Hi,
I’m refreshing my development environment and getting back into Unity and I’m wondering if anyone can comment on how useful having a multi-core development machine is. I’m planning a laptop purchase and I need some guidance on whether to go for high CPU clock speed or many cores.
From what I recall; a while ago now; the Unity dev environment didn’t use multiple cores much, if at all.
Any advice is greatly appreciated.
http://www.harveynorman.com.au/samsung-np550p5c-s02-laptop.html
I ordered that one, It is the best value for laptop i’ve ever seen, but that sale ends today.
IMO having multiple cores is virtually essential to a good experience today - even mobile devices have multiple cores! That said, it’s hard to find a ‘single core’ PC these days.
I’m currently running on two cores and it’s fine for everything I do. IIRC very few features in Unity editor are multithreaded - with the possible exception of beast and [hopefully] asset importing. Runtime wise, barring any code you multithread yourself, Unity is has a few things on other threads.
So Unity is a good example of a few high performance cores being better than lots of slow cores - even though it’ll run on either fine.
This is from a programmer - many artist tools use multithreading so having multiple cores can have a noticeable benefit for those use-cases.
Hi,
I had a similar situation recently.
I wished a directx9 capable machine, so I could make work on simple shaders. I also wished a windows computer able to run visual studio, so I can benefit from visual studio + resharper for c# editing. No huge asset-wise projects for this one, so no need for fast cpu. Weight also was unimportant since I am not walking long distances with the laptop.
I ended up with a second hand t61 lenovo core 2 duo 2.0gh, 3gb of ram x1300 graphics card. I added a 120 gb ssd. Total cost 260 + 87 ~ 350euro.
The machine is very - very quick, the keyboard is great and the screen is super (1600x1050, 15"). I am very satisfied from this purchase.
I am not suggesting purchasing the same model, I suggest buying a laptop that fits what you need it for, like npsf3000 said. Buying a laptops with high specs that one might need in the feature, is not cost effective.
Kind regards,
-Ippokratis
I think unless you go incredibly low-end almost all laptops have at least two cores nowadays. As for the processor power that you need - well - what are your needs? Raw CPU power will largely speed up things like asset imports and build times (possibly important if you’re doing mobile development). If you’re just a one-man-band the likelihood is that you won’t be creating enough assets that are complex enough to require a really powerful machine to work on them.
I would worry more about the screen resolution - the standard seems to be 1366x768 which in my view is rather too cramped to use Unity comfortably. I’d much rather have a 1920x1080 screen.
What are you actually using this ‘laptop’ for? Will it be the ‘main’ dev device or a secondary device whilst travelling/away from the office (bedroom et al.)?
I would say (and this is just my opinion), if you will be ‘based’ somewhere most of the time, don’t get a laptop; upgrade the desktop. For me, any real dev can’t be truly done on a laptop - the small screen, low memory, keyboard, cpu etc etc. Don’t get me wrong, if you are a man on the move then great, but if you are ‘based’, you can get so much more for your money with desktop. i.e. my 27in iMac bakes my Beast Lightmaps in about 4 hours… my i7 PC in about 1.5hrs… my laptop, forget it!
Just think about what you really need before getting out the cash. What types of games are you developing etc.
Regards,
Matt.