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Need an iMac that can handle diablo 3. Current top end 27 can't do it.

mzjin

mzjin

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 28, 2011
412
0
Here's the skinny:

On a maxed out 27 inch 2011 model: under both windows and OSX (only able to confirm frames under windows)

Native resolution, vsync on, low effects, no shadows, no clutter, high textures = 60 fps that consistently dips into 30 fps causing a very unsmooth gamely transition.


1920x1080, same settings as above - maintains 60 fps, except In areas of act 3 full party. Drops to 40s or 30s.

Conclusion, I can't believe I have to run this game at lower resolutions for it to be playable. Vsync is a must or you are running around with screen tearing the whole time.

Solution: new iMac needs to come out or I will likely have to build a gaming system with a thunderbolt capable motherboard. :(
 
I own the high end and ur facts are incorrect. It's more then able to handle and the parts it can't handle is because of poor support for macs by blizzard. On everything high I'm right around 30 fps on lion. The settings you want to run at will run even better
 
This doesn't sound right at all. I can see performance issues under OS X as that's a given, but not under windows... FYI, Command+R will display your FPS in-game on the OS X side.

What drivers are you using under windows? The 6970m is a beast for D3. I'm getting ~30fps in OS X with the same settings as you, but I have the 6770m 512mb. A card with 2-4x the memory, double the bandwidth, double the stream processors, potentially higher clocks, and tied to a higher end CPU and undoubtedly more RAM than me should have no issue with this game.
 
mzjin said:
Here's the skinny:

On a maxed out 27 inch 2011 model: under both windows and OSX (only able to confirm frames under windows)

Native resolution, vsync on, low effects, no shadows, no clutter, high textures = 60 fps that consistently dips into 30 fps causing a very unsmooth gamely transition.


1920x1080, same settings as above - maintains 60 fps, except In areas of act 3 full party. Drops to 40s or 30s.

Conclusion, I can't believe I have to run this game at lower resolutions for it to be playable. Vsync is a must or you are running around with screen tearing the whole time.

Solution: new iMac needs to come out or I will likely have to build a gaming system with a thunderbolt capable motherboard. :(
Click to expand...

I get smooth 30 fps at native res which is enough for me.
 
What kind of eyes do you have that you can detect the difference between 40 fps and 60 fps? Without the framerate posted on the screen, I mean.
 
With vsync on the frames will dip from 60 to 30 fps.

For a game like D3, anything less than 60 fps is unacceptable ( from a fast paced gameplay point of view, just like FPSes).

I will also add for windows: over clocked to 710/1000' latest 12.4 drivers.

May try AA tonight to see if it makes a performance hit.
 
Last edited:
mzjin said:
With vsync on the frames will dip from 60 to 30 fps.

For a game like D3, anything less than 60 fps is unacceptable ( from a fast paced gameplay point of view, just like FPSes).

I will also add for windows: over clocked to 710/1000' latest 12.4 drivers.

May try AA tonight to see if it makes a performance hit.
Click to expand...

Were you experiencing screen tearing with vsync off?
 
forty2j said:
Were you experiencing screen tearing with vsync off?
Click to expand...

Of course. The iMacs screen unless used with vsync is completely unuseable due to screen tearing. Any movement of your character will result in the entire image shown to fragment and rejoin repeatedly during movement. Vsync is necessary to play this game on the iMac. Other display technologies may not need it but ours do.
 
I think you've got something else going on brotha... Is there a benchmark you could run to test your graphics, cpu, and memory? Perhaps this is a warranty issue.
 
D3 was sluggish for me too on a Late 2011 MacBook Pro.

Heres what I did to dramatically help performance.

Downloaded gfxCardStatus. I know it says for MacBook Pro but pretty sure it'll work for an iMac.

Select 'Discrete Only'

Launch D3, go to the video options and set to default.

Now turn off 'Shadows' entirely.

Should help things when playing.
 
mzjin said:
For a game like D3, anything less than 60 fps is unacceptable
Click to expand...

It's strange that all of the other posters have found it acceptable.

Just because the iMac can play games does not mean that it is a gaming computer. Since you are not content with what others find acceptable you might want to consider getting a computer built more for gaming. You could even use the iMac monitor as the display for it to cut down on the cost.

Have you ran any sort of hardware diagnostics on the iMac to eliminate a hardware issue?
 
