HARDWARE / LAPTOP / COMPUTER for use in Unity development? Ask here! (and only here)

I'm looking for a laptop that could be used to make a small-ish violent/gory multiplayer shooter with low poly graphics. I've looked at several options, but I'm not entirely sure what my best choice would be. I looked at the MSI GF63 Thin, and it has been a big contender for a while, but if you guys have anything else you might reccomend, let me know! (Budget is ~$1200, preferrably under 1K)

ALSO--- thoughts on this as a title?

 

Does it have to be a Laptop? For the same price you can get desktop components that are easily several times faster overall.

You also have to consider the battery drain. If the laptop is advertised at "10 hours" then this is under no load at all. If you use Unity however, the CPU and GPU will be under constant load, the fans will spin a lot (noise) and its going to get hot (aka "laphot" ). All the while the battery will last for maybe 20% of the advertised time, or around the duration they advertise for high-end gaming use if such a spec is given.

But generally you'll be doing okay with a gaming laptop like the GF63.

 

Wow, that has to be the cheapest gaming laptop that I have ever seen, but that's also understandable as the CPU is 3 to 5 years old and the GPU is 4 years old. My problem with it is I can't recommend the base model which is where the real savings are and the higher tier models are quickly outstripped by other budget laptops.

https://www.amazon.com/MSI-GF63-9SC-068-i5-9300H-GeForce/dp/B07QD32VTT

The base tier Acer Nitro 5 at $719 has a better CPU (12500H vs 9300H/11400H) and GPU (3050 vs 1650) than the base model of the GF63 at $609. It also has twice the storage and a better display. Its higher tier models have even better components. It's just all around a better device.

The model linked below is the tier that I think is the best value for the series. For $781 you get the 12500H (4P/8E cores) which is better than the 13420H (4P/4E cores), it has the 3050 Ti, 512GB SSD, and 16GB RAM. Both of the cheaper models lose too much, and the higher tiers don't offer enough.

I thought the GF63's $900 top tier model offering 64GB RAM and 2TB SSD was interesting but the CPU and the GPU just bring it down too much. RAM and SSD are user upgradeable in just about every Windows laptop. It's usually better to buy a model with less of each and upgrade them yourself to get a better CPU and GPU.

https://www.amazon.com/AN515-58-57Y8-i5-12500H-GeForce-Display-Keyboard/dp/B0BSLWGFXD/

 

thanks!

 

I don't know how much it costs in your country, but I bought the Acer Nitro 5 and have been very happy with it, for Unity dev, considering my main desktop development PC is a beast with a Ryzen 5950X CPU.

 

Thank you a lot for this very complete response.

What do you think about this configuration?

Did I pick some suboptimal parts? I Must admit that I'm a bit lost about this and I just picked based on benchmark, price and most popular.

Also this is a bit over budget so if it is possible to downgrade some parts that don't make much a difference I'm taking it.

 

Looks OK. But I am don't know if best parts are selected for the price tag. I would need to lookup for benchmarks myself. Which you know it is a quite time consuming, to get most relevant parts to your build

I would like someone's input as well, Bu if you budget low, I think you can reduce GPU family to lower one. Like 30xx series. You would need to see, if you gain 100$ on hat alternative.

Other option, is to switch i7 to i5, but keep high frequency. It is fewer cores, but if you ho bist still and only entering professional work, may be sufficient for now. And maybe two years time you will be able affort easily an upgrade, if needed. Also regarding CPU, check if 12k, 13k or 14k differ anyhow in prices/performance. I think you can gain here another 100$ or so, on feeling with it.

Basically, if you low on budget, you may need to sacrofice on latest top hardware. But instead focus on 1-2 years old generations, which are tested and proves to work on market. I usually try buy components, which are already on the market 1 after release. There is enough feedback by then.

 

That SSD is way too expensive for far too little storage. You can fill a drive these days so easily. My C drive is a 2TB SSD and with just the OS and my applications it's almost half full. You also don't need PCIe 5.0. A PCIe 4.0 drive like the Samsung 990 Pro and ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro are both cheaper and higher capacity.

Everything else looks fine to me assuming that those are sensible prices for your country. I'm only really aware of prices in the United States.

I just checked the prices for them and the 3060 and 4060 both start at €320. They're identical in performance but the 3060 has 12GB VRAM making it good for AI inferencing and the 4060 has newer gaming features like DLSS 3.

That said if you want the best of both worlds and pay less a 4060 Ti 16GB is €120 less than the 4070. It can be noticeably slower though so at that point you may still want to consider the 4070 if you're intending to make and play graphically demanding games.

Here's a review article with benchmarks showing all of the above cards.

https://www.techspot.com/review/2701-nvidia-geforce-rtx-4060/

 

Thank you both for your advices.

You are right the best way to reduce the budget was to downgrade the GPU. I can always buy a better one in a few years if needed. I bought a 4060.

 

Hi all! Now I'm looking for a laptop so that I can sometimes work outside the home. It should be relatively light and not very noisy. That's why I don't review gaming laptops.

I'm going to do mostly not very demanding projects, for WEB GL, like Subway Surfers, jetpack joyride, Hill Climb Racing, LIMBO, etc. That is, mostly with simple low poly graphics and a small number of mechanics.

What should be the minimum characteristics for normal operation?

• Processor: is intel core i5 suitable? or do you need at least an i7, or should you consider Ryzen 5 or Ryzen 7?
• Video card: how hard will it be on a built-in video card, like amd radeon graphics, Intel Iris Xe Graphics, intel hd graphics, or do you need at least a simple discrete video card, like AMD Radeon 780M and nvidia geforce mx550
• As far as RAM is concerned, it’s generally clear, most of these laptops have 16GB, but it’s better to find 32GB

In general, my main goal is to understand what minimum characteristics are needed to work on similar, not very demanding projects.

 

For CPU make sure you understand the performance characteristics of the exact model. Passmark provides a reasonable assessment. An i5 can range anywhere from 5000 to 15000 passmarks (roughly), this primary classification like i5, i7 is still providing a very wide range of performance, and age.

I would go for a discrete GPU simply because the integrated GPUs can have surprising limitations, if only memory access speeds due to shared memory.but again, check passmark for the exact model‘s rough performance stats. This helps weighing the various options.

SSD is very important too, although you barely get any choice of manufacturer or model here. But stay away from HDDs and hybrids.

For lightweight projects 16gb memory is fine unless you plan on multiple projects open simultaneously, or related apps like Photoshop and Blender.

 

Here are the processors to choose from:

 

If you got budget then go ahead with i7 or equivalent. But I think you would be good with i5, as long you got good clock speed.

But as discussed, focus on dedicated GPU and ssd.Make sure you can have option to attach monitor. As you can this way turn laptop into workstation. Specially if you don't have desktop for such work at home.

Also, depends where you plan to work and if having access to power mains, or not, consider battery capacity.

 

A direct link to the store page would be preferrable. Without that the best advice I can give you is to check if the device has dedicated graphics. If it doesn't then the 6800H is better than the 12650H as AMD's integrated GPUs are generally more powerful. If it does have dedicated then they're about equivalent to each other.

 

hi,
the editor Compiling Scripts raises my daily (stress/depression) i have to wait multiples seconds or minutes every single change even one click space => save (ctr+r) => wait Compiling..
i heard about Assembly Definition solution but i prefer the hardware upgrade solution so please help with any advice .
in project loading screen (with ssd device) i take a look at the cpu usage and realized that unity act as a single-threaded program so most the job attached to one single cpu.




I'm not sure if same happen when re-compiling using (ctr+r) after script update , i review this events and ask cause i building new custom pc and want to get ride from Compiling scripts boring duration (reduce it the maximum possible) and take right selection in hardware customization and spend on right component.
- do i need to focus on single core CPU power or multiple core (Ex: i9-10900K vs i9-13900K)
- does ddr4 vs ddr5 make any difference
- what exactly the computer component responsible on this compiling process
- does the GPU part of the job

can you please suggest a perfect pc build for unity daily task thank you so much .

 

Both, but you don't really have to worry about that as modern CPUs come with both assuming you don't buy the budget tier models (eg Intel i3 and Ryzen 3).

Beyond that I don't recommend purchasing hardware that is more than one or two generations old (eg 5950X instead of the current 7950X) as you're simply giving up too much with the way hardware is currently advancing. It's not like it was a few years ago. Just going back one or two generations now can reduce performance by 50%.

