We’ve seen this question come up in a variety of different ways, from developers just getting started with Unreal Engine, to those who are looking for increased speed for their larger projects.
The minimum requirements are just that, the minimum that we recommend. However, I personally am not a fan of minimum.
So the question is - what kind of hardware do you use to run Unreal Engine?
Bonus points (there are no points) for sharing a picture of your setup! I’ll take one of mine when I get home from the office.
Using 3 INtel PCs 8, 6 and 5 generation with 64/32GB memory and giving the fact that UE leaks memory pretty good, the 64GB are necessary, I would recommend that to anybody.
Now, I’m thinking about getting an AMD Threadripper for my next machine. Does anybody have experience with that and UE? Does UE utilize threads in sufficient ways to justify that?
I have been answering good part of those questions and also looking closely when people report issues with UE4 on certain setups. What I can tell is a common sense between a lot of gamedevs:
Needs for dev:
RAM - the more the better for large projects and to have the ability on having several apps opened at same time. 32 GB is the bottom line from my experience
CPU cores - multiple cores will mean different things depending you the role people have in the dev process, but C++ compilation times, shader compiling times, are affected to the better the more you have, and for nowadays prices 8 core/16 threads are cheap as hell.
VRAM - depending on what you do, you can reach the limit while tweaking stuff. Unfortunately the less you have the fast you will reach the limit, and once you reach it will crash the engine. I don’t think less than 8 GB is an option.
faster I/O with SSDs are a must. It increases loading and saving times by a lot (mine is 7x faster than a hard drive, I can tell)
Needs for testing:
RAM - min 16GB (assuming it will be the less amount a next gen console will have)
CPU cores - all current consoles are 8 cores and the roadmap for next gen consoles are saying 8 core/16 threads.
VRAM - 6GB is the minimum in my opinion.
Controversy on notebooks for gamedev (Windows/Linux):
many bugs are reported in notebook configurations with GPU (GTX 1050TI (4GB) or GTX 1060 (6GB)). There are already issues spotting with new notebooks with RTX 2060s and RTX 2070s.
notebooks have issues with overheat when too many cores compile source code or shaders (mainly the last one), added to the extra heat for the graphics card, made this not a good choice, since you decrease the overall life-spam for the machine. You will need extra cooling.
you won’t find them with enough memory, needing to upgrade to your needs
My personal setup:
AMD R7 1700 @ 3.7GHz
32 GB RAM - 2133MHz
GTX 1080 - 8GB VRAM
1 SSD 480GB for OS (this one is a SATA type - 500MB/s read and 450MB/s write speeds)
1 SSD 1TB for projects (this one is a NVMe type - 3500MB/s read and 3000MB/s write speeds)
1 HD 1TB 7200 RPM for not very often used projects and downloads from internet
CPU: Intel i7-4790K (I’ve been dying to get something faster, probably something from the Zen 2 launch)
GPU: Gigabyte GTX 1080 Ti FE
RAM: Kingston HyperX Fury 32Gb 1866Mhz
I have an original IBM PC in storage somewhere. I demand compatibility with Unreal Engine 4. There is no hard disk, but it comes with two 5-1/4 floppy drives. My current github directory for unreal is 98.8GB that is only 274,444 double density floppy disks. Sounds manageable. (totally)
I was able to get Prince of Persia to run on it once. I want to use UE4 on it. Make it happen.
I think it’s kind of crazy how overboard a lot of people have gone with hardware. I just use a ryzen 7 1700x with a radeon rx580 8gb card and 16gb of memory @ 3000Mhz and it does me just fine. I rarely touch the amount of ram I have but I don’t think going with 32gb would be a bad recommendation it just isn’t 100% necessary is all.
This is a system I only recently upgraded to a few months ago. I was running unreal on a really really old system prior to this with a phenom x6 1100T in it and 8gb of ram with a very dated and out of support HD6970 that card hasn’t had driver support since like 2016. The only real problem I ever had with that system was the 8gb of ram in it. That simply isn’t enough to get the job done. I had a few times where I ran the system right down to like 100mb of free memory and the page file was using around 9gb as well and yeah it DID finish but the system was totally unresponsive and I thought for sure it was going to bomb LOL.
I’m pretty sure you can get away with any modern 8 core+ system that has a half decent graphics card and at least 16gb of memory.
Ryzen 2700X, 32GB G.Skill 3200 (Samsung B-die) works for me for archviz. I use GPU lightmass, but would have gone as many cores as I could have afforded if I used CPU lightmass. The fast RAM (3200, 14-14-14-34) makes the editor much more responsive; Ryzen benefits a lot from it.
My last one was almost 10 years old. Built this new one by hand for the first time - feeling proud :rolleyes: