My load times suck, and i chug everytime i go near Shenk, or do ancients.
Current:
Intel core i5-2320 @ 3/00ghz (4cpus) ~3.3ghz
Nvidea Geforce GTX 750 Ti
2x 4gb DDR3
500gb HDD
I plan to get Crucial 16GB Kit (2 x 8GB) DDR3L-1600 UDIMM
Will this significantly improve my gaming potential? Or is my rig just too old altogether?
Increasing your RAM to 16 gigabytes would be optimal for D2:R. Going from 16 to 32 gigabytes would provide very little benefit for D2:R. The increased RAM would help your load times a bit since your system isnāt having to offload data in RAM to your hard disk in order to make enough room to run the game.
And if you are indeed running a mechanical platter drive, GET A SOLID-STATE DRIVE. SSDās are cheap right now. You can pick up a 500GB Samsung 2.5" SATA solid-state drive for around $50-$60. Go with the EVO, donāt get the QVO drive.
The biggest help would be a SSD instead of a HDD.
More RAM will help to some degree, too. But to be honest (sorry),
your PC is beyond hope.
I know RAM you just unplug and replug - HDD to SDD is probably more of a job? A brand new gaming PC is Ā£2k + 
You can use this software to clone your current drive over to the SSD.
A SATA solid-state drive is anywhere from 5(sequential) to 200(random) times faster than a SATA mechanical hard disk.
You dont need to reinstall windows in the new ssd, just copy paste the diablo folder there and it will work, i did this before when i had the same problem that you do.
Sometime after that, i replaced my pc and didnt even reinstall diablo, just copy pasted it again lol.
What has been discussed will only improve your game loading times. It will do next to nothing to improve the games frames per second. To improve the frames per second, you would need to upgrade the graphics card.
Think ill just wade through humus a little longer and save for a better rig 
Thanks all.
The SSD is never a bad idea, cheap, can be used on newer builds, although you will have nvme then as well.
Ram you could upgrade, and I would, if the slot is used on current/future boards and not something that will be hard to use in a year or two.
I usually upgrade by piece with the exception being cpu/board almost always at the same time due to chipset changes. Start going too wild then power supply needs to go.
Otherwise I still use an old earthwatts 750 thatās survived 3 builds now. Rest has changed over that time.
Edit: itās 13 years old now, I really should check the voltages some day.
Power supplies will typically lose 1-2% of their āmaximum ratingā every year with normal usage. The loss can be higher especially if the power supply is ran at or very close to its max rating. The reason is the electrolytic capacitors wear out.
The capacitors in power supplies are typically rated to last at least 10 years under normal usage.
If you want to test it, youāll need an oscilloscope. Check the 12volt power while the power supply is under load. Ideally the reading should be a straight 12volt line. If you get any jitter or āsawtoothā appearance in the voltage line, time to replace the power supply.
Continuing to run your hardware with a power supply that doesnāt produce a flat 12volt line can lead to system instability, and increases the risk of electronic failure, specifically the power conditioning circuitry of the system mainboard and graphics card. (voltage regulator modules)
Forgot to add that typical 12 volt tolerances are +/- 5%.
Solid state drives are very affordable and can be easily transferred to a new rig when you get one. Itās the best bang for the buck upgrade in older rigs.
too bad you werent my neighbor, I would give you an i7-2600k the ram you need and a Extra GTX 1070 I just have boxed up in a shed at zero cost.
Wonāt you be mineā¦wonāt you be mineā¦ wontchya be my neighbor.
Edit: I donāt need it I just had to get that out for some reason.
Iām the same way when someone mentions Bob Rossā¦
āBeat the devil out of it.ā āJust add some happy little trees, right over here.ā
Yup lol I usually hear āhappy accidentsā.
He would do three of the same paintings. The first was the āideaā, the second was the demonstration for the show, the third and final was the āmasterpieceā used for his instructional books.
Itās crazy that he was a master sergeant in the USAF.
I use Asus TUF GEForce RTX 3080 012G IC D6X 12GB, RAM 16GB, hard drive 500G SSD.
D2Rās graphics are available as a full option.
Thatās your ancient card, not ram. But a quick way to verify is to check ram usage while in the game, if it stays under 75% utilization you donāt need more ram.
Iām suprised the game even runs on that thing. I had a 980 and it was barely playable at 1080p all low settings. You must be running like 1280*800 res.
I had m llama on In The background the other day. He mentioned something about unpacking data to get faster load times.
No idea what he was going on about but someone may know the answer
Another interesting thing about the loads in D2Rā¦ that screen is literally just an image that is set to display for X amount of frames. The higher your FPS the faster your āloads.ā
Check the difference in load times between different FPS limit amounts and unlimited. Itās hilarious how badly designed it is.