what kind of pc hardware do you have

just wondering what kind of ram , cpu and gpu do you guys use for unity and if you use it blender

ive only a 64bit i3 with 3 gb of ram and it stalls every now and then so just wondering what you use

 

I have a home-built machine that's a little bit aged but I don't usually have issues with it unless I'm running a really resource-intensive program. No issues with Unity or Blender.

• Asus M4A785-M Motherboard
• AMD Athlon X4 - Quad Core Processor
• NVIDIA GEForce 9500GT
• 4GB RAM

Not listing things that aren't interesting (PSU, Case, etc).

 

Upgrade your ram and buy an HD 6450($30). I used to use Unity, Blender, Photoshop on my Dual Core i5, 4gb ram Inel HD 3000 Macbook Pro. Upgraded to 16gb ram, helped.

 

That is nowhere near enough RAM. At the very least, bare minimum, just barely scraping by? You should have 4 gigs. For a bit more breathing room while still on a budget? 8 gigs. Ideally? 16.

 

How about your harddrive? It could be bottlenecking some stuff.

 

I need to upgrade to a PC box soon, and was thinking of this build - anyone give some advice on it?

http://3xs.scan.co.uk/shared/78d5efae-3cf2-4c20-b7d1-81b5e4de964c

(Ignore the intro text as I modified some of the options)

 

Rob, a maxed out Imac will get you better specs.

 

How though? that PC there is 512gb ssd + 780 TI GTX factory overclocked and best i7K 4 core possible overlocked to 4.6 gb.

I do love the iMac a great deal, but the only place where it's anywhere better would be the cinema display + 1 gig more vram. But the iMac haunts me. Its so pretty.

 

The suckiest you can find anywhere!

 

The 780m is not comparable to a 780, it is SLOWER than a GTX 660 Ti, and the 780 Ti clearly is way better than the 660 Ti.

 

Robert I would throw an extra 40 bucks into a upgrade on the motherboard and possibly faster RAM. I mean come on, why not throw an extra 40 out for peace of mind that you have more reliable parts.

 

Commodore 64

 

Got one.

So the 2133 ram is actually faster than the lower latency 1600? I had thought timings were more important.

 

Dont go near a nvidia card less than a reference 780 unless you wanna go back to 580, that said, good machine, i like it

My machine is aging and im not even sure my computer knows how much ram is has, neverminds me (tends to be irrelevant now i just use big apps for baking and Unity crashes at the 3gig mark) - i7s are always a wonder though

 

One of the best investments I made was into a 512Gb SSD so I can strongly recommend that. Remainder is i7 3.7Ghz, 8Gb DDR3 Ram and Geoforce 580Gtx, CPU and GFX overclocked 10%.

 

I like that, double up the 580 for extra fun - there's some beautifully cooled 580s now that will sli easily and save you a ton of money over plumping for a titan or whatever

Also most i7s OC on air quite comfortably if nothing else is heating everything up

 

I'm not much of a fan of dual gpus purely because more power, more heat, more things that can go wrong and some games still screw things up. But, 1600 with lower timings or 2100 ram with slightly less good timings?

1600MHz, CAS 9-9-9-24, 1.5V

or

1866MHz, CAS 9-10-9-27, 1.5V

or

2133MHz, CAS 11-11-11-27, 1.5V

Bearing in mind they'll overclock it for me.

 

go with the one you choose at first. Why? Because it doesnt matter http://www.techradar.com/news/computing-components/upgrades/why-pc-memory-no-longer-matters-1076180

 

I was doing a lot of research a couple of months ago when I needed to build a new PC, and the general consensus seemed to be that most of the difference between RAM timings and frequencies once you get up into the levels you're talking about is negligible except for squeezing out a little extra from RAM benchmark scores.. I ended up just getting some Crucial 1600Mhz with I think 9 CAS, no problems.

Not an expert on the matter, that's just the conclusion my Google searches led me to fwiw.

 

My concern is basically as it's overclocked to 4.6 ghz, it will cause the 1600 ram timings to be inflated in order to be stable - that is unless that's nothing to do with it (it used to be back 6-7 years ago when I last built a PC). Read some nonsense or other about GPUs liking high bandwidth ram as well, but the whole thing baffles me.

Perhaps I deserve an iMac instead.

 

as far as I know, this is not the case anymore! If you have the money you can get ram with higher clock speed. There is definatly no disadvantage ( but to my knowlege no advantage either )

Dont get me wrong, the OS is quite lovely but the rest is just overpriced! So much wasted money

 

I am using an amd 8320 @ 4.3ghz, amd 7970 @ 1.1ghz and 8GB ddr3 1600.

I plan to upgrade to 16GB ram soon.

