Game Dev's prefer intel?

[averagemoe]

Let me explain myself before I ask my question. I currently have my AMD FX6100 3.4Ghz cpu from 2012. I want to start planning upgrades and am confused as to what to choose. I want to get into game development using Unreal Engine 4/Unity, but I'm not sure which cpu to get. My friend reccommends AMD because they perform better with 3d graphics and video rendering, but I was looking at PC Gamer's "Show Us Your Rig" article and it seems every single game dev they interview uses Intel i7. So if someone could explain why, and possibly recommend a certain cpu that would be great. Price is sort of an issue, but recommend it even if its pricey (I'll figure something out).

 

[Vic Rattlehead]

Because it's nearly impossible to program a game to perfectly spread tasks across all available cores, and this is the situation that current AMD CPUs require to perform as well as Intel CPUs. When you're specifying certain threads for certain tasks, and need to make sure that your game runs well on all types of processors, programming for AMD CPUs just becomes very difficult just because of how they need tasks split up to perform optimally, as most games' struggle to run the mainthread efficiently on AMD CPUs due to the lack of high single-threaded horsepower.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

Intel Core I7 is much stronger than any AMD CPU, that's why devs prefer Intel.

 

[averagemoe]

I read somewhere that modern games are starting to use more cores, making AMD a better choice. Is that true? And also, what would be a good intel cpu to get? i7 4790k?

 

[photonboy]

I read somewhere that modern games are starting to use more cores, making AMD a better choice. Is that true?

No.
It's a bit complicated but games won't change quickly, and Intel has roughly 50% more performance per core (4th gen Intel to FX). There are low price points it arguably makes sense such as your FX-6100 due to its low price.

As a GAME DEVELOPER, during game development it's the "per core" performance of the Intel CPU that will run those tools better as they won't be fully threaded.

*Having said that, I'm not sure that you necessarily need a new computer to develop games anyway. Why not just start using Unity (because it's free) and play around with it using your existing PC?

Most of game dev time is spent thinking and working with tool boxes not rendering. Even when rendering you don't need to do that at full quality so a high-end PC isn't a necessity to develop games well.

A second monitor for example might be your best upgrade.

Other:
Don't trust friends advice solely. Go look at benchmarks.

 

[averagemoe]

I read somewhere that modern games are starting to use more cores, making AMD a better choice. Is that true?

No.
It's a bit complicated but games won't change quickly, and Intel has roughly 50% more performance per core (4th gen Intel to FX). There are low price points it arguably makes sense such as your FX-6100 due to its low price.

As a GAME DEVELOPER, during game development it's the "per core" performance of the Intel CPU that will run those tools better as they won't be fully threaded.

*Having said that, I'm not sure that you necessarily need a new computer to develop games anyway. Why not just start using Unity (because it's free) and play around with it using your existing PC?

Most of game dev time is spent thinking and working with tool boxes not rendering. Even when rendering you don't need to do that at full quality so a high-end PC isn't a necessity to develop games well.

A second monitor for example might be your best upgrade.

Other:
Don't trust friends advice solely. Go look at benchmarks.

I currently have a 6870 1GB card, Would that be able to handle dual monitor in UE4/Unity?

 

[Vic Rattlehead]

Adding a second monitor doesn't really use much GPU horsepower as long as the second monitor is only being used for web browsing and whatnot. It wouldn't be able to play over 2 monitors, but it would have no issue just having a second monitor hooked up. You might lose like 3 frames per second.

 

[averagemoe]

Thanks so much for the help guys. What a great community, I didn't expect this to get answered so quickly. Absolutely amazing.

 

[Ryanrenesis]

It gets exponentially harder to program a game to efficiently use more cores than 4. It is far harder to balance a heavy load across 8 weak cores than it is to balance it across 4 strong cores.

That is why game developers prefer Intel.