Getting Ready for Diablo III on the Cheap
By
Peter Brown, Editor
We show you how easy it can be to get Diablo III up and running on rather modest means, including one unusual recommendation that might surprise you.
Any PC game that's as anticipated as Diablo III manages to conjure fear of hardware inadequacy. Quite often, uninformed system upgraders/builders construct a system that is way out of their price range and generally too powerful for the game that led them into this frenzied state to begin with. We're here to help with a short but sweet guide to make sure you're prepared come May 15 without spending unnecessary amounts of cash.
In an effort to calm this zeal-fueled hunt for the "perfect" system, we've assembled a handful of scenarios and laid out the most reasonable plan of attack. This is not a guide for extreme hardware enthusiasts, but for "average" gamers who might be on a bit of a budget, or simply unsure about what their options are. We do take the viability of our recommendations in regard to the current PC gaming landscape into consideration, but it's not our primary concern. Thankfully, if you are only interested in Diablo III, it won't cost you an arm and a leg to get it running, even on high settings.
Here's a video we made in October 2011 showcasing the various quality settings and their impact on the visuals. This footage is obviously from the beta, but it's a fair approximation of the final product.
Diablo III – Required Hardware Specifications
Diablo III will run in both Windows and Mac OS X, but most people upgrading or building systems are looking for a PC, so that will be our focus. There are three main components that will influence the viability of your system: CPU, GPU (video card), and RAM. Here are the hardware requirements and recommendations, straight from Blizzard.
| Component | Minimum Reqs. | Recommended Reqs. |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Pentium® D 2.8 GHz or AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 4400+ | Intel® Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 5600+ 2.8 GHz |
| GPU | NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800 GT or AMD ATI Radeon™ X1950 Pro | NVIDIA® GeForce® 260 or AMD ATI Radeon™ HD 4870 |
| RAM | 1 GB (XP), 1.5 GB (Vista/7) | 2 GB |
In true Blizzard fashion, Diablo III will run on most machines built within the last five years. You may have to survive on low settings with an aging system, but for Diablo, that's an acceptable scenario. Even on the lowest settings, you can still appreciate Diablo III's masterful art direction.
Still, it doesn't take much in today's market to bump the graphical settings to medium or high, even if you're limited by a budget. To give you a better idea of what I mean, let's look at the quality settings within the game and examine their relationship to your hardware.
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Determines the clarity and size of textures used throughout the game. Texture Quality relies on your total video memory (VRAM).
Low: 256 MB High: 512 MB |
Determines the realism of colliding objects and gravity. Physics Quality relies on your computer's processor (CPU).
Off: No shadows Low: 75% Reduction High: No Reduction |
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Controls both the method and quality of shadows. Decreasing this may greatly improve performance.
Off: No shadows Low: Low-resolution terrain shadows, blob shadows for units. Medium: Low-resolution terrain shadows, high-resolution dynamic shadows near player. High: High-resolution dynamic shadows for entire scene. |
Controls the density and the distance at which ground clutter items like grass and foliage are placed.
Low: Short distance at which clutter items are placed with low density. Medium: Medium distance at which clutter items are placed with medium density. High High distance at which clutter items are placed with high density. |
Shadow Quality
Texture Quality
With all that info under our belt, let's take a look at some of the options when it comes to upgrading an existing machine.
By
Peter Brown, Editor
Peter Brown has been writing about video games and hardware since 1999. He grew up with the NES and has an unwavering love for retro and arcade games. Though he's a New England native, he's called the Bay Area home since 2004.
462 comments
This Peter Brown is really involve at promoting US based and game companies and flaming Tokyo based...
I m guessing he is earning an extra pay check, month in, month out...
The publicity D3 gets is disgusting though, a large proportion of every new article is a new publicity to D3, the log in failure. Why would anyone invest on a game, that does not even boost when the players wants, just because of a server error?
I believe that everyone who has a super premium corporal internet connection and paid the super premium price tag for D3, already has D3. This article one aims to bring more clients, in my high end PC, the bet looked cartoony and ugly as hell, this is not the game that would force anyone to make a hardware upgrade, Crysis 2 is...
However this article exposes how badly optimized this game is, in lower settings, in a 3-5 year old pc, it looks like a 10 year old game...
Shame, since was used to be Blizzard's strong point, but i guess Blizzard as we knew them are no more...
AMD Athlon? 64 X2 3800+and ATI Radeon HD 2400XT 256MBI check and my video is listed as LOW so i can run it right?
