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f13.net General Forums => Diablo 3 => Topic started by: Jacob0883 on May 26, 2012, 06:38:36 AM



Title: Diablo 3 and Laptops
Post by: Jacob0883 on May 26, 2012, 06:38:36 AM
Long story short, I have been away from computer gaming since the WOW launch.  Even then, I had started to lose any knowledge I had about computer specifications.  Now that the Diablo series is back out, I woud like to play but my current computer is about 7-8 years old and just doesn't cut it anymore.  It can barely launch Quicken for me.   

I would just buy a desktop that matches the games specifications exactly, but I can't talk my wife into another desktop.  She said laptops only which I really agree with anyway.  The problem I am having is I can't match any laptop specs to the Diablo 3 website.  I don't need an entire lesson or anything, but would it be possible to go spend about 700-800 dollars at best buy on a PC laptop and it should play Diablo 3 with medimum to low graphics (If I can spend less even cooler).  I was looking at them online last night, but the 3d cards in the laptops don't exactly match what is on the Diablo 3 website.  It will have a few extra letters at the end or the number will be GE Force 8720 which doesn't show up on their website as supported or unsupported. 

I would have just posted this on the B-net website and not bugged everyone here, but you need to have a character and I refuse to open this box until I know I have a laptop that will play it. 

Thanks for the help and hopefully everyone has been doing well over the past few years.


Title: Re: Diablo 3 and Laptops
Post by: Tannhauser on May 26, 2012, 06:48:52 AM
My Sony Vaio runs it just fine and it's two years old almost.


Title: Re: Diablo 3 and Laptops
Post by: MuffinMan on May 26, 2012, 07:01:14 AM
My total non-technical advice would be anything but a netbook is enough. It runs great on my Speak & Spell but I had to turn anti-aliasing off.


Title: Re: Diablo 3 and Laptops
Post by: IainC on May 26, 2012, 07:36:46 AM
Runs fine on my MacBook Air on with most settings on high.

The specs on that are 4GB RAM, 1.7GHz Intel i5 and Intel HD3000 graphics. I'm sure there are Windows machines with similar specs for a lot less than the cost of a MacBook.


Title: Re: Diablo 3 and Laptops
Post by: Cheddar on May 26, 2012, 07:56:45 AM
I run it just fine on my HP DV8 w/ the NVIDIA 230M.  I do get a little slowdown here and there and have all settings turned to low (still looks great, though!).  Benchmark off the 230M and go up a generation or three (my laptop is 3 or 4 years old).


Title: Re: Diablo 3 and Laptops
Post by: Soulflame on May 26, 2012, 09:02:00 AM
I'm kind of baffled.  I have a laptop with a 6770m, and I had to turn off shadows or have slowdown/stuttering.  My daughter has a laptop with an intel 3000, and it won't run on hers at all.


Title: Re: Diablo 3 and Laptops
Post by: Trippy on May 27, 2012, 03:00:23 AM
Yes you can get a laptop in your price range that can run Diablo III but it may not run much else since Diablo III can run on some pretty low end GPUs. If you want a real gaming laptop you are better off saving a couple hundred more dollars and get something that can run a wider variety of games.

Diablo III mobile benchmarks are starting to appear. Here are two sets:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5865/laptop-graphics-face-off-diablo-iii-performance
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Diablo-III-Benchmarked.74918.0.html

The list of supported GPUs on Battle.net is abbreviated, especially with regards to mobile GPUs. E.g. the NVIDIA 360M is 3 generations behind the latest NVIDIA mobile GPUs. So you'll need to look at the specs of the various mobile GPUs and guesstimate performance if the laptop you are looking at doesn't have a GPU that's been benchmarked.

Notebookcheck has a few different views of their ranking of mobile GPUs:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Computer-Games-on-Laptop-Graphic-Cards.13849.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-630M.63761.0.html

In your budget range I would recommend getting a laptop with a GPU roughly comparable to the NVIDIA 540M like this Acer on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-TimelineX-AS4830TG-6808-14-inch/dp/B006ITEB34/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338112413&sr=8-1) which is similar to the one AnandTech benchmarked.

Best Buy has an Asus - U46SM-DS51 (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Asus+-+U46SM-DS51+14.1%22+LED+Notebook+-+Intel+Core+i5+i5-2450M+2.50+GHz/5387227.p?id=1218635924935&skuId=5387227) with an NVIDIA 630M but that's more expensive at $870:




Title: Re: Diablo 3 and Laptops
Post by: Trippy on May 27, 2012, 03:05:34 AM
I'm kind of baffled.  I have a laptop with a 6770m, and I had to turn off shadows or have slowdown/stuttering.  My daughter has a laptop with an intel 3000, and it won't run on hers at all.
What resolution are you trying to run at?


Title: Re: Diablo 3 and Laptops
Post by: Soulflame on May 27, 2012, 01:26:07 PM
I'm kind of baffled.  I have a laptop with a 6770m, and I had to turn off shadows or have slowdown/stuttering.  My daughter has a laptop with an intel 3000, and it won't run on hers at all.
What resolution are you trying to run at?


1900, I think.  It runs just fine, with everything set to low, and shadows off!   :awesome_for_real:

fake edit:  1600.


Title: Re: Diablo 3 and Laptops
Post by: raydeen on June 05, 2012, 08:57:49 PM
If anyone is in the same boat I was and was getting 'Your graphics card is unsupported because you're a cheap ol' bitch and you should buy a new system and did I mention you're a cheap ol' bitch' message, edit your D3Prefs.txt so that the below lines match.

DisableTrilinearFiltering "1"

HardwareClass "1"

This should get D3 up and running on older cards. It won't be great and you'll have to lower all your settings and endure the derisive laughter of your gaming peers but you can game. I'm still playing with other settings as anything with water seems to really kill the framerate. I've seen others set HardwareClass to "2" as well but I haven't played around to see what that does. I've only played with the foreground and background fps settings.

Edit: ATI x1400 Mobility Radeon with 256 megs of ram if that puts things into perspective. It's 6 years old but I can't afford anything new for quite some time. My 2010 work supplied MacBook does run it quite well though but I'm not always on it.