Bashiok, could you tell us, what was the hardware configuration of the computer whereat the Diablo III ran?

They were insane.

There's a few reasons why it doesn't matter what those machines were though.

Most machines are lent to us by hardware vendors. It's in our interest to have our games look good and run well, and it's in their interest to show off the latest and greatest their company has to offer. So generally they're top of the line, using all the newest and best hardware.

Because we're working with a pre-release version we work with the hardware that's going to be on the show floor to build a final show floor build. The game hasn't hit (obviously) final QA and hardware compatibility testing as it would before release to the public, so we need to ensure it's going to run smoothly on this one specific set of hardware for the show.

It can also help, to a degree, overcome some potential technical hurdles we could run into with a pre-optimized build of the game. Throw more CPU/RAM/3D processing at it, and generally those pre-optimized problems won't throw a wrench into the brief glimpse of a game that isn't finished yet.

So, the combination of having hardware vendors showing off the latest and greatest, coupled with our interest to have a unoptimized version of the game look good, leads to show floor specifications that are probably way beyond what even the final "Recommended" specs for the game would be, let alone "Required".

This is the general outcome anyway, it could turn out that hardware we had is EXACTLY recommended spec and I'm TOOMA here. But regardless it really wouldn't matter at this time, and also... I'm noooot goooonna teeeeell yooooou! ;)