Diablo IV PC Performance Review and Optimisation Guide
No, you don’t need a high-end CPU to run Diablo IV
CPU-wise, Diablo IV is not a demanding game, which makes sense once you consider the broad audience that Blizzard are targeting with this game. Diablo IV is available on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5. Beyond that, Blizzard wants this game to be playable without an ultra high-end gaming PC. Blizzard wants everyone to play this game, and that level of accessibility means that this game needs to run on low-end processors.
Diablo IV was not a challenge for our system’s i9-13900K processor, but as we disabled cores it became clear that this game does benefit from higher core count processors, at least a little. Turning off our CPU’s E-Cores resulted in a minor drop in average framerate, but Diablo IV’s performance didn’t really drop much until we disabled all but four of our CPUs cores. Even then, the game ran at extremely high framerates in the area of the game that we tested.
We tested Diablo IV within Kyovashad, a large city within the game. This area has a large number of NPCs, and a lot of details to render. This area is also a highly repeatable benchmarking area, assuming that you keep in-game time of day consistent. Combat is too chaotic for repeated testing, and while cutscenes are more demanding on GPU hardware, they are not overly hard on processors.
To summarise, Diablo IV does not need a high-end processor to run well on PC. So long as you have decent quad core CPU or better, you will be able to run Diablo IV with ease.
