I realize the safest bet is a PC for Unreal Engine right now, but for my other work it makes a lot more sense to buy a new (8 core / 1 TB SSD / 64 GB Ram / Dual D700). I’m wondering if this will perform well with The Unreal Engine Editor today and also (if not not great today), if it will be very good in the future. I’m sure there must be some people with experience with this. I read on the forums from a month ago Epic received some New Mac Pros, so I’m hoping to get some feedback. Thanks.
(My current mac is a 2009 with a below system req. card and not performing great)
For UE4 development you’d be better off with a gaming card, for one UE4 can’t use multiple cards so your second card is useless. But since it’s a pretty high end card it shouldn’t have bad performance, but still for the performance you’re likely to have you could spend less on a Windows PC with a gaming card and have more power.
I’m not sure what other mac users have been experiencing but comparing performance on my 4 year old Windows box versus iMac I bought last year(i7 3.4ghz,32GB ram, fusion drive, GTX 680, etc.) the ancient Windows box feels worlds faster. Thats with a very outdated graphics card(GTX 275). I just bit the bullet and built myself a new Windows rig which I’ll use for UE4.
darhviper107 - Would something like this be a better option? (Graphics Card is a GTX 760). Link to Computer at BestBuy ] (about $1100 and has a GTX 760) Or Alternatively would it be just the same if I were to put a GTX 760 into my current 2009 mac and run bootcamp (windows). ($250 for card plus $120 for windows)? (The 760 from what I’ve read does work in a 2009 mac).
tiggus - Have you ever tried running bootcamp on that iMac to see if it runs smoother in the alternative operating system?
If you’re going to get a Windows PC then build one yourself, you can save money and it’s not difficult. If you were planning on spending the money on a with Dual D700’s then you could still get a very good PC for much cheaper with something like a GTX 780, I think the GTX 760 is a great standard where you can get high graphics quality at around the right framerate, but if you can afford it certainly consider something better.
I don’t know that the newer graphics cards would be supported on a 5 year old Mac, PCI Express 3.0 wasn’t out then so even if it worked it wouldn’t run as well as it should.
PCIE3/16x/etc only really matters when you’re running 3+ GPUs, a single GPU isn’t flooding the bus regardless.
Personally, in his situation, I’d buy the upgraded video card for his existing mac, and see if that performs acceptably for him(it should really), if not, then consider other options.
Just installed the GTX 760 ($300) into my 2009 mac. It helped a lot. It still doesn’t run stellar. I will try i the next few days to see how it runs under windows bootcamp. For now it’s at least to a point I can learn more comfortably, but doubt I could develop anything real.
Wait, UE4 can’t utilize multiple GPUs? Is that true, and are they planning to fix that? I was planning to run two GTX770s in SLI instead of a single GTX780, 'cause I’d get a lot more power for the same cost.
Yes, it’s true. I’m not sure if they’re ever planning on adding support, I think they would have to work with Nvidia and it might be a problem that they are changing the engine a lot. Typically you would add SLI support on a per-game basis, so if you’re wanting SLI then you might have to talk to Nvidia about how to add support for your game.
Wanted to update this thread for any mac users in my situation. I have now installed Windows 8.1 on a bootcamp dedicated drive in my computer and tested a couple scenes
Mobile Temple is now 59 fps vs. 17 in OSX
Shooter Game is now 44 fps vs 10 in OSX
And I should mention these were all tested in the editor. When I played them as standalone games they both played at 62 fps
So clearly the mac version is in need of some great improvement. But for 100 dollars or so for Windows you can still participate on your machine.
I have a GTX 760 as well, but just on a PC. I’m seeing very similar performance in windows, just in case you were curious what other people were experiencing with that card.
I’m investigating why faster Nvidia cards in a 2012 or earlier are noticeably slower under OS X than they are under Windows when running the same OpenGL 3 renderer (you need to run from the command line with -opengl under Windows for a like-for-like comparison). I don’t see anything like this performance gap with the AMD GPUs like the D*00 series in the 2013 's, nor is it apparent with the mobility GPUs in the MacBook Pros and iMacs AFAIK.
The iMac’s GPU is actually a mobility part and is therefore nowhere near as fast you might expect were you to lookup the performance of the desktop part. The OS X performance should be roughly equivalent to the performance under Windows using Bootcamp and supplying the ‘-opengl’ command-line switch to UE4Editor. If it isn’t then I want to know.
This is the machine I’m currently using as my main UE4 rig (8 core, Dual FirePro D700), and it works great. It might be the case, as a few have suggested, that a gaming card would be better suited to the task, but there aren’t a lot of options for gaming cards for us Mac users. If you’re buying a new machine primarily for UE4, a high-end Windows-based gaming rig will probably get you the best bang for your buck, but if you’re a Mac user and already have or can afford the D700, you’ll find it to be a great machine for UE4 no ifs, ands, or buts.
That mac “could” be better for your work, but are you sure or just eating Apple marketing? Unless the software you need to use doesnt work in windows, a PC with windows or linux is a much better bet, you will get twice the power for the same price, or even better, if you just build your pc or go to a store so they build it for you(normally they charge 40$ for building it). Macs are only good if you really dont want to deal with windows or just prefer to spend twice more so its pretty and easy to use.