Best hardware setup for a new Unity team

Hi,

I work for a large research institute's software development team and we've recently started working on applications built in Unity (both mobile, AR/VR as desktop clients). Currently we're limited to two Unity developers with a third on the way.

Since our previous projects were mostly focussed on web/mobile development, most of the devs have a laptop as primary devices (Macbook Pro's and a mixture of Windows laptops). This works fine for small Unity projects but since we have several projects on the horizon that will require more graphically intensive applications (3D modelling, animation, photogrammetry,...) as well as Unity development, we are looking to buying some hardware for the Unity devs that is better suited for these tasks.

I'm looking for suggestions/advice on the best dev setup for our team, whether it's high-end tower pc's, a VDI setup with one powerful central server or renting resources in the cloud (like Amazon Workspaces). What would work best for a small team (max 5 developers) and provide the most efficient workflow keeping in mind that all devs will probably keep their laptop as their primary device for other projects and OS-choice doesn't really matter.

 

You get alot of bang for the buck with the AMD Threadripper platform. They are also releasing a 32 Core CPU soon. But the 16 Core one will do to.

 

So you suggest separate PC's for a team instead of a centralised solution? Doing some more searching I found Boxx which has a number of solutions for 3D workstations but I don't know if they're any good/worth the money.

 

You mean cloud based GI baking etc? I dont know how well that works with Unity to be honest. But when doing large worlds is also nice to have some performance when working in the editor

edit: I'm on a AMD Ryzen 2700x 8 Core @ 4.2 GHZ myself, 64 gigs of RAM and a 512 gigabyte Samsung 960 PRO. I'm pretty happy, Would like 16 or 32 cores when baking light though

 

IMO i'd be looking for a decent GPU for when GPU light-mapping gets shipped, I believe this will be vendor agnostic, still as historically nvidia have always lead the way for GPU lighting, I'd plump for one from them, other than that, unless you're going AAA which is an oxymoron for indies anyhoo, you're pretty much good to go.

 

I've seen this bad boy of yours in action. *mouth drools*

 

Well, no. The GPU lightmapper is based on AMD tech btw.

 

Is it . . . oh well isn't it purportedly vendor agnostic anyway?

 

Since the Vega architecture was a big disappointment I really hope so

 

It is.

Well, who knows, by the time they finish the GPU lightmapper, AMD and NVIDIA will probably no longer exist. So who cares!

 

This is the reason I would go for as many CPU cores as I can

 

Spoiler

BTW, in case anyone is reading, I'm talking about your computer here, in case it came across sketchy

 

Too late.

 

@imec-apt - Ask your devs what they need. Presumably they're specialists, so they'll probably know what will maximize their productivity. For example, one artist might be particularly effective with a specific type of mouse or drawing tablet, or he might be experienced with a particular type of photogrammetry camera setup. One programmer might be more comfortable using Visual Studio on a Windows PC than a Mac, and from her experience she might have an idea of what hardware will increase her productivity, such as a minimum amount of RAM, or a number of monitors.

Your team members will almost certainly recommend local workstations, not VDI. But keep in mind your back-end server requirements. For example, your institute may require the version control system to be on-site.

 

* More CPU cores is better than faster but fewer cores.

* Have a good GPU. I'd start with NVidia GTX 980 or better, or the AMD equivalent.

* 16+ GB RAM

* SSD storage

* Choose a version control solution.

 

Interesting thoughts, our institute does in fact have an on-site hosted version control solution. Most of the things we develop (Unity or otherwise) are NDA and export-restricted.

I was wondering, we do have a DGX-1 here (that is used for ML tasks) but would it be usable in our Unity workflow as well? Any thoughts on this?

 

Seriously doubt that, Unity does not even have normal GPU lightmapping yet

 

Last month someone asked about the possibility of using Amazon Workspaces for Unity. Being fascinated with the idea I went and researched the topic for about an hour and came to the conclusion that for the cost you pay the service is only practical if you only need it for a few hours per week.

It's important to understand that the base tier of Amazon Workspaces doesn't have dedicated hardware acceleration for graphical tasks. It's intended for business applications like Microsoft Office. For programs like Unity you will need to step up to the much more expensive Amazon Graphics Workspaces service.

Currently the lowest priced tier for Amazon Graphics Workspaces provides you with eight virtual CPUs (they don't specify whether these are all dedicated cores so it's entirely possible it's 4C/8T), 15GB RAM, and one dedicated graphics card with 1,536 CUDA cores and 4GB VRAM. Based on the specs it's either a GTX 960 or a GTX 1050 Ti.

Cost is $22/mo + $1.75/hour. Working off of the lazy estimate that a work week is 160 hours (4 weeks of 40 hours) that comes out to just over $300 per month. For hardware that is on par with a basic gaming machine (examples below).

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-gpu-powered-amazon-graphics-workspaces/

Equivalent desktop:
https://www.amazon.com/iBUYPOWER-Desktop-i5-8400-Geforce-N27W7055GRXV2/dp/B07BDQPMSC/ - $885

Equivalent laptop:
https://www.amazon.com/MSI-GL62M-7REX-1896US-i7-7700HQ-Steelseries/dp/B074VLX5XV/ - $915

 

But what engine does , unreal GPU LM is still in beta, You guys gotta cut unity some slack, you know that age old adage.

Spoiler

don't bite the hand that feeds you. . . lies

*ducks and hides* jk jk

 

hehe, our customers nag on us for bugs in the game, we nag on Unity, unity nag on third party vendors like umbra and enlighten

 

^

Spoiler

nah you're being optimistic they prolly just have you on the ignore list

 

Considering Unitys absence in my thread about my Baking problems you could be right :/

 

Trust me everyone's problem is critical because isn't their game is gonna be the next AAA blockbuster that needs to be solved immediately, even paying customers *

*Disclaimer: my posts do not reflect UT philosophies or their business model.

P.S if you wanna get baking just right I use this. . .

Spoiler