Search Unity

  1. Megacity Metro Demo now available. Download now.
    Dismiss Notice
  2. Unity support for visionOS is now available. Learn more in our blog post.
    Dismiss Notice

Ryzen 2700x or rtx 2080 for development ?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Eiseno, Nov 5, 2018.

  1. Eiseno

    Eiseno

    Joined:
    Nov 1, 2015
    Posts:
    86
    Hello ,

    I am working on VR Fps game. So we have many assets. I want to upgrade my computer i7 3770k + SSD 16gb ram . Because i want faster build and project load times. If i go 2700x i cant buy 2080. i will buy 2070. Should i go 2600x + 2080/1080ti or 2700x + 2070. Which will be more benefical for my development. I heard unity will switch to gpu light baking in feature so i cant decide.
     
  2. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    Man just think about how many potatoes I could purchase for the cost of all those components... :p

    In all honesty I think you ought to go with the GPU if you're using Unity 2018's ECS and Job System. If I'm not mistaken those run on the GPU. Upgrading your processor and ram can improve performance for (mostly) single threaded stuff however I'm not sure if that's what you ought to do.

    Wait for more input. :)
     
    vakabaka likes this.
  3. vakabaka

    vakabaka

    Joined:
    Jul 21, 2014
    Posts:
    1,153
    wait for something like cyber monday and get both. 2k geforce is really overpriced now. "faster build and project load time" -> I think: important are cpu, memory and ssd.

    and: For the potatoes ! :eek:
     
    Last edited: Nov 5, 2018
  4. ShilohGames

    ShilohGames

    Joined:
    Mar 24, 2014
    Posts:
    3,015
    For faster builds and faster loads, get the best CPU you can get. A RTX 2070 and a Ryzen 2700X would be a solid combo for building games. For strictly playing games, the RTX 2800 and Ryzen 2600X might have an edge.
     
  5. AndersMalmgren

    AndersMalmgren

    Joined:
    Aug 31, 2014
    Posts:
    5,358
    ECS and Jobs run on the CPU
     
  6. yoonitee

    yoonitee

    Joined:
    Jun 27, 2013
    Posts:
    2,363
    One thing to think about is that making your game on a very fast computer can be counter productive because it may work great but then when someone buys it with a less powerful computer it won't work so well.

    I do all my work for PC games on a core i3 laptop because if it works on that, it'll probably work on most things.
     
  7. Ryiah

    Ryiah

    Joined:
    Oct 11, 2012
    Posts:
    20,964
    Ignore the RTX 2070 and 2080. Unless you simply can't live without being able to use raytracing from day one you will be far better off purchasing the previous generation cards. Benchmarks show the RTX 2070 is identical to the GTX 1080 and the RTX 2080 is identical to the GTX 1080 Ti. Only the RTX 2080 Ti is worth considering from the new series.
     
    Last edited: Nov 6, 2018
    Deleted User and xVergilx like this.
  8. ShilohGames

    ShilohGames

    Joined:
    Mar 24, 2014
    Posts:
    3,015
    Doing the development work on a powerful PC gives you the advantage of being able to work faster. You should additionally test with less powerful computers, but I would not recommend doing dev work on a less powerful computer.
     
    angrypenguin and Ryiah like this.
  9. Ryiah

    Ryiah

    Joined:
    Oct 11, 2012
    Posts:
    20,964
    This. With the project I'm currently being paid to handle the difference between my previous processor (AMD Phenom II X4 965) and my current processor (AMD Ryzen 5 1600X) was massive. Baking lightmaps, compiling scripts, running the game from within the editor, etc are all boring tasks that take entirely too much time away from developing games as it is.
     
    Last edited: Nov 6, 2018
    angrypenguin likes this.
  10. yoonitee

    yoonitee

    Joined:
    Jun 27, 2013
    Posts:
    2,363
    Well, we all have our methods I guess. My method ensures that I don't try and make overly graphically intensive games and I've always got an eye on optimisation just so it will run smoothly on my less than powerful computer.

    But the kind of games I make are more character driven than graphics driven so I don't do things like baking lights and so on. I leave that for the experts! Also, because I have all my files on dropbox, if I break my laptop it's only cost me about £300 at most.

    Yes, but ideally you'd have two computers. A super powerful one for developing and then sending the build to a less powerful one for playing.
     
