Arch Linux

skyview

Member

Registered: 2008-12-26

Posts: 5

Wine WoW x64 Slow

Hi,
I'm having low fps with WoW under wine running ArchLinux x64 (2.6.27-ARCH), Wine-1.1.7, Ati 4850 (8.12 drivers).
I've had the exact same issue with Ubuntu 32/64, Opensuse32.

I have applied all kinds of registry tweaks, followed countless of WoW guides to tweak performance but FPS remains like crap.
It does NOT matter what resolution I run WoW in, if it's in 1920x1200 (like screenshot) or 1024x768.

If you look below I have around 15fps (I run in OpenGL) when there is a long view distance.
On the system monitor my Wow.exe process is always running at 100% (it just dipped to 93% in this screenshot but believe me, it's at 100% all the
time when I'm moving).

I'm running on a Q6600 OCed at 2.9Ghz, 8GB RAM, 4850... I used to have an nVidia 8800GTX and that gave exactly the same issues (low fps like that in crowded area).

Is this a limitation of Wine ? Is there somehow a bottleneck with my other hw ?
If you have any clue on how I can get decent fps in WoW (I need 30fps+) I would be very grateful.

Last edited by skyview (2008-12-28 20:15:01)

initbox

Member

Registered: 2008-09-27

Posts: 172

Re: Wine WoW x64 Slow

I always had good FPS with similar specs..

So something weird is going on, but I don't know what it could be.

skottish

Forum Fellow

From: Here

Registered: 2006-06-16

Posts: 7,942

Re: Wine WoW x64 Slow

Hi skyview, welcome to the forums.

We're asking that people who post screenshots follow a few guidelines. Please check them out:

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=61754

skyview

Member

Registered: 2008-12-26

Posts: 5

Re: Wine WoW x64 Slow

Sorry about that ... adapted and added thumbnail !

cosma

Member

Registered: 2008-12-15

Posts: 10

Re: Wine WoW x64 Slow

Same problem here.. poor WoW performance with Athlon X2 3600+ and an 8800GTS 512 (G92) cards, using x86-64.

Dheart

Member

From: Sofia, Bulgaria

Registered: 2006-10-26

Posts: 956

Re: Wine WoW x64 Slow

Look here at the HOWTO section - You need to the beta nvidia driver.

---

My victim you are meant to be
No, you cannot hide nor flee
You know what I'm looking for
Pleasure your torture, I will endure...

cosma

Member

Registered: 2008-12-15

Posts: 10

Re: Wine WoW x64 Slow

Installed 180.18-1 using the AUR... framerate wasn't affected much.

I'm at 10-15 FPS in stormwind, running windowed at 1280x1024, all graphical details settings at minimum, no aa, no vsync, no triple buffering.
The strange thing is that moving all the settings to good and enabling 4x AA doesn't affect frame rate at all..

A very strange thing is that, using cpufreq-info, I see with cpufreq-info that current the CPU frequency is set to 1000Mhz for both cores, while I configured them to scale among 1000/1800/2000Mhz steps with cpufreqd (powernow-k8 module, 'conservative' governor).

cosma

Member

Registered: 2008-12-15

Posts: 10

Re: Wine WoW x64 Slow

As I thought, it was a CPU bottleneck...

Simply running

sudo cpufreq-set -g performance

Caused FPS to jump to 25-28FPS. Also the ondemand governor will do.

tafsen

Member

Registered: 2006-05-03

Posts: 141

Re: Wine WoW x64 Slow

Is there a guide on how to install the beta drivers on Arch? I tried to just forceinstall the beta drivers and utils but then my computer freezes everytime i try to start X.

skyview

Member

Registered: 2008-12-26

Posts: 5

Re: Wine WoW x64 Slow

Cpufreq not enabled and intel speedstepping is disabled in Bios.
If I do /cat/proc/cpuinfo all cores are showing up as: "cpu MHz         : 2968.250 "

Afaik it should be running at full speed. Still getting bad fps in Wow and CPU continously at 100%.

The only idea I have is to install WoW from scratch on Wine (I use a copied folder which is located on an ext3 vol).
At one point I also rebuild all the cache files in WoW but it did very little to improve the performance.

angel333

Member

Registered: 2009-07-07

Posts: 1

Re: Wine WoW x64 Slow

hi, i've had the same problem - solved installing lib32-catalyst-utils from AUR (you have to unintall lib32-libgl with pacman -Rd first). now it runs great!

oni5115

Member

Registered: 2009-01-10

Posts: 38

Re: Wine WoW x64 Slow

Have you also setup wow to utlize your cores properly?  Wow sadly uses defaults that only work well for single or dual core CPU's and not Quad Cores.  You have to manually edit the config file to utilize which cores you prefer - or all of them if you simply want your OS to handle load balancing - which generally works best unless your are mutlti-boxing.

The way you mention how the CPU's are going to 100% reminds me exactly of the posts on the wow forums I stumbled across while looking up i7-920 info.  Seems a lot of Quad Core folks were having issues as well.  Perhaps its the CPU and not the GPU in this case.

Reference:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/threa … 1&pageNo=1

Hope that helps

oni5115

Member

Registered: 2009-01-10

Posts: 38

Re: Wine WoW x64 Slow

hi, i've had the same problem - solved installing lib32-catalyst-utils from AUR (you have to unintall lib32-libgl with pacman -Rd first). now it runs great!

I'm curious how well WoW runs for you under wine.  Do you also use Compiz?

I'm really debating on what gfx card to get, since ATI/AMD prices are really good, but I've always had nVidia cards, and never had any issues with them so far under linux or windows.  I'm really concerned about ATI/AMD cards under linux since everywhere I read is like ZOMG teh drivers suck!!!111eleven!!!!  Most of those posts however, are rather old now circa 2007 or 2008 when ATI first went open source. 

I haven't found any recent articles covering ATI/AMD drivers under linux with radeon HD 4x00 or5x00 series cards. I know they are open source now and improving, but are they good enough to run WoW stable under Wine so I can spend 99.9% of my time in Linux.  Even raiding time.

I currently run Arch with LXDE, exchanging openbox for compiz.  So I am particularly interested in Compiz + Wine + WoW + ATI/AMD cards.

Dheart

Member

From: Sofia, Bulgaria

Registered: 2006-10-26

Posts: 956

Re: Wine WoW x64 Slow

Go with nvidia, you'll have no troubles. Go with ati, all hell will break loose. (Unless you want to buy some old card, which is properly supported by the open source xf86-video-ati driver)

---

My victim you are meant to be
No, you cannot hide nor flee
You know what I'm looking for
Pleasure your torture, I will endure...