 

I'm currently using an Intel Pentium Core 2 Duo at 2.8GHz, 4GB of DDR2 RAM, a 100GB HDD at 7200RPM and a Geforce 9600GT

OS is Windows XP 32bit

So far I've been able to manage using a lot of newer lightweight open source software, and Blender always works pretty darn smooth as long as I don't go crazy with sub-surf modifiers, which isn't something I'd really need to do for games anyways. I can't use any DX10 or 11 features like geometry shaders or anything but for the basics it works dandy.

Being more art focused I can get by with FireAlpaca and Blender for most of my art needs. Though I do plan to upgrade to a much better computer once I save up for my specific budget. Though this computer is pretty darn old, the motherboard, CPU, etc all are pretty much 7ish years old and I haven't really had any problem with my hardware other than a small noisy fan.

 

Price out a similar all in one desktop to the iMac. Price out a similar Mini PC to the Mac Mini. Price out a similar Ultra book that is as thin as the Macbook Air. Price out a similar laptop that has the same resolution and build quality as the Macbook Pro. Any metal Ultra book with specs like a Macbook Pro is around the same price or more.

 

I would say you can stay with 1GB RAM if your game will be small in ram size, ....

but every time you'll want more you'll figure out it'll start to write on your HDD as frame will drop at 1 frame per 1-2 sec
and once you will run out of HDD virtual ram your game could crash and OS as well.

Proc: i7 920 267GHZ
Graph: ATI 4800 - don't look at me I hate it the day I bought it, ... Nvidia is way better, ...
RAM: 6GB ram
HDD: SSD 10GB, HDD 1TB, HDD 200GB

 

@Laptops Ultrabooks; Somewhat true but you can get much better machines for much less if you look at custom made laptops (not DELL, HP but Clevo / Sager types). Also, last year PC models will price-drop much faster then Apple's. Build quality is almost the same for high-end PC laptops (metal uni-case, screeen and such) then Apple's now. (wasn't true 2 years ago)

Ex; https://www.mythlogic.com/configure.php?id=147 for $1,882.38 you get a laptop that runs circles around a maxed-out 13" Macbook Pro. For the base price of $1,440.53, incl 3 year parts + shipping warranty, its still 500$ cheaper and better (GPU) than a comparable 13" Macbook.

Better CPU, GPU, RAM + 3 Storage slots and a 1080p beautiful screen with a nice alum body. Yes it's not retina but who cares with a 13". (I have that particular laptop, FYI)

@Desktops: Mostly false by a big margin if you don't buy pre-made computers. Again, look at small shops building PCs... not the huge corps like Dell.

@Price for Desktops: If you build it yourself you can save big. The margin is even bigger compared to Apple hardware. Building a PC now is much easier than before... almost plug play for 99% of the time. Go with safe brands and never forget that Google is your friend.

Conclusion: Apple hardware is overpriced by as much as 50% for laptops and over 50% for desktops if you know where to search. It all depends on your development priorities after all.

Cheers.

 

iMac: XPS 27, better CPU, touchscreen, and optical drive (~2000)
Mac Mini: Couldn't find one near the specs, either sucked or OP.
Macbook Air : Samsung Series 5 UltraTouch(~500) with better specs in everything except HDD and you keep 500 dollars!!!!
Macbook Pro: Asus N550JV(~1000) Only 1.5k cheaper than the equivalent Macbook!!! Only thing is no Retina, but if your crafty you could replace the screen and still save over 1k.

I also like how you don't ask for the Mac Pro equivalent

Im not an Apple hater; I'm typing this from my OVERPRICED iPad and may buy a MacBook Pro soon.

Edit: I really like the new logo design and UDS, good work!

 

SSD is really a booster, if you like to work multiple projects (opening big projects) or big / multiple files with photoshop. And it also speeds up things a lot when you run out of ram.

My pc is basic iMac with ssd/hdd hybrid, and its more than enough. Sure i would like to have even better one ..but for sure, good packet.

Hardware Overview:


Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac13,1
Processor Name: Intel Core i5
Processor Speed: 2.7 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 8 GB

 

I don't give a S*** if a Mac is overpriced because I will gladly pay that premium to completely divorce Windows from my workflow for everything but testing.

 

I can't really give advice on the build itself, but I will say Scan 3XS give superb service. I recently bought my laptop (LG1710, a Clevo P170SM chassis) from them and they did a great job, building it and delivering it within a week and I've not had a single problem. They also are very open to answering any questions you have, I spent a few weeks before buying it discussing it with them on their forums. I would recommend posting on their forum if you need help deciding about memory and the like. Another great thing about Scan is, because they're a big supplier of components, you pretty much pick whatever components you want even if they're not listed as options on the 3XS site.

