Exposing the lie about AVX

General Discussion
1

Hello fellow gamers.

I am one of those locked out from playing the game because of the infamous ‘AVX’ issue and come to you now with some recent discoveries that will put this whole debacle to rest and reveal the truth.

First some background. On September 23rd when Diablo 2 Resurrected released, I was there at zero-hour looking at the “Play” button just waiting for it to glow blue in anticipation for the long awaited remaster. When I heard my friend on Discord yell: “ITS UP! ITS UP!” instantly I restarted my Battle.net client and there it was… glowing blue like a clear summer sky! I press “Play”… crash.

After trying again, and again without success I started troubleshooting, reinstalling, looking at every blue post, support thread and everything I could find on Google to find a solution but still it did not solve the problem.

Since then we have come to learn that this is related to something called ‘AVX’ and been told that our poor computers just simply aren’t strong enough to use it. But there was one thing that rubbed me the wrong way about this answer… my CPU (i7-3770k) has support for AVX! So I started doing more research looking into it, as a computer savvy guy and developer myself I just simply couldn’t believe it. My computer is above the minimum requirements so I should be able to run it right?

Some time passes and I get an answer from Blizzard Support. They tell me that my motherboard does not support AVX… shocked with that answer I do more research. Thinking to myself “can a motherboard really not support all the features of the CPU?”, of course this couldn’t be the case and today I finally found out why!

As a developer, I started up a project and wrote some code. I compiled it using the infamous AVX… Runs perfectly.

I compile it using AVX2… crash.

Interesting, so I do what any developer would do in my situation, I look deeper into the D2R executable and find that the binary uses instructions exclusively targeting AVX2, which is different from AVX.

So the proof, in the binary I found that it uses an instruction called ‘vpbroadcastd’ you can find more information about that on <cant put link but you can search vpbroadcastd on google and find Intel Intrinsics Guide> where it stated that it is a feature in AVX2. Looking into the binary more I bet I can find even more AVX2 exclusive instructions.

Now you may think, what’s the big deal, AVX here AVX2 there it doesn’t matter. But it does! If my research is correct then it is proof Blizzard has officially lied not only in the many blue posts, the support answer I got pointing fingers at my motherboard but also on their minimum requirements article because i3-3250 does not support AVX2.

Why they did not come forward and just tell us they accidentally enabled AVX2 instead of AVX if this is what happened is up for debate.

TL;DR: D2R uses AVX2 not AVX and we’ve been lied to.

Sorry for the long read but hopefully I got the point across without to much tech gibberish, let me know what you all think about this. Does it change anything?

Edit: One thing that I forgot to mention is that if it is true that AVX2 is required them lying about it could be considered illegal under U.S customer protection laws. I’m not a lawyer so that’s all I’m going to say about that.

55 Likes
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So, if this is true, not only did they make a mistake. They made a mistake2.

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tldr just get your refund, they said u can if u want to keep your money until this is fixed

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You missed the point. I concluded that they use AVX2 which my CPU does not support. Buying a new motherboard changes nothing.

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Welp, time to get that refund.
Wish i was surprised but I am really not.

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So your cpu was above the system requirements and couldn’t play either?

If was the issue, then they messed up really bad on their system requirements.

Because if was only AVX they could try to validate also the minimum requirement, those things, but if you had above minimum requirement then things were really bad on their end.

You made some bold claims, if you’re really certain of those stuff then, they should address and apologize really badly.

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And the specs on your computer are?

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All you can do is wait it out, I don’t know what else to tell you. The PC was a suggested way for you to take control, I completely understand the COVID situation. They’re working the problem. The worst case is they can’t do anything about the problem and they will update the system requirements.

Here is the official Blizzard listed system requirements for D2:R:

Note: “Due to potential compatibility changes, the minimum system requirements may change over time.”

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I’ve been getting pretty long load times on a ryzen 3600x so I doubt that is a problem with avx or avx2.

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What do the specs of my pc have to do with the fact they changed the requirements from pre-order/beta to now? Also how does that change the long load screens were to be gone as of launch day and that hasn’t happened?

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Just to make it clear, this is an issue for those that can’t even start the game.

There is no proof that this is related to the long loads.

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I have very old CPU (Intel 2500K, 4.5 Ghz OC) and game work perfect, no crash, lags or other bad things. I just play with pleasure )) And my CPU not support AVX2, but game work fine.

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Was asking the op, just curious cause of his/her post.

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Nope, that was perfectly understandable and followed well. I’m far from computer illiterate but also not a programmer and followed it perfectly.

I’m interested to know why the AVX2 instructions were there in this version and NOT in the beta though… that would be interesting to find out.

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  • Intel i7-3770k
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 970
  • Asus Sabertooth Z77
  • 16GB ram
  • Windows 10 (latest update)
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I generally have an i7-2600. I have a normal flight at high settings

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Sure. But maybe buy a new computer. We are in the year 2021 now… real gamers should be up to date…

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How? When you have a oooooold computer with a low life HDD long loading time would be normal…

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Get a load of this fool. “Maybe buy a new computer”. What a dumb thing to say. Not everyone can just fork out a grand or two on a new computer you ignoramus. Especially when the computer they have, although a bit dated by PC standards, is still quite powerful and runs the vast majority of modern games with absolutely no issue.
What is your point coming into this thread and telling people to “just buy a new computer dude”? What a waste of time. You’re not helping anyone and you’re not contributing to the discussion at hand either.

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Just curious… why would an i3 CPU support AVX2, but an i7 CPU wouldn’t?

1 Like