For example a 7950X (62,943 PassMark) is 50% faster than a 5950X (45,681). A 14900K (61,037) is three times as fast as a 10900K (22,962). AMD and Intel are roughly on par with each other. Choose whichever one you prefer the platform features of and can get the best deal.

No. Just choose a decent amount of it. A 16GB kit is the absolute minimum for just running Unity. If you're like me and you run more than Unity don't go with less than 32GB. I'm on 64GB because I was running 32GB and saw 80% usage on a daily basis.

If you think you might need more later buy that amount now. Inserting a second kit down the road is problematic and can lead to all kinds of problems (eg difficulties hitting rated speeds, blue screens, etc). If you find yourself having to do it you generally have to replace all of it.

CPU, RAM, SSD.

No.

 

Look for the cpu with the highest single or dual core performance as compiling scripts is the main culprit and that operation is single threaded.

 

Anyone use the 13-inch Macbook Air (24GB M3) for dev work? It won't be the main laptop, primarily was interested in it to have a lighter device when traveling. I currently have the 16 inch Macbook Pro (32GB M1 Pro) and it's about 75% heavier than the macbook air (2.7lb vs 4.7lb)

It would be primarily for coding / light play testing for as doing any scene heavy work on such a small screen would be a nightmare. Low-poly PC or mobile titles, so nothing graphically heavy.

The M3 outperforms the M1 Pro in many ways except with graphics so I know it should be fine for dev work, but I'm wondering if anyone has real world experience on the Air, especially since it has less RAM and gets hot quickly.

 

Well, i've used 13-inch Air (although it was M1) and it did a pretty good job as my main for almost a year. Even with just 8 gigs of RAM (i had never ran out of memory, although Unity was complaining sometimes, since i had Blender, Affinity, Unity, VS and about 20 tabs in Safari opened at all times )... But it never got too hot and performed well on the battery side (i could easily get 6 hours out of it with all of those programs, and still got some charge left).
If you're picking 24GB, it should be way more than enough (i'm not sure how you could use so much memory at once with programming), so you should pretty comfortable, especially since you have a 16-inch as a reserve.

One note though - did you ever used 13-inch for work before? Because now, since i've swapped to 16-inch MBP, i would never go back to that smaller screen, even for programming. There is just not enough screen-space, even with smaller fonts, which caused my neck a lot of pain That is, of course, if you're planning to have more than one window/column of code opened at once. If so, consider getting 15-inch Air, should be more comfortable.

And, in terms of performance - yes, M3 is more performant compared to M1, but on the other hand... I'm not sure that performance is noticeable during development (except faster build times).
Just as a reference - my games is not optimized right now, so - 500 batches, around 300k vertices, 80 SetPass calls - on my M1 Air i had about 120 FPS stable, on my current MBP M3 Max i'm getting about the same 120 FPS from battery (optimized performance mode) and around 300 FPS when plugged, but the Unity itself performs at the same speed (opening it, recompiling, etc).

But you should consider, that this machine is way overpowered (compared to Intel) right now, and in my opinion - it's not a good thing, since i cant test any performance on it, it'll always be much better than any PC on the CPU side.

So, to summarize my experience with 13-inch M1 - it's very good in terms of performance (and M3 should be slightly better), but a very uncomfortable size. 15-inch would be a better choice for programming.

 

Open Activity Monitor and add the values for Memory Used and Swap Used. That's the actual amount of memory that the system is trying to use. You can't actually run out of memory in the sense that you'll see an error and stuff will stop working. Modern OSes will use SSD as virtual memory when they run low on physical memory.

What you will see if you're sensitive to it (I am) or if you're on a very powerful computer that almost never relies on it (again, I am) is the performance hit from virtual memory. Virtual memory is orders of magnitude slower. If your system almost never uses it it's very noticeable when it finally does need it. If you're always using it it's not.

 

I know that and never meant to actually crash a system with "out of RAM" issue
What i meant, is the fact, that Unity will actually tell you in the Editor when there is not enough physical memory or you're approaching the limit (can't remember exact wording in that message), but i've only got it a couple of times. And yes, in such cases, the whole thing becomes very slow and sluggish to use (even entering Play Mode took a couple of noticeable seconds). Hence why i've upgraded, but could finish the game on that machine anyway, just slightly more annoyed by the fact, that i would have to close programs while opening others (unlike now, where i've never closed my working apps unless there is an issue).

