Diablo III is light on hardware

Diablo III is arriving next week and Tom's Hardware has published a series of benchmarks in which it explored how well the game performs on 12 different graphics configurations and a couple of processors. The reviewer concludes Diablo III doesn't require a lot of power, even at 2560 x 1600 with the highest quality settigns you don't need more than a Radeon HD 6770 or GeForce GTX 460 to achieve a minimum of 35 FPS. You can check out the results over here.

Once you've determined where your graphics card gets you in Diablo III, there's very little to worry about with regard to platform performance. Operating at 2560x1600 and using the highest detail settings, a dual-core Phenom II at 3 GHz manages at least 75 FPS. Don't be surprised. Diablo III doesn’t exactly offer sophisticated AI. The undead simply walk towards you and attack without much in the way of strategy.

What does that say about the game itself? Despite its simplicity, playing Diablo III is just as addictive as it was the last time around. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to enjoy another Diablo click-fest, but Blizzard’s mastery of the simple and timeless isometric RPG has me looking forward to buying a copy on the day it's released.