IT RAN ON INTEL GMA 4500MHD!!! SUCCESS!!! Everything was fine until the part where the servers died...
@ThAdEa82 You had to change something in order to start the game? I read in the Beta that you had to change some config file to even start the game with that graphic card. It ran at what resolution, specs and fps, exactly?
This is my System: http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/7466/overkillo.png
QUAD SLI GTX 690s OH YEA!
System requirements lab said my graphics card didn't meet the min. requirement. I have an ATI Radeon 4200 with 256 mb.
I have a Macbook PRo with 2.8ghz 2 duo, nvidia geforce 9400m and geforce 9600m gt.
Will my MBP run Diablo 3 and how well?
@x2rufff4u your eyes will dry out like dry old paint and turn to stone from watching how slow the game will run on your system lol, Windows will make a new Blue screen for you, yes NEW. your PC will crash and open an gate way to the classic Another World setting where you must fight your way though a world with 3colours to live with :-)
1 Like If you concerned, you can build a cheap rig using the AMD/ATI APG (CPU + GPU on a single chip), for around 500. I would recommend the A8 APU, as they have faster CPUs and a dual ATI chipsets. The A8-3870K is reasonably priced.
@klugenbeel hit that up with 8 gigs of ram and a 6670 and boom duel graphics with the 6550 of the 3870k Apu turning them into the radeon 6590D. its runs diablo on ultra settings. no hiccups
I have a 560Ti 2gb gddr5. I Runs everything close to maxed and I got a great deal on it. Skyrim runs awesome without a bit of slow down.
These requirements are pretty low. It would be cheap just to buy the parts listed lol. I mean unless you gave your change to a homeless guy..
MINIMUM... - GPU NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800 GT or AMD ATI Radeon? X1950 Pro
This means nothing to me... can someone translate please? Intel GMA 4500MHD...will it run? (my guess is no) Even if the Diablo games never seemed like they needed to ask much of video cards...but apparently do for some reason
You can play it on medium settings with a gpu that costs as low as the game :P SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6670 1GB 128-bit DDR3 $64.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102988 so I don't think it asks much of a video card...
@Coseniath Thanks for the recommendation. I only have a laptop and from what I hear I am SOL with this game unless I get some other computer (from what I hear)
For those also who want to buy a gpu just to maximize gpu settings:
At the open beta I played a lot and all areas.
The game used only 70% max of the gpu and 490 max VRAM (GTX570 slightly factory o/ced).
So just go for a gpu with the 70% of the gpu power of a GTX570/HD6970 with any amount of RAM (there are no new gpus with lower than 768/1024MB VRAM anymore...)
Want to know if your graphics card is good enough to play Diablo 3?Here is a list of supported cards. http://www.brainlazy.com/article/video-games/diablo-3-graphics-card-video-card-enough/
1 Like +1
I just checked this list and its nice. It misses some new gpus, but what the hell, the new gpus wouldnt have any prob running it.
Bottom line is Blizzard is setting a trend that goes back in time instead of looking for the future! I wonder when Blizzard starts releasing games that say on box, "6 year old pc required to play our game!". It wouldn't surprise me in the least.
The guy who claims Skyrim is taxing because of graphics is crazy. What computer do you have? I run SLI GTX 680's, 12 gigs of ram, and a new 2011 socket 6 core cpu from intel rated at 3.8 gigaherts. If I take off vsync I get close to 100 fps everywhere in skyrim in 1080p resolution on a 32inch sony Bravia led 240hz tv with every setting maxed out. No game is ever taxing on my pc's because I upgrade every 1.5 year. Build gaming machine and stay current on technology or don't play computer games because you ruin it for the enthusiasts!
The game play will be solid and it will be fun and I know this because I was in the beta. But they failed me on the graphics part. No directx 11 support = fail. No tessellation support = fail. No shader 6.0 = fail. No doubt Diablo 3 will have huge sells and Blizzard will make hand over fist. With that said I have to ask the question?????? Why make a otherwise flawless game and then gimp everyone with 6 year old graphics?? Blizzard did this with WOW at launch. I mean look at Everquest 2 which was released around the same time as WOW. EQ2's graphics capabilities were light years ahead of WOW. They need to make there games have state of the art graphics, but make it scale-able so low end machines can run it where it looks like crap and people with 3,000+ dollar rigs like my self can gasp in awe at the pretty graphics. This is one thing about Blizzard I always hated. However, with that being said I like the Diablo series enough to play it with 6 year old graphics. It just saddens me that Blizzard operates like this.
sup m8, i believe we could not set up the full graphics in the beta, beside that i thought the graphics were nice. and im pretty sure your pc will have a hard time when the screen is full of creeps and demons with all the effects and so on. not to mention how busy the psix engine will be
Basically, I think the system requirements for Diablo 3 are a joke. Bottom line is the game will be awesome, but the graphics are very much outdated at release. This is very disappointing to someone who has a very high end SLI computer. I can only hope that someone will release a graphics mod for Diablo 3 that will make the graphics relevant to the year 2012 and fix the one thing Blizzard failed at.
