I’ve been developing with Unity for quite a while now. First on my Mac Mini, which only had a Intel HD 3000, and then switched to my current Macbook Pro 13 Retina (i5) using an Intel HD 4000 as graphics card. So on both devices my Unity Editor is very laggy on big scenes and that makes it hard for me to work with. I mean it takes forever to even do little things/changes.
Therefore I decided to get a new Laptop (as I travel a lot I can’t take a desktop). So I thought I’d either get a new Macbook Pro 13" Retina or a Alienware 13". As far as I can see the MacBooks still offer one of the best dual-core Intel processors, whilst other manufacturers like Alienware offer as similar setup and an additional graphics card.
I know it has been asked 100 times which laptop to get so I do not want to ask that (but still appreciate suggestions )!!!
My main question is whether the Unity Editor can take advantage of the graphics card performance and if that would improve the flow. Or if the main bottle necks are other components of the system.
Unity is not very good when it comes to manipulating large number of objects at once. For example if you tried to rectangle select few hundred objects it would take forever. on earlier versions (5.2 and the like), and I doubt that it was fixed.
Oh, it definitely can take advantage of the “real” GPU. Just look at Adam demo, AFAIK it is running on either 980 or Titan (1080 wasn’t out when it was showcased). Will edit out with YT link to the demo.
@neginfinity Well I have large city scenes, with many buildings, details and so on. I would love to test it on the different laptops but I don’t think that it will be possible
Why would the editor not take advantage of your graphics card? The test feature would be pretty useless if it didn’t use real hardware to run the game.
Also, if you check Unity’s hardware requirements, pretty much the only thing the editor needs for certain is a decent graphics card. They say you should be running either an Nvidia or AMD graphics card, or REALLY good Intel internal graphics. They wouldn’t have that requirement if it didn’t actually need a “real” graphics card
I know for sure you need a “real” graphics card because Unity won’t even run in a Virtual Machine because it doesn’t even recognise the virtualized graphics card.
So yes, not only does Unity take advantage of a “Real” graphics card, it requires one.
Sure it needs graphic card. The thing is that I see a lot of other people using Macbooks with the Intel internal, so I really wondered whether this actually makes a difference. I don’t mean during runtime/play mode. I don’t really care on how good it looks on the laptop rather than having the editor experience being a smooth workflow with no lagging or so.
But I guess I can take from your statement that this does make a difference.
Yes, the Unity editor does run better on computers with a powerful dedicated video card. For example, I use the Unity editor on a nice desktop PC with an Nvidia GTX 780, a laptop with a weak internal GPU, and a Mac Mini. On the desktop PC with the GTX 780, the Unity editor runs great. On the laptop and Mac Mini, the Unity Editor is slow when working on the same scenes.
@fred_gds I think that the CPU is going to used a lot on various things. for example when you select 100 objects in the scene, I dont think the gpu is doing all the hard work here, i think the cpu is doing more. There seems to be a huge lag when selecting many objects even with a GTX 980.
But im not an expert in these things so it would be great if unity peeps could enlighten us with the inner workings of the editor.
If the bottleneck is CPU, then better GPU won’t help. For example, lightmap baking does not utilize GPU.
Speaking of which, default settings for lightmap baking is “auto”, so it’ll keep trying to re-bake scene often, so the editor may act sloppy because of that.
Yeah, it depends entirely on what the bottleneck of your scene and editor setup is compared to the hardware it’s running on. CPU, GPU and available RAM all make a difference… but the difference each makes is only noticeable if your scene/editor setup needs more than what’s available.
For instance, if you’re doing something CPU heavy with minimal graphics then a better GPU or more RAM won’t help. If you’re doing relatively little CPU work but have loads of heavy visual effects then the opposite is likely to be true - a better GPU will help crunch all the pixels, but more CPU is unlikely to make a difference.
Just about every graphical effect a computer can do, whether it’s 2D or 3D, goes through the GPU. If an application is heavy on the GPU but the computer has a weak GPU it can be held back from running ideally. Likewise this problem can occur with the CPU too.
Intel’s graphical hardware is very weak compared to their processor hardware.
Generally I recommend people pick up an MSI gaming laptop like the following.
I would not recomend an Alienware, I personally would go with an this or something like it. Reason? Larger screen, better graphics card, larger SDD, all for $200 less.
I see that most of you mention that I should find the bottleneck. So I am actually wondering how I would do that. I can tell for sure that RAM is not my main concern. The ActivityMonitor often shows me a high CPU usage but I can not find information on how much the gpu is used…
@Ryiah and RavenOfCode: Thanks for your suggestions. I actually love the 13" size I also saw the new Razer Blade 14" which is more compact any experience with that?
I don’t have personal experience with either, yet I do have a friend who used an Alienware and he enjoyed it but for the price he wished he had gotten something better.
I personally don’t mind the look of the Razer, the specs are nice too. I just would want something bigger.
Yeah, I feel like Alienware is more overpriced in some respects than even Apple.
I remember out of curiosity one day look at their website a few years ago when I was buying my current laptop and I was expecting super high performance components and all this for everything I had heard about them, and I was shocked to find out that building a laptop with specs similar to the laptop I eventually went with from Sony (gives you an idea how long ago this was) was like, twice as expensive. The only difference was the battery life was poor and the thing was significantly heavier.
Personally, I find 15 inch to be the best compromise between performance and size, 17 is just too heavy and unweildy, while 13 usually doesn’t have a full keyboard, and at that form factor compromises usually need to be made in the performance department as well. 15 is just kind of an ideal size, where you can have something thats reletively light and useable, while still having a full sized keyboard and can usually get most of the components that can fit into a 17 inch (with the exception of the more extreme stuff like desktop GPUs, but really people getting those in their laptops are just overcompensating anyway. Like people who buy Corvettes)
I’ve seen a few nice MSIs out there, and of course Asus makes good stuff. personally, I’ve been looking at System76 for my next computer, because I think I want my next laptop to run Linux
)!!!
