I am new to the game development scene. I have a basic question.
I am planning to start to develop with UE4 and I am looking at setup. The plan is to make a 3rd person aaa with the main character 35 000 poly.
As it is now, UE4 can’t utilize more than 2 threads, so i3 is perfectly fine for running the game. We did some tests and i3-4160 outperformed both 4core and 6core i7E. You’ll have to wait longer for building lightning, as that will take significantly longer. But as long as you stage lightning builds for food breaks etc., you should be fine. Definitively get a better GPU if you can, GTX750Ti at bare minimum or even something older 670 or 680 if you can’t afford new one. And 16GB RAM.
UE4 is dependent on both, but a better GPU will be a bigger upgrade performance wise for most of the games you create.
The CPU runs the Physics calculations, will affect lighting build times, and compile times, and the GPU will do all of the the graphics calculations such as drawing the materials and meshes in your scene.
In general a better GPU will give you a higher FPS increase, but you don’t want to skimp on the CPU either. Hope that helps!
EDIT: I see ENiKS says “Stay away from ASUS products if you ask me”.
I am completely the opposite, ASUS is in my opinion the best out there when it comes to hardware. I have purchased many different parts over the years from ASUS and have never had any issues whatsoever. I can’t speak to how good their laptops are since I have never owned one, but if I was going to buy a laptop they would be my first choice when researching various brands.
Please don’t waste your money on pre-built junk.
Unless you specifically need a compact, small computer, there is no reason to buy that one what so ever.
And if you do need a mini pc, you can get a smaller and better one by buying pre-built, for a cheaper price tag.
If you’re only buying it (instead of non-pre-built) because it looks so **** trendy and cool, then you might as well just throw your money in the nearest pond.
Also the specs aren’t good so you’ll be hard pressed making an “aaa game” using it. I would go with at least 16gb RAM and a much better CPU.
Sure you might not need 16+ and a better cpu for most softwares, but if you want to be able to use more than one a bit more demanding software at once (which you will definitely want to do when making games) you need something better.
Now, I do love Asus and have had nothing but great support and quality on everything I’ve bought from them through probably 15 years of using various Asus products.
But there are just too many cons in buying pre-built personal computers. Also the ROG G20AJ have gotten lots of quite terrible reviews.
Here are my main reasons to why I would never, ever, ever buy a pre-built personal computer:
They’re overpriced as hell. You’ll be paying premium for a bunch of **** that you don’t need.
You would save a lot, and I mean a LOT of money on just buying the parts and putting it together yourself.
And if you can’t do it yourself, there are tons of stores that do it for a fee bellow $50.
If one part of your pre-built computer breaks, you have to send in the whole **** thing. Although Asus have great support compared to some of their competitors, it would still take a whole lot of time to get your machine back. Also, shipping a whole computer is a lot more expensive than a small, individual part.
If something ever breaks in a home built machine, you just take out that part and either send it for repairs/replacement or buy a new one. You could be back up and running the next day depending on if you send it for repair or just replace it yourself.
And if you do wait for repairs, you can always borrow a friend’s old part to use while you wait.
Now I haven’t had the displeasure to deal with a pre-built computer in the last decade or so, so might not hold true for the modern year that is 2015.
But one thing to consider is that proprietary connectors and that kind of awful **** at least used to be standard in pre-built computers from certain brands at least (Dell for instance) which essentially lock you down to not being able to upgrade your computer with any regular parts you find in the store.
Now, if isn’t true about machine, it still holds slightly true by the fact that the case is built to look like some kind of sleek toy and have virtually no space in it for anything else than what’s already there. Which limits your options tremendously if you ever need to upgrade it. Also, adding any hard drives is out of the picture. One 2.5" and one 3.5" seems to be all it can take.
Now I know I have an bellow average view of pre-built computers, but there just isn’t any advantage what so ever in buying one.
The main argument I hear is that they can be rather small, and if that is something of value to you, then you’re better of buying a small case, a mini-atx motherboard and just build your own small one.
Performance is key, not how cool it looks with the lights off in your room. And if that’s important, then there’s tons of LEDs and stuff to decorate your home built machine with.
@Sitrec - You are totally right. Yes I could go out there and build my own system but should it brake down I don’t want to deal with the headache of trying to figure out what went wrong. It wouldn’t hurt to get a price. I mean I can do it and I have done it in the past.
Asus on the other had has been good to me and I am brand oriented. If a brand is good and I like it I will stick with it. The major comments around here is that the i3 is not good enough. In Canada the i3 can be found for $840 where ht i7 for $1400. As you can see its quite the price difference. Thanx for the feedback everyone. I will hunt around and post another spec.
I own a ASUS Rog G550JK myself and it works perfect for UE4 and any other gameengines. It can get hot sometimes, but not too hot. It also runs Skyrim and Fallout 3 with ultra-settings and mods just fine
That’s insane. Which i7 are we talking here? Is hardware always expensive in Canada? Is there anything preventing you from just ordering from the states instead?
I’m from Sweden so it’s a bit more expensive here than in the US but those prices you just described are insane.
How much would you be paying for the G20 with the parts you just listed?
From what Im reading, the i5 is more pointed to gaming and not developement. But it can manage it if your not going for GTA/Battlefield games I havent read so much about the 700 series as I only have experience with the 600 series which is on my desktopbuild. Much harddrive space is indeed a thing to think about as rendering and build files can get very large. 8GB ram is fine too as I run Photoshop and 3Ds Max (Now MODO) with lots of elements when rendering. But I would recommend atleast 12GB or greater if you can afford it.
Just to be clear, I believe he was mentioning the price of a laptop with an i3 or an i5. I purchased the i5 4670k not long after it launched for around $280 Canadian (on sale, reg around $320).
From there you can purchase all of the parts separately (which will be cheaper), or custom build a PC using their PC Builder. You start with a base system and modify it to suit your needs.
NCIX is Vancouver based, but has a outlet/warehouse in Toronto as well so delivery should be really fast (not sure where in Canada you are ^^), and you can even get free shipping if you pick carefully. I have purchased everything relating to computers from them for over 10 years, and imo they are the best place to order from. Compared to FutureShop/BestBuy their prices are cheaper as well.
The CPU is good, the rest is pretty standard, but the video card is really lacking when we are talking about a development PC. The GTX 635 and R7 240 are more in the home theater PC or Office PC class of GPU’s, they will struggle with most of the recent games, therefore they will struggle with UE4. You will want to get a GTX 660, 750 TI, or 760 at minimum if you are looking at Nvidia cards, and an R9 270 or HD 7950 (in that range +/-) on the AMD side. An R7 260x would be the minimum I’d recommend for AMD, and a GTX 750 ti would be the minimum on the Nvidia side for UE4 development.
The official min specs are:
Desktop PC or Mac
Windows 7 64-bit or Mac OS X 10.9.2 or later
Quad-core Intel or AMD processor, 2.5 GHz or faster
NVIDIA GeForce 470 GTX or AMD Radeon 6870 HD series card or higher
8 GB RAM
I don’t know what your price range is, but that system is more of an office PC than a gaming/game dev PC. If you let me know your max budget I can take a look at a few for you.
