Tell Wine what video card I have

[slopoke]

Mepis 11 (Debian Lenny base)
nVidia GeForce 9600GT (1GB VRAM, shader 4)
Wine 1.7.4

I play two games in Wine: WOW and D3. Neither recognises my video for what it is. All settings are at minimum. In a WOW 25 man raid I get 1 to 2 frames per second. I can't group in D3. I'm getting hammered by my guild for using a "second rate" OS, and it's getting annoying.

I hope someone can tell me what I can do to get Wine to recognise my card and pass that along to these apps (and any others in the future). I play these games for enjoyment. I would hate to have to go back to Windoze when Wine has come so far.

Thanks

[Agent24]

Do you have your video card drivers installed?

[dimesio]

More specifically, do you have the latest proprietary driver for your card installed, and if your system is 64 bit, did you install the needed 32 bit parts?

[slopoke]

I do have the latest nVidia driver installed. The system is 32 bit.

[oiaohm]

slopoke just because its installed does not mean its being used. glxinfo |grep version You should see a few lines with Nvidia in it.

Wine normally auto reconises card. http://wiki.winehq.org/UsefulRegistryKeys manually declaring the card is covered in here. But should not be required.

slopoke you did not tell us what version Nvidia. 310.14 and later you have the option of doing __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 wine Wow.exe -opengl

slopoke you also did not mention if you were using the -opengl flag with Wow. It lifts its performance a lot under Wine and cures some of its detection errors.

Sorry I don't know what D3 is.

[slopoke]

I apologize for my omissions.

D3 means Diablo 3

I did "glxinfo |grep version" and got
server glx version string: 1.4
client glx version string: 1.4
GLX version: 1.4
OpenGL version string: 3.3.0 NVIDIA 319.60
OpenGL shading language version string: 3.30 NVIDIA via Cg compiler


I made sure my card was manually entered in the registry.

Yes I am using the "-opengl" flag.

My driver is Nvidia ver. 319.60.

I start both games from desktop links created by the game installers. They work and I'm leery of breaking them. They are:
WOW
env WINEPREFIX="/home/volunteer/.wine-wow" wine "C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Wow.exe" -opengl

Diablo 3
env WINEPREFIX="/home/volunteer/.wine" wine "C:\Program Files\Diablo III\Diablo III.exe" -opengl

Is this supposed to begin with one or two underscores?
__GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1


Just in case I've made another omission, WOW's video settings say I don't have shader 3 or 4. Nvidia driver info says I do. That's why I said the games were not recognizing my card.

[oiaohm]

__GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 yes does start with double _ Nvidia thought this was a cool way to call a custom Environment item. I am very careful to copy those exactly how they are.

Mind doing http://wiki.winehq.org/3DDriverIssues instructions for seeing what wine is seeing. Wine should report the same as glxinfo. There are a few odd cases on warply broken systems where I have seen glxinfo and wine report differently.

shader 3 or 4 bit I need one of the developers in the opengl section of wine to inform me if this is passed or someone else running wow or equal tell me if this is passed through. If it not there should be a bug.

[slopoke]

I ran the debug command (WINEDEBUG=+wgl wine Wow.exe &> wine.log), but all I have in wine.log is:
wine: cannot find L"C:\\windows\\system32\\Wow.exe"

Does it matter what prefix Wow.exe is in?

[oiaohm]

Yes it does matter if the application is installed in the WINEPREFIX or not.

I ran the debug command (WINEDEBUG=+wgl wine Wow.exe &> wine.log), but all I have in wine.log is:
wine: cannot find L"C:\\windows\\system32\\Wow.exe"

But it also does matter if you have cd to the application or not. Also wine can be case sensitive at times.

