Computer System Requirements to Develop with Unity

Hi - I am going to start teaching Unity at my high school next school year. Our tech dept. needs to know the system requirements so we will buy the correct laptops for this new class. I just don't want to teach this on computers that can't handle it.

Can someone recommend some good specs such as minimum amount of memory, recommended processor brand and speed, recommended graphics card, recommended hard drive capacity, etc.??

I do have this link (https://unity3d.com/unity/system-requirements) but I'm looking for more specific specs.

 

I use unity on everything from i7 powered desktops to mobile chipset notebooks, unless I am doing crazy big things it usually handles it. Its unlikely you will find hardware to be a problem unless you are going for the most budget of budget devices.

Its high school so unlikely you will be making AAA games, so a laptop with an i3 processor, 8gb ram, 250gb + HDD space and a graphics card such as a nvidia 1060 (even a 1050) will do. Can pick those up for pretty cheap.

Ofcourse if you can, more RAM is great so 16gb would be better and more future proof, also upgrading the processor would be my next priority, followed by graphics card. Thats for high school use, if it was in our studio we would put the graphics card first, only because we do a lot of GPU lightmap baking overnight.

 

It's completely dependent on the game being developed, but if you don't know what the most complex project will be a safe bet will likely be a laptop capable of driving a VR HMD like the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive.

Below is a laptop with an i7-8750H (6C/12T), 16GB RAM, and a GeForce GTX 1060. It will be capable of realtime raytracing too (though with limited performance) when NVIDIA releases their driver update for it.

https://www.amazon.com/Acer-Predator-Overclockable-Aeroblade-PH315-51-78NP/dp/B07CTHLX8C/

 

Thanks. I love this feedback. I just don't want the district to spend money on a new class set of laptops and then not be able to use them effectively with Unity.

This (2 attached photos) is what we currently have and if I ever have the kids do anything in Unity, it just drags and lags like crazy.

 

I'm not surprised. Laptops with those hardware specs are good for normal office tasks (ie word processing, checking email, etc) but that's about it. Both the memory and the graphics are just too weak for Unity. The processor would hold up for very basic tasks but little else beyond that and it would perform them slowly.

 

For new purchases intended to be useful for several years I'd go with:

Intel i7 4+ core CPU (or AMD equivalent)
16GB RAM
512+ GB SSD (not an HDD)
nVidia 1060 or better graphics (or AMD equivalent)
Display resolution of at least 1920x1080

This is above the minimum requirements for Unity, but Unity's requirements are actually very low just to launch the editor. Keeping the Unity editor quick and responsive for even moderately complex projects requires a lot more than Unity's minimum requirements. The projects really are what dictate the computer needed for them.

 

Thank you; this is very helpful.

 

Thank you.

 

A bit of a tangent.... You also get more performance by disabling auto generate in the lighting settings whenever you create a new scene. By default light maps automatically bake whenever anything changes in a scene, which can bog down the editor with a lot of background processing. By disabling this the developer would have to manually go into the lighting settings and manually bake the scene, but won't be constantly fighting a slowed down editor when they aren't done manipulating their scene.

By changing this one setting you can get really great performance out of good hardware, but even better you can still get acceptable performance out of sub-par hardware. This is how I'm still able to get ok performance out of my 2 core 8GB laptop I often develop my fairly large project on, otherwise it would border on unusable. (I always intend on working on my much more powerful desktop, but my underpowered laptop is just far more convenient, so I end up using it around 80% of the time even though I put the desktop together specifically for Unity)

 

In fact, this varies depending on the size of the Project unity engine system requirements. I suggest you use a high system.

 

it is possible it run smoothly on my pc intel i3 4gb ram no graphics card