Wine and WoW Cataclysm Patch 4.0 troubleshooting thread

dardack · Post by **dardack** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 12:37 pm

On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 9:21 AM, JontomXire <wineforum-user@winehq.org> wrote:

That's what I'm going to do, after purging all the current nvidia stuff frommy system.

The second thing I'm going to do is download, build and install the latest decent version of Wine.

Thanks for all your advice. It's been really helpful.

---------

Yea totally get new wine/new drivers.

One more question. What with OpenGL support getting dropped from WoW, I was wondering if it was worth trying to use DirectX under Wine. I found a post where this guy actually installed the real thing under Wine and said his game ran fine.

AFAIK, WoW is not dropping OpenGL support. That'd be almost as bad as
dropping DX9 support. 1. It only runs on Mac because of OpenGL (now
SC2 they actually have 2 separate engines, whereas WoW is same engine,
IIRC). 2. DX9 is still the most widely used. 3. Unless they
completely revamp the engine, it's not going to drop OpenGL, I can see
their next MMO Titan not having OpenGL for windows, but not dropping
it for WoW makes no sense, especially sense I don't see them
recreating the #1 mmo engine.

My understanding is that on Windows DirectX is better than OpenGL because it talks more directly to the drivers than OpenGL. So if I install the real deal, will I still get that directness and speed? Or is it still going to translate to OpenGL?

No don't install real deal, you can actually mess up your wineprefix
if you do. You can however, get the dx dll's with winetricks. IIRC
this requires you to own a windows license to use those DLL's. But
yea bad to install dx directly, unless absolutely necessary (I believe
steam tends to install some version of dx9 for the games it runs, but
can't be 100% possitive).

I'm wondering what the effect on the graphics of having everything set to minimum is going to be. I read here that some WoW spell effects won't show up - if they are important ones like Boss AoE in a raid then that could wipe a raid if they aren't visible and I or my wife die as a result. I'm MT for my guild, but my wife mostly plays on that PC and she's mostly OT healer, although sometimes she heals me.

OK for raiding this is what you can set to low:

Texture Resolution: Low
Shadow Quality: Low (limited by opengl/dx9 anyways)
Liquad Detail: Low (limited by opengl/dx9 anyways)
Sunshafts Disabled (limited by opengl/dx9 anyways)
Environmental Detail: Low
Ground Clutter; Low
View Distance: Low (althought I like at least fair even in raids myself)

OK next you MUST have Projected Textures enabled to raid properly.
Particle Density MUST at least be fair, if not Good to see all the
spells the boss casts.

It'll also be a bit poor if the graphics are really shoddy. My PC is brand new self built, same motherboard, CPU, and RAM, but two much newer SLI enabled graphics cards and I have all the graphics set to max and it is so much cooler than I used to get on my old laptop before it died. I don't want to subject my wife to terrible graphics.

Wait were you the one with the 7k series nvidia? Cuase I hope not,
the 7k is pretty old, at least have 8800 or something even in the
300/400 range.

Lastly I'm worried that in a few months, Blizz will drop OpenGL support altogether and we'll no longer be able to play like that.

Don't as explained above.

So maybe it's worth trying to get DirectX support working reliably now?

It does already, to test wine 1.3.28 I played like 3 weeks in dx9
only, just to see how far it's come. Very.

What do you all think?

Lastly, I've quit WoW after almost 7 years, sub ends 10/5/11. So I'll
still try to help anyone in WoW with Wine as always, just might be a
bit dated I guess. GL to you.

--
Sincerely,

MacNean C. Tyrrell

tparker · Post by **tparker** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 2:23 pm

On 09/29/2011 01:36 PM, MacNean Tyrrell wrote:

Wait were you the one with the 7k series nvidia? Cuase I hope not, the
7k is pretty o

If you do decide to try another video card I would see if someone still
has 260s for sale. They should be cheap and should work fine for the
graphics settings options that we get through wine. It would be less
expensive than a 4/500 series and everyone I know that had a 300 series
had heat and noise issues.

JontomXire · Post by **JontomXire** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 2:31 pm

Ok, after several hours, I installed the nVidia drivers from their own website, and then (this was the bit that took longest) I installed Wine 1.3.28 from the PPA. I had a go at building 1.3.29 from sources, but it complained about not having 32 bit development libraries. I looked around and all I could find was to install wine-deps from the PPA so I figured if I was going to do that, I might as well go the whole hog and install Wine directly from the PPA.

