I’m a game designer and am very eager to get my hands on UE4. The problem is, I don’t own a desktop computer and probably won’t for some time because I can’t afford one. I have a 2010 Macbook Pro that I acquired by attending Full Sail University. I ran UDK on it through college (I have Windows 7 installed as a partition) just fine, but I understand UE4 is much more powerful.
I know the recommended requirements 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
My question is, what are the minimum requirements?
My specs are:
MacBook Pro 15" 2010
Mac OS X 10.9.2
2.66 GHz Intel Core i7
Intel HD Graphics 288 MB
4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
I feel your pain. I had to upgrade my PC when I got UE4. Was fine for UDK, but next gen requires a bit more especially for development. Fortunately I only had to upgrade my graphics card. Good luck though. =)
The specs you quoted from Epic’s site are what they recommend as the minimum for game development. “Minimum” is misleading since just getting the engine to run doesn’t mean you’re actually going to be able to do anything productive at 4 FPS.
Your GPU is well below the minimum requirements, and there’s also a lot of people experiencing crashes on the Intel HD integrated GPUs. There’s a fix on the forums that’s worked for some. Performance on OS X is a little worse than Windows too, run 7 through bootcamp. You also don’t have enough memory, 288MB isn’t enough for the GPU, many games are breaking 1.5GB easily now. You’ll be using your RAM in the place of VRAM, which is slower and means there isn’t as much left for the editor.
A Macbook is simply put not meant for game development. I’m very surprised that a school that teaches it would have you buy one, many engines don’t even run on them. And unless you spend an exorbitant sum you can’t get decent specs.
You can run the editor with your laptop, but it won’t be anywhere near what’s necessary to make something more complex than a simple mobile game.
Ok so I’ve realized that getting a computer is essential for me since I’m a game designer. I’m going to sell some stuff around the house to raise money for one. After doing some research I’ve came up with a build. Please give me feedback on this build. Does it seem pretty solid? Are there any components that are incompatible with another?
Solid build. You’ll get some people telling you to get an i7 but the 8350 is a good CPU when on a budget. I would make a couple of changes though, this Seasonic PSU is of much higher quality than the Rosewill and has a 5 year warranty. I’d also get a heatsink like the Hyper 212 Evo for the CPU, should be about $30. Even if you don’t intend to OC, those 8350s run hot. That’s also a really expensive case for a relatively simple build. I personally just use a $35 case and it fits my GTX 760 and aftermarket CPU cooler just fine. The 760 is really good card for the price.
If on a budget you can put together a capable dev pc at a Fry’s electronics store or from Newegg, Tigerdirect or a site like that, buy the components and put it together yourself. The GTX 750 is plenty capable of running UE4, and is the cheapest card I would recommend, because it only uses 60 watts of power it makes for an overall less expensive computer. An AMD cpu, like an FX will be a lot cheaper than an i7 with equivalent specs. You should probably have 16gig of ram.
A good pc is a requirement for game dev. Maybe try a GoFundMe campaign or something and be creative if you can’t afford it and don’t want to use credit.
Thanks for the input ! Although, I think you only read the op. Check out the post I made a few posts above where I list the build I’m thinking of going with.
I missed the post with that build, I swear it wasn’t there.
I’d add another 8 gig’s of ram.
For the video card, if your going to spend for a 760, you might as well go to a 770. The 770 is really the best performance for money right now ( I think ). Otherwise you could save yourself some with a 750Ti, I have no problems with it at all.
If you went with a 750 you would be fine with a 500watt ppwersupply. You could also use a cheaper case as MuchToLearn said, it’s really a waste.
First time poster, long time lurker, but I just thought I’d chime in after seeing the build Harley was proposing. I just had an FX8350 die on me after minimal use and the power use/heat was huge, also I just put a 750ti in my rig and it runs UE4 just fine, although I have a GTX660ti on standby (business write offs, too many parts). Also one thing you might want to look at is getting an SSD, maybe if you save money by getting a 750ti. I notice coming from Unity development that there’s a lot more compiling going on and I think an SSD might make a huge jump in productivity if you can spare. I’d also recommend getting even an i5 if you can spare. I’ve had nothing but problems with AMDs and AM3+ motherboards, especially relative to how few issues I’ve had with Intel. Intel/Nvidia combo, seems to be an awesome performance/heat/efficiency ratio. Just thought I’d chime with some recent experience.
