Wine and 3D rendering issues

EagleRock · Post by **EagleRock** » Mon May 11, 2009 9:24 am

Hi everyone,

I hate to ask n00bish questions, but after several days of forum scouring and searching for answers, I'm at a loss as to where to go next.

I'm a long-time Linux CLI user, but I haven't really played with Wine or many aspects of the GUI-end until recently. I've been trying to get two of my favorite Windows games to run on my Debian Testing install, and keep coming to the same road block: games in Wine run as if they're being rendered by the CPU, not my graphics cards.

Here's a rundown of my PC:
Intel C2D E6600 2.4GHz
4GB 800MHz DDR2
NForce 680i Chipset
2x NVidia 8800GTS 320MB OC GPUs
Creative XFi Titanium Sound Card

OS Info:
Debian Testing with 2.6.26-2-amd64 kernel, KDE3.5 and Wine 1.1.18

After fiddling with ALSA and the recently released drivers for my Creative XFi sound card, I've gotten sound working fine at least to the point that 2.1 sound is working for testing purposes. I'm trying to install the two games below:

Steam + Counter-Strike:Source
The Lord of the Rings Online

I've gotten both working at least to the point that I can start them both up and get into the game itself, but the games run ridiculously slow, like it doesn't see my graphics cards. It's not a small difference, either. Here's a framerate comparison for CS:S:

Windows: 1680x1050 + Full Effects + 4xAA + 16xAF = 80 fps minimum
Wine: 800x600 + Minimum settings = 5-20 fps

I've installed the proper nvidia kernel package (nvidia-kernel-2.6.26-2-amd64) and installed the current nvidia-glx userspace libraries and all seems to be working fine. The glxinfo output shows direct rendering is enabled, and Linux-native 3D applications (e.g. Extreme Tux Racer) work great. Also, glxgears gives a high output at 16,000+ fps, indicating the graphics cards must be working, at least for Linux.

I've actually done a full reinstall of Debian at this point to ensure I did everything right and I was working on a vanilla system. I've also tried the stable version of Wine and the one in the squeeze repository (1.1.18) to no avail. However, at this point, everything works on the machine except for the fact that Wine doesn't seem to recognize the graphics card at all. I've searched high and low for any configurations that I need to perform on Wine itself to enable rendering, but I can't seem to find anything.

Hopefully someone can shed light on the situation...thanks!

Cloudef · Post by **Cloudef** » Mon May 11, 2009 9:42 am

It is 64bit install? That is probably why it is not working smooth for you. CSS is 32bit game.

gamblor01 · Post by **gamblor01** » Mon May 11, 2009 10:32 am

I can't say much about the Lord of the Rings game -- never played it or tried it with Wine. I can likely help you with the Steam related content however.

First, here's a how-to that I wrote for installing the Orange Box:

http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?t=151354

Check out step 8 specifically. You might just need to change the heapsize or dxlevel options.

Second, see my post from a few weeks ago:

http://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?t=4641

There are tons of details in there about tweaks that can be done. Specifically, you might want to look at adding the Direct3D registry key and all of the values (well, most of them) that cloudef posted (see his picture in the post from Wed Apr 29, 2009 9:36 am). I installed Ubuntu 9.04 (64-bit) on a test partition and then installed Wine. Oddly enough it seemed like all of the tweaks from that thread had negative effects on my 32-bit partition, but worked beautifully on my 64-bit partition.

Since you're using a 64-bit kernel I would recommend trying all of those registry tweaks -- they made a world of difference on my 64-bit system. My advice would be to try setting heapsize and dxlevel in the game properties like so:

-heapsize 1048576 -dxlevel 81

Then try playing the game and see how it does. After that, start trying to add the values in the Direct3D registry key one at a time and see what happens. Obviously the heapsize and dxlevel won't help LotR much, but the registry tweaks might. If you're running Compiz then temporarily disabling that while you play a game should also help.

EagleRock · Post by **EagleRock** » Mon May 11, 2009 10:34 am

Cloudef wrote:It is 64bit install? That is probably why it is not working smooth for you. CSS is 32bit game.

Yes, it is a 64-bit install. It looks like quite a few people are running 64-bit distros with Wine, and I've seen successful installs of CS:S and Lotro using 64-bit. I don't mind installing 32-bit to get stuff running, but I'm worried that I'd reinstall the entire OS and get everything up and running again just to come across the same issue again. Is there something else I should be looking at first before resorting to that?