  11. Ryiah

    Ryiah

    Joined:
    Oct 11, 2012
    Posts:
    20,964
    Have to admit I thought this sentence was weird because anyone who has been doing this for any length of time will have at least the same amount of file recovery as you are using. Choice of a high-end system won't affect this unless you spent literally every cent you have and can't afford to pay your ISP.
     
  12. yoonitee

    yoonitee

    Joined:
    Jun 27, 2013
    Posts:
    2,363
    I mean if your £3000 computer catches fire it's worse than if your £300 laptop catches fire. That's my view. Then you can't finish your project unless you buy another £3000 computer.

    But in terms of the question, buy the best you can afford because you're probably one of the few people that will play your VR game!! (or any VR game). So you might as well enjoy it.
     
  13. ShilohGames

    ShilohGames

    Joined:
    Mar 24, 2014
    Posts:
    3,015
    If one of my high end desktop PCs caught fire, I would be a lot more upset than if one of my laptops caught fire. But that is strictly because I get a lot more work done with my desktop PCs. Data wise, I have backups to rely on regardless of which system we are talking about.
     
    angrypenguin likes this.
  14. AndersMalmgren

    AndersMalmgren

    Joined:
    Aug 31, 2014
    Posts:
    5,358
    Laptops and workstations fill two different needs. and game dev work is not oke of those needs that a laptop fullfills.

    I have a ultra compact i7 laptop 13.3 inch. No Unity installed on it.
     
  15. Ryiah

    Ryiah

    Joined:
    Oct 11, 2012
    Posts:
    20,964
    Okay, if for some completely unforeseeable reason my computer catches fire it will be worse than if my laptop catches fire, but the odds of it just spontaneously catching fire are very low because I perform proper maintenance on it all the time.

    That said this is utter nonsense and it shows that you completely misunderstood the points we were making. We're not saying our games can't be developed on a low-end system. We're saying that developing on a low-end system takes time that we could have spent making our games better rather than just twiddling our thumbs.

    No. My game (that is to say the game I'm contracted to develop) isn't even remotely demanding. It's prototype was able to run off of a low-end laptop (Intel i5-2520M, 8GB DDR3-1333, Intel HD 3000).

    By the way the prototype was neither developed nor optimized on that machine which just goes to show that you don't need to develop on a potato to run your game on a potato.
     
  16. Living on the edge, eh? If you don't have, do make a proper backup/version control environment. Dropbox IS dangerous. (Or be sure that you NEVER ever open your project on another computer simultaneously - but it's better to have a proper version control instead).
     
    angrypenguin and Ryiah like this.
  17. neoshaman

    neoshaman

    Joined:
    Feb 11, 2011
    Posts:
    6,492
    Get two computer, and switch when baking
     
  18. Ryiah

    Ryiah

    Joined:
    Oct 11, 2012
    Posts:
    20,964
    Which is even more expensive but definitely a consideration if and when baking becomes a lengthy process.
     
  19. snacktime

    snacktime

    Joined:
    Apr 15, 2013
    Posts:
    3,356
    I always develop on hardware that is at the mid range of what the suggested spec for the game will be. That's what I put my teams on also. Developers will optimize the game towards what they work on. That's just how it ends up so whatever hardware you want your game to run well on, that's what you need to be doing your daily development on. That's for games that are going to be demanding performance wise, other categories things can be different.

    Baking and builds is not something you do all the time in daily iteration. And there is little to no difference in development productivity by having the best high end hardware.
     
    nxrighthere and Deleted User like this.
  20. AndersMalmgren

    AndersMalmgren

    Joined:
    Aug 31, 2014
    Posts:
    5,358
    Dropbox is a distaser waiting to happen, move it to git, it's done in two minutes
     
    angrypenguin likes this.
  21. AndersMalmgren

    AndersMalmgren

    Joined:
    Aug 31, 2014
    Posts:
    5,358
    There is no reason or logic why you should sit on target hardware and develop. I mean sure test on target hardware is one thing. But develop on it?

    That means you need to move to a pocket calculator if you target console.

    What you should instead do is to learn the tools, profile alot both code and engine performance like set pass calls etc. Learn to directly smell performance problems like allocation and complexity
     
    angrypenguin likes this.
  22. neoshaman

    neoshaman

    Joined:
    Feb 11, 2011
    Posts:
    6,492
    The logic is that it's good enough today for midrange or high end at least, depending on the project, also some people are piss poor
     
  23. Well, they use whatever they can afford and they don't deliver high-demand applications, so this entire discussion is pointless if money is an issue. You can't test a current, high demand 3D game on a pentium 1, this is how it is.

