A cool article, showing different performance settings of Diablo 3 beta by Gamespot.com (Full story here)
Performance
We tried the Diablo III beta on a variety of machines, and what surprised us the most was how low we could keep going. Our first experiences with the game were on the Windows 8 preview using a Phenom X3 and a Radeon HD 5770. The game ran fine at maximum settings and at a resolution of 1920×1080. We experienced some slowdowns, but the frame rate drops had more to do with a lack of proper drivers for the operating system than actual game-related demands.
Hopping onto our test beds, we thought we’d limbo down a bit and pair up an Intel Core i3 with a practically ancient GeForce 9800 GT. Frame rates ended up pegged at 60, the maximum the monitor allowed with V-sync enabled, and we were still running with everything cranked at 1920. Clearly, we were still overestimating the game’s demands.
Off we went to our dusty 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo paired with a GeForce 8800 GT. This has to be the bottom, right? Wrong. We maxed out everything and still ended up with a machine that could output 60 frames per second under normal conditions and in average battles.
We finally got the game to chunk up when we dropped the video card down to a GeForce 8600 GTS, a midrange card that was released in 2007. At 1920×1080, with maximum settings, the game was playable if a bit jerky. Dropping the resolution down to 1280×720 resulted in smooth gameplay at 51 frames per second.
