Diablo III stuttering, will an SSD help?

A client called me and told me he wants to upgrade to an SSD because Diablo III is stuttering, I told him an SSD will only help the load times not frame rates

am I right?

what are the recommended hardware specs for a laptop to run this game?

He blindly set all the settings on max quality he said which I need to check and ensure he didn't enable Anti Aliaising as that would kill the frame rate

 

D3 runs on low settings 30+ fps on even Intel IGP.

on any real GPU, a 650m or higher is more than enough to run at 40+ fps even on ultra.

Sadly the code which grabs resources from the hard disk is awful, and D3 is known for its HDD thrashing especially when changing areas.
If the customer is seeing this stuttering when he changes areas, then yeah... the SSD will help. (it's just plain bad coding)

You are correct in theory, but due to that bad coding the customer may be correct.

 

Yes an SSD will most definitely help in smoothing out the gameplay experience a ton. Diablo III does a lot of streaming from disk which causes hitching and rapid frame rate fluctuations on an HDD.



Diablo III isn't a very demanding game at all, so any midrange mobile GPU from the last few generations can max it out at 1080p easily. For instance, my Mobility Radeon 5870, a 2010 card which is equal to a low-end GPU today, didn't break a sweat. Never dropped below 60 FPS at 900p maxed out except during HDD access, which admittedly was quite often and ruined the experience at times. An SSD is really the best upgrade you can get for this game as most people have the hardware to handle it no problem.

 

I have D3 installed on my slave drive which is a normal HDD....I don't experience what the above HDD is experiencing, its a little weird...looks more in game lag than anything. I'm using a 680m atm but even when I was using a 485m I was able to run the game, max settings; without any lag.

 

Well what you're seeing in the video is stutter lag due to HDD thrashing, not graphics lag. The system seems perfectly capable of handling Diablo III, hence the smooth frame rates between the freezes. The fact that the game is perfectly smooth the entire time on an identical system with an SSD tells you right there that the HDD is the culprit. Maybe it's because D3 is on a separate drive from your OS?

I don't know, I've always had this problem with Diablo III since as long as I can remember, but admittedly I haven't played since 2012, so maybe the developers have fixed it. The hitching in the video is nothing compared to what I saw back when I played. My entire game would lock up for a second or three in the bigger fights and the hard drive light was going crazy. I've no interest in going back to see if the game's improved or if Reaper of Souls is any good, not since moving on to Torchlight and Torchlight II and Path of Exile.

So maybe that's the best solution for the OP: Tell your client to ditch Diablo 3 and go play Path of Exile.

 

Having tried post-patch D3 (minus expansion), I can say it is indeed better... but they did NOT remove the asset loading problems.
The game is now a solid B+... but not really a Diablo game. With an SSD, most gaming-class laptops will own it and then some.

One thing to try... turn down the sound options (lower quality and turn 3d off) or turn it off sound entirely and see if the problems go away. Apparently the sound engine has bugs with higher quality settings. (some laptops have fairly potent sound cards built into them now which might be being detected and your laptop is wasting cycles processing high quality 3d sound and pumping them through famously bad laptop speakers.)

 

First, drop the shadow,
Second, realize the game does lag here and there not matter what rig you have, especially in multiplayer.

 

thanks a lot guide, surprised that an SSD makes a big diff. in this game but that's good news! at least we found him the solution

cheers

 

Yeah sorry - I meant network latency.

I would honestly suggest than if your client has an additional HDD installed on his computer, I would try and install on that before dropping any money. All he'll be wasting is his time - thrashing or not, the game doesn't lag on my machine and i use a standard HDD that came with my NP8170. Like octi said above, perhaps its because I'm using my slave drive but idk

 

There's also an issue, where the CPU defaults as the device that handles the physics, instead of the GPU.
Make certain your client opens the Nvidia panel (if he has an Nvidia card that is), and checks the profile and that the GPU is set to handle it.

LINK:

https://forums.geforce.com/default/...ile-gpus/gtx-880m-diablo-3-fps-is-super-low-/

 

This makes no sense as Diablo III doesn't use PhysX.

 

You're 100% correct. And I've not had any issues running D3.

Yet a Google search reveals many examples of people having issues with the game until they set the GPU to handle it.
I don't know what the underlying issue is...