Currently I dual boot Windows and Linux, using Windows for things like Unreal Engine and Unity, and Linux for well… everything else. However one of my phone applications has a really high demand for a iOS port, and I was already needing a laptop for working when I’m not home anyway. I’m curious as to how Unreal Engine will hold up on the 2015 Macbook Pro, or how the Mac version of UE4 is doing, considering all of the posts I’ve seen about it in the past was simply that it’s the most unstable piece of bad-performing software you can download for Mac game development. However most of these posts date back to Unreal Engine 4.5.0
I’m curious as to how the performance of Unreal Engine on Mac is doing now and if it’s worth getting a Macbook Pro instead of just a Macbook. Being able to work in Unreal during my free time when I’m away from my desk would be lovely, considering I’m a hobbyist game developer.
Looks like that only the 15-inch MacBook Pro with 2.5GHz CPU can offer sort-of OK performance. The rest of them have intel GPUs - don’t even bother with them.
I ended up purchasing the MacBook Pro 13’ with the 2.7GHz i5 processor. It has 8GB of 1867MHz DDR3 RAM, and the Intel IRIS 6100 1.5GB video display.
For anyone that is curious, the blank unreal project loads like absolute aids. The scene is choppy and laggy, running the blank project as a standalone game averages about 16fps with horrible camera lag.
Not recommended for graphical development or gameplay testing.
Very dissapointed that a $1500 machine can’t even run a basic project with more than 20fps. This is what apple considers a “Pro” machine, now I remember why I hated them.
Maya isn’t a Real time 3d software, it doesn’t need a powerful GPU
and unity is, well!! it’s unity lol duuh even even unity5 is barley at UE3 level when it comes to graphics, but i do believe that unity Editor is somehow still optimized better (by default) than UE
to me i think UE4 was created for desktop GPUs and they never recommend you an integrated GPU or a mobile one , i’ve tested it with a GTX 650 ti , a 2012 med-range and barley can keep up with the cheapest of the GTXs of our days yet it’s running really really good i was surprised in my opinion if you want to develop games don’t go with intel IGPU no matter how will they perform there is always that application that hates it lol and refuse to run probably on them take an example the pre 2015 Mudbox just be safe and buy a computer with a dedicated GPU and desktop is always the better choice unless you’re out of choices.
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I suggest your RETURN your MBP 13" ASAP AND/OR EXCHANGE IT**
I’m sorry I couldn’t warn you earlier. The Macbook so-called “Pro” 13-inch is way, way below par. My Macbook Pro 15" at least has a quad-core, 16GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, but still only Intel Integrated, but at least Iris Pro (GT2 or something, can play most new games 1920x1080 on Low/Medium/MediumHigh or what not) - but NOT RECOMMENDED.
The only recommended Mac laptop for Unreal Engine 4 is the Macbook Pro 15" WITH THE DEDICATED GPU: Buy MacBook Pro - Apple <–THE $2,500 ONE
QuadCore (Haswell, I believe), 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD (the latest ones from Apple are very fast), AMD R9 370MX 2GB, you can switch to Intel Integrated Graphics when not needing that power.
The other advantage of the 15" MBP with that specs is that you can use RDM (Retina Display Menu*) to run EVERYTHING AT 4K for testing and screen capture, etc. That’s how I view my 4K videos in, well, 4K (4K rendered from Matinee frame-by-frame then FFMpeg video encoding).
I’m not sure of the exact performance of the 370MX but at least you can look up PC and Mac gaming benchmarks on it and get an idea including when running it at 2K (using Retina Display Menu etc).
At this point you have to be quite dedicated in developing for the Mac and iOS platform or really like Macs overall to do Unreal Engine 4 development on a Mac. Don’t get me wrong, with OS X El Capitan Epic ~should~ bring Metal to the Mac so you should see significant improvements in performance on Mac… but again a Mac laptop (the $2,500 one being the only option) should be I think, mainly if you are seriously cross-compiling for Mac - which is fair enough, Mac games are a signficant market etc.