 

I'm not sure how relevant this is anymore, i havent myself a dual card setup (a single 580 is more than enough for everything i've done so far) but overheating i cant see being a problem - my msi twin frozr 2 does have well regarded cooling anyways and it never gets remotely hot, i suggested doubling because if you're buying an older card you're saving a bit of money anyways, and you're actively throwing money away by completely replacing it with a significantly more expensive newer card should that come along. maybe more aimed at people who aret you as your chosen card is fine anyways

 

Dual GPU's are more trouble than they're worth. My previous machine had dual GTX 460m's and while they did give a suitable performance boost on some games, comparable to a single higher end card which would have cost more, the high end games where I really wanted the extra power to be used all had problems with the dual card setup. Some of those games simply didn't give much better performance than when only one card was active, but some were unplayable without disabling the second card, one example being Crysis 2 which had crazy graphics corruption on dual cards due to problems syncing data (e.g. render targets, realtime GI data) between the two cards, similarly Rage had issues with it's megatexturing on dual cards for similar reasons. I think Rage was eventually patched but I'm unsure about Crysis 2, I got so fed up I gave up and just disabled the second card while I played it. From my experience I would recommend spending the bit more to get a single card rather than two cheaper cards. Though, there is an exception if you want a second card to dedicate to PhysX, that doesn't cause problems.

 

I've got a..

AMD FX 8150
12 GB of Ram (had 16, but a stick died on me)
Gigabyte 990X Mobo
1x GeForce 570 GTX

I used to use Blender, but have since then moved to play with Cinema 4D. Regardless, with the card I use, and the processor (8 cores), it all renders fairly quickly. The added amount of ram is nice for multitasking with little to no hesitation.

 

Is that simple conjecture or is there data to support it? Just curious.

Sounds more like personal experience rather than fact. I, myself, have had no problems with dual GTX 760s in SLI, but that's just been my personal experience.
However, if you've more information outside your own experience, I love to see it. If there are issues with dual GPUs I want to be able to effectively address them in my own system.

At Work:
Cooler Master HAF 932 ATX Full Tower
Asus P9X79 Deluxe LGA 2011 Motherboard
Intel i7-3930K 3.2GHZ Sandy Bridge-E LGA 2011 (3.8GHZ Turbo)
G.SKILL Trident X 64GB DDR3-2400 PC3-19200
EVGA Signature GeForce GTX 690 4GB 512bit GDDR5
Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold Series 1200 watt 80 Plus PSU

At Home:
Cooler Master HAF 912 ATX Mid Tower
Asus Maximus VI GENE Motherboard
Intel i7-4770K 3.5GHZ LGA 1150 (OC'd to 4.2 GHZ)
G.SKILL RIPJAWS 32GB DDR3-1866 PC3-14900 (OC'd)
EVGA GeForce GTX 760 FTW 4GB 256bit GDDR5 x 2 in SLI (OC'd)
EVGA SuperNOVA NEX750G 80 Plus Gold Certified 750 watt PSU

 

Well, the story goes, through the 600 anf 700 series of gaming nvidia cards they changed the architecture of the compute cores. Not really sure of the details but AMD have been almost shockingky hamering them in compute performance (many benchmarks are meaningless, but one marked a 6x compute improvement over an nvidia card). Nvida intend to push compute up to their workstation carda forgetting compute is becoming increasingly important in games

The 580 was the last 'uncrippled ' card (the potential is still actually on the card in later nvidia cards, just not connected) and its considerably cheaper than a 780 and i'll warrant in sli edging to the top of the pile. Given my card has no problem with non-directx11 effects (i think directx11 blur post effects were the reason for my 470 sounding like jet taken off), i would if possible (no idea how possible) use a second card for, as you say, physics, and really al the other non-graphics stuff that gpus do amazingly well these days. I dont really see them us so much use for traditional dx9 style graphical approaches as a single 580 gtx will manage that fine

Without wanting to sound like a killjoy, getting a 760 with 4gig of vram is a bit of a waste, the card isnt strong enough to even move all that data around - you coulda gotten a 580 with 3gig that would be much more efficient (except if you count pennies on your electric bill)

780 upwards is a good place for nvidia cards at the moment but now i realise opencl is becoming so widly adopted, id be at an AMD card much more ahhpily, troucing at compute tasks, being affordable and fast, and having a bunch of new, actually possiby revolutionary performance improvements waiting. im not into brand loyalty - for making buildings in revit or autocad, maybe a tesla is better, but for gaming (making and playing), AMD have it in numbers atm. esp when you realise (and you should) that so much is going to be moved to the gpu soon that theres likely a paradigm shift waiting for how games are being made at all