But usually, Mac's are just better with their memory management, so my current 36 GB is an overkill. 16 gigs and more should be well enough for comfortable game-dev and testing.

P.s - as a reference: right now i have Unity, Affinity, Blender, Logic Pro, VS, VS Code and a bunch of tabs in Safari opened - still sitting at around 10 gigs of application memory and 1GB of swap.

Btw, how in the world Unity Hub tries to use more memory than the actual Editor?!

 

Thanks for your review Yeah I found the memory management to be quite good, but also it seems to use as much as there is. Here's a snapshot with Unity, Firefox, Rider, and some smaller background tasks like messages, obsidian, discord, steam, e-book reader, etc. 24/32gb ~ It could definitely run on less (say 16gb) and I think memory consumption would be constrained to fit the lower RAM.



I was considering the 16gb version as it's available at $300~ cheaper but I think it would be noticeable to me as my desktop has 64gb and my other laptop 32gb, so 16gb would feel much slower..

And yeah, the 13" screen size will feel quite small compared to the 16" It's a tradeoff but weight is the main concern for travel (for example airlines only allowing 7kg carry on), otherwise I love the 16" Pro It's just very heavy for a single item in the bag.

 

You're welcome)

I'll just add a couple of points - in terms of memory, and this is mostly based on my experience with Mac - it feels macOS behaves in a way that the more memory you have, more of it will get used. This isn't based on real facts, but on my feeling with different Macbook's (always had a pair of Air and Pro).
But, on the other hand, if you're just comfortable having more of it and this won't be a financial burden - then yes, you should get a 24GB version, otherwise 16 will do just fine

In terms of weight... Could agree more, my Pro really wants to rip out the handles from my briefcase D
But if you're selecting 13-inch against 15 just for the weight - there is barely a 250 grams difference (1.51 kg for 15 vs 1.24 kg for 13-inch), so... Do your neck a favor and get a bigger one

Anyways, just get the one you like, that's the most important part. And hope you'll enjoy your new Air

 

Hello everyone and thank you for your time.

I am about to update my graphics card from a GTX 1660 with 6 GB of VRAM and 192 bit bus, to either an RTX 3060 or an RTX 4060, as that is all that my budget can handle.

I need a new graphics card specifically for baking lightmaps for my VR projects, and of course for some gaming and game development in general ( I focus on VR game development almost exclusively).

The 3060 has 12 gb of vram and a 192 bit bus, with an L2 cache of 3 mb, while the 4060 has only 8 gb and a 128 bit bus, but comes with a huge 24 mb L2 cache. Nvidia claims that the 24 mb of L2 cache makes the 128 bit bus work faster because the card uses the vram less.

In terms of gaming performance, the 4060 seems to beat the 3060 in almost all games by around 10-15 %.

BUT, for my specific use case, which one would be better?

I am having a hard time deciding, so any help will be appreciated. The prices of the GPUs are virtually the same in my country so that is not a deciding factor.

Should I maybe look for a second hand GPU like a 2080 Ti?

My specs are : Aorus B550 Elite motherboard, Ryzen 7 3700X, 32 GB of ram, 970 evo M2 drive for Unity projects & windows + 1 hdd for storage, and the GTX 1660 I mentioned. My PSU is an Asus 550W so it should be able to handle either of the two RTX cards.

Thanks again!

 

For baking? The 3060 is the better choice because if you run out of video memory while baking it can slow down the bake by quite a bit.

https://docs.unity3d.com/6000.0/Documentation/Manual/GPUProgressiveLightmapper.html

For gaming? The 4060 if you want to use DLSS 3 otherwise the 3060 for mostly the same reason as baking. We're starting to see games appear that want more than 8GB VRAM. It's rare right now but it won't be that way for much longer especially if the next generation of consoles has more memory.

Yes. A 2080 Ti is the best choice for baking and in most cases for gaming too. Some games have the 2080 Ti and the 4060 about equal if you're using raytracing and DLSS 3 but for the most part the 2080 Ti is the better card.

Spoiler: RTX 2080 Ti vs RTX 4060 Benchmarks

 

Thank you!