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- Nexus Mods retire their in-development cross-platform app to focus back on Vortex
- Canonical call for testing their Steam gaming Snap for Arm Linux
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How to setup OpenMW for modern Morrowind on Linux / SteamOS and Steam Deck
How to install Hollow Knight: Silksong mods on Linux, SteamOS and Steam Deck
The project was started by University student Andrew Comminos which improves Wine performance. A new Staging branch based right off 2.21 has been added which you can find at this link: https://github.com/acomminos/wine-pba
I've tried to build it from source however it aborts a few steps through the process, the error has been reported already, hopefully will be fixed soon.
You can also read more on the author's personal blog: https://comminos.com/posts/2018-02-21-wined3d-profiling.html
Huge thanks to Andrew for his work and to Phoronix for bringing this in the spotlight. :-)
I gave this patch a spin earlier yesterday morning, Downloaded Base Wine 2.21 > Applied Staging 2.21 patches > Applied Andrew's patch. Didn't have much luck. Games ran, sound audible but with a black screen.
I recompiled it again using latest patches, black screens are gone and there are some serious improvements this time (also a regression):
As you can see above, Witcher 3 improved a lot for Nvidia, however all the characters (including Geralt's horse) are invisible. Also noticed an important factor - my GPU usage peaked to about 80%.
Will keep posting with updates :)
For the moment I can't seem to manage to build a WoW64 Wine build (32+64bit combo) so all my tests will either be a Pure 32bit or 64bit build.
View PC info
Quick summary here:
staging-2.20 avg: 83.83staging-2.21 avg: 83.65
staging-2.21+pba patches avg: 104.77
Links to plotted fps graphs etc are in reddit post:
[Link to my Reddit post](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflinux/comments/801er5/testing_of_winepba_patches_gives_some_nice_fps/)
~7 fps wine master latest~20 fps wine master latest with (new) buffer patch
~20 fps wine staging 2.21
~13 fps wine staging 2.21 with PBA patches
PBA patches gives invisible Geralt etc as already reported (using 4 from: ae1cb0d Fix constant buffer invalidation).
Not sure why the Nvidia performance improved so much for Avehicle7887 but not for me. :-/
It was a bit shorter game tho but i did see around 100-130 fps most of the time.
staging-2.20 avg: 83.83staging-2.21 avg: 83.65
staging-2.21+pba patches avg: 104.77
staging-2.21+pba patches (rebuild with latest) avg: 113.23
[link to plot](https://imgur.com/7XWSJXR)
View PC info
Guild Wars 2 - My "usual" testing area is back to 80+ fps, in other areas where fps used to dip mid 20's is now 32-40 fps. Turning the camera now longer drops the frame rate or stutters (have yet to test in normal gameplay hours). Virtual Memory usage is increased.- Updated report below.Path of Exile - The 32bit version of the game, stutters and throws random errors, also with this patch it runs out of Virtual Memory (4GB Limit) in less than 10 minutes whereas without, it takes like 3-4 hours to reach the limit. Couldn't get the 64bit version to run.- Updated report below.I'm pleased with GW2 however, I'm noticing a pattern here, Virtual Memory usage increases a lot with this patch and that's not good for 32bit programs in Wine, as I also reported yesterday Witcher 3 was reporting 51GB VM usage. For 64bit games this shouldn't be an issue but 32bit ones are prone to crash sooner than usual.
View PC info
So it is exactly about the topic above.
I just gave Guild Wars 2 a good 2 hours test run, including one of the most popular and CPU intensive events in the game (Tequatl for those familiar with the game). This is based after my long time experience of running the game under Wine Staging 2.0 where it was the best and last version for playing this game under Nvidia....until today.
First thing you'll notice with PBA is that the game allocates 3.7GB Ram right away - Up to 2 hours of gameplay it peaked 5.1GB which I find 'acceptable'. In the usual game hubs framerate improved by about 10-15 fps, turning the camera remains smooth and no stuttering is present. In instances it's even better, framerate is overall the same as 2.0-Staging but fps keeps steady and again no stuttering.
The Big One - One of the game's most popular events (Tequatl) includes over a 100 players battling a boss, this is a common place for fps drops and getting below 20fps here can be easily achieved. I used same settings as always for comparison. Right off the bat the stuttering was gone, and when lots of players were on the same spot it didn't drop the frame rate to the usual 5-8fps crawl, instead it remained smooth the whole time. This was HUGELY much better than 2.0-Staging, overall throughout the whole fight it maintained a solid 25-40fps while remaining smooth during the heavy parts. ---- There are other areas and events where many players are together, this was just one example.
--------------------------------------------
As for other games tested:
Crysis Warhead (64bit) - 1920x1080 / Full Enthusiast Settings (Very High) + Gamer Shadows (High) / 2x AA / Motion Blur off. Framerates were in the 70-100 mark, except a few dips to mid 60's and occasionally 45. No Stuttering at all was present. Feels much better than normal Staging / CSMT.
Path of Exile - This one you need to use the 64bit Client if you want PBA otherwise Virtual Memory hits 4GB and crashes. I used to run this with Wine_Dev_3.2 and normal CSMT and got about 100fps max / with PBA I'm getting about 143 now, overall better but not strictly needed.
Conclusions: So far Guild Wars 2 benefitted a lot from this patch and although it allocates a lot of memory right from the beginning, I think the trade-off for much better performance is worth it.
If you wish to give this build a try I uploaded it to my google drive: [Download Link](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1TdFwaZ7juoiPawa9d2TCz3i7xZ9vswmR)
-------------------------------------------------------
My Guild Wars 2 Settings:
Registry Settings File (Adjust memory size to your GPU):
Also launch game with the "-dx9single" parameter for better performance.
As per https://wiki.winehq.org/Useful_Registry_Keys
Or for Wine Staging:
I will test it and report back :D
I hope this version will be also added to PoL for convenience :P
Thank you very much for that test and effort Avehicle7887 .
More Guild Wars 2 tests (copied from my earlier report on github):
I Ran the test with GW2 on an i5-4590 / 8GB Ram / GTX 960 384.111 / Using latest PBA. Didn't notice any performance loss compared to my previous build. To say I went from 16 threads Ryzen 1700X to a quad core, the fps difference was minimal, in action areas such as fractals it did quite well at keeping that 42+. I'm very happy with the results.
I've also did Tequatl tonight with the i5 system, the frame rate was pretty good considering the amount of players during that event. I didn't experience any stutters even when the fps was down to 20, average 25-30 during the event.
Usages throughout the tests:
CPU: About 45% on 3 cores, 100% on the 4th.
GPU: 57% Peak, with about 31% Memory used (2GB Card)
RAM: (about 45mins Including Tequatl) game was only occupying 3.3GB
The Highlight of this build: The ram usage went down by at least 1GB and the at the end of the test the total difference compared with the old one was 1.4GB, meanwhile the performance remained the same for the most part (I did notice a slight fps increase with the Ryzen build though). The cores are also being utilized better, before with Staging 2.0 it was 2 cores at like 100% while the other 2 relaxed.