It took AGES! But that's a different matter.

I now have two worries:

1) Wine complains that it cannot initialise OpenGL.
2) When running the game, Wine complains that it cannot emulate DirectX9 without OpenGL.

Now obviously the first is a big problem, but the second is also worrying because I already changed Config.wtf to use OpenGL, so why is Wine trying to emulate DirectX9??

glxgears works fine and gives me 5k FPS (even though it says it is synched to the monitor refresh rate).

So, one thing at a time. Does anyone have any idea why Wine can't run OpenGL?

@dardack: Yes I was the one with the 7600 GS. I know it's a bit old, but it's been running WoW fine for ages. I recently had to rebuild my old PC after my laptop died (including new monitor) and then had to shell out more cash for new mobo, CPU and RAM for this PC. We really need to buy a new car because the wife's has become more expensive to fix than to junk, and my car looks like it's developed a leak in the fuel system somehow (it's LPG). I really cannot afford new graphics cards. It would be cheaper to pay for a Windows 7 license and run the game under Windows. Which was what I was doing before the old mobo died.

dardack · Post by **dardack** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 2:35 pm

On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 3:31 PM, JontomXire <wineforum-user@winehq.org> wrote:

Ok, after several hours, I installed the nVidia drivers from their own website, and then (this was the bit that took longest) I installed Wine 1.3.28 from the PPA. I had a go at building 1.3.29 from sources, but it complained about not having 32 bit development libraries. I looked around and all I could find was to install wine-deps from the PPA so I figured if I was going to do that, I might as well go the whole hog and install Wine directly from the PPA.

It took AGES! But that's a different matter.

I now have two worries:

1) Wine complains that it cannot initialise OpenGL.
2) When running the game, Wine complains that it cannot emulate DirectX9 without OpenGL.

Now obviously the first is a big problem, but the second is also worrying because I already changed Config.wtf to use OpenGL, so why is Wine trying to emulate DirectX9??

glxgears works fine and gives me 5k FPS (even though it says it is synched to the monitor refresh rate).

So, one thing at a time. Does anyone have any idea why Wine can't run OpenGL?

When you ran the nvidia installer, did you click yes to install
Nvidia's opengl 32bit libraries?

@dardack: Yes I was the one with the 7600 GS. I know it's a bit old, but it's been running WoW fine for ages. I recently had to rebuild my old PC after my laptop died (including new monitor) and then had to shell out more cash for new mobo, CPU and RAM for this PC. We really need to buy a new car because the wife's has become more expensive to fix than to junk, and my car looks like it's developed a leak in the fuel system somehow (it's LPG). I really cannot afford new graphics cards. It would be cheaper to pay for a Windows 7 license and run the game under Windows. Which was what I was doing before the old mobo died.

Even in windows, with the changes to the engine, it's still not gonna
run awesome except on low settings, just saying.

--
Sincerely,

MacNean C. Tyrrell

JontomXire · Post by **JontomXire** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 2:47 pm

I only got offered a few choices - I think I clicked yes to all of them.

I read in one post that the answer is to uninstall and re-install the graphics drivers - not sure how that will help, but how do I uninstall nVidia's drivers?

I have a vague memory of someone posting about lib32 paths and simlinks or something.

JontomXire · Post by **JontomXire** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 2:50 pm

root@fred:/usr# ls lib32/libGL*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 656 2011-09-29 18:45 lib32/libGL.la
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 2011-09-29 19:57 lib32/libGL.so -> mesa/libGL.so.1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 2011-09-29 18:45 lib32/libGL.so.1 -> libGL.so.280.13*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 794628 2011-09-29 18:45 lib32/libGL.so.280.13*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 2011-09-29 19:57 lib32/libGLU.so -> libGLU.so.1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 2011-09-29 19:57 lib32/libGLU.so.1 -> libGLU.so.1.3.070701
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 456380 2010-04-29 06:43 lib32/libGLU.so.1.3.070701
root@fred:/usr# ls lib32/libgl*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 2011-09-29 19:57 lib32/libglade-2.0.so -> libglade-2.0.so.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 2011-09-29 19:57 lib32/libglade-2.0.so.0 -> libglade-2.0.so.0.0.7
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 93072 2010-03-06 14:31 lib32/libglade-2.0.so.0.0.7
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 2011-09-29 19:57 lib32/libglut.so -> libglut.so.3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 2011-09-29 19:57 lib32/libglut.so.3 -> libglut.so.3.9.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 216620 2010-01-18 18:31 lib32/libglut.so.3.9.0

So there is no libglx in /usr/lib32, and the libGL that is there seems to belong to mesa and not nVidia.