[slopoke]

So I tried this:
env WINEPREFIX="/home/volunteer/.wine-wow" wine "C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Wow.exe" -opengl &> wine.log

And got this in "wine.log":
fixme:heap:HeapSetInformation (nil) 1 (nil) 0
fixme:heap:HeapSetInformation 0x1502000 0 0x191fee4 4
fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x191ed00,0x00000000), stub!
fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x191eb38,0x00000000), stub!
fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x191f018,0x00000000), stub!
fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x191efe0,0x00000000), stub!
fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x191ee18,0x00000000), stub!
fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x191efe0,0x00000000), stub!
fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x191ee18,0x00000000), stub!
fixme:advapi:BuildSecurityDescriptorW ((nil),(nil),1,0x191fa5c,0,(nil),0x19cde0,0x191fa54,0x191faa8) stub!
fixme:advapi:BuildSecurityDescriptorW ((nil),(nil),1,0x191fa58,0,(nil),0x19cde0,0x191fa50,0x191faa4) stub!
fixme:avrt:AvSetMmThreadCharacteristicsW (L"Pro Audio",0x191f704): stub
fixme:imm:ImmReleaseContext (0x50020, 0x19c1b8): stub

[oiaohm]

slopoke so close but so far.

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WINEDEBUG=+wgl WINEPREFIX="/home/volunteer/.wine-wow" wine "C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Wow.exe" -opengl &> wine.log

You missed the WINEDEBUG so the log does not have the information we want.

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__GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1  WINEPREFIX="/home/volunteer/.wine-wow" wine "C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Wow.exe"

This would be like max performance mode.

[slopoke]

Damn, I knew I'd done something wrong.

I ran your command and got the info. The file (wine.log) is 10.6MB! Should I cut it into pieces to attach it? Or, is there only certain info you need?

[oiaohm]

http://wiki.winehq.org/3DDriverIssues
Its covered here the lines of interest all start with.

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trace:wgl:X11DRV_WineGL_InitOpenglInfo

so

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cat wine.log |grep "trace:wgl:X11DRV_WineGL_InitOpenglInfo"

Will reduce it down. I would be expect a max 20 lines after filtering.
And you should be able to use the information on 3DDriverIssues to work out if you have nvidia drivers loading or not.

slopoke that it only took 10.6 MB it was nice. +wgl can run away into the hundreds of megs.

[slopoke]

OK.

Did this:
cat wine.log |grep "trace:wgl:X11DRV_WineGL_InitOpenglInfo"

Got this:
trace:wgl:X11DRV_WineGL_InitOpenglInfo GL version : 3.3.0 NVIDIA 319.60.
trace:wgl:X11DRV_WineGL_InitOpenglInfo GL renderer : GeForce 9600 GT/PCIe/SSE2.
trace:wgl:X11DRV_WineGL_InitOpenglInfo GLX version : 1.4.
trace:wgl:X11DRV_WineGL_InitOpenglInfo Server GLX version : 1.4.
trace:wgl:X11DRV_WineGL_InitOpenglInfo Server GLX vendor: : NVIDIA Corporation.
trace:wgl:X11DRV_WineGL_InitOpenglInfo Client GLX version : 1.4.
trace:wgl:X11DRV_WineGL_InitOpenglInfo Client GLX vendor: : NVIDIA Corporation.
trace:wgl:X11DRV_WineGL_InitOpenglInfo Direct rendering enabled: True


If I read the "3DDriverIssues" article correctly, I have a working installation. Doesn't that mean the nvidia drivers are loaded?

[oiaohm]

Yes you have working Nvidia drivers.

Now we can move on to performance tweeking.

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__GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1  WINEPREFIX="/home/volunteer/.wine-wow" wine "C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Wow.exe" -opengl

If this runs ok you can attempt the next command

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WINEDEBUG=-all  __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1  WINEPREFIX="/home/volunteer/.wine-wow" wine "C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Wow.exe" -opengl $> /dev/null

This one has all from of debugging and console interaction neutralized.

There are differences in performance between Windows and Linux it is really annoying you have to use a special var to take advantage of threading on Nvidia.

