Team Fortress 2 Forum

Hey guys, I just had a few questions that I hope one of you can answer. First my machine specs:

Intel Q6600 Quad core
evga nvidia 8800GT
4gb ddr2 667 ram
running Kubuntu 8.10 64-bit
Nvidia drivers: 180.37

• How far is he DX9 development? Should it be playable at this point? I have been trying since I first purchase CXgames, but i still find it completely unplayable due to really low FPS. I've followed Stefan's suggestions in other threads about enabling UseGLSL and adding in the OffscreenRenderingMode='fbo', to no real change. And now yesterday I read that Codeweavers is getting prepared to move to DX10, so I'm starting to think i'm missing something here. What setup do you guys use to test Crossover? Should I be running 32bit instead of 64bit? Are there any other suggestions?

• Is there something inheritly wrong with the Linux graphics drivers or system as a whole? One day, for fun, I installed one of those "not-so-free" versions of OS X 10.5.4 on the said machine above. Everything worked out of the box, and I installed Crossover games in it to test, and guess what? It ran WAY better than it ever has in Windows. I was averaging >70fps in-game while in Linux I can't get >20 consistantly with dx8 or dx9. I find this amazing. So, I must be definitely missing something on the linux side cause the Crossover software does work.

• What is your guys suggestions for the best distribution to run for this? 32 or 64 bit? What version of NVidia drivers have proved most stable?

• Are there any more "tweaks" or something I can do to optimize my Crossover experience?

I'm still at the point when my friends want to jump in and play TF2, I still have to ask for them to wait while I reboot back into Windows, I would really like to be done with that.

Once again, thanks for your help. I hope you don't take the above as me whining, because that's not the case, I really do think i'm missing something in what i'm doing and want the experts to tell me what. You guys are the best when it comes to responding in these forums threads, and I appreciate the work you put into it and the effort you put into improving Wine in general.

Thanks,
Corey

Hi. I'm neither an expert in Linux graphics drivers nor our Direct3D implementation, but I'll answer what I can. Stefan may pop by at some point and fill in the the blanks (and probably correct some stuff I get wrong 😉).

Corey Quilliam wrote:

How far is he DX9 development? Should it be playable at this point?

As far as I know, everything should be functional give or take graphics driver issues. On Linux, it's generally quite playable. My understanding is that Nvidia is better than ATI on Linux. The Mac drivers tend to choke a bit if you enable GLSL.

Corey Quilliam wrote:

Should I be running 32bit instead of 64bit?

For the time being, CrossOver only runs as a 32-bit process, regardless of the bit-ness of your OS. You do need the proper 32-bit libraries installed. The dependencies for our .rpm and .deb installers should take care of that.

Corey Quilliam wrote:

Is there something inheritly wrong with the Linux graphics drivers
or system as a whole?

Nothing inherently wrong, no. There are differences between specific drivers (open-source vs. proprietary) and versions. As I say, I understand that the proprietary Nvidia drivers work best on Linux, at this point. Unfortunately, the actual specifics as to which version is best is where I'm lacking expertise.

Hi,
Ken answered most of it already. There seems to be something wrong with your system if you're stuck to 20-30 fps. I get 60+ fps on my geforce 7400, 2 GB, Intel core 2 duo with 2 GHZ, Gentoo. Granted, I am running at 800x600 in a window(helpful for development since I can see debug output too), but otherwise it is highest graphics.

As for d3d10: The work is focused on updating our d3d 'server' library(wined3d.dll) to the d3d10 interface, d3d10-like datatypes and internal structures, and adjusting / implementing the client libraries(ddraw, d3d8, d3d9, d3d10, d3d10core, dxgi - the last 3 are new). We don't have any specific games yet, it is more theory paperwork. Basically, there are still no d3d10 games. All d3d10 games have a d3d9 renderer, often with equal features(if you hack out artificial restrictions). However, Windows 7 will come some day. d3d11, which is similar to d3d10, will come at some point. We don't want to be stuck with d3d9 when d3d10 or d3d11 gets momentum. MacOS doesn't support d3d10 yet(or better: New features like geometry shaders only in software, so there's not much merit yet either)

d3d9 should work pretty well, if the driver supports it properly. That means the Nvidia Linux driver for now. MacOS still chokes on GLSL currently, although in practise you can run many d3d9 shaders fine on d3d10 cards because the additional power of the cards levels out the driver limitations. The ATI binary driver works pretty well nowadays too, for me as a developer. Unfortunately it advertises incorrect features(e.g. 128 shader constants instead of 256), so games complain. That's the only remaining big problem I know about fglrx. ATI knows about it, and I'll try to work around it in the next crossover version if it doesn't get fixed.

Thank you both for taking the time to reply, its so nice to be able to speak to the people actually working on this stuff.

It seems I have been stuck at this performance level no matter what distribution of linux I try (I often re-install every few months to try new ones). Maybe the one thing that may be causing my problem is the resolution I play at. I try and play at 1650x1080, maybe that is my issue. Obviously, this runs perfectly fine in Windows. And, I believe when I was trying it in OS X, it worked fine as well. When I get home today, i will try 800x600 or 1024x768 in a window and see if that changes anything.

I imagine with my hardware, I should be getting the optimal performance that cxgames has to offer. I have not given up hope yet, I'll tinker around and see what I can do.

This is an exciting time for gaming in linux, ever since the release of Crossover that supported TF2 I have been amazed at how well the stuff works (even if it doesn't work directly for me, I appreciate the fact that others are having success). The other game I play, Guildwars works 100% perfectly with no flaws that I can see.

Stefan: Would you be so kind as to share with me what registry changes you have made? What settings you have set in TF2? I'm just looking for a point for comparison.

Thanks Stefan and Ken for your time. I'll be following the forums closely for other tips and tricks for getting better performance.