Buying a Mac mini for Unity3d - any comments welcome!

Hi there,

actually, I was looking for a port of XNA to mono because I do like XNA a lot, but am very unhappy that it doesn't support publishing for Mac and Linux... so... on the mono project page I found Unity3D and was... amazed ;-)

This really looks extremely cool. So, I am now in fact considering getting a Mac, the indie license of Unity3D and maybe later the pro license (for publishing "stand alone" version(s) of my Game(s)). I'm an old C64 and Amiga veteran, so moving from Windows back to Mac (at least part-time) feels kind of natural.

I've already browsed the forums a bit and found some postings about Mac mini - but I must say I found those postings more confusing than helpful, possibly because there's different versions of the Mac mini around (from different times)... or maybe simply different perceptions of performance ;-)

I've just checked out apple.de and might be going with a current Mac mini with the following specs:

1.83GHz Intel Core Duo
2 GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x1 GB
120 GB Serial ATA-Laufwerk (HD-Drive)
Kits f?r kabellose Tastatur kabellose Mighty Mouse (wireless keyboard and mouse)
Mac OS X

It seems the "bottleneck" of that machine is the gfx-card: Intel GMA 950 with 64 MB DDR2 SDRAM (somehow shared with the usual RAM).

Would such a configuration be useful for developing and developer-testing with the current version of Unity3D? In that configuration, it would cost me EUR 1.260,00 and I would still need a display... which takes me to the next question:

I'm used to 1920x1200, 17" on my Dell Inspiron 9200 notebook (2GB RAM, 2.0 GHz Pentium-M, ATI Mobility Radeon 9700, 400MHz, 128MB), running Windows XP. 1920x1200 is nice, and I was wondering if the Mac mini would run smooth with that resolution (especially with Unity 3D).

This is especially important for me because I'll use whatever display I'm getting also with a "more high-end" desktop PC (which I still need to buy... mostly for rendering, so it'll have 4 GB of RAM), so I wouldn't want to take a lower resolution display just to make sure the Mac mini doesn't have a problem (and working with an interpolated screen resolution most of the time is also out of question). Whenever I do 3D stuff, I never use any resolution lower than those 1920x1200 on my DELL, and never had a real problem with that so far (even though I think the Radeon 9700 is not really "high end").

So, will the Mac mini be cool with 1920x1200 when using it primarily with Unity3D? I can always switch to the PCs for "high quality game testing", but most of the time, I'd probably work and test on the Mac as I do like short test/implement/retest cycles and don't want to switch machines all the time.

Finally: does the Mac mini work fine with non-Apple displays, or would you recommend getting an Apple Cinema HD Display (23", 1920x1200) if I take the Mac mini? I'm not sure if that display supports connecting two computers and then switching between those two at will (actually, I'm not even sure if it's easy to find this functionality in displays these days... been "in the notebook world" for many many years now ;-) ).

Any thoughts and comments will be greatly appreciated. I'm not perfectly sure, yet, but it "feels" like Unity3D is the tool I want to go for. For multiple reason: it looks cool, it can produce for both Mac and Win, there's a nice Webplayer, there seems to be a nice community around it, there's "serious" games (I like it when a tool is used for something other than "kill as much as you can"-games), "multi-cultural company" based in Europe etc.

The other options I'm currently considering are Blade3D (XNA based) and Visual3D.NET (also XNA based), both of which look very nice and promising, but are currently both in beta, and lacking some of what I feel I can get with Unity3D (especially, I can't develop for Mac, which is actually a KO-criterion since that would even circle out some of my friends)...

Kind regards,
Jashan

 

I can tell you a few general things:

* The mini will work with other displays. No problem there.
* Doing 3D at 1920x1200 on an intel integrated chip is gonna be a study in pain - especially once you begin creating real games.

If you can scrape together the cash, I'd recommend the mid-level iMac - we use them all over the place at Serious Games and they perform great. The 17" screen is fine, and you can hook up a secondary monitor. Also, you can boot them up in Windows just fine, so how about looking into buying an iMac (or a Mac Pro) and dual-booting between windows Mac OS X?

Finally, never buy RAM from apple - they charge an insane premium...

 

Here is a recent post regarding Unity development on a Mini.
http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=4319&highlight=mac+mini

Looks like Jonathan Czeck developed Big Bang Brain Games on a Mac Mini. He states, that doing so forced him to make the game run well on lower-end machines, which is important for the causal game market.