[slopoke]

I was not too sick this morning so I ran this:
__GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 WINEPREFIX="/home/volunteer/.wine-wow" wine "C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Wow.exe" -opengl
fixme:heap:HeapSetInformation (nil) 1 (nil) 0
fixme:heap:HeapSetInformation 0x1502000 0 0x191fee4 4
fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x191ed00,0x00000000), stub!
fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x191eb38,0x00000000), stub!
fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x191f018,0x00000000), stub!
fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x191efe0,0x00000000), stub!
fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x191ee18,0x00000000), stub!
fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x191efe0,0x00000000), stub!
fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x191ee18,0x00000000), stub!
fixme:advapi:BuildSecurityDescriptorW ((nil),(nil),1,0x191fa5c,0,(nil),0x1a1830,0x191fa54,0x191faa8) stub!
fixme:advapi:BuildSecurityDescriptorW ((nil),(nil),1,0x191fa58,0,(nil),0x1a1830,0x191fa50,0x191faa4) stub!
fixme:avrt:AvSetMmThreadCharacteristicsW (L"Pro Audio",0x191f704): stub
fixme:imm:ImmReleaseContext (0x50020, 0x19dac8): stub
fixme:advapi:CreateRestrictedToken (0x252c, 0x0, 2, 0x1469dba8, 19, 0x19364c, 5, 0x191a524, 0x191a628): stub
fixme:advapi:BuildSecurityDescriptorW ((nil),(nil),1,0x191a150,0,(nil),0x193648,0x191a178,0x191a184) stub!


I don't think this is what you mean by running ok (but I could be wrong - the game did start). There was no change in the games video capabilities.

[oiaohm]

slopoke __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 should have increase frame rate. The --opengl disables a few video features even under Windows.

Those fixmes you were seeing are general noise and I do class as running ok. WINEDEBUG=-all to turn them off does also speed up wine. Yes it costs cpu time printing the debugging messages of course even if you cannot see them.

slopoke more video features should appear if you don't use the --opengl flag. But price is performance.

slopoke also the direct x mode will be faster with __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 enabled. Just always slower than the opengl option.

Please note I said performance tweaking I was not going after having every effect. Going after every effect is something to attempt once you know you have the performance in the first place.

Also just to be stupid setting all settings to min with wow can in fact make it slow. wow contains sections when you set to min that internally redirects to cpu. So yes your settings will have cut your video card out from being used as much as it can as well. Basically wow should not have all options jammed on min.

http://wiki.winehq.org/UsefulRegistryKeys in directx mode it is possible to change what your video card appears to be. In opengl mode the information is passed straight threw from the system opengl information this cannot be overridden other than disabling extensions.

VideoPciDeviceID and VideoPciVendorID are the controlling factors for direct x. Now there is a possibility that wow is improperly coded and used direct x when it told opengl mode to work out what features to expose. But that would be a bug in wow that would need adding to the appdb install instructions.

slopoke basically I did not want to focus on features straight away. We need to know the basics worked. Basics work.

[slopoke]

Please excuse me for being gone so long. I had some family issues to deal with.

Can we continue from where we left off? None of the suggested changes made any difference to the game. Based on something I read somewhere, there appears to be an issue between DirectX shaders and Nvidia shaders. Does Wine do the translation between them? Could this be the problem?

[Bob Wya]

@slopoke

Just read through this thread... To save it dragging on into 2015 perhaps you could also dump the following information for us...

If you could install/run lshw and attach (!!) the output of the following command (run as root)...

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lshw -quiet -sanitize -html > ~/hardware.html

Just gives us an idea of your full system specs - but do strip out anything you are not happy posting on the interwebs.

Not sure I would choose Mepis as the basis of performant Debian Desktop OS... What kernel and DE are you are running? Again running an older kernel could have a performance impact on Wine gaming.

