This Specs and upcoming games?

TweFoju · Post by **TweFoju** » Tue Sep 20, 2011 8:57 pm

I know that in uBuntu, you must use wine to play Windows game, and the wine makes the performance drop, well at least that is what i know, maybe i am wrong

and i also seen lots of people with monster PC rig using uBuntu, and many games works just fine

so here's a question to all those uBuntu gamer out there that have been successfully play a game with high settings and without a problem in performance

do you think this Laptop ( which i am buying soon )

Specs:

i7 2630QM
GTX560 2GB
7200rpm HDD ( maybe upgrading to SSD as primary )
12GB RAM

this is ASUS G53SX

will run games on Wine with at least medium-high and play fine?

the games that i will be playing most is probably Skyrim and SWTOR and maybe Guild Wars 2 and MW3

i know these 4 is not yet out, but i take it that, if people can play Crysis2 on uBuntu with no problem like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmWTc0P85pU

then i can see no problem with other games?

thanks before!

i seen some topics, and i can see that a lot of games work, but i just want to know, what are the minimum spec for a laptop to be able to play recent games with high settings and also i wonder if DX11 games will work fine in Wine?

thanks a bunch

SpawnHappyJake · Post by **SpawnHappyJake** » Tue Sep 20, 2011 9:39 pm

Was that even a question? You could play several games at once with those specs. Heck, you might even be able to do 3D gaming! With those specs, why not get a USB 7.1 sound card and game in 3D with surround sound?

Honestly though, it's not so much about the specs as it is brand of graphics card. NVIDIA has great Linux graphics drivers, and ATI has poor Linux graphics drivers. So good job on getting an nVIDIA graphics card.

Ok, actually I don't know about the 3D thing, especially with Linux, but the point is that you could get away easily with a quarter, if not, a sixth, or even a twelfth that RAM. And your graphics card is a beast. My 6 year old computer with only 1 gig of RAM and half a gig of video RAM went pretty fast with Linux, and Oblivion in Windows was no problem (still working out WINE + Oblivion personally, though others have succeeded).

Remember that you won't be burdening your hardware with Windows. Just as a reminder of how lightweight the Linux kernel is, know that there's actually a distro of Linux, TinyCore, and the whole OS is 10 MB. Another, DSL, only needs 16 MB of RAM and the OS is 50 MB.

Any extra burden from running WINE is made up for multiple times by replacing Windows with Linux.

WINE does have to translate graphics calls into OpenGL graphics calls (that's all that Linux uses), unless the game is already only using OpenGL. So if a game has the option to use only OpenGL, use it, because you eliminate a step. You won't notice an improvement because your laptop is like 12 desktops put together, but you will emotionally feel better knowing that you made the process more efficient.

Happy Gaming,
SpawnHappy

Post by **dimesio** » Wed Sep 21, 2011 5:54 am

TweFoju wrote: also i wonder if DX11 games will work fine in Wine?

Wine doesn't support dx11 at present.

tparker · Post by **tparker** » Wed Sep 21, 2011 6:22 am

On 09/20/2011 10:39 PM, SpawnHappyJake wrote:

Honestly though, it's not so much about the specs as it is brand of graphics card. NVIDIA has great Linux graphics drivers, and ATI has poor Linux graphics drivers. So good job on getting an nVIDIA graphics card.

You should have a good shot at being able to play the games fine, but
you will probably not be able to max out every setting listed on the
graphics page and some things there you will not be able to use at all,
even if you could use them in Windows. Those upcoming games you listed
are likely to have some special effects that require Direct X 10. Even
though your card will run DX11 stuff if a game has it, you will not get
any options above DX9 until Wine progresses further in that area.