    Not to mention that today's high-end (or mid-high category) tomorrow's mid-range. Especially when we're talking about game development (long process and no one is waiting for us to catch up).
     
  24. neoshaman

    neoshaman

    Joined:
    Feb 11, 2011
    Posts:
    6,492
    That's an exxageration, with feature parity I have done it once, it's like doing a movie, you wait for render more during dev, but then the final product run as great because the performance offset is predictable
     
  25. "high-demand"
    If you can somehow run your game, at least you will know how many frames it renders because you have enough time to count them individually. :) It's kind of debug, that's for sure. We can call it manual frame debugger.
    But more likely it just does not work due to very old system, old connectors, probably you can't even get a modern enough GPU to run high demand(!) 3D games nowadays.
     
  26. neoshaman

    neoshaman

    Joined:
    Feb 11, 2011
    Posts:
    6,492
    I'm saying entry level cpu and gpu today (same generation) tend to have features parity with high end machine, I'm not talking generation leap at all, my 705 run all the 1080 games even though there is literally a power magnitude of difference between them, so I can check the game in low setting to check gameplay and go into slideshow to check graphic rendering, which I did for the unity BOTD demo :p
     
    Lurking-Ninja likes this.
  27. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

    Joined:
    Dec 29, 2011
    Posts:
    15,616
    For you, maybe. I get loads of game dev done on laptops, including on a Surface with it's tiny screen and underpowered GPU. Straight up, my game would not be as far along as it is if it weren't for my laptop.
     
    bobisgod234 likes this.
  28. bobisgod234

    bobisgod234

    Joined:
    Nov 15, 2016
    Posts:
    1,042
    I have an SP3, I find it has enough processing power (when not throttling), and the battery life is good enough for a decent length of dev time. Screen is quite good too, and I like the 4:3 non-widescreen shape. A combination of extreme thermal throttling and sub-par keyboard (in terms of typing, and the awkward kickstand when used as a laptop) kind of kills development on it for me.

    Next laptop will be a big chunky plastic conventional thing though. I imagine development on it to be quite practical.
     
  29. Ryiah

    Ryiah

    Joined:
    Oct 11, 2012
    Posts:
    20,964
    You might not be able to find one now. It's not that ultra thin laptops have completely displaced every laptop on the market as much as the concepts of thinner and lighter have largely displaced previous designs on just about every laptop being made now.

    Just to give you an example a friend of mine sent me their ASUS ROG laptop as a gift as they were planning on buying a new one. I wasn't too surprised to see that the old laptop weighed 10 pounds, but I was surprised to find out that the new equivalent model weighed less than half that and was much more streamlined too.
     
  30. neoshaman

    neoshaman

    Joined:
    Feb 11, 2011
    Posts:
    6,492
    On top of ultra powerful laptop due to stalling moore laws (hence why teh thinning is replacing ghz) there is eGPU, that is laptop the day and gaming machine the night, the masked super hero of game development for whom can afford.
     
    Ryiah likes this.
  31. AndersMalmgren

    AndersMalmgren

    Joined:
    Aug 31, 2014
    Posts:
    5,358
    Depends on the game I guess. But Unity editor starts to slow down really fast for even medium or smallish scenes. I guess if I really needed to work on the game on the Move I would install Unity on it. But as it is, I dont. Which I'm glad for, i hate downtimes and laptop means downtimes.
     
  32. AndersMalmgren

    AndersMalmgren

    Joined:
    Aug 31, 2014
    Posts:
    5,358
    Still a mobile CPU though with all of its drawbacks. but yeah, eGPU is an option
     
  33. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

    Joined:
    Dec 29, 2011
    Posts:
    15,616
    I can't say I follow. From my perspective, having a laptop means I can fill what would otherwise be downtimes.
     
    Ryiah and Deleted User like this.
  34. AndersMalmgren

    AndersMalmgren

    Joined:
    Aug 31, 2014
    Posts:
    5,358
    "wait for laptop to load scene" = downtime
     
  35. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

    Joined:
    Dec 29, 2011
    Posts:
    15,616
    One of my laptops is near as fast as my desktop (edit: actually, in some ways it's faster), so no worries there. The other one is tiny and light and can be used where my desktop can't, so that's all win. And there's loads of game dev tasks that really don't need a beefy computer anyway. Not everything is done inside a 3D scene editor. ;)
     
    Ryiah likes this.