Diablo 4 got its latest expansion pack “Vessel of Hatred” a while back. Hailed as “Diablo at its best” by fans and critics alike, it introduces new classes, enemies, and explorable areas. Unlike the base game, however, Vessel of Hatred features a densely forested (and populated) area that can be quite taxing even on high-end PCs. Here are the optimized settings for Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred for high-end, midrange, and low-end PCs.
- If you’re playing Diablo 4 (the base campaign), refer to our older optimization guide.
Windows/System Settings to Optimize
- Enable Resizable BAR.
- Turn on Game Mode.
- Enable Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS) and Windowed Optimizations.
- Use the Windows “High Performance” power profile and set your GPU power management mode to the same.
- Disable Memory Integrity. Windows Menu->VBS->Device Security.
- Ensure you use the proper XMP/EXPO memory profile (if available).
- Overclock your GPU if you’re narrowly missing the 60 FPS mark.
- Here’s a guide with more detailed instructions.
Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred: System Requirements
Diablo 4 requires a Core i5-4670K or a Ryzen 3 1300X alongside a GeForce GTX 970 or Radeon RX 470 for 1080p 60 FPS at the “Medium” quality settings. You’ll also need 16 GB of main memory and 90 GB of SSD storage.
The heavily forested regions of Nahantu Forest, however, are much more taxing than the base game as you’ll soon see.
Contents & Testing Methodology
- We tested the game in the starting areas of the Nahantu Forest.
- Benchmarks at a glance:
- Resolution and upscaling.
- Graphics quality presets.
- Best ray-tracing settings.
- Texture filtering and shader quality.
- Geometry and clutter quality.
- Fog and fur quality.
- Reflections and SSR.
- Shadows and ambient occlusion.
- Particles, FX, and physics quality.
- VRAM usage.
- CPU bottlenecks.
- Optimized settings for Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred 2024.
- Hardware setup used:
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X.
- Cooler: Arctic Liquid Freezer III 420.
- GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti FE.
- Motherboard: MSI MPG B650 Edge WiFi.
- Memory: 16 GB x2 @ 6000 MT/s CL30.
Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred: Resolution & Upscaling
Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred is extremely taxing, considerably more than the base game due to the dense vegetation of the Nahantu forest. That’s further exuberated by ray-tracing where individual shadows are cast for each tree, bush, and shrub. We recorded an average framerate of 21 FPS at 4K, 36 FPS at 1440p, and 50 FPS at 1080p with all the graphics settings (including ray-tracing) maxed out.
Upscaling makes the game playable, but when you’re limited to 20 FPS, reducing the internal resolution alone does not do much. The average framerates increased to 36 FPS, 40 FPS, and 47 FPS with the quality, balanced, and performance presets, respectively.
While the three quality presets of DLSS 3 and FSR 3 are comparable, XeSS 1.3 takes a different approach to upscaling. The XeSS “Ultra Quality” preset produces a similar picture quality as DLSS/FSR “Quality,” XeSS “Quality” is comparable to DLSS/FSR “Balanced,” while XeSS “Balanced” is the equivalent of DLSS/FSR “Performance.”
Graphics Quality Presets
Diablo 4 features 8 graphics presets, including 4 ray-tracing presets which show incredible scaling. From a mere 21 FPS at “RT Ultra,” we recorded 65 FPS at “Ultra” to 85 FPS at “High,” and 111 FPS at “Low.” These numbers indicate that the high and ultra-quality ray-tracing settings are off-limits to most users.
Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred: Best Ray Tracing Settings
Diablo 4 features three ray-tracing settings, including shadows, reflections, and particles. Ray-traced shadows are the most intensive as they add high-quality shadows to every piece of vegetation in the “Vessel of Hatred” expansion area. Disabling ray-traced shadows resulted in a near-doubling of framerates at 4K.
Low enables ray-traced shadows for sun shadows, medium adds player-carried light shadows, while high enables it for all light sources, natural and artificial.
Ray-traced reflections aren’t that taxing, mainly because there aren’t a lot of reflective surfaces in the game. They reduce performance by 8-12% at 4K with DLSS “Performance” upscaling enabled.
Low enables single ray reflections with approximated blur from rough surfaces, while high enables multiple ray reflections with more accurate blur from rough materials. Ultra increases the range of objects that cast reflections.
Ray-traced particles only impact quality and performance in select situations. For example, when there are onscreen explosions or bursts of magical energy. In usual scenarios, the performance remains intact. Completely disabling ray tracing improves performance by 2.6x at 4K.
Texture Filtering & Shader Quality
Texture filtering, mostly anisotropic filtering, improves the clarity of texture maps perpendicular to the screen. The performance hit is negligible, but the impact on texture detail can be quite substantial.
Shader quality subtly affects the quality of a variety of effects, including snow, rain (wetness), vegetation (leaves), and other decals (tear marks/abrasions) on surfaces. The performance impact is trivial.
Geometry & Clutter Quality
Geometry quality adjusts the level of detail of various aspects, including terrain, vegetation, and environmental clutter. The performance impact is almost negligible.
Clutter quality controls the number of non-essential (physics-disabled) objects in the scene, including dead leaves, grass, and pebbles. Disabling it has a non-noticeable impact on performance.
The low, medium, and high settings enable clutter at close, medium, and far distances. The highest setting also enables shadows for the clutter which greatly improves realism.
Fog & Fur Quality
Fog quality sets the resolution of fog, producing blocky/pixelated patches at lower settings. Surprisingly, the performance impact is minimal.
