Wine performance drops hard on popup notification

RemiParks · Post by **RemiParks** » Sat Sep 11, 2010 1:55 pm

Ubuntu 10.4 32bit
I've tried Ubuntu proprietary drivers, and latest Nvidia drivers 256.53 or something. (gpu = evga 8600 gts 256mb)
Wine versions 1.2 and up all have my issue

When I run Steam games windowed or fullscreened, they run amazing. Until I get a skype/pidgin/rythmbox/email notification popup, at which point the steam app drops dramatically in performance. (1 different frame every 10 seconds)
I've installed various things via wine tricks, and things just don't seem to fix it.
I'm curious if this is a common issue, or better yet is a quick fix available?

(steam isn't effected, but the games CSS/TF2/GMOD)

eps · Post by **eps** » Sat Sep 11, 2010 7:46 pm

On 12/09/2010, at 4:55, "RemiParks" <[email protected]> wrote:

Ubuntu 10.4 32bit
I've tried Ubuntu proprietary drivers, and latest Nvidia drivers 256.53 or something. (gpu = evga 8600 gts 256mb)
Wine versions 1.2 and up all have my issue

When I run Steam games windowed or fullscreened, they run amazing. Until I get a skype/pidgin/rythmbox/email notification popup, at which point the steam app drops dramatically in performance. (1 different frame every 10 seconds)
I've installed various things via wine tricks, and things just don't seem to fix it.
I'm curious if this is a common issue, or better yet is a quick fix available?

(steam isn't effected, but the games CSS/TF2/GMOD)

This hasn't been an issue for a very long time. At least a year, maybe longer. Skype uses a different overlay to everything else (libnotify) as well so the problem is likely X related.

If you're playing a native 3d game do you get the same slowdown? =

RemiParks · Post by **RemiParks** » Sat Sep 11, 2010 8:34 pm

Not at all, I run RTCW (Return to Castle Wolfenstein) flawlessly under the native linux build.
Another thing, the slow down can also be caused by alt+tabing (I only alt+tab when windowed) but yeah only happens under Wine.

Thunderbird · Post by **Thunderbird** » Sat Sep 11, 2010 10:09 pm

This sounds like something 'process priority related'. It might be that the Linux kernel (or perhaps something in Wine but I would say the kernel) doesn't give the game a high priority anymore after giving focus again to the game running in Wine.

RemiParks · Post by **RemiParks** » Sat Sep 11, 2010 10:12 pm

So when I alt+tab or when something reacts in the background it takes precedent over the program?
What is a "normal" priority for wine, and if it is being changed how can I set it to hold instead of waver?

RemiParks · Post by **RemiParks** » Sun Sep 12, 2010 11:32 am

I was looking into this, using the "Nice" cmd variables but I couldn't launch from console with a priority -10 even with sudo
something along the lines of ".wine does not belong to you" came up.

So I tried to manually change it inside the system monitoring GUI where I was able to set a -10 priority on HL2.exe. (in this case GMod)
But it still seemed to run choppy-ish, however I think I need a more permanent kind of setting instead of just going that way.

DaVince · Post by **DaVince** » Tue Sep 14, 2010 9:58 am

RemiParks wrote:I was looking into this, using the "Nice" cmd variables but I couldn't launch from console with a priority -10 even with sudo
something along the lines of ".wine does not belong to you" came up.

So I tried to manually change it inside the system monitoring GUI where I was able to set a -10 priority on HL2.exe. (in this case GMod)
But it still seemed to run choppy-ish, however I think I need a more permanent kind of setting instead of just going that way.

You could go for an easy way to change (running) process priorities: install htop, run sudo htop, find your application, and use the hotkeys shown in the bottom to raise priority (by lowering the number). Or, more recommended, lower Skype's priority instead (into a positive value).