1 Like Just because the graphics requirements are low doesn't mean the game is going to be bad or it's going to look graphically impaired, it just means Blizzard is increasing it's game selling audience. The game looks and runs great and it's a good thing that people can play the game comfortably without a decked out computer. More power to the little guy with the average PC.
@E-i-N-e That's not really an excuse to make a game with horribly dated graphics, I played it and it looks rather bad. Not average or so-so, plain out bad. And I don't see any other producer taking cover when they make a game with bad graphics. Everybody criticized Skyrim for its poor textures even though it was already taxing for even brand new machines.
Graphics options are there for a reason. When I crank out a new game to the max, it should look NEW. Not like it came out 5 years ago.
game don't take much. got my friend's phenom ii 955 with his radeon 4890 running stock speeds and blowing this game away. if you've played anything big in the last 4-5 years with decent frames you will play this the same way.
To be honest I played it with my desktop and my laptop and I found it always smooth. Well, my laptop is 5-6 years old with a p8400 inter cpu @2.26ghz, 4gb ram and the "mythic" 9600GT. With that specs I had only a little problem during a fight with over 20-30 monsters, but for the rest it was smooth as hell. So, u don't need an exaggerated pc.
Using Q9300@2.5GHz, GB-GTS250 1GB, 4GB ram on XPSP3 x86(32b) last beta ran fine* everything high, no need for normal antialiasing anymore, because of the FXAA (comes with beta driver 301.24 so far for nvidia) that gives 4xAA effect with 60% more performance than a normal 4xAA, though fonts are kinda effected by it too, but it's more like an issue of getting used to new font style kinda. *Well using only monitors that are on lower native like mine 1440x900, because 1980x1020 is useless on small monitors and especially sucks when using a non native res on lcd/led monitor the image is blurry, never happened on CRT, that's why I was like wondering great yeah smaller, but the image quality got shittier, CRT monitors have crystal clear images because they used glass not somekinda plastic feeling glass, I still can see on most of the LCD/LED (some of the laptops don't have those looks) monitors have that grainy look on the images, especially when very bright images and looking at it in a dark room.
1 Like @maitkarro u seein some very crappy, very old LCD monitors then. got a CRT 1024 right next to my LCD 1080 and the CRT looks like sh*t compared to the LCD even when they're at same res. come out of the cave and experience real hi-res.
I got a i5 with 6 gigs and a intel 3000HD intergrated . Beta ran very well on low settings. Hope final product isnt any different.
I essientually have a new system, i7-2600k, 16GB DDR3 on an EVGA Z68. The only thing is I'm still running Dual 9800GTX+, Managed to max out the settings on the beta :) I can't wait to play this on tuesday
1 Like this article is gud but i m playing Diablo 3 beta with no problem and games like Battlefield 3 ,Batman,COD MW3 ,F12011 and mass effect 3 run fine on my system and I only SPEND 350 $ on my PC my system spec. Intel Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz 4GB DDR2 800 MHZ RAM ,Powercolor HD 6770 ,550W Cooler Master Ex. PSU ,& i recommended HD 6770 bcoz excellent value of money bw 100$ -120$ ,even this graphic card better perform than Nvidia T550I ,So if you spend nearly 100-120 $ go for HD6770 instead of HD6670 or any other card with that range
I have the same speccs on CPU and RAM :D.
I agree on gpus. HD6770 and GTX550ti/GTX460SE should be the MINIMUM gpu if you want a gaming pc. Don't even think of HD6670/GT440...
I ran the beta everything at max and had no problem with it!!!! I'm so excited!!! Just one more day left!!!!!
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Table of Contents
Diablo III
Not Following
-
X360, PC, PS3, MAC, PS4
- Publisher:
- Blizzard Entertainment
- Category:
- Role-Playing
- Release:
- May 15, 2012
- PEGI:
- 16+