 

Hi Nicholas,

I kind of suspected that... probably, on 1024x768 or so it's fine or at least "okay", but 1920x1200 is quite a resolution ;-)

Well, actually the first thing I clicked on at Apple's Website was the Mac pro - but EUR 2.500,00 for the "standard configuration" is quite an impressive price. On the other hand, I just noticed it's two dual-core processors, so maybe this could indeed replace the Win-PC I was gonna buy.

It's quite a bit of money, though, especially after realizing that the indie license of Unity3D doesn't allow screen effects, which is definitely a feature I need to have ;-)

Ok, I guess that's good to know... when I get the minimum configuration (2x512 MB), can I add (4x 1GB) to have 5 GB altogether? Or would I have to add 512MB-DIMMs to that?

Sorry for the noob-questions, but Mac is really "new territory" for me ;-) The dual boot option feels very nice, though.

Kind regards,
Jashan

 

Replacing the high-end PC was definately what I was suggesting. It's quite a monster and runs XP so it screams ;-)

For the RAM, AFAICS on store.apple.com, you need to install them pairwise. It has 8 slots. Tthe minimum they'll sell is 2x512MB. Then you can add whatever on top.

For comparison: The game I'm leading dev of (Global Cconflictsalestine) is probably the largest Unity game in development and currently has app. 4GB of assets - with just about everything in one Unity scene. It's being developed on machines with 1.5Gig. This includes (on an average day) Photoshop, Unity, + the odd Maya session. When I launch Maya, it begins to swap. We have a few machines with 2GB RAM - they are completely smooth. So 4gig might be quite a bit more than you need unless you're plannign on doing some hi-end renderings under windows.

One thing you could consider about the mini: I don't know how German consumer laws are, but at least in Denmark, you can get a full refund on ANYTHING you buy over the web. If germany has something like it, you might be able to buy the mini and just return it.

In the end, though, if you have the option($$$) get the Mac Pro - swallow the bitter pill do it. The hardware is incredibly balanced they last forever. I've never heard of anybody regretting a Mac Pro (or the PowerMac before that). Wish I could afford one ;-)

 

Unity will run fine on the mini, and all the shaders will work, but I think you need the 2 gigs of ram, to help w/ shared video memory. And the mini looks great on my Dell 24" at 1900x1200, native res. I use Blender and Cheetah on this machine and they're very useable too. Not as quick as a box w/ a nice video card, but very useable. And as others have mentioned, in some ways it's better to develop on a midlevel consumer platform, rather than rely on horsepower to produce your desired effects.

 

Just confirm for me and the origional poster, please, that the mac mini runs all shaders. I thought it was not capable of bump/specular highlights, and doing detail dextures was a maybe? I might be all wrong...?

If you want looking good, get a videocard with loads of vram, If you want smooth physics calculations (smooth framerates,) without glossy fx, a mac mini with a decent cpu is fine.

Thats my understanding of it. But its from trying to follow the gossip about them, not actually owning one.

I'd say get the Macpro
AC

 

I'm going to have to second the notion that the 20" iMac is the ticket for you. If you don't need the portability of a mini and the laptops are too expensive, the 20" iMac with 2GB of RAM and the (admittedly long in the tooth) 256MB X1600 card make a fine platform to develop in Unity.

 

I just have to chime in AGAINST getting a poor computer for developing for low end. Doing that makes gives you pain each and every day.

We develop on mid-range macs. If we could afford it it, we would get the best gear available. We target extreme low-end machines (think the stuff standing in public schools that were cheap when they bought them 3 years ago).

Here's the kicker: We spent one week right at the end of the project making the game 10x as fast so it runs on all machines. It's called profiling optimization. It's a very simple process that takes very little time. Developing on low-end would have wasted SO MUCH time on the entire production team.

Just don't go that way. The "Develop on a S***ty machine" sounds great, is very easy to buy into. In fact it just causes you pain doesn't get you anything.

 

;-)

That sounds good. I'm a bit "burned" with RAM though, since my last desktop PC seemingly had a problem with its RAM and froze every once in a while. I've looked around a moment for RAM and found 1GB DDR2-667 for as little as EUR 60,00. That would be extreme a difference. I'm not sure those have EEC, though...

Another company that was selling RAM specifically for MAC charged EUR 220,00. Which would still be quite a bit less than what Apple charges (EUR 260,00 or so).

I might have to look into that again. One of the things that got me back into 3D was an idea I've had doing some sort of "spiritual anatomy", i.e. using physical anatomy models and adding some meridians and chakras to them - which could be very nice for illustrating certain meditation and healing techniques (not really related to games, though ... yet).

