What are the best computers for Unity 3d game development?

Right now my computer is really slow and game development has tons of problems. My first question: Are the problems with Unity (extremely low texture quality, slow movement, extended time to import objects) the cause of a bad computer? My second question: What are the best computers for Unity 3d game development?

 

Just a standard PC with decent graphics card.

Minimum I'd recommend if you were to buy a new one:

i5 750/760 processor. Recommend: i7 920 or so.

4GB of RAM. Recommend: 6-8GB, just so you never have to worry about RAM at all.

nVidia GTX460 or ATI equivalent (5870 or so). Recommend: GTX470/480 or ATI 6950/6970.

Plenty of hard drive space. Might be beneficial to have an SSD in a dev PC.. seems like something that would help quite a large amount. I have no actual experience with this myself though, so take that for what it is.

24" monitor would be extremely beneficial, though you could get away with a 22" no worries.

 

you don't have to spend that much, I got a mid range pc, with a Intel Dual Core E5400 @ 2.7Ghz, 4GB Ram, 320GB hard Drive @ 7200 RPM, an xfx ATI Radeon HD 5770, a 500w arctic cooler Power Supply and a 19" monitor for around £630. A brilliant deal, does the Unity job just fine for me.

 

My home PC specs are:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+
2 GB DDR2 RAM
lots of hard drives I can't remember
NVIDIA 7600 GS

 

I have a double monitor and it makes it really nice.

 

The following specs I suggest will let you use unity with 0 lag and run multiple instances for multitasking:

Processor: Quad || i7 850+

RAM: 4gb 1666mhz+

Motherboard: Up to you, recommend Asus

Videocard : nvidia 460GTX+ (470, 480) 580 is unnecessary, overpriced aswell || ATI 5870+

HDD: 500gb and external to backup your project (500 external) = 1tb total.

PSU: 700+watt.

Tower: Anything good with 140mm+ fans, and with mesh covers that prevent dust from entering.

 

You don't need a fancy computer at all. I have a 6 year old and 4 year old base system and the important things that make game dev ok on both my systems is having 2GB of ram and a pixel shader 3 video card. I have a 7800GS and 9800GT so nothing fancy on that front but plenty for game dev. The 6 year old system is single core 3000+ and the 4 year old one a dual core 5600+ (both AMD).

So you really don't need fancy computers at all. Win 7 runs about the same on both systems with most regular desktop tasks, the newer system plays all modern games well at 1600x1200 with high graphics settings but no AA.

 

Intel e2500 (dual core) 2,5 ghz.
2 GB ram
data drive: 1 TB (sata ofcourse)
application/OS drive: 200 GB (sata ofcourse)
Nvidia 9600 GT GPU, 512MB, PCI-EX

Works like a charm (3d modeling tools too).

to give you an idea of the realtime render speeds:
I can play all Big blockbuster games on the market (very recent ones: November/Dec. 2010 released) with every setting maxed out without any stutter or glitch.

 

I'm sorry, but unless you're playing at a low resolution, there is no way you can run modern games maxed out without any stuttering at all.

 

Any modern pc will do it. The newer the better. Although I would personally avoid solid state drives for a while. They are nothing more than the same flash memory chips used regular usb drives. They have a low number of write times compared to traditional drives which means the heavy reading and writing done during development could cause the drive to fail much sooner than you would expect. I heavily used a flash drive for 4 years and it died, I can't imagine a ssd lasting any longer. Unless you have the SSD dedicated to the OS ONLY, I would not recommend them for development machines.

For a current system, it depends on your budget. I am running an older machine:
System Components:
Core 2 Duo 6420 2.13Ghz with 800Mhz FSB
4GB DDR2 ram @ 667Mhz FSB. (which causes bottle necking, for best performance, ensure RAM FSB matches the CPU FSB. When I built my pc, that technology was new and would have cost me an extra $1000.)
NVidia Geforce GT240 1GB GDDR3 Video RAM (upgraded from original GeForce 8600GT GDDR3 256MB Video Ram)
250GB Western Digital Hard Drive w/ 16MB cache @ 7400RPMS
ASUS P5NSLI Motherboard
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy SE Sound Card

Dual Monitors:
Acer H233H 23" widescreen monitor (purchased when my graphics driver was on the fritz and I thought my other monitor was dying)
Acer AL1916w 19" widescreen monitor

Sound:
Altec Lansing 2.5 Speaker system. (VS2321, great set of speakers, perfect crystal clear deep sound!)

Input:
Microsoft Comfort Optical Mouse 3000
Microsoft Digital Media Pro Keyboard
Wacom Intuos3 6x11 Pen Tablet
Logitech Gamepad F310

My system still works great, and I have no problem working or playing in any 3d app or game. Also, I like thinking my older system will keep my ideas in check that by ensuring my game will run on this machine, I know most gamers will be able to play it whenever I release my final product.

 

My PC is about 3 years old and it gets the job done, I only wish I had more RAM.
I have a 1GB ATI HD card, Pentium D, dual core (3.2GHz), 180GB HDD, 1.5GB of RAM and two monitors (one 23'' HD LED and my secondary is a 17'' LCD).

 

Yea u don’t need anything to fancy. My old hp laptop runs unity just fine. It’s a 1.6ghz dual core nvidia geforce Go 6150 with I think 256mb vram and 2gb of ram and I do all kind of crazy work with my laptop and it’s just fine. I do a bunch of 3d modeling with it and high quality texturing.

 

Technically you only need one processor core .

 

depends on what you find high, or low...

1280 x 800 (16:10) is my resolution (has to do with my eyes, if i go higher i go "epileptic", meaning dizzy and boat sickness kind of feeling)

 

Ooooh an Amiga multimedia pc! I knew it was ahead of its time in the 80's to early 90's, but so much that it can run Unity? Cool
(just wanted to point out what it was for those who didn't know just exactly what it was:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga)

 

The software is pretty flexible. For a long time, I ran it on an iBook 1.33ghz with 1gb of ram. Any recent system should run it fine. Just give it plenty of memory to work with as scenes can get big pretty quick.

 

@MakerOfGames
I think that the terms Amiga and PC exclude each other, for both good and bad reasons. Isn't that red LED on the left cute?! :O)