TweFoju · Post by **TweFoju** » Wed Sep 21, 2011 6:27 am

Haha, yeah i know that specs are good for gaming, if it were for windows i wouldn't have even asked

but because i will be using it through Wine, that is why i feel i needed to ask

because my thought was, it would be just like using Parallel on Mac to play Window games, which is like virtually playing Windows game on Mac ( hence like playing it on a Wine in Linux )

so i thought that maybe it needed double the processor effort

but anyway thanks, good to know that Nvidia is better with Linux, was about to go for AMD graphics laptop

dardack · Post by **dardack** » Wed Sep 21, 2011 8:16 am

On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 7:27 AM, TweFoju <[email protected]> wrote:

Haha, yeah i know that specs are good for gaming, if it were for windows i wouldn't have even asked :P

but because i will be using it through Wine, that is why i feel i needed to ask

because my thought was, it would be just like using Parallel on Mac to play Window games, which is like virtually playing Windows game on Mac ( hence like playing it on a Wine in Linux )

so i thought that maybe it needed double the processor effort

but anyway thanks, good to know that Nvidia is better with Linux, was about to go for AMD graphics laptop

[Shocked]

The thing is SWTOR and other games you listed aren't released. We do
know that SWTOR will have dx9 option, so it should work in wine. But
if any games goes dx10/11 only, then AT this time it wouldn't work in
wine. Also, you have to think about DRM and other things that Wine
doesn't play well with sometimes.

I'm just saying you should think about these things before dropping
windows 100% (esp since that laptop will come with Win pre loaded,
just dual boot). I just put together a desktop (first Time in 6 years
I haven't bought a new laptop every 2 years) and put win 7 on it for
gaming. I still have linux on 5 other machines in my house. I still
play WoW on my linux laptop. Anyways, just saying.

--
Sincerely,

MacNean C. Tyrrell

TweFoju · Post by **TweFoju** » Wed Sep 21, 2011 10:56 am

thanks for the reply, well yeah i am not planning to 100% drop Windows, but,

i am planning to, haha

dx9 is good enough for SWTOR i guess

SpawnHappyJake · Post by **SpawnHappyJake** » Wed Sep 21, 2011 10:13 pm

Haha, yeah i know that specs are good for gaming, if it were for windows i wouldn't have even asked Razz

but because i will be using it through Wine, that is why i feel i needed to ask

because my thought was, it would be just like using Parallel on Mac to play Window games, which is like virtually playing Windows game on Mac ( hence like playing it on a Wine in Linux )

so i thought that maybe it needed double the processor effort

There is a major misunderstanding here. WINE is nothing like a virtual machine at all. WINE has near native spec requirements. Sure, maybe a little loss, but nothing at all like a virtual machine.

Programs are made of two parts, processor instructions and calls to code provided by the operating system. When an operating system runs a program, it resolves those calls (ultimately into processor instructions), and lets the processor instructions go to the processor.

If a program has Windows "calls," then those calls must be translated into Mac OS or Linux "calls" for that operating system to resolve the calls to run the program.

WINE is such a translator. WINE doesn't actually "run" programs. It just serves as a translator between the operating system and the program.

So let's say you are playing Skyrim in WINE 1.3.33 (just a hopeful gaze into the future). You open the process list for your operating system (gnome-system-monitor or Activity Monitor or whatever). You will actually see skyrim.exe as a process that the operating system is running. WINE isn't "running" skyrim.exe, the operating system is, though WINE does mimic a kernel to the Windows program and does some kernelish things.

Let's compare that to a virtual machine of Windows. Skyrim would be running in Windows in a virtual machine. That virtual machine is a "black box" to the host operating system. The host operating system is completely unaware of processes being ran by a guest operating system. Also, your hardware has the obvious load of running both operating systems at the same time in the case of virtualization, but it's much more than that. The virtualization program has to emulate an entire hardware platform and BIOS (or EFI), which is a monstrous task. Such emulation implies constant analysis of the output of the guest kernel. The virtualization program must constantly analyze and alter the exchange of data between the guest kernel and the processor to maintain the illusion of an emulated hardware platform, on which the virtual machine sits.

WINE doesn't impose the load of running a second operating system or the load of emulating any hardware. And the whole "analyze and intercept" thing is greatly less than what you see in a virtual machine.

In a virtual machine, you don't get to use your real graphics card (at least not yet). You use an emulated graphics card. Sure, you might be able to share some real video RAM to this emulated graphics card, but you aren't actually using the real graphics card. A lot of load is put on the CPU that should be on the GPU, unless there is some GPU sharing I'm not aware of at the moment.

WINE on the other hand sends graphics calls to the real graphics card. When you run a game in WINE, the game is actually being rendered by your real graphics card.

WINE sees and uses real hardware.

Cheers,
Jake