So, I've gotten some "mid-end" anatomy models (skeleton, nerves, muscles) etc. - and doing just a render of a skeleton, a few organs and a skin around that (lots of transparency, though ;-) ) made my 2GB WinXP notebook choke quite a bit (in fact, it simply refused to render and said "not enough memory")... and I didn't even have any textures or anything. That can definitely be optimized, but I think working with these models (which I would have to do even for optimization) gave me exactly the experience of "every day pain" you mentioned.

In fact, the behavior of my machine with these models (which are, quite complex, of course) was what stopped this project for now. I prefer being patient waiting a few weeks or months for a new machine than having to wait a few seconds every time I do the wrong move with my mouse.

The software I'm using (Realsoft 3D, I might post about it "External Tools") is now also available for Mac, so maybe before investing too much into RAM, I might rather get a Mac license of that software ;-)

Another reason I'm a "RAM junkie" are virtual machines. If you ever saw your machine thrashing to a halt just because you've opened one VMWare instance before the other one was dropped completely out of memory, you know what I mean...

We do have that, but it's only for two weeks, I think. The Mac pro solution really feels best at the moment - even if it may mean that I'll have to wait a little longer than I would like to.

Another option I'm considering, though, right now, is starting with a really "low profile Mac mini", and maybe even get a really cheap (and low-res) display. Sort of like getting the cheapest possible solution for a start, and then upgrade as soon as it doesn't give me too much financial pain.

For these "very first steps", I could even work with boxes with face-textures instead of real character models, just to be able to play around with some of the ideas I currently have ;-)

Maybe this does make sense, since I'm also doing Web application development, and one problem I currently have is that I never really know what the pages look like or behave on most people's screens because I have such an exotic screen and a fast machine (1920x1200 on 17" really is quite a different experience than maybe 1280x1024 on 17"). So, maybe it would be good to have one machine just for testing the "lower-end". From that perpective, the Mac mini supporting shader effects might actually be considered a disadvantage, but one I guess I can live with (and I'm sure these can also be "switched off" from the software for testing purposes) ;-)

I very much agree with your last posting concering optimization, though. I believe Donald Knuth once said "premature optimization is the root of all evil" (and he was definitely someone capable of squeezing the last clock ticks out of an algorithm, if he had to), I think in most cases, creating something with a solid (software-)design and then optimize when the need arizes is the best approach, and seems like modelling is not that much different from that...

 

Go Mac Pro. Unity Pro runs smooth like butter with numerous assets even when I have a ton of other apps open. I have 3GB of RAM installed and I never see a hiccup.

I am adamant about Macs and how great the computers have always performed. I have developed on many different platforms and hardware configs, and the Mac is the best hands down. Well, again that is just my opinion. However, I purchased a Mac Pro about 2 months ago and I think it is probably the best computer purchase I have ever made.

One of the basic rules for buying hardware has always been buy the high-end config if your budget allows. Your system will definitely have a longer lifespan. This rule has always worked for me.

 

Hi Jashan,

I'm also a recent Windows convert with industry experience that dates back to the dinosaurs (early 80's). I'm developing full time and here's what I'm using:

17" iMac Intel Duo with 1 GB RAM (although I wish I went with 2 GB instead). I think a 20" would have been better (easier to sit back and work, especially for this old fart), but the 1.83 GHz cpu is plenty fast.

I'm also using Parallels Desktop to run Windows XP Pro in a VM so I can run some of my "must have" apps that don't have OS X versions.

And then to pull it all together seamlessly I'm using "VirtuesDesktop" which gives me 4 vitual desktops, so I can flip from Unity to my Paint app to Mail and Windows XP with a couple key strokes.

I had considered the Mac Mini as well, but I'm definitely glad I spent the extra $$ and got the iMac. It is a much better development platform IMHO.

So far so good! Welcome to the community!

 

Of course Nicholas is correct, that one should buy the best gear one can afford for development. I certainly would prefer a monster box or slab, and as soon as I get my first Unity contract (soon, no doubt) I'll go there. I'm also waiting for CS3 to take the big plunge, as are a lot of folks.

I'm not saying the mini is optimal, but as a (re)intro to both Macs and Unity, it was, for me, a VERY good price/performance compromise. You can get a capable mac and a indie Unity license for under a thousand USD. And it does work fine w/ a non-apple display, at full HD res.

Plus, it's so cute!