JontomXire · Post by **JontomXire** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 3:17 pm

I reinstalled the nVidia drivers. It really didn't take long.

Now WoW runs. Not great, nowhere near as good as my other PC, but it's useable.

Now to see if we can raid with it!

Thanks to everyone for your advice.

I may be back to see if I can get any more speed increases out of my system. If you have any tips, please post them here for me.

BlackNoxis · Post by **BlackNoxis** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 3:36 pm

JontomXire wrote:I reinstalled the nVidia drivers. It really didn't take long.

Now WoW runs. Not great, nowhere near as good as my other PC, but it's useable.

Now to see if we can raid with it!

Thanks to everyone for your advice.

I may be back to see if I can get any more speed increases out of my system. If you have any tips, please post them here for me.

You say wow runs, but I ask you : from which version ?

JontomXire · Post by **JontomXire** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 2:30 am

How do you mean which version? AFAIK WoW refuses to run unless it is updated to the latest version. So...the latest version.

It was a while ago, but I'm sure that the graphics were better - much better - last time I ran WoW under Linux. Yet if I increase a few things from low to fair (all I am allowed to do know) everything slows down quite a bit. This is despite a better processor and memory.

I read somewhere that having Wine output debug slows it down. There was an environment variable or something you could enable to turn it off, but a build without any debug at all would be even better.

Does anyone have any ideas on this? Or anything else I can do to speed Wine up when playing WoW?

JontomXire · Post by **JontomXire** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 2:45 am

Tips for improving performance I've found so far:

BUT: There are many guides out there that tell you to add that "DisableExtension" parameter to your registry - for me that was the main issue, letting my FPS go down. Adding the registry key, dropped my FPS by about 30-40%!

Second thing: On several sites it is suggested to disable Pixel Shaders for WoW (because of a bug with patch 3.0.2, I think). That option dropped my FPS another 10-20%.

So: Those fixes MAY give you better results with your configuration, but let me assume that on Jaunty (amd64) with the latest Nvidia Beta drivers (185.13), removing the suggested registry key and leaving Pixel Shaders enabled gave me a performance increase by between 40-60% on a GeForce 7300.

So I'll remove the registry key and see if I can enable pixel shaders (not sure what that's about yet).

Can anyone tell me how to measure my FPX in WoW?

Really got to get back to work now

tparker · Post by **tparker** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 8:10 am

On 09/30/2011 03:30 AM, JontomXire wrote:

How do you mean which version? AFAIK WoW refuses to run unless it is updated to the latest version. So...the latest version.

It was a while ago, but I'm sure that the graphics were better - much better - last time I ran WoW under Linux. Yet if I increase a few things from low to fair (all I am allowed to do know) everything slows down quite a bit. This is despite a better processor and memory.

Each expansion of WoW, and sometimes updates within expansions, has
increased the graphics requirements. Depending on how long ago you
played in Linux that may be what you are seeing. The increases may not
have been as noticeable in Windows but are with the dx9 and some other
limitations in Wine.

tparker · Post by **tparker** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 8:14 am

On 09/30/2011 03:45 AM, JontomXire wrote:

Can anyone tell me how to measure my FPX in WoW? Really got to get
back to work now

In game using control-r should give you a frame rate. I may also show up
if you mouse over the little 'computer' in the icons to the left of your
bags in the bottom bar, but I am not sure if showing it there is game
default or an addon.

JontomXire · Post by **JontomXire** » Tue Oct 04, 2011 8:53 am

I'm getting 24 FPS in Uldum in that place the portal from Orgrimmar takes you to.

Not great. My wife seems to be raiding ok with it as it is, so I guess we're ok, but it seems sad to have upgraded CPU and RAM so much and be getting such poor results. Seeing as playing WoW is pretty much all we do with it, maybe it's worth giving £80 to Micro$oft to get their rubbish OS.

In summary, I'm pretty disappointed.

Thanks for all your help though.

