Workaround: Unsupported graphics card error in Diablo III

So, you've downloaded and/or installed Diablo III. You've got your Red Bull, your comfy slippers and track pants on and you're all set for a marathon first sitting of the game ... but what's this? The night is shattered when you load up the game and get an error:

"Unsupported graphics card error"

Why?

This rather generic error signals that your video card isn't powerful enough to play Diablo III very well. It might run it, but the performance won't be great. This isn't Blizzard's fault, it's your finances - time to upgrade if you can dude. But there is hope.

This is a little workaround that might boost performance for some cards ... enough to get you by until you can upgrade your video card. What you do is, in the file: d3prefs.txt
PC: C:\Users*YOUR USERNAME*\Documents\Diablo III\ Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Blizzard/Diablo III/
change: - DisableTrilinearFiltering "1" (from 0 to 1) - HardwareClass "1" (from 0 to 1)

More information about this can be found here for:

PC users: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4903520596
Mac users: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5007620948


Blizzard know about the issue and this workaround and their response is: Omrakos

That's all well and good but I'd add, if you decide to do this and have terrible performance as expected, please do not contact us reporting it. We know the unsupported cards aren't going to perform well and there's nothing we'll be able to do to remedy it.

So, if you have the dreaded "Unsupported graphics card error" try this workaround and if the game still runs like a slideshow it's a signal that it's time to cough up for a new video card.

Let us know how the workaround goes for you in the Comments section below.