Diablo IV in Technology Testing – ComputerBase

technical framework

Blizzard has developed a new engine for Diablo IV – and it has paid off. The game will not become a technical reference, which is neither necessary nor expected for hacking anyway. However, the game looks really good in terms of characters, multiple effects, animations and environments: everything fits together in the end and results in an amazingly dark atmosphere that the title knows how to carry.

The short story sequences, now implemented with in-game graphics, should also be highlighted positively. It looks really nice and doesn’t tear the player out of the game, as the visuals remain consistent.

Without ray tracing, but with DLSS 2 & 3, FSR 2, and XeSS

What Diablo IV does not currently offer is ray tracing. Currently because Blizzard has announced that they will support Rays in the future. It’s still not entirely clear when that time will come and what “RT effects” it will include.

On the other hand, modern shorthand is included in the beginning. The game offers DLSS Super Resolution and Frame Generation and thus DLSS 2 and DLSS 3. Competing technology DLSS-2 from AMD FSR 2 is also on board, as is XeSS from Intel.

Diablo IV strictly ties its sampling method to its manufacturer. Naturally, DLSS is only available on Nvidia graphics cards. However, it is not possible to activate FSR 2 or XeSS on GeForce RTX in the game. In terms of modern graphics cards, FSR is only available on Radeon graphics cards, XeSS on Arc. This is unusual and meaningless from the player’s point of view.

At least the developers thought about it: FSR 2 can be used on a GeForce GTX, so owners of this card can also enjoy the downsampling that Nvidia denies.

Graphics options at a glance

Diablo IV offers an above-average graphics roster on PC, which still leaves something to be desired in the end because Blizzard focused so much on quantity rather than quality.

In addition to four graphic presets, there are countless individual options. Additionally, there is a sharpness filter that can be configured between 0 and 100 in increments of 1 percent. The display resolution can be set between 50 and 200 percent in 1 percent increments, while the game always runs with the desktop resolution set by default.

The FPS limiter, which can be set in 1 FPS increments between 15 and 400 FPS, was also considered. As is often the case with Blizzard games, there is a separate selector in case the game is not currently running in the OS hotspot.

However, many other convenience functions are missing, including sample screenshots of individual graphics settings. Instead, little useful (and partially false) information is available in text form. In the end, it is still not entirely clear to gamers which option loads which hardware component. There is at least an FPS display, but no overlay with more information. The integrated standard is completely missing.

Fee presets in comparison

Diablo IV offers four different graphic settings: “Low”, “Medium”, “High”, and “Ultra”, with “Ultra” also being the maximum quality. The graphic differences between the individual settings are simply huge. Even the high preset sounds exponentially worse than the very preset. As a rule, there is not much difference.

visual differences

The biggest, if not the only difference in the presets, is the texture quality, which drops dramatically with each preset level – more on that later. Apart from texture quality, shade and vegetation quality also suffers from the high preset. In addition, it is relatively difficult to recognize details with the high preset. It’s hard to tell if they’re really missing or just lost in the mush of texture.

Even with the middle preset, almost no detail can be seen anymore. The shadows continue to fall, other than that any other difference vanishes into a mound of mud. So you can imagine what a low preset looks like.

performance differences

The presets, which mainly adjust texture details, only bring a slight performance boost in Diablo IV. If you switch from “Ultra” to “High,” the Radeon RX 6800 XT accelerates only 12 percent, and the GeForce RTX 4070 10 percent less. Even the Medium setting doesn’t bring much of a boost: 12 percent more FPS can be measured on an AMD graphics card, and 11 percent more on an Nvidia counterpart.

Upsampling is the best choice

So aside from putting textures when you’re low on VRAM, it’s not a good idea to set Diablo IV’s graphics detail to anything other than max, as the frame rate doesn’t increase much. If the graphics card or its raw performance is the limiting component, downsampling is the best option – whether it’s AMD FSR 2 or Nvidia DLSS. The sampling looks better than the original resolution (whether it’s used in Full HD, WQHD, or Ultra HD) and gives a much better boost. The next page provides details.