BlackNoxis · Post by **BlackNoxis** » Tue Oct 04, 2011 9:33 am

JontomXire wrote:I'm getting 24 FPS in Uldum in that place the portal from Orgrimmar takes you to.

Not great. My wife seems to be raiding ok with it as it is, so I guess we're ok, but it seems sad to have upgraded CPU and RAM so much and be getting such poor results. Seeing as playing WoW is pretty much all we do with it, maybe it's worth giving £80 to Micro$oft to get their rubbish OS.

In summary, I'm pretty disappointed.

Thanks for all your help though.

There are methods to speed up your system & processes, what linux are you running on and what kernel, and what kind (preinstalled or costum) ?

JontomXire · Post by **JontomXire** » Tue Oct 04, 2011 10:27 am

Kubuntu 10.04 LTS 64 bit.

Whatever kernel comes with Kubuntu 10.04 LTS.

Custom built system (AMD Phenom II quad core 3.3Ghx processor, 8Gb RAM, twin SLI linked NVidia 7600 GS graphics cards).

BlackNoxis · Post by **BlackNoxis** » Tue Oct 04, 2011 11:04 am

JontomXire wrote:Kubuntu 10.04 LTS 64 bit.

Whatever kernel comes with Kubuntu 10.04 LTS.

Custom built system (AMD Phenom II quad core 3.3Ghx processor, 8Gb RAM, twin SLI linked NVidia 7600 GS graphics cards).

You may want to costum your kernel in other to achieve more performance, but if you're just learning linux, I wouldn't advise.
So another advise would be changing the priority of the wow.exe with task manager to high priority or realistic, so all background processes are second in priority whatever those are.
Check with wine-doors if you have all the libraries installed for gaming performance, just check if you have some progs installed there related to gaming and performance

JontomXire · Post by **JontomXire** » Wed Oct 05, 2011 5:04 am

I'm having trouble finding information or anything about wine-doors. Please could you post some links to info/downloads, etc.

Changing the priority in Task Manager is going to be a problem. If I switch from WoW back to the desktop, the mouse stops working in WoW. Is there any way to do this in Wine so that WoW always runs as top priority. Similarly can I change the priority that Wine runs at within Linux? To be honest with my new processor and extra RAM, processing speed really shouldn't be a problem.

I am moderately familiar with Linux. I work in embedded software and we use a Linux kernel on our various platforms, and I have had to rebuild the kernel once or twice. I also once went on a course that covered building a Linux operating system from scratch, although I've forgotten a lot of it. So if you think I can get some good performance enhancements by building a custom kernel, I'm happy to try. I can always back up the old kernel and boot off a CD to restore it if things go wrong. My main limitation is time.

Post by **dimesio** » Wed Oct 05, 2011 5:46 am

JontomXire wrote:I'm having trouble finding information or anything about wine-doors. Please could you post some links to info/downloads, etc.

Wine-doors is an abandoned project, and it was never supported or recommended here.

dardack · Post by **dardack** » Wed Oct 05, 2011 12:19 pm

On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 6:04 AM, JontomXire <wineforum-user@winehq.org> wrote:

I'm having trouble finding information or anything about wine-doors. Please could you post some links to info/downloads, etc.

Changing the priority in Task Manager is going to be a problem. If I switch from WoW back to the desktop, the mouse stops working in WoW. Is there any way to do this in Wine so that WoW always runs as top priority. Similarly can I change the priority that Wine runs at within Linux? To be honest with my new processor and extra RAM, processing speed really shouldn't be a problem.

I am moderately familiar with Linux. I work in embedded software and we use a Linux kernel on our various platforms, and I have had to rebuild the kernel once or twice. I also once went on a course that covered building a Linux operating system from scratch, although I've forgotten a lot of it. So if you think I can get some good performance enhancements by building a custom kernel, I'm happy to try. I can always back up the old kernel and boot off a CD to restore it if things go wrong. My main limitation is time.

I just think with the changes in the WoW engine to be more graphic
intensive your 7k series is just a tad low to run it they way you
want. Perhaps even in windows. I know I get roughly same FPS (within
5 fps) in windows and in Linux with OpenGL (How I test windows is dx9
with same settings that OpenGL in linux would use).
Raiding/questing/Stormwinding. Anyways, just my 2 cents.

