Quick question on builds

Hi quick question my builds take like 1+h to make and switch (so lets say i start win 64 1h uilt then mac switch 1h+1h more to get to 64bit etc)
Im guessing this more due to on old 7 year old pc so low processing power etc
My question is what makes the build faster is it processor,memory or graphics card asking as planning on getting a new cheap pc (£500 ~$800) but not sure if i should oost ram or processor etc

 

Disk speed makes a big difference. I have two machines. They have the same amount of memory. One has a slightly faster CPU. The other has SSD instead of HDD. The one with SSD builds much faster.

You might also be interested in @Stefan-Laubenberger's Turbo Switch Pro. It's an asset that shortens the time required to switch platforms. At $48 USD, it's probably the best bang for the buck when you want to reduce the time it takes to switch platforms and build.

 

cool thanks

 

Does that asset really help as much as they claim? And if it does, why isn't that built into Unity already? Unity is nightmarishly slow switching between platforms.

 

Generally speaking, you want to replace any old hard drives with new SSD drives. You can use a tool like HDClone to quickly clone your existing hard drive to a new SSD drive.

Beyond that, make sure you have enough RAM. How much do you have already? If you only have 4GB, then your computer will be swapping memory and loosing performance. 8GB is probably the bare minimum. 16GB would offer a noticeable bump in performance.

CPU performance has a large impact on build time. If you don't already have the fastest CPU that fits your existing socket, you may want to find the best CPU for your existing socket (especially if you can find a cheap used one somewhere).

If you want really big performance gains, consider replacing the motherboard, CPU, and RAM at the same time. The 3000 series AMD CPUs are currently an excellent value. For example, an AM4 board with a Ryzen 5 3600 and 16GB of RAM would be an inexpensive solution with plenty of performance.

Upgrading the GPU will give a huge performance boost when designing and playing a game, but it will not give you any performance boost when building the game. If you are looking to reduce the build time, a faster GPU will not help.

 

A "new cheap pc" is probably not going to do that great, as cheap PC's generally aren't optimized for workloads like compiling.

For example, yes you'll want an SSD and can find them now on even budget PC's, but the SSD's used on lower end PC's are much slower than something like an Evo 860, even ones made by Samsung themselves. You'll get a much better experience if you just save up a bit extra to get something approaching a mid range machine.

 

That said there are times where a budget product exceeds expectations. Currently the best example of this is the Intel 660p NVMe SSD. It's 33% cheaper than the Samsung 860 EVO while being 3-4x times the sequential speed and having nearly the same 4K Q1T1 (normal random accesses done on a daily basis) performance as the 970 EVO.

https://www.amazon.com/Intel-660p-512GB-80mm-978349/dp/B07GBKQ9ST - $60
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-500GB-Internal-MZ-76E500B-AM/dp/B0781Z7Y3S - $75
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-970-EVO-500GB-MZ-V7E500BW/dp/B07BN4NJ2J/ - $90

Spoiler: Benchmark 4K Q1T1 @ 17:40

 

Absolutely true, but I haven't seen any budget PC's using any NVMe SSD's. If you're building the machine yourself, definitely a good option.