Will my PC play Diablo 3, and if so what video card should I purchase?

[cmonstergt]

Okay, so this is the first post I've put up. Before you laugh at my computer set up, realize that I won this in a raffle at my work for $5, and acquired some spare parts that were laying around (I work in the IT department).

It is an Optiplex 745 Mini-Tower.

It is a Core 2 Duo 2.13 Ghz machine with a Corsair 650W power supply and 7GB of DDR2 Ram, 1TB hard drive and Windows 7.

A link to it: http://www.dell.com/us/dfb/p/optiplex-745/pd

I don't currently have a video card, as I was waiting for the official min requirements for Diablo 3 to come out, to see if the rest of my machine qualifies before spending any money.

My first question is, will this computer run Diablo 3 with an appropriate video card?

Secondly, if it will run the game, then what would an appropriate video card for it be? I obviously don't need to buy a big badass card, if the bottleneck is in the CPU.

The system requirements for Diablo 3 are located here:
http://us.battle.net/support/en/ar [...] quirements

Minimum:

Intel Pentium® D 2.8 GHz or AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 4400+
NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800 GT or ATI Radeon™ X1950 Pro or better

Recommended:

Intel® Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 5600+ 2.8 GHz
NVIDIA® GeForce® 260 or ATI Radeon™ HD 4870 or better

It looks like I'm just under the 2.4 recommended with 2.13, so it seems like the CPU would work, but I'm not sure how low the D 2.8 Ghz Pentium is to compare.

As for the video card (if the first requirement is met), what should I get? There is space for 1 PCIe x 16 graphics card in the machine. The monitor I have is here:

http://216.52.208.185/Product/Prod [...] 6824009266

The max resolution is 1920 x 1080. I'd like to play at that res, but solid framerate is a priority. I don't mind buying a nicer video card to achieve that res, but I don't want to waste time or money and buy one and it rocks, but the CPU can't keep up with it.

Any and most information would be helpful!

Thanks in Advance,

Joshua

 

[xxsjxx1]

Yea it'll be fine, diablo isn't really graphically intense. Just. Air sure your motherboard has an appropriate slot for a video card. I'd recommend at least a 6850 or gtx 560

 

[xxsjxx1]

Actually the evga superclocked 460 is a great value at newegg right now at around 140 bucks. It will equal or beat 180-200 dollar cards

 

[farrengottu]

i checked to see what others are getting.
with a 2500k and a 560ti it was smooth at 60-70 fps with max settings in 4 player co op, for one guy. that would likely be about 50 fps on your processor. maybe better. its hard to tell until proper benchmarks are out.

so i agree with a 6850/ 560. you could get away with a model lower, but it might not run to great with a bunch of mobs around. unless you lower settings.

 

[xxsjxx1]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130750

 

[asukafan2001]

The first thing i would do in your situation is measure how much space you have, length and height. As dell cases are notoriously small. As what card you will be able to fit into your case is going to be a huge determining factor on what graphics card you want to put in your rig.

If you are still a bit concerned about space even after measuring and looking the sizes of the cards, i would just call dell directly and see what they recommend for your case and then compare that with the requirements blizzard has set forth.

Assuming you have enough room in the case, I would suggest getting a 560ti. Especially because the new kepler models are coming out soon and the new 680 is supposedly supposed to be the replacement to 560ti. so you should be able to get a 560ti at a bargain by the time may comes around and its diablo 3 time.

The 560ti would no problems running diablo 3 at your screens resolution. Diablo 2 wasnt very cpu intensive and your cpu is pretty close to what they suggest so you should be fine there.

 

[cmonstergt]

Thanks for the responses! So, I see that the recommended video card is the Gx260, and the Gx 460 and 560 are 1 and 2 notches (respectively) above the recommended video card (according to the hierarchy list on this site).

Would this still be correct to get a faster than recommended GPU, even though the CPU speed is lower than the recommended? Are y'all recommending it as it will help pull the weight of the slower CPU, or because if I get it, then I won't have to worry about the GPU ever being a bottleneck on this machine?

Lastly, it says that the 460 Superclocked has an interface of "PCI Express 2.0 x16", whereas the specs for the Optiplex 745 says "1 PCIe x16 full height graphics,
-(H: 4.2" X L: 9")". Is this compatible? I haven't built a machine in quite a few years, so I'm not 100% sure.

 

[xxsjxx1]

Im not sure about the slot, but I can tell you that the superclocked 460 will perform close to a 560

 

[xxsjxx1]

Your slot will be fine as long as it is x16

I googled it lol. Should 1.0 and 2.0 should be backwards compatible other than a 1-2% difference