u/Electrical-Copy9678

Hi! I am about to finish high school and i wonder, is a game developement(the proggraming part) worth it or should i do cs and work on game dev along side it ? I know unity and c# some c++ and i tried ue5, i do have a personal project i am working on and i have some game jams, so, what do you think? I have seen all of these layoffs and ai and all of that and idk if i should give up on this dream and cs in general or go with it, i am not in it for the big paychecks i do like it but i am afraid that i wouldn't be able to get a job

I'm a solo game dev working on a 3D game (currently HDRP, might shift to URP for performance).

My main rig is a Ryzen 5 9600X + RX 9070 XT + 32GB DDR5, dual-booting Linux/Win11. My laptop is an 2021 i7-11800H + RTX 3050 (4GB VRAM). I travel a lot, so I need a portable replacement that's beefier than a 3050, and I'm considering a MacBook Pro 14" with an M5 or M5 Pro.

My current laptop in my simple HDRP scene (just a character controller, few cubes, test textures) runs at ~100fps at 1080p fullscreen. Task Manager shows 100% GPU usage and 6% CPU usage

Other stuff I'd use it for: coding (Rider/VS Code), Blender, DaVinci Resolve, KiCad for custom PCB, and writing.

I'm stuck between:

1. MacBook Pro 14" M5 Pro, great efficiency, battery, build quality, and that unified memory for future-proofing HDRP/URP work.

2. MacBook Pro 14" M5 (base), cheaper, but the GPU seems too weak to be a meaningful upgrade over my 3050.

3. Windows laptop with RTX 5060, like a Asus Zephyrus G14

For those of you actually using Apple Silicon Macs for Unity (especially HDRP or URP), how does the editor perform in real-world projects?

Is the CPU/memory advantage noticeable enough to justify the price over a 5060 Windows laptop?

I'm focusing on the code side at the moment, so compile times and Play Mode entry are way more important than pushing ultra settings in AAA games