What specs are good for a computer that you are planning to use Godot with?

Question

I've been using the Godot Engine for a little while now, and I've recently had the problem of my 3D games running really slowly. My computer only has 2GB of ram, and so I'm thinking that may be the problem. I now want to upgrade to a better computer, and I was wondering what specs would be good for a new computer. If you have any recommendations, or any other thoughts on what may be slowing my games down, than I'd really appreciate you sharing.

Answer 1

As a foreword, here are the software requirements for running the Godot 3.0 editor:

• Windows 7 or newer, macOS 10.10 or newer, Linux (64-bit or 32-bit x86)
• Hardware supporting OpenGL 3.3 Core Profile

Here are GPUs supporting OpenGL 3.3:

• AMD Radeon HD 7000 series GPU or newer₁
• NVIDIA GeForce 8 series GPU or newer₂
• Intel 3rd generation (Ivy Bridge) series GPU or newer

_{1: Some people have reported Radeon HD 6000 series GPUs to work as well.}

_{2: Some users have reported issues with GeForce 8 and 9 series GPUs; GeForce 400 (Fermi) GPUs and newer should always work, though.}

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As for hardware recommendations, remember that the Godot 3 renderer is fairly high-end-oriented. However, it is difficult for Godot developers to publish "universal" hardware requirements since different kinds of games are going to widely differ in terms of hardware requirements.

CPU

Any remotely modern CPU will run Godot fine; 2 cores should be enough to keep the editor running smoothly. However, if you plan on writing C++ modules or using GDNative, it's a better idea to get a quad-core CPU (or more) to help cut the compile times down.

RAM

Godot is relatively light on RAM – the editor can operate just fine with 4 GB of RAM. It's a good idea to get at least 8 GB if possible, especially if developing 3D games or when planning to run other programs in the background.

GPU

It's probably the most important part of a game development workstation. If you're going to develop 2D games, you won't need a fast GPU – integrated graphics will do fine in most cases. In contrast, if you want to develop 3D games, you will most likely need a dedicated graphics card. It doesn't always need to be very fast; even something like a GeForce GTX 1050 (which currently costs $130 in new condition) will be enough for 3D game development, provided you do not push the settings all the way up.

Storage

The Godot editor is very frugal in terms of storage space, compared to other engines such as Unity or Unreal Engine 4. As of Godot 3.0, the editor binary itself is around 35 MB uncompressed, a size which varies slightly depending on the compiler and optimizations used; export templates are 420 MB once uncompressed. Configuration and cache files weigh less than 3 MB in total, which means that a "complete" Godot editor installation will occupy less than 500 MB on disk, excluding project files.

Comments

I run Godot 3.0 on a 2nd gen HD Graphics 3000 (that's Sandy Bridge). Is that why Godot is so slow for me? Mesa having to use software rendering for some things (Sandy Bridge doesn't support GL 3.3)?

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The OpenGL version provided by the Linux drivers should be recent enough, but the Windows drivers are stuck at OpenGL 3.1 which is too old.

That said, even the Linux drivers for old generations such as Sandy Bridge tend to be less than optimal (since Intel stopped caring about them several years ago), not to mention those IGPs are very slow compared to modern generations.

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GL 3.3 has a lot of new features, and Godot uses them. Sandy Bridge does not support most of them. It's more likely that it's just the GPU not being able to do everything, and the CPU having to intervene. Especially considering that only Godot 3.0 runs this slowly, 2.1 and Unity and many games run very well (3.1's editor runs faster as well).

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Thank you sir for the explanation . I was looking forward to upgrade my computer and was looking for the right description .

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It seems to me that you have made an excellent overview of a computer that is best suited for the basics of programming