--
Sincerely,

MacNean C. Tyrrell

dardack · Post by **dardack** » Wed Oct 05, 2011 12:22 pm

On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 1:18 PM, MacNean Tyrrell <dardack@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 6:04 AM, JontomXire <wineforum-user@winehq.org> wrote:
I'm having trouble finding information or anything about wine-doors. Please could you post some links to info/downloads, etc.

Changing the priority in Task Manager is going to be a problem. If I switch from WoW back to the desktop, the mouse stops working in WoW. Is there any way to do this in Wine so that WoW always runs as top priority. Similarly can I change the priority that Wine runs at within Linux? To be honest with my new processor and extra RAM, processing speed really shouldn't be a problem.

I am moderately familiar with Linux. I work in embedded software and we use a Linux kernel on our various platforms, and I have had to rebuild the kernel once or twice. I also once went on a course that covered building a Linux operating system from scratch, although I've forgotten a lot of it. So if you think I can get some good performance enhancements by building a custom kernel, I'm happy to try. I can always back up the old kernel and boot off a CD to restore it if things go wrong. My main limitation is time.

I just think with the changes in the WoW engine to be more graphic
intensive your 7k series is just a tad low to run it they way you
want. Perhaps even in windows. I know I get roughly same FPS (within
5 fps) in windows and in Linux with OpenGL (How I test windows is dx9
with same settings that OpenGL in linux would use).
Raiding/questing/Stormwinding. Anyways, just my 2 cents.

Yea the recommended is an 8k 256 MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600, sure yours
meets the min req, but we all know min req are just that, bare min to
get the game to run.

--
Sincerely,

MacNean C. Tyrrell

--
Sincerely,

MacNean C. Tyrrell

JontomXire · Post by **JontomXire** » Thu Oct 06, 2011 2:41 am

Are you pschizophrenic?

Anyway, as I have said before, I am sure it ran faster when I was running it with the same graphics cards under Windows with a slower processor and less RAM.

Maybe I need to tweak the SLI setting. Currently it is set to "on", but there are other settings. ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux ... dix-w.html has some details.

Post by **dimesio** » Thu Oct 06, 2011 6:10 am

JontomXire wrote:Are you pschizophrenic?

That was unwarranted. Do it again and I'll lock this thread.

Anyway, as I have said before, I am sure it ran faster when I was running it with the same graphics cards under Windows with a slower processor and less RAM.

Doesn't matter. You're not running on Windows now.

There's a tutorial on troubleshooting performance issues here: http://wiki.winehq.org/Performance

JontomXire · Post by **JontomXire** » Thu Oct 06, 2011 6:35 am

dimesio wrote:
JontomXire wrote:Are you pschizophrenic?
That was unwarranted. Do it again and I'll lock this thread.

It was a JOKE. The man quoted himself. He even quoted his own signature separately. I thought that was funny (haha funny not weird funny) so I made a joke about it.

Sorry if anyone didn't get that - maybe I should have added a smiley.

dardack · Post by **dardack** » Thu Oct 06, 2011 10:42 am

On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 7:35 AM, JontomXire <wineforum-user@winehq.org> wrote:

dimesio wrote:
JontomXire wrote:
Are you pschizophrenic?

That was unwarranted. Do it again and I'll lock this thread.

It was a JOKE. The man quoted himself. He even quoted his own signature separately. I thought that was funny (haha funny not weird funny) so I made a joke about it.

Sorry if anyone didn't get that - maybe I should have added a smiley.

I'm an email user. It just works like that. Anyways, not going to
turn this into anything. TY Dimesio.

How long ago did you run it on windows? The engine has been upgraded
was my point. It runs worse on windows just as much now on older
hardware, which the 7k series of NVIDIA cards is. If you ran it
recently (within past 8 months) on windows and got better results, I
don't know. I personally got ~same FPS in both on same hardware.
YMMV obviously.

--
Sincerely,

MacNean C. Tyrrell

JontomXire · Post by **JontomXire** » Fri Oct 07, 2011 2:19 am

I ran WoW on Windows just a few weeks before I first posted in this thread. TBH my wife used it more than me - it was her PC. But I used to occasionally steer her around when we were questing together or something and she was AFK.

The graphics settings under Windows were much higher then than they are now and the FPS, although I didn't measure it exactly, was at least as good. When I turn the graphics settings higher under Linux now, particularly the view distance, it runs noticeably worse, and definitely worse than when running under Windows even though the graphics settings are still lower than when running under Windows.