Skip to Main Content

AMD: No, Modern Video Cards Won't Muck Up Diablo 3

After a Blizzard representative suggests that new Catalyst video card drivers won't work with Diablo 3, AMD jumps in to clarify.

May 6, 2012

There are apparently only two things that can stop a player from defeating the forces of Hell: Playing a hardcore Diablo 3 character on "Inferno" difficulty, which seems to be the kind of suicide mission that would humble even Mass Effect, and running an AMD graphics card on launch day.

At least, that was the impression given by Blizzard Support Forum Agent "Omrakos," in response to a question from a forum poster who indicated that he (or she) was having some difficulties playing Diablo 3's recently ended beta. Specifically, user "Darkrune" indicated that the beta client was refusing to load due to a video card driver "incompatibility."

"If you're using ATI's Catalyst 12.4 release," responded Omrakos, "you need to revert to an earlier version. 12.4 isn't going to be supported for use in Diablo III."

Commence Internet freak out.

Just think about how easy it is to keep your video card drivers updated – we're talking to you, owners of Nvidia or AMD cards. Both companies make it super-easy to check the current version of your card's drivers against the most current release, typically in the form of a pop-up desktop notification or automatic driver download. You can even find this functionality in third-party gaming services like Steam, where updating your video card drivers takes just a few clicks of a mouse button.

It's reasonable to expect that a number of gamers will be running AMD's Catalyst 12.4 video card drivers, released April 25th, by the time Diablo 3 launches on May 15. Does this mean that they have absolutely no chance to kill hundreds, thousands, and hundreds of thousands of digital demons on launch day?

Nope.

"With respect to the subject of this article, we've recently found an issue where some of our legacy graphics products are producing certain artifacts in Diablo III with our latest release of AMD Catalyst 12.4," wrote AMD product marketing manager Robert Hallock, in a comment on PC Perspective's website.

"This issue only affects users of ATI Radeon HD 2400, 2600, 2900, 3400, 3600 and 4500 graphics cards under Windows Vista and Windows 7. Users of these products under Windows XP are unaffected, as are users of ATI Radeon HD 5000, and AMD Radeon HD 6000 or 7000 series products. We are working directly with Blizzard to investigate the issue with the highest possible priority and will provide updates as they become available."

In other words, if you're running a fairly modern graphics card — Radeon HD 4500-series cards hit the market in 2008, for what it's worth — you will have no problems playing Diablo 3. Assuming, of course, that the thought of missing out on the game didn't already give you a heart attack.

Sorry about that.

 

For more tech tidbits from David Murphy, follow him on Facebook or Twitter (@thedavidmurphy).