I have 4 gigs RAM, 4th gen Intel core i5 3.6 GHZ, with integrated 4400 HD graphics. I can run most of unreal fine but lighting builds and material editors. Will increasing my ram help or should I get a laptop.,I’m using an Intel HD 4400 With 4 gigs ram. Will increasing my ram help. I can run unreal fine but have trouble with compiling.
So, you are asking several questions, not one. So lets start with the 4GB question. Will adding more memory help?
The answer is yes. It will help with the editor performance, as well as baking lightmaps, and material creation. These are all memory intensive operations, and throwing 16GB min at them will see increases. Essentially, your OS is currently using your hard drive as extra swap space, which is orders of magnitude slower than memory, even if you have an SSD. Adding more memory, as much as you can, is a great investment in the game creation and 3D graphics space.
Now, I am not sure why getting a laptop will help, as you didn’t specify what would be upgraded with the laptop, If you can add a discreet GPU, and a recent one at that, you will see improvements in the operations of the whole editor. Adding more GPU memory is more than twice as beneficial for the overall speed of the editor as a game. A game that has shipped has been optimized to use as little GPU resources as possible. As you are creating your game, the largest majority of the time, your game is not optimized as such, and your use of the GPU’s resources are more stressful than a shipped game.
Now, as you add memory on the Intel HD 4400, some of that memory gets used as GPU memory. So adding more RAM helps in this instance as well. But the Intel graphics are not ideal to use with the editor.Partly because it uses some of your system memory as GPU memory, forcing your use of the Hard Drive more often.
More memory is also beneficial to the compiling process, for all the same reasons stated before.
Thank you that helped a lot, if I need a new computer I’ll get a desktop, I’m currently on a laptop that’s why I said new laptop. But I’ll try getting more ram for now until I can get a new computer.
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YES!!!
4GB of RAM isn’t even enough to run a x64 version of Windows properly.
Forget the laptop, unless you are buy a Boxx laptop for $5,000.00, laptop aren’t the best thing for 3D development.
You just can’t upgrade them properly. You will need 16Gb RAM or more, the more the better, but no less than 8Gb.
Get some heat spacers on the RAM as well, this does help.
Also, you will need a proper video card (GPU). 1Gb minimum!
If you are looking for something cheap, search amazon.com or eBay.com
You can get a 1Gb FP V4800 from eBay for $50.00, If you don’t want AMD, MSI has some 1Gb cards for around $100.00 as well. FYI, FirePro cards, as do most high end cards, require Display Port Cables…
I myself use FirePro v4800 in my kids workstations and a Titan Black in my workstation.
I don’t notice much of a difference between them.
What kind of computer do you have?
Go to http://www.crucial.com/, they have a program on their site that will tell you what kind of ram and how much ram you can install. It’s right on their home page.
Your welcome. On a laptop, get as much memory as you can. Something to consider as well, a laptop discrete GPU is almost always slower than its Desktop counterpart. So a Desktop is really best for 3D applications.
I don’t know what your budget is for such a thing, but you can build a fairly cheap system that can achieve great results.
Your most expensive part will be the CPU and the GPU. A great budget GPU would be the R9 285 that you can find used on ebay for 150 bucks or 180 new. The R9 380 which is the same card with 4GB of memory for 200 bucks is also a great buy.
Both of these cards will out perform the v4000 for these tasks and have the added benefit of being based on the newer compute heavy GPUs that will work so well with DX12 and Vulkan when they arrive. Looking to the future, these things can help make a build last for quite some time.
The v4800 is working fine for the time being and it is under $50.00.
I don’t need to upgrade at all. I have a 6Gb Titan in my station and I am upgrading to the GTX TITAN Z 12GB soon.
I mentioned the v4800 because it was cheap, and I know from first hand experience that it works well with UE 4.8, Maya 2014, Photoshop CC 2014, MudBox 2015 and World Machines, among others…
So, I guess I should have specified my response was geared toward the original OP, and for his reference and anyone else’s that looks at this. I didn’t mean you should buy a new card, you seem to know what you are doing in terms of hardware.
Oh, sorry. Thought you were directing your comment at me.
Yes, I know my way around the hardware part, but having issues with the software part… 