel and it was faster if you were not trying to multitask much.

This is only the tip of the iceberg, you need to look over well respected benchmarks and decide where you need the speed; and how deep your pockets will go to get it.

 

i went for that amd 8350 because it was in my budget, offering competitive performance too. No troubles, works fine for me. No reason for me to shell out for little difference.

 

I used to do the same, and then I upgraded to 8GB. Massive difference in the OS responsiveness and heavy programming tasks. Windows 7 has better caching to memory when given more ram to play with. Just a head's up though, the Task Manager is a horrible tool to try and figure out how much memory is actually being used.

 

The computer I'm using right now I spent no more than $150 on, and it can run most games at 60fps on max settings, without a graphics card. This chip-set is seriously the S***.

F2A55-M LK motherboard, it's like $70, 4GB RAM, and QuadCore 3.8GHz AMD 5800k processor.

 

Fanboy? Hardly. I love Apple's products but I still use a Windows 8 computer. I have both, use both equally and each have their pros and cons. If Apple releases something S***ty, I'm not going to defend it. Does owning a Macbook Pro and an iPhone make me a fanboy?

 

How'd you get all that for $150? Friend of mine is looking to buy a computer and doesn't have much cash. His budget is a little higher, but that'd be a start.

 

F2A55-M LK motherboard, it's like $70, 4GB RAM, and QuadCore 3.8GHz AMD 5800k processor.

 

All what matters most is the GPU , my Laptop specs :

Intel(R) Core i5-2450 2.50 GHz
6 GB ram
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
Intel(R) HD graphics 3000
AMD Radeon HD 7650M
My PC model is HP probook 4540s

The problem in my pc that it runs on the intel only , I cant run the AMD ever , because of a problem in Configure switchable graphics .
Search "HP probook configure switchable graphics problem " and you will know what Iam talking about .

Anyway my PC runs on the intel and its good enough with unity , cant run big scenes well but with the AMD it will , And my ram is very fine .

 

My specs are:
Intel Celeron E3300 @ 2.5 GHz
nVidia GTS 250
4 Gb of RAM

And I never had a single performance problem. Am I doing something wrong?

 

Haha, you're funny. Your GTS 250 (middle desktop) is actually faster than the original poster's GT 330M (low mobile). I've got a similar issue where my GTX 550Ti (middle desktop) is almost as fast as my GTX 670MX (high mobile).

 

Sorry, let me clarify: Was it Newegg, Ebay, NCIX, BestBuy, FShop, Fry's, Circuit City, TigerDirect? Homebuilt or prebuilt?

 

Intel Core i5 2500K (3,4 - 4,3 Ghz)
Nvidia 680 GTX
16 GB DDR3 Ram
SSD 120 GB SSD as system drive.

The graphics card is overpowered but i never will let go the CPU and the 16 gb ram.
Unity alone does maybe not take so much power (except in big scenes) but i have to run my 3D and 2D software the most time so more power is very useful.

@inafield : Homebuilt its just a day of work

 

In my iMac system ( where i run Windows 7 too) with 8 GB of Ram, the bottleneck is the HDD.
So from my experience i suggest in particular a SSD, at least for the system drive.

Personally for my next Mac system i'm waiting for PCI-E SSD in a system with a discrete GPU.

 

2011 MacBook Air 13.3"
1.7Ghz Intel i5
4GB DDR3
120GB SSD HD
Intel HD 3000

Quite a baby compared to some of the beasts that others have shown to be their workstations, but I can honestly say that this setup provides me with more than enough power to run Unity 4.x, Photoshop CS3, Blender, Web design tools and whatever else I throw at it; granted I am using Unity for only mobile games at the present.

But to answer the topic question, and my computer a testament to the fact, anything that runs what you need it to without breaking the bank.

 

Agreed! A second monitor is what makes the difference for me.

 

Amazingly I have been working with one monitor...it can be done but it is more time consuming.
For sure will get second monitor...

 

You need to keep in mind that you are going to be doing more than just running unity. The specs for whatever modeling package you are using will most likely be even more important. Also will you be using any terrain generating software, I use LT3D and areas with heavy erosion can take a lot of time. I'm also not the best 2d artist so I found that I'm doing a lot of 3d rending for texture creation than I originally planed for.