Hi folks! I’m choosing CPU for my unity programming workstation and I’m not sure if go for a 6 cores 12 threads (5600x) vs 12 cores 24 threads (5900x)
What kind of situations (in the Unity Editor) would benefit from a higher core count?
I can think of baking lights of course, importing assets maybe? compiling…What else?
Thanks! 
Unity editor is mostly single threaded. While there are some features, which are multithreaded too. But you most likely want to focus on per core performance, rather than number of cores. And of course fast data bus between PC components, like memory, CPU, disk and GPU.
Compling and building game, importing, reimport librayr, etc, etc. Lots of tasks uses multi threading. Get the 5950x insane single core perf AND multi core perf
Just bare in mind getting something like a 5950x is pointless if you are going to seat it in a crappy low cost motherboard, use it with crappy quality (and timings) memory etc.
Ideally you want to use something that is of similar quality otherwise you are going to be limited by annoying things like bus rates etc.
So yes get a 5950x if you want power, but please also then get a proper motherboard for it too. Too many people are getting high quality GPU + CPU and then using their same crappy motherboard from previous build, and then do not realise all the unused potential of their build.
A good motherboard will usually always be £100+ , unless you are really savvy and follow mobo trends and know what to look for. Get a good gaming motherboard first, get the CPU + GPU upgrades afterwards. And finally, make sure to upgrade your RAM to high speed ram with decent timings, it makes a world of difference (And only 16GB+, no point going lower than that anymore)
I did this a while bakc on my old 3950x to get an idea how much threads UNITY is using
edit: agree with above poster. I reused my x570 mobo. (Asus crosshair VIII)
Sorry I should have explained the rest of my build:
I do have some decent components here to go with a 5900x (or even a 5950x), so you’re making me consider it. But anyway, something like a 5950x would still be pointless if the Unity Editor doesn’t really make use of that high amount of threads. What I’m trying to say is: would it be really noticeable when doing typical Unity development? (writing some code, playtesting, level design, etc)
B550 chipset is a lowend chipset, they dont even have gen4 lanes seperate from the CPU lanes. If you want a 16x GPU and 2xnvme etc. you will run into problems.
I’m surprised no one brought it up but choosing a 5900X or 5950X is about more than just the threads. Both of those processors have an enormous cache and benchmarks have shown that some tasks (esp compiling code) become much faster thanks to the entire compiler being able to sit in the cache as opposed to loading sections when needed.
At this point I wouldn’t recommend anything less than a 5900X unless you don’t have the budget for it.
I’m not aware of a single graphics card capable of saturating an 8x lane slot that doesn’t support PCIe 4.0, and anything that will be demanding on the graphics compute power will likewise not need a ton of lanes (just as an example this is why mining cards only need a single lane slot).
You are going to share resources with the CPU how much it matters I don’t know, I would go for the x570 instead of its little brother but that’s just me.
Edit: good points on the cache didn’t think about it since the cache on my old 3950x is same size
Hi everybody, I was planning to buy an asus strix 17 inches r9 5800x , rtx 3070 laptop for unity as my main work computer but perhaps it would be better to spend a little more money on a better desktop. The 5950x processor seems like a good choice. I was also interest in the threadripper, but it is not easy to make the right choice for all components and I am not sure I want to built a new machine myself. the RTX 3080 seems great but the 3090 has more memory which can be usefull since I have many assets using GPU. Do you have any recommendation as where to order a beast desktop computer? I live in canada and pretty much all RTX 3080 computer are back order here. My computer is preety decent now but has close to 3,5 years and I hate to wait when compiling or baking lights. Any tips or suggestion would be appreciated. I wouldn’t mind spending the money if I could get a really fast computer without to much fan noise. Thanks for your help!
Not the best time to build computers. I’m on a 5950x and 3090 setup and can really recommend it. But it will be next to impossible to get the parts right now
Is the portability of a laptop of benefit to you? Because that’s some pretty powerful hardware right there which shouldn’t really hold you back in game development type work.
Consider the impact of more powerful hardware during your work hours with a desktop, compared to the increase in available work time with a laptop. 20% faster hardware does not make you 20% more productive. 20% more time to work on stuff will.
When you happen to be at your desk you can still plug it into better peripherals, so a good laptop will get you the best of both. Of course if you’re only going to work when you’re at your desk anyway then don’t spend the extra on a laptop.
I upgraded my kids Asus G14 to a Asus G15 and while it being great for a laptop it’s 5900hs and rtx 3080 is far behind it’s desktop equivalent
Thank you all for your feedback and input. It is appreciated!
I have an I7 6850k 6core, 3.6 GTX 1080 with 1TB M.2 SSD which is not so bad.I am ready to buy but i don’t mind waiting a few weeks or months to buy the right computer. The reason I wanted a laptop was to continu developing while sitting on my couch and watching TV with my wife. I spend tremendous amount of time surfing the net and figured it would be great to spend this time on unity instead. I thought that a powerful laptop would perhaps be able to replace my main computer completely to avoid copying projects between both of them. But perhaps it make no sense to work on an 8 core laptop when you can have a 16 cores for a little more money. I also asked myself it it would be worth it to look into the 32 core threadripper with the 3090. I don’t change computer that often so it might be a good move too. But the last thing I want is to have a noisy tractor sitting beside me. 
Water cooling is your answer to the noisy tractor problem And not those crappy AIO loops. Custom loops.
Also there is no zen 3 threadripper yet so you are better of with a 5950x if you do not need the extra lanes that is.
That’s one of the reason I don’t want to built it myself.
I wasn’t aware of that. perhaps that the reason, I could not find any. I also noticed there is not much 5950x computer with the RTX 3090 card option. Perhaps this will change in the next few months when there is more card availability.
Thanks again!
I am just a bit surprised by the benchmark numbers. It seems like changing my 4 year old computer to the latest 5950x computer would only result in a 18% (single processor) to 36% (multiple processors)increased speed .
Buying the Asus Rog Strix 17" Ryzen 9 5900HX laptop would result in a 8% increase (single processor) and around 21% ( multi processor) for much less. This would also increase my productivity since I could work anywhere within my house.
Strange… I thought a change in a 4 year old computer would make a huge difference and at the same time I am impressed to see how powerful recent laptop are. I could still buy a RTX 3090 card for my old computer, than increase my ram to 64gb. I have to check if this possible. For the wizards, here are my specs:
Intel I7 6850k 6c 3.6
Msi x99s sli plus v2
32gb 4 x 8 gb teaam 3000 mhz clocked 3200 mhz
Nvidia efga Gtx 1080 oc
Kraken G10 black
Corsair H75 closed loop
Artic cooling 120 closed loop (H80)
Samsung m.2 SSD 1 TB
Corsair spec 1 Gaming Case
Evga gq 750 w 80+ gold modular
Thanks again for your help!
I don’t believe in those numbers, download cinebench r23 and post your single core scores here
User Benchmark is known to be heavily biased against multi-core performance and AMD in general.
And it’s so heavily tarnished their reputation that even the Intel community has banned them.
https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/comments/g36a2a/userbenchmark_has_been_banned_from_rintel/
Just as an example in that article I linked they consider an Intel i3-9350KF (4 core/4 thread @ 4GHz) to be faster than an i9-9980XE (18 core/36 thread @ 3GHz) which is obviously not going to be true. It’s not just one example either or I would chalk it up to that one entry being off. There are countless examples of it all over their site.
In this case the numbers were skewed in Intels favour though