Rally Games: Video Stutters

[Bagmoolwan]

I just installed wine-1.7.14 to play two oldish games, Colin McRae Rally 2005 and Richard Burns Rally. They seem to work, but are really unusable, as the video "stutters", that is, it runs for half a second and then stops for a half second. And then runs again for half a second, and so on.

The Linux graphics driver is from nVidia. It reports the card as a GeForce 7100 / nForce 630i. I am not at all familiar with graphics cards, but it seems to me that this should be good enough for both games. The CMR2005 box, say, mentions nVidia 5600 as a usable card.

Is there a fix for the stuttering video? Or should I just give up on the games?

[Bladeforce]

I have this game from GoG and it runs fine also the wine database reports this game running between gold/platinum standard

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.p ... &iId=17283

Albeit with an older version of wine, maybe its a regression with the latest wine?
I'll have to see if I can run it with the latest Wine version as I use playonlinux to play games with wine

[Bob Wya]

@Bagmoolwan,

Unfortunately, even under Windows, your card is actually weaker than an nVidia 5600...
There is always some overlap between GPU generations. Your card is a "bottom of the rung" 7000 series (integrated graphics - which shares system RAM). The 5600 is a midrange Discrete 5000 series card (with it's own VRAM).

Even under Windows I'd be telling you it's time to upgrade! With the overhead of Wine on Linux - the experience is going to be even worse.

I wouldn't give up on Linux gaming. You'll find many games that DirectX 7 era that will run fine and are still excellent by modern standards (well they actually have a story for example). System Shock II and Deus Ex 1 for example. I've run these games, on Windows, even on SIS integrated graphics (read super-weak performance) - "back in the day". They are both available on Steam (or GOG for that matter). I've played both Steam versions of these games, via Wine, without any issues at all.

You basically have to "cut your cloth" to suit your budget as they say...

Bob

[Bagmoolwan]

There is always some overlap between GPU generations. Your card is a "bottom of the rung" 7000 series (integrated graphics - which shares system RAM). The 5600 is a midrange Discrete 5000 series card (with it's own VRAM).

Even under Windows I'd be telling you it's time to upgrade! With the overhead of Wine on Linux - the experience is going to be even worse.

OK; thank you. I looked at a nearby store's catalogue and a card with the nVidia GeForce 210 was inexpensive and passively cooled. Would that be enough of an upgrade?

[Bob Wya]

There is always some overlap between GPU generations. Your card is a "bottom of the rung" 7000 series (integrated graphics - which shares system RAM). The 5600 is a midrange Discrete 5000 series card (with it's own VRAM).

Even under Windows I'd be telling you it's time to upgrade! With the overhead of Wine on Linux - the experience is going to be even worse.

OK; thank you. I looked at a nearby store's catalogue and a card with the nVidia GeForce 210 was inexpensive and passively cooled. Would that be enough of an upgrade?

@Bagmoolwan,

You want a hierarchy of gaming performance - don't get bogged down in the details of the zillion different GPU models...
Refer to Tom's Hardware GPU Hierarchy Chart!!
( Of course for Linux gaming one ignores the column headed Radeon )
You will also see that your existing integrated 7100 card is 1-2 performance tiers below the discrete FX5600 card)

Basically the Geforce GT210 is a cheap way to shoehorn vdpau video decoding/multimedia support into a system - it won't do anything else.

To get basic gaming you want an Nvidia card that is modern - so you will get driver support for the longest period. But low-end so it isn't going to break your wallet!!

Looking online in the UK I would guess on a budget you would currently want to get the GT630.

If you are feeling significantly richer... Then the steps up in performance are the GT640, then the GTX650, then the newer Maxwell-based GTX750 and GTX750Ti.

Don't get the GTS models of any of these cards!!

You can get the 630 and 640 cards in passive versions - but just make sure your computer case has good cooling in this instance!!

Bob

[Simon of Aragon]

off topic comment: Hey Bob, Thanks for the GPU hierarchy chart link.

on the topic: I would like to suggest Bagmoolwan could try some registry tweaks. I blew out my old Nvidia card last Summer and had to replace it with a low budget Radeon card. I am no expert on cards and I shop by price not by brand. So I can relate to GPU issues.

Start terminal; $ wine regedit
You should see the folders on the left follow this branch: HKEY_CURRENT_USER --> Software --> Wine --> Direct3D
If there is no branch folder for Direct3D then you can make one by right clicking on Wine folder then in the submenu --> New --> Key
Then rename the new key to Direct3D. There are about a dozen or more tweaks you can do with this one key alone. Check them all out on the Wiki here.

In some cases I have found that turning off shaders or changing the rendering can improve performance.

[Bagmoolwan]

Then rename the new key to Direct3D. There are about a dozen or more tweaks you can do with this one key alone. Check them all out on the Wiki here.

In some cases I have found that turning off shaders or changing the rendering can improve performance.

I tried turning off shaders, but didn't see any improvement. In fact, some combinations meant video did not work at all.

[Bagmoolwan]

You can get the 630 and 640 cards in passive versions - but just make sure your computer case has good cooling in this instance!!

I spent some time at http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/ and found that the passmark of my integrated nVidia 7100 was 30, whereas that of a G210 was 185. This looked like a significant improvement for 39€.

But then I found an even cheaper (33€) card with a passively cooled AMD Radeon HD5450, passmark 233, and bought that one.

And, well, it seems to do the trick. The video for both games runs just like it should.

Irritatingly, after I replaced the nvidia driver with fglrx, a box with "AMD Unsupported hardware" appeared at the lower right corner of the screen. I wonder why.

(The passmark for nVidia's GT630 was 733. It seemed overkill.)

[Bob Wya]

The expression "you can take a horse to water..." comes to mind

Bob