Fur quality sets the amount of fur on player and enemy characters. Unfortunately, there aren’t many of those in Nahantu, at least not at the beginning of the campaign. Consequently, no performance hit was observed.
Reflection & SSR Quality
Reflection quality configures the resolution of pre-baked, cube-mapped reflections in the game, while screen space reflections enable dynamic onscreen reflections. Since there are few glossy surfaces in Nahantu, the performance isn’t much affected by either.
Shadows & Ambient Occlusion Quality
Shadows are the second-most (non-RT) graphics setting in Diablo 4, reducing framerates by 10-15% at 4K “Ultra.” For most players, the medium or high settings will run much faster while offering similar visual quality as “Ultra.”
Low enables low-quality terrain shadows with blob shadows for characters, medium upgrades it to high-resolution dynamic shadows (near the player), while high enables high-resolution dynamic shadows for the entire scene. The highest quality further increases the shadow resolution.
Contact shadows set the quality of character shadows, but their impact on the visuals is very limited. Low enables contact shadows only for the player character, medium enables it for mounts and non-hostile NPCs, and high enables it for enemy characters as well.
Ambient occlusion is the most taxing (non-RT) setting in Diablo 4, reducing the average framerates by more than 20% at 4K. This is understandable as there are a lot of nooks and crannies in Nahantu, each casting self-contained shadows.
Anti-aliasing has a non-noticeable impact on visual quality, and it’s disabled whenever you use temporal upscaling like FSR 2, DLSS 3, or XeSS 1.3.
Particles, FX & Physics Quality
Particle quality sets the number of onscreen effects such as explosion particles, destruction, and other special effects. They’re mainly evident during combat or explosions. Low FX reduces the particles rendered by the game to a minimum. Consider enabling it if you experience FPS drops during combat.
Water simulation quality sets the complexity of water flow, producing more waves and ripples at high, compared to a plain and simpler texture at low. As there aren’t many flowing water bodies, its performance impact is marginal.
Physics quality configures the number of interactable and destructive objects, including dead bodies, skeletons, debris, and other movable objects. If you have an old or low-end CPU, the high setting can tank framerates while battling enemy hordes.
Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred: VRAM Usage
Diablo 4 consumes a lot of VRAM for a top-down RPG. We observed an average graphics memory usage of 10 GB at 4K “Ultra” which drops to 7.7 GB at “High,” 6.6 GB at “Medium,” and 6 GB at “Low.” Enabling ray tracing pushes the peak VRAM consumption to 11.6 GB at 4K.
The VRAM usage hovers above 10 GB at 1080p and 1440p (RT Ultra), a mere GB or so less than 4K. Upscaling reduces the graphics memory allocated by nearly a GB at 4K. Blizzard recommends a system memory of 32 GB and a VRAM buffer of 12 GB for 4K “Ultra.”
Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred: CPU Bottlenecks
Diablo 4 is highly CPU-bound. We recorded a GPU-busy deviation of 77% at 4K “Low” and “RT Medium.” Setting the graphics preset to “Ultra” makes the game more GPU-bound, with a GPU-busy deviation of 53%.
Setting the ray-tracing settings to the maximum increases the strain on the GPU, reducing the deviation to roughly 50% at 1080p/1440p, and 33% at 4K.
Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred: Performance Summary (non-RT)
- Ray-traced shadows are incredibly taxing and are best left at “Low” on most PCs.
- Shadows and ambient occlusion reduce performance the most among rasterization settings. Consider reducing them if you’re running low on FPS.
Optimized Settings for Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred 2024
| Optimized Settings | High-end | Midrange | Low-end PC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Resolution | 4K (3840×2160) | 1440p (2560×1440) | 1080p (1920×1080) |
| FPS Target | 90 FPS | 60 FPS | 60 FPS |
| Upscaling | DLSS/FSR Quality | DLSS/FSR Quality | DLSS/FSR Quality |
| Texture Quality | Ultra | Ultra | Medium (Ultra for 12 GB VRAM) |
| Texture Filtering | 16x AF | 16x AF | 16x AF |
| Shader Quality | High | High | High |
| Geometric Complexity | High | High | High |
| Terrain Geometry | High | High | High |
| Clutter Quality | Highest | Highest | Highest |
| Fog Quality | High | High | High |
| Fur Quality | High | High | High |
| Reflection Quality | High | High | High |
| Screen Space Reflections | On | On | On |
| Shadow Quality | Highest | High | Medium |
| Contact Shadows | High | High | Medium |
| Ambient Occlusion | Ultra | High | Medium |
| Particle Quality | High | High | High |
| Low FX | Off | Off | Off |
| Water Simulation Quality | High | High | High |
| Physics Quality | High | High | Medium |
| Ray Traced Shadows | High/Medium | Medium | Medium |
| Ray Traced Reflections | Ultra | Ultra | Ultra/High |
| Ray Traced Particles | On | On | On |
| CPU | Core i7-14700K/Ryzen 7 7800X3D | Core i5-13600K/Ryzen 7 7700 | Core i5-12400/ AMD Ryzen 5 3600 |
| GPU | RTX 4080/RX 7900 XTX | RTX 4070/RX 7800 XT | RTX 3060/RTX 3060 Ti/RTX 4060 |
| Memory | 32GB (dual-channel) | 16GB (dual-channel) | Less than: 16GB (dual-channel) |
| High-end | Midrange | Low-end PC |