John Drescher · Post by **John Drescher** » Mon May 11, 2009 10:38 am

On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 11:34 AM, EagleRock <[email protected]> wrote:

Cloudef wrote:
It is 64bit install? That is probably why it is not working smooth for you. CSS is 32bit game.
Yes, it is a 64-bit install. It looks like quite a few people are running 64-bit distros with Wine, and I've seen successful installs of CS:S and Lotro using 64-bit.

I have been doing this for 5 years on SMP machines without any problem
like this. However I use a build from source distro.

John

EagleRock · Post by **EagleRock** » Mon May 11, 2009 11:19 am

gamblor01 wrote:Then try playing the game and see how it does. After that, start trying to add the values in the Direct3D registry key one at a time and see what happens. Obviously the heapsize and dxlevel won't help LotR much, but the registry tweaks might. If you're running Compiz then temporarily disabling that while you play a game should also help.

Good stuff. I'll give this stuff a shot tonight. I hope it's just as simple as something DirectX-related being messed up. The fps discrepancy seems way too high to be just down to "tweaking." Like I said, I have dual 8800GTSes and I can normally get over 80-100fps in normal CS with full eye-candy, while Wine looks like a slide-show at 800x600 with minimum settings.

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, is there something to know about running SLI cards and Wine? I might try disabling one tonight to see what happens. I was also considering installing DirectX 9, but many threads and HOWTOs seemed to strongly advise against it.

Andy Wettstein · Post by **Andy Wettstein** » Mon May 11, 2009 12:30 pm

On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 10:34:04AM -0500, EagleRock wrote:

Cloudef wrote:
It is 64bit install? That is probably why it is not working smooth for you. CSS is 32bit game.
Yes, it is a 64-bit install. It looks like quite a few people are running 64-bit distros with Wine, and I've seen successful installs of CS:S and Lotro using 64-bit. I don't mind installing 32-bit to get stuff running, but I'm worried that I'd reinstall the entire OS and get everything up and running again just to come across the same issue again. Is there something else I should be looking at first before resorting to that?

Make sure you have the 32 bit nvidia libraries installed. If you are
you using the debian packaged version of the nvidia driver, you need to
install nvidia-glx-ia32.

EagleRock · Post by **EagleRock** » Mon May 11, 2009 1:24 pm

Andy Wettstein wrote:Make sure you have the 32 bit nvidia libraries installed. If you are you using the debian packaged version of the nvidia driver, you need to install nvidia-glx-ia32.

Well holy crap, that sounds like it...

I only installed nvidia-glx, not the 32-bit user libraries...

Thanks a million! I'll definitely be trying this out tonight! Also, I'll be looking forward to gamblor01's HOWTO for optimizations on the Source engine!

EagleRock · Post by **EagleRock** » Tue May 12, 2009 12:55 pm

EagleRock wrote:I'll definitely be trying this out tonight!

Just a quick follow-up:

Adding the 32-bit libraries for nvidia-glx worked! I got both games to run with flawless graphics. I'm having other issues with the C++ Redistributables and working with separate wine environments, but those are issues I'm tackling myself. Either way, the huge roadblock is gone and I'm moving forward!

Thanks again to everyone for all your help!

ocellaris · Post by **ocellaris** » Thu May 21, 2009 8:03 am

3vi1 wrote:

EagleRock wrote:
I'll definitely be trying this out tonight!
Just a quick follow-up:

Adding the 32-bit libraries for nvidia-glx worked! I got both games to
run with flawless graphics. I'm having other issues with the C++
Redistributables and working with separate wine environments, but those
are issues I'm tackling myself. Either way, the huge roadblock is gone
and I'm moving forward!

Thanks again to everyone for all your help!

I am really curious how you got LOTRO installed with Debian and Wine. I am
running Wine 1.1.21 with Debian 5.0 Lenny. The Mines of Moria installer
always gets stuck on the .NET 1.1 prereq. I have tried the fakenet11.reg
and installing .NET 1.1 using winetricks without any success. LOTRO always
tries to install the .NET files and hangs. In other distros I have no had
any trouble getting LOTRO to skip the .NET files by using the registry keys
or winetricks. I am trying to switch everything over to Debian however
including my desktop PC and this is one of the final sticking points.

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