Bob

[slopoke]

I've attached the file.
kernel=2.6.36-4
desktop=kde 4:4.5.3

I run Mepis because Wine is in the repositories; Debian is not even close, although I run Debian on every other comp I have.

[Bob Wya]

I've attached the file.
kernel=2.6.36-4
desktop=kde 4:4.5.3

I run Mepis because Wine is in the repositories; Debian is not even close, although I run Debian on every other comp I have.

No sorry, I meant I was surprised you weren't running a more bleeding edge version of Debian on a desktop machine e.g. SolydXK, LMDE, VSIDO, etc. But anyway that's just my own opinion of course!

Are you sure that file is attached?? I'm not seeing any attachments at this end... Try renaming it with a ".txt" extension. Perhaps it got filtered out by the Forum software.

Thanks
Bob

[slopoke]

I've renamed the file and will try again.

[Bob Wya]

I've renamed the file and will try again.

OK got through this time (must remember not to suggest anything but .txt attachments!!)

I had a look through the specs. of your system. Apart from running a rather odd system RAM setup (I guess it will probably still dual-channel - more RAM would be nice ) and the desperate need for an SSD storage upgrade (the 500Gb WD Blue & 500Gb Seagate 7200.10 HDDs are old and v. slow by modern standards)... Nothing there that really stands out as being a major issue for gaming. I presume you're not running into memory pressure and you've undirected fullscreen windows in KDE (or disabled compositing whilst testing WOW)?

I am not familiar with WOW - but my understanding was it uses an ancient graphics engine. There's no way it should be rendering at 2 FPS with an Nvidia blob driver - even via Wine.

Have you run any native OpenGL games to test performance is OK with these?? 0A.D. , The Dark Mod, UT2004, Doom 3, etc. These should run well - given the hardware you have.

Bob

[slopoke]

Appreciate your comments.
This is a 32 bit system.
The RAM amount was to avoid the limit imposed by 32 bit.
SSD would be nice, but not possible at the moment.
No memory pressure. When I play the game I have only a Teamspeak client (in native Linux) running.
No compositing or other special effects.
I run the game in fullscreen.

Quote "There's no way it should be rendering at 2 FPS with an Nvidia blob driver - even via Wine."
I agree. But you should know the 2 FPS is in a raid. Normal solo is 20-30. And I have no shaders. But the card config says they're on.
nVidia driver is latest as of a week ago.
OA.D. runs well considering it's state of development.
I didn't know about "The Dark Mod". I'll have to try it when I can.

Hope that helps.

[Bob Wya]

@slopoke,

You can install 64Gb of RAM and still install a 32-bit Linux OS. If it has PAE kernel it will even be able to use all of that RAM. Really you want 4Gb of RAM as a 32-bit Linux OS (without PAE support) will still address most of it. I would recommend using the same manufacture, size, matched sticks in all the slots on your MB (for long-term stability, etc.)

Anyway there is one little extra hack you could try:
add a line to the file: /etc/security/limits.conf

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<user>                  both            nice            -10

where is user is your Linux username.

Then try running your game/Wine at a higher priority:

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WINEDEBUG=-all  __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1  WINEPREFIX="/home/volunteer/.wine-wow" nice -n -10 wine "C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Wow.exe" -opengl $> /dev/null

If this doesn't work then it's just gotta be that ancient, crufty kernel version your rocking... Great for a server - not so great for a Desktop/gaming rig. I would heartily recommend the SolydK distro (yet I've tried it out). Also has a KDE desktop by default, but is based on Debian Testing (with a delay for stabilising) and has really up-to-date packages. It was reviewed recently on the Linux Action Show and talked about on the follow-up Linux Unplugged. Dont' forget you are dependent on the speed of all the core Linux kernel network drivers, etc. when you are playing a game online via Wine.

Keep an eye on those SSD prices and your wallet!! This investment can make a huge difference to the overall performance of your computer.

Just my $0.02,
Bob