It's a problem with the game, AFAIK.

Under Windows I am also getting 30 FPS on the 4850M at 2560.

I saw a framerate stability improvement with D3DOverrider (part of RivaTuner), as well as an increase to 40 FPS in some areas.

I would suggest to try that, you may get 60 FPS on a more recent card. What it does is start writing to a third buffer instead of waiting for vsync.

If you DO play at lower than 60 FPS than I recommend enabling the Max FPS limit of 30 or 31 in Diablo 3, that way you get a much smoother scrolling with vsync on. It's the jumpy framerate that hurts.

forty2j said:
What kind of eyes do you have that you can detect the difference between 40 fps and 60 fps? Without the framerate posted on the screen, I mean.
Click to expand...

You can definitely see the difference. It's like on my ol' Amiga500 there was a very notable difference between 25 and 50 FPS. One feels like a movie, the other feels like real life. In fact, you may have seen comments about the new Hobbit movie where early reviewers felt that the higher framerate changed the way they perceive it and that it was "too lifelike" and lost some charm due to that. Likely, we'll just get used to it.

More specifically, if you simply rotate around quickly at 30 FPs columns and other obstacles will appear to move like a slideshow, where in 60 FPS you can not distinguish the frames at all. So in a way, you CAN distinguish 60 FPS.

60 FPS is super awesome for arcade games and I'm guessing very nice for Diablo 3 as well, though a stable 30 FPS is sufficient.
 
I can definitely tell the difference between 30 FPS and 60 FPS. Personally, I think 30 FPS is acceptable for Diablo 3, it's not like you need super precision and timing like you do with a first-person shooter. But 60 is definitely better than 30. There's another thread I posted in, I can get 60 with shadows off and AA off, but I don't like playing with shadows off, so I live with 30 FPS.

It's too bad they don't sell the 21" with the same graphics options, that would be better for gaming IMO.
 
EricT43 said:
I can definitely tell the difference between 30 FPS and 60 FPS. Personally, I think 30 FPS is acceptable for Diablo 3, it's not like you need super precision and timing like you do with a first-person shooter. But 60 is definitely better than 30. There's another thread I posted in, I can get 60 with shadows off and AA off, but I don't like playing with shadows off, so I live with 30 FPS.

It's too bad they don't sell the 21" with the same graphics options, that would be better for gaming IMO.
Click to expand...

Yes you can get 60, until you enter a dungeon or have a full party and then vsync drops it down to the 30.

Even with 1920x1080 60 is not maintainable in all parts of the game.

And this is with running the game with an over clocked 6970, 3.4 core i7, SSd, 16gb ram...

Looks like we definitely need a graphics boost for D3 to run at native acceptable frames and settings. Sub 60 is certainly not acceptable in PVP or Hardcore gameplay, which I do (and plan to do PVP when that's out).
 
I've got my settings nailed down so that it actually STAYS at 30fps. The problem (for me at least) isn't that Diablo 3 doesn't run at 60fps. It's that it bounces between 60fps exactly and 30fps exactly, which is really jarring.

The key is to get your settings so that it stays at 30fps 99% of the time, since no current Mac can run it at 60fps 100% of the time, and that switching of frame-rates is just enjoyment-ruining.

On my late 2009 iMac Core i7 with 16GB RAM and a 512MB Radeon 4850, that's the following:

1920x1080 resolution, AA on, everything on HIGH except for shadows set to OFF. I get a solid 30fps (so far, almost done with Act 1), and it only bounced to 60fps on the interior of a village house, which I can live with. At least it stays at 30fps, which is fine with me.

I tried lowering the resolution to 800x600 with everything set to LOW/OFF, LOW FX, and even then I can't maintain 60fps. So either this game needs a patch or it's just ATI's drivers.

In any case, the best a Mac owner can hope for is a solid 30fps without the jumping back and forth between 60 and 30.

For newer Macs, you'll need to experiment with what settings work best for you. For example, on my iMac, I had to turn on AA to get the frame-rate to stick at 30, or it would bump to 60 at times.
 
If the bounce bothers you, you can set the max framerate to 30... I might give this a try myself and see if it looks better.
 
EricT43 said:
If the bounce bothers you, you can set the max framerate to 30... I might give this a try myself and see if it looks better.
Click to expand...

I tried that, and it adds some strange jerkiness to the gameplay that otherwise isn't there, so I turned that off.
 
