How well does it run at 1080 and 1440 with stock GPU and the 1.5 i5?
How about multiple instances?
I run on a mac mini circa 2014. It does ok. I notice I’m behind other players moving from floor to floor. If I tp to a player, it takes a while. If I tp while others are doing, e.g. we all accept a boss kill, it’s a disaster.
Overall it works ok; but I have nothing to compare it to. I’m looking for a new computer and monitor to game with. I’m not skilled enough to build my own. Every time I read reviews there are some really bad “1 stars”. Will probably go with a Windows based system to open up more gaming possibilities.
Edit: Another issue is it takes me a long time to exit a game and a while to create a new one.
I run D3 on a 2014 MacBook Pro with 2.5 GHz i7, 16 GB RAM and NVIDIA GPU and I haven’t had any issues. Not sure about the Mac mini but I imagine it should run more or less fine. That said, a Windows machine with a similar price-tag will give you way better performance.
One thing to also be aware of is that, supposedly, the NVIDIA drivers on Mojave at one point were not compatible with D3 (as well as other games), so I’m still on High Sierra. I remember seeing a post about that some time ago and I haven’t gone back to check since or verified it myself, so take that for what you will…
Macs are not designed for gaming. Go out and get a laptop or a PC if you want the full experience.
Perfect video for gaming on Mac
The CPU is going to hurt you. A lot. It’s 1.4 GHz BTW, not 1.5 if you’ve got the low end model. While it can turbo to 2.7 GHz, if you aren’t using SMCFanControl or MacsFanControl and setting an active profile for higher fan speeds, it can sometimes thermally throttle below its turbo speed.
The other thing that’s going to hurt you here is the RAM. If you got the base model, it’s got 4 GB and it’s soldered to the motherboard and not expandable. 8 GB is necessary to not hit swap or the VM compressor constantly. The former will drop your game down to slog city while the latter will slow it to a crawl when it triggers.
Ironically, the HD 5000 IGP can handle D3 at 1080p, though not at 60 FPS. You’ll get more like 20-40 FPS max. Forget 1440p. It can’t do it unless you like slideshows. I’ve got a Haswell 4770k in my hackintosh and while its HD 4000 IGP is lower than yours, it’s only slightly worse. It’s what I had to use for D3 when I first built the machine until my nVidia 780 GTX (at the time) arrived. I can guarantee input lag. Lots of it.
If you’re going for a newer Mac and are married to OS X like I am, you’ll need to figure out your budget ahead of time and get what you can for a new computer. Getting a refurb from Apple might be your best budget bet. There are some decent iMac deals and all recent Macs should handle D3 just fine.
There is one caveat though: If you’re running Mojave (10.14.x), OpenGL performance is going to tank. You want a Mac capable of running 10.13.6 if D3 is your primary fare for gaming there. There are issues with OpenGL and Mojave and since OpenGL is deprecated, there will be no fixes from Apple. They’re only updating Metal.
And you want 10.13.6 since it’s the least buggy OS and D3 doesn’t run properly on OSes prior to 10.12.6 due to Blizzard using the latest XCode to compile and it can’t target anything prior to 10.12.6 for its builds now.
Other than the refurb option though, I can’t give you any really good news on the Mac front. For the hardware provided by Apple, which is sadly lacking vs. PCs of the same price tiers (even AIOs!), you’re paying a rather steep tax to stick with OS X. This is coming from someone that prefers OS X to Windows any day of the year in terms of user experience.
I’d suggest going the hackintosh route, especially since you have a Mac capable of downloading and creating install media to use with the hackintosh, but unless you’re extremely tech savvy, that isn’t a route I’d tell you to go. It’s how I went, but I know what I’m doing when it comes to both software and hardware and I specialize in tech support. Hackintoshing isn’t for the feint of heart.
TL;DR: Your Mac mini will run D3, but between the input lag and lower framerates, not well. The higher base CPU models would have worked better, but the low end model is as bad as the older MacBook Airs I’m afraid. 
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My advice , install Bootcamp on your Mac , dual boot it to Win 7 , D3 will run better with the 64 bit D3 Win client
The D3 MacOs client is only 32 bit. Hence anything higher than 4GB ram in your Mac is not used . Plus all the enhancements on the 64 bit D3 Win client such as DirectX 12 will be realized. Including all the Intel IGP graphics driver for Windows is much better than the MacOS version for gaming
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Yup, totally agree. Went with Windows 10 and noticed that the gameplay was much smoother. Still crappy when compared to a real windows PC with dedicated graphics but much better than seeing a spinning beach ball every time there’s a hint of mob density.
You can buy a cheapo gaming pc at Best Buy now for $500 or $600. (Cyberpower PC) Use your existing monitor and sound, or buy both for around $150. Not the best cpu or gpu in the world, and only 8 gigs of ram, but it’ll play the hell out of D3 and most other games out right now. Gaming doesn’t have to eat your bank account anymore. No I don’t work for the computer company or the retailer, I just use one of their machines set up in dual monitor config. Hell of a lot cheaper than building a comparable gaming rig.
Um, no. D3 hasn’t been 32-bit in OS X for years now. They got rid of 32-bit clients on the Mac a long time ago in preparation for OS X going 64-bit only.
Don’t believe me?
This is precisely why having insufficient RAM would be a problem. A 32-bit client would actually have run better in a low RAM situation as it requires less RAM.
The point does still stand that the OP needs a newer computer to properly run D3 now though. Running it on an IGP is…painful.
Thanks for updating me on the D3 Mac Client . But the latest IGP can run D3 very well . It just needs a better driver and DirectX is way better than OpenGL on MAC. Check out the performance on the latest Intel IGP gen 11 on Skylake
Thanks for the posts, guys. I went with a i7 with 16gb and a 1tb spinner. I will throw in a 1tb blade and have an eGPU case on the way. ~450 for the Mini and ~160 for eGPU. 100 for blade. ~60 for cables n whatnot. My question now is stick with HS and run my 1060 6gb or Mojave and RX 580 8gb? LCDs are 4k 60 and 1440p 166.
Mojave has better eGPU support, but to be safe, you should clone your current High Sierra drive and keep that clone as a fallback so that you can try out Mojave with the eGPU and see if it works for you. If it does, stick with Mojave. If it doesn’t, you can always fall back to High Sierra via the clone. It never hurts to have a backup plan anyway. 