MVC Game Developer Workstations

This really depends on which part of Game Design the Workstation is being utilized for, but the overall best CPUs for game development in Unreal Engine is AMD’s Threadripper 7000 Series.
Most development tasks in Unreal Engine are multi-threaded and scale very well on CPUs offering a lot of cores, and developers compiling source code benefit from the quad-channel RAM available on this class of workstation.

But developers might not see enough of a speed boost from these CPUs for their specific workflow – which is notable due to the high cost of these CPUs. Studios working on smaller games or using a dedicated compile server, or individual users more focused on asset creation, may prefer to use a more affordable option like the Intel Core i9 14900K or an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X. These CPUs offer a good number of cores, while also offering high single-core clock speeds that can aid in 3D modelling application performance.

For engineers, the more CPU cores a system has the faster it will be able to compile shaders, compile code, and bake lighting. But, for more artistic workloads the core count tends to be less important, and clock speed / performance per clock is prioritized.

Again, this depends on what part of game design the workstation is used for. High clock speeds are sought after by gamers, but developers using game engines like Unreal Engine won’t experience much benefit. On the other hand, 3D modeling applications like 3ds Max and Maya do benefit from higher clock speeds – so for a game artist’s workstation you will want a balance of cores and clock speed.

At this time, AMD has a subtle lead due to high CPU core counts. Intel is a viable option, though, especially for aspects of game design that don’t need as many cores.

As of this now, the quickest GPU for game dev is the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090,
But – depending on the target platform and workflow, many developers will be able to use a more affordable GPU like the RTX 4080 Super or4070 Ti Super

The necessary amount of VRAM will depend on the target platform and desired quality setting in-engine. 8GB is enough for the majority of users.

Multiple GPUs isn’t necessary. As an example, for Unreal Engine, the GPU Lightmass feature can use multiple GPUs – but general gameplay would require a customized build of the engine. OTher game engines can be better at utilizing multiple video cards, but unless playing or testing at extremely high resolutions there is no need for more than one GPU.

Both NVIDIA and AMD-based cards work well for game development, and – as of now, the biggest difference is NVIDIA is faster with ray tracing workloads, which is a technology that is becoming increasingly common in both Game Design and – more recently, Technical Audio Design.

For Game Development workstations, there is no need for a professional video card, like NVIDIA’s RTX or RTX A-series.

This depends on the user’s workflow and software packages being used. Unreal Engine can function on a system with 16GB of RAM as long as the projects are small – but larger projects will require 32GB and the game artists that run several high-end applications at the same time need 64GB or even 128GB of RAM.

Game Engine projects can very quickly become large. 30-40GB projects are quite common and 100GB+ projects aren’t unheard of – and becoming increasingly likely with enormous open-world games and their additional DLC content and campaigns.
Having both large and gast storage is recommended, with at least 500GB NVME drives for the OS and Application and an additional 1 or 2TB NVMe drive for the project files.
Separating things like that helps protect your important data in the event that the OS needs to be reinstalled, while – of course, regular backups to external drives or networked storage is an important habit to perform intermittently.
On top of this, artists will also want a larger drives for material and reference libraries which can use a slower (and cheaper) SATA SSD or even platter hard drive.