Need advice upgrading classroom computers for Unity

Unity Engine
1

I teach a class on video game programming at a local science museum. I need help deciding on a cost effective way to upgrade the 14 Windows computers in our lab to be able to use Unity Indie (we are working on getting an educational license).

Our current computers have:

Pentium 4, 2.26 GHz
640 MB RAM
NVIDIA geForce2 MX

The current graphics card only has 2 texture units (4 required for development environment). Is increasing the RAM necessary assuming they are solely using Unity, or would upgrading the graphics card be sufficient?

I am also looking for a Mac laptop for personal use. I could get a couple year old black-case Mac Book for cheap ($200). If I remember correctly, the stats are:

Intel Core Duo 2.16GHz
2 GB RAM
Intel GMA 950 w/ 64MB SDRAM (pulled from a website, I may have a different model)

Will that be sufficient for Unity development?

For the curious:

The class is in 3 sections (3rd section is going to be unveiled this upcoming summer). Each section is 3 hours a day, 5 days. Each section has the one before it as a prerequisite. Target age is 13-15.

So far it has been done entirely in Game Maker. I am thinking about foregoing making section 3 this year, and instead replacing section 2 with a lesson in Unity using mostly prefabs. Probably remaking (part of) the island demo with a few extras thrown in for fun (ie, Detonator).

2

Hello!

Write a mail to support (support@unity3d.com) they will immediately help you out :smile:

3

I have an old macbook with 1.83Ghz, 1GB ram and with an intel GMA 950 (the first macbooks with Intel processors) and I can program things in there :slight_smile:

4

I doubt that you are seriously recommending an INTEL GMA950 to a potential customer.

–
oxl

5

I have a Mac mini with the GMA950; it’s extremely viable as a Unity development machine. Would I attempt anything graphics-intensive on such a chip? No, it’s terrible for that. But sadly, even though Apple ditched Intel graphics chips a while ago, there are still plenty of older machines using them, and they are also still pretty common in new Windows machines, so it’s useful to know how your games perform on such systems.

–Eric

6

Totally agreed, I didn’t want to start any kind of flame or so.

Just wanted to mention,
if I were in the position of the thread opener, I would prefer a decent GFX card (Geforce, Radeon) to work with.

–
oxl

7

There are no flames here. :slight_smile: Ideally, yes, you’d want the best system, but the question here seems to be about cost-effectiveness and the minimum you can get away with. If you can actually get a functioning Macbook for $200, sure, go for it; it will be fine.

–Eric

8

Sorry for the long response time. Personal life has been… interesting. Thank you for your input.

I will definitely be going the route of the $200 MacBook. I am a coder, and my first project-for-profit is extremely light on graphics.

I should have mentioned that the company computers I am looking to upgrade appear to only have PCI slots. Before I write the email suggested in the first reply, does anyone have any thoughts on PCI graphics cards… or is pain all that lays down that path?

9

You can still get PCI graphics cards, though obviously they’re less common.

–Eric

10

Oh I’m not worried about getting them. I’m worried that trying to teach on them would be painful - that PCI cards would be insufficient to run Unity gracefully.

Forgive my ignorance of hardware.

11

No, that won’t be a problem.

–Eric