WilliamG said:
I've got my settings nailed down so that it actually STAYS at 30fps. The problem (for me at least) isn't that Diablo 3 doesn't run at 60fps. It's that it bounces between 60fps exactly and 30fps exactly, which is really jarring.

The key is to get your settings so that it stays at 30fps 99% of the time, since no current Mac can run it at 60fps 100% of the time, and that switching of frame-rates is just enjoyment-ruining.

On my late 2009 iMac Core i7 with 16GB RAM and a 512MB Radeon 4850, that's the following:

1920x1080 resolution, AA on, everything on HIGH except for shadows set to OFF. I get a solid 30fps (so far, almost done with Act 1), and it only bounced to 60fps on the interior of a village house, which I can live with. At least it stays at 30fps, which is fine with me.

I tried lowering the resolution to 800x600 with everything set to LOW/OFF, LOW FX, and even then I can't maintain 60fps. So either this game needs a patch or it's just ATI's drivers.

In any case, the best a Mac owner can hope for is a solid 30fps without the jumping back and forth between 60 and 30.

For newer Macs, you'll need to experiment with what settings work best for you. For example, on my iMac, I had to turn on AA to get the frame-rate to stick at 30, or it would bump to 60 at times.
Click to expand...

On newer iMacs you can lower settings and resolution like mine and stay at 60 for the most part. Only act 3 road to azmodan gets frame hit like crazy.

However I dont think it's a stretch to expect 60 fps on native resolution with no shadows and no AA, so that's my hope for the next iMac.
 
mzjin said:
Here's the skinny:

On a maxed out 27 inch 2011 model: under both windows and OSX (only able to confirm frames under windows)

Native resolution, vsync on, low effects, no shadows, no clutter, high textures = 60 fps that consistently dips into 30 fps causing a very unsmooth gamely transition.


1920x1080, same settings as above - maintains 60 fps, except In areas of act 3 full party. Drops to 40s or 30s.

Conclusion, I can't believe I have to run this game at lower resolutions for it to be playable. Vsync is a must or you are running around with screen tearing the whole time.

Solution: new iMac needs to come out or I will likely have to build a gaming system with a thunderbolt capable motherboard. :(
Click to expand...

i have the top of the line mbp & two thunderbolt displays & best settings i've found is shadows off, ground clutter off, vsync off, & anti alialiasing off... other settings default... anyways, the 6970m is on par w/ a gtx 460 from what i understand, which should have no difficulties w/ most current games @ 1080p, but.... sounds like you want a gaming rig, sometimes ya just can't have it all in one w/o compromises, and for native 2560x1440p you really want the top of the line 7970 big daddy graphics card... next generation imac will certainly be better but not perfect.. and sounds like you want gaming perfection...
 
SamsChannel said:
D3 was sluggish for me too on a Late 2011 MacBook Pro.
Click to expand...

What does sluggish mean?

I'm playing with the setting that are default when the game is installed on an 8,2 MBP with a AMD Radeon HD 6770M 1024 MB video chip. (full screen or windowed, 1680x1050 which is as high as it will go)

The game plays great, and I'm seeing 30-35 fps which is smooth to my eyes. (just getting in to Act 2)
 
Those frames are smooth for casual play but feel painfully sluggish and unresponsive for me. Also expect to drop to 20s in the later acts with parties.
 
It seems like there is a bit of confusion as to what VSync does. All VSync does is limit the framerate to that of your monitors refresh rate (~60Hz).

Without VSync you see a higher average framerate because there are bursts well above 60fps. With it on your will never exceed 60fps (even instantly) so your average rate will drop without really impacting the visual appeal of the game (the absolute min should remain the same).

The benefit is that when the rendered framerate exceeds the refresh rate of the monitor you will get tearing.

It is kind of sad that the common benchmarks are all based on average framerate, which isn't necessarily what defines the visual appeal. What you really need to a histogram of quality service outliers on a per frame basis.
 
WilliamG said:
I've got my settings nailed down so that it actually STAYS at 30fps. The problem (for me at least) isn't that Diablo 3 doesn't run at 60fps. It's that it bounces between 60fps exactly and 30fps exactly, which is really jarring.
Click to expand...

On Windows (Bootcamp) there is a "Max FPS" option in Diablo 3 graphics settings. It works.
 
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