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Diablo III doesn't play very well for me in OS X, even with most graphics quality settings set to low.

A Battle.net support article says that the minimum system requirements in Windows 7 are lower than Mac OS X.

If I play Diablo III in Windows 7 via Boot Camp, is the game performance going to be better than playing in OS X natively?

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  • Hello, Jojas. Questions about "Can I run this?" or "Which will run this better?" are considered Too Localized for our site.
    – Raven Dreamer
    May 16, 2012 at 4:28
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    I've had better frame rates on W7 than I did on OS X, but overall I think you need a better dedicated graphics card, because a Intel HD Graphics 3000 integrated graphics card just can't handle the graphics.
    – Krazer
    May 16, 2012 at 4:31
  • If you're playing the game before it is fully downloaded, then the performance will be terrible. My Mac (similar to yours) ran much better after I let the download complete. It was a painful wait, but worth it.
    – Pat Ludwig
    May 16, 2012 at 4:32
  • @Krazer I think so, It's really bad news for me :-(
    – Sakares
    May 16, 2012 at 4:33
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    This question is being discussed on Meta. I feel it should be reopened.
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    May 19, 2012 at 17:35

1 Answer 1

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TL;DR version: Yes, Diablo III runs better in Windows than in Mac OS X.

I have a Mid 2011, 27" iMac (Specifically, with a Core i5, 2.6GHz CPU and a Radeon HD 6770M graphics card). I installed Diablo 3 in both OS X and Windows 7 and ran a few simple tests by loading up a character who was parked at the Act II starting area.

The location I used

Default settings

The default/suggested video settings were the same on both platforms:

  • 1920 × 1080 resolution
  • High texture quality
  • Medium shadow quality
  • High physics
  • High clutter density
  • Anti-aliasing on

High resolution

My 27" iMac's display has a native resolution of 2560 × 1440. I did a separate set of tests at this resolution as well.

Low FX

Changing the texture, shadow, physics, and clutter settings only had minor effects (at least on my machine), but I did notice a significant boost by disabling anti-aliasing and turning on the "Low FX" mode.

Results

(In the chart below, D means default settings, L means default settings with Low FX mode enabled and anti-aliasing off.)

             1920× D  1920× L  2560× D  2560× L
             --------------------------------
       OS X: 34 FPS   39 FPS   23 FPS   27 FPS
    Windows: 47 FPS   53 FPS   27 FPS   35 FPS
Improvement:   ~38%     ~35%     ~17%     ~29%

I didn't exhaustively test every combination of settings and resolutions, but based on these results, I'm willing to state that yes, Diablo III runs better in Windows.

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  • Not only that, but even now, in 2014, the textures' resolution is somewhat lowered (it's pretty visible with the human eye), on OS X, even at the maximum settings possible.
    – user66129
    Apr 11, 2014 at 18:02
  • As a general impression about gaming on OSX, almost all the multi platform games work a lot better on Windows. Given the fact that most multi platform games run the same on Linux like they work on Windows, on properly made cross-platform games (I mean games that use the same API OpenGL, and not DX on Windows and OpenGL on UNIX-based systems), I'm pretty sure that OS X problems are due to the bad drivers, and the lack of will from Apple to work closer with AMD/nvidia to push better drivers for OS X.
    – user66129
    Apr 11, 2014 at 18:12

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