Diablo 3 visual effects missing on a 9600Gt ?!

[Shiver]

Heya there. I've been away from giving attention to PCs the way I used to for a long time, and now I find myself needing help because it seems I'm a nabcake when it comes to PC hardware x)

I just traded my laptop for my brother's desktop.

I'll post it's full specs if anyone thinks it's necessary but I think it's probably something related to the 3d card.
My laptop had a ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650 gpu, my desktop now has a Nvidia 9600GT card.
To my eyes the 9600Gt is a much superior 3d card than the one the laptop had, however I ran Diablo 3 to see how it ran on this computer and even though the frame rate is much much better, I instantly noticed something different in the visuals of the game. Some special effects are missing, the Wizard's shield visual effect for example is not present.
Now the only difference I see between these two GPUs is that the HD4650 supports DX10.1 where the 9600Gt only supports DX10 . Is this the cause of the problem, before I start digging up solutions for an nonexistent bug?

I just made a fresh installation of Windows7 Ultimate and I think I didn't miss installing any drivers.

Edit: I'm wondering if it's some driver issue or something because the game's frame rate counter only shows 0 when it's obviously rendering some frames per second xD

[Orcass]

D3 queries your video card and gets its feature set everytime you start the game. If you have a DX 9 card you get DX 9 effects, DX 10 gets DX 10 (Dx10.1 is a subset of additional features added to the api after the fact). So the effect for the wizard's shield is probably a DX 10.1 effect. Make sure you are using the 301.24 drivers or if you are feeling like running beta drivers the 304.79's have D3 specific optimizations and added fixes (these have been reported to be unstable or just act weird with older cards while others are having nothing but praise of them on older cards). Also make sure to download the Directx June 2011 redistributable (do not use the web updater) and run it to make sure your libraries are up to date. Good luck and let us know how you are fairing.

[Shiver]

thank you I'll try it and let you know.
I forgot to mention, I didn't install DirectX because I checked DxDiag and it said version 11 so I assumed it came pre-installed.

--- Post Update ---

by any chance is it June 2010 and not 2011 ? =P I can't find any other lol =P

--- Post Update ---

Think it should be a DX10.1 effect or something.
Just installed the latest drivers (the beta) and latest DX version and still occurs the same thing. Oh well =P
Thanks for your help, guess I was hopping it was a bug

[Kaotika]

The DX webupdater works just fine, run it and it'll make sure you have all the latest stuff.

Diablo 3, though, is DX9 only, so it's not a case of DX10.1 only effect or some such, it must be issue with the specific nVidia drivers you're using

[Shiver]

oh wow thanks for the input!
I had given up already. So what do you suggest I try to work it out ?
I've tried googling various things to see if I could find more users with this problem but I can't find anything

--- Post Update ---

also, the fact that the Frame rate counter is not showing any value other than zero, made me think it should be a driver (or some other bug) issue

[idchoppers]

oh wow thanks for the input!
I had given up already. So what do you suggest I try to work it out ?
I've tried googling various things to see if I could find more users with this problem but I can't find anything

--- Post Update ---

also, the fact that the Frame rate counter is not showing any value other than zero, made me think it should be a driver (or some other bug) issue

The FPS counter is not working for anybody right now. They broke it with the 1.0.3 patch and haven't fixed it yet.

[Shiver]

Oh alright had no idea since I was away from the game for a while.

[naqoyqatsi84]

You need to open D3Prefs.txt in My Documents/Diablo III folder. Edit the line ''HardwareClass'' and place 5 there. At least it worked for me ).

[Shiver]

Hell yeah that worked!
Thank you =)
I'm not quite sure if the effect is exactly the same as it was on my laptop, somehow it seems lower detail or something. I have to check it out, out of curiosity.

Also... I wonder why it didn't work as supposed in the first place?!? o.O

Thanks again