[Wine] AMD/ATI or Nvidia

[James McKenzie]

On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 9:39 AM, phildaman46 <wineforum-user at winehq.org> wrote:
>
> jjmckenzie wrote:
>> On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 8:15 PM, phildaman46 <wineforum-user at winehq.org> wrote:
>>
>> > Thanks for the response. I'm already using an Nvidia GTX 560 and have most of my games running in Wine with
>> > no problems. I was just curious to know if AMD GPUs have improved since I last used them. Looks like they
>> > haven't as I suspected. Thanks for clearing that up.
>> >
>>
>> It is not that the AMD/ATI video cards are poor, just the drivers.
>> Intel video is junk, all around.  For now, nVidia is leading the way
>> for high quality Linux video drivers.  That may never change unless
>> AMD/ATI sees a large move to Linux.  I've been there with ATI and
>> another OS back in the 1990s.
>>
>> James
>
>
> I totally agree with you on that. I think AMD/ATI drivers work fine with native games in Linux. It just doesn't convert
> DirectX calls to OpenGL in Wine very well. If you only use Windows, either card should work fine. It's just a matter
> of whether you want 3D or Eyefinity.

No Linux video driver does DirectX to OpenGL conversions, Wine does
that.  The problem is the speed of conversions and whether OpenGL is
running in software or hardware.  nVidia appears to use their GPU to
do OpenGL calls and AMD/ATI uses software.  Thus the slowdown when
Wine does the call conversion and then again when the OpenGL call is
converted again to proprietary calls for the video card.
