[Wine] Re: Weird problem with WINE

Bob Wya wineforum-user at winehq.org
Thu May 26 06:42:30 CDT 2011


Stray wrote:
> ... I'm having a weird problem with WINE. I've tried the latest version from here, the latest version in the Ubuntu repositories. I'm using Kubuntu 11.04 x86_64. I'm running AMD Phenom II x4 @ 2.5 GHz, 6 GB of RAM, ATi Radeon x1950 PRO with 512 MB vRAM. Don't know which display drivers I'm using, its whatever I'm working with. ...


I can't tell you what display driver you are using either  8)  - but I can tell you it will be the FOSS (open source) one that is still under heavy development. This driver will support native Linux games but it is unlikely to support more than DX7.0 games (e.g. Dues Ex or Half Life 1.0) run via Wine. Come back in five years time or so and things might have changed   :D 

ATI no longer support cards <HD 2100 - which obviously includes the X1xxx (Pro) series - with their latest proprietary Catalyst display drivers. Basically the drivers you need for any kind of gaming performance under Wine!

The last Ubuntu release to officially support these older Catalyst drivers was Intreped Ibex (8.10). From Jaunty (9.04) onwards the X-Server was updated and broke the proprietary drivers. I was there when it happened (and also had an ATI 1950 Pro 512Mb card)! I got stuck using Inteprid Ibex x64 (which had a really bad memory bug) - I needed the newer Kernel it provided just to install (and I was not aware of PPA's at the time). [Rolling Eyes] 

Should you think about upgrading your GPU ( :D ) you are strongly recommended to get an Nvidia series card which also supports VDPAU as well (these include: 240, 250, 460, 560 and are all good gaming cards - the 2xx series are relatively cheap second hand).

I have just been in discussion with someone on the Ubuntu Wine forum who has a new/powerful ATI card (6850 I think) - with the latest, bleeding edge ATI proprietary Catalyst driver (11.x). When running Crysis, via Wine, it runs very well (in terms of visual quality) on my ancient 8800 GTX Nvidia card - he is seeing polygon glitching on his card. I know ATI Linux drivers are always bad on newer hardware - but come on!

I did have a  go at struggling to get an ATI HD4870 (1Gb) GPU running on my system. After following a 100 (*well almost) step guide to getting video decode acceleration running and it still not working... :( 

I should point out that ATI is a much smaller company than Nvidia and all their driver development effort goes into the Windows platform. ATI have also released more technical details of their hardware to the FOSS community than Nvidia have. The ATI FOSS driver is much more advanced than the Nvidia Nouveau FOSS driver.

I would suggest heading over to Phoronix if you are interested to read more. (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=category&item=Display%20Drivers)

Bob







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