Help choosing imac

Getting an imac or possible macbook. Whats it like for unity development?

This will be a second machine, have a decent pc already but my wife wants a mac so want to get one powerful enough to develop with unity. Any suggestions.

 

Any Mac is powerful enough; just buy what you want.

--Eric

 

Personally i think its a waste of money.I allready saw that those integrated laptop gpu wont hold to unity 5.If your wife wants a apple just for basic stuff just buy a macbook air and save the money for the future.

 

Was more looking at a imac.
i5 2.9g
8gb memory
geforce gt750m
its whether i pay the extra or let her have the cheaper one with iris pro graphics.

 

Um, what? I have a 2011 13" MBP with Intel 3000 graphics, and it handles Unity 5 just fine. Granted, it doesn't play the games at their best settings, but I can make them no problem.

 

That is more than enough. I have somewhat lowered specs than you (running a windows 8.1 laptop) and I can run UE4, Cryengine, and Unity 5 without a stutter. On top of that, I can max out a lot of games, even some of the new ones. I currently have a gtx 670m.

Also, an i5 is great for gaming, but not as good for productivity. If you have the money, upgrade to an i7, especially if you are going to have a lot of windows and applications running.

 

Am I misinterpreting you or did you say that a 970m is lower spec than a 750m? It should be the other way around by a big margin.

 

And you are in a windows environment.Ive seen a gt755m how performes on a mac and than on windows.That core i5 is 4 core so you wont benefit from hyperthreading,a i7 will be better.If you want a mac realy bad wait at least a few months as i suspect that then they will upgrade the gpu at the same price probably and that gt750m will not have any future.

 

Focus on a good CPU and fast drives (with enough space). I use a Mac mini with HD4000, and what 3D I've been doing has been smooth so far. Not doing much fancy PBR stuff yet, as I work mostly in 2D right now, but 3D scenes my old 9400m struggled with have no delays. I also have a Retina MBP with HD5000, which is about the same. Slower at compressing and compiling, but I have no problems with the Unity 5 editor on it.

So get an i7, maybe upgrade the drive space a notch if you can afford a larger SSD.

 

The GTX 970M is significantly more powerful than the GT 750M. Not only is it a newer generation, but it is a higher tier model number (X70 vs X50).

I'm going to recommend the model with the GTX 775M. One gigabyte of video memory is slowly becoming the bare minimum memory I would expect in a system with a lot of current generation cards shipping with at least 2GB.

 

Woops!!! I meant to say 670m!! Not 970m!!!!! Major difference right there!!!! sorry guys haha

 

I recommend spending a little extra, and getting the one with the 780m and the i7. The 780m has 4GB of video memory. Since it's a development box, it should be more powerful than your standard target, since you'll have the overhead of running your tools (etc) that the end user will not have. Plus it's a monster at playing games, you'll love it.

 

Ok, thanks for all your input.

 

Get the best config you can afford. You will never look back! I'm a 25 year pc veteran, and the last 2 years with an iMac. I just wish I'd switched to Mac sooner!

 

Oh and try to invest in dual monitors please! It really does help the workflow

 

There is a massive difference between the GT and GTX cards... if you need to get an idea, visit this site and search for your card.

Basically, the GT755M has a rating of about 1600. The GTX775M has a rating of about 4500. If you need a good card that can run things on high settings well... go for the GTX, otherwise you might regret not doing so in a year or two after purchase.

I need to get a new iMac too, soon... my only wish is that you could select a better card for the 21-inch models in the future... which you now only can do with the top 27-inch model. :/

Though you should probably wait a few months - I can sense that they will upgrade their hardware soon.

 

I'd definitely recommend getting the best graphics card you can... the i5 will be plenty powerful for cpu. I'd avoid the whole built-in/iris thing and make sure the card has dedicated graphics memory.

 

It wouldn't surprise me given that NVIDIA has GeForce 965M, 970M, and 980M models out.

 

A major thing to remember with macs that people who complain they are overpriced don't realise or conveniently forget is the resale value of macs. You can use it for a couple of years and probably get 2 thirds of its value back selling it on eBay. In the decades I've had PC's they end up with no resale value and you cant even give them away.
Another major sellin point is the electricity cost, my iMac paid for itself in saved electricity in 18 months, so it was effectively free compared to my 850 watt pc. Power wise it's a i7 quad core with enough grunt to do anything I ask it to do, it's even great for playing games and unity works great on it! Did I mentioned I love my iMac? Can't remember ever feeling the same towards any of my pc beasts. My recomendation is to buy the top spec 27 inch and forget the cost, when you subtract the resale value and electric savings they are quite cheap actually.

 

Yes, but a self-built PC has a much longer useful lifespan than a Mac (or OEM PC). I actually find it amusing when people are struggling with demos, games, development tools, etc with a two to three year old system only for me to point out that my current system is pushing five to six years with only one component having to be replaced during that time frame.

If you can't be bothered to build your own system though a Mac is far better than the OEM PCs available.

 

This isn't what I've found in practice. I used to upgrade my pc every 18 months, and rarely was it as straightforward as changing one component, Just about every time I upgraded the CPU I had to change the motherboard too which then pulled on a loose thread leading to new ram not to mention there was usually no point in upgrading unless I also upgraded the graphics card, which normally meant the existing PSU wasn't powerful enough etc. etc. Needless to say over the years the cost of maintaining a cutting edge PC was massive and has left me with boxes upon boxes of useless obsolete parts that I couldn't give away.

So I've opted out of the PC rat race and now buy a nice shiny new iMac every 2 years, sell the old one and it ends up costing me very little. Not to mention looks sexy as, on my desk. I still have my water cooled mega PC under the desk but it's like having a BMW under the desk and a Ferrari or McLaren on the desk.

 

I've always been very careful to ensure there is an upgrade path with most of my components or that a component could last as long as possible. It didn't always allow me to have cutting edge hardware but I wasn't too far behind it.

My current processor, an AMD Phenom II X4 965, was released when AMD had a habit of making very minor changes to each socket so I was able to buy a motherboard that supported both it and the AMD FX series.

My current graphics card, an EVGA GeForce GTX 460 1GB, has lasted me far longer than I expected. Aside from Unreal there hasn't really been a strong need for me to upgrade.

Likewise in the past I have stumbled across some very unique components. At one point I actually got my hands on an ASRock board that supported both DDR and DDR2 as well as AGP and PCI-Express.

It doesn't always work out though and I've had at least one case where I had little choice but to upgrade multiple components in one pass (the ASRock LGA775-VSTA board I mentioned saved me one time).

I can understand not wanting to deal with the entire process though. I've been building computers for over a decade but I still feel really nervous when having to deal with the more fragile components. Intel's processors are the most stressful.

 

OK, we're not doing Mac vs. PC here for the 10 billionth time. The topic is "Help choosing imac".

--Eric

 

We don't know the basic development requirements. This statement might be true in some situations but it won't necessarily be accurate for all of them. Especially given the state of Intel-based graphics.

 

I'm going to anyway. Although I hope it's understood that "any Mac" refers to any Mac that can actually run a current version of Unity. The question was "powerful enough to develop with unity", and the answer is "all of them that meet the system requirements". The older Macs that might struggle with Unity can't run it anyway.

--Eric

 

System requirements to open Unity? Or actually make good use of it?

 

Can you name any Mac that does not run Unity well?

--Eric

 

All of those iMacs meet the system requirements, but the requirements don't state how well the engine will perform and while Intel-based graphics may be sufficient for some development projects they won't be good for that many.

Unless you want to get an idea for how your game will handle for those without NVIDIA/AMD hardware.

 

The Intel graphics in more recent Macs aren't actually embarrassingly terrible like they were in the GMA950 days. You can reasonably develop with them, even if they aren't high-end.

--Eric

 

Thanks for all the replies.
This is the one we were looking at
21.5-inch: 2.9GHz
Specifications

• 2.9GHz quad-core Intel Core i5
• Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz
• 8GB (two 4GB) memory
• 1TB hard drive1
• NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M with 1GB video memory

maybe put memory to 16GB on the above one

This is the one I may push torward
27-inch: 3.4GHz
Specifications

• 3.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i5
• Turbo Boost up to 3.8GHz
• 8GB (two 4GB) memory
• 1TB hard drive1
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M with 2GB video memory

I dont want to spend more as a new PC for me at the end of the year is due.

I have a decent PC (mid top range 18 months ago) duel screen. The mac is for the wife but I would want to use it so I am not shut away in my office all the time. Can still talk with the mrs while shes watching her tv or doing her hobbies.
I take two days off mid week so can develop on pc then.

 

On this note I did a quick search to check whether or not you could upgrade the memory at a later date. Many of the iMac models have a panel on the back covering the memory compartment and opening it is as simple as pushing a button.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT1423

According to the list the 21.5-inch models starting from 2012 and onward do not have this panel but can still be upgraded at an Apple store or authorized service provider. The 27-inch models are supposed to still have it though. It has slots for up to four DDR3-1600 SO-DIMM modules.

 

Either option is good but don't get the 16gb from Apple. Buy the lowest amount of ram option from Apple then buy an extra 8gig from the internet and fit the extra yourself. (you can do this on the 27 inch, not sure bout the 21 inch though) this will save you a couple of hundred $$

 

Sorry, it wasn't meant to be. I just had the need to point out iMac's are not as expensive as people seem to think they are. Not when you factoring the total cost of ownership (resale+power savings). Also since I swapped from PC to Mac as my main do everything machine I've become like an ex-smoker or born again christian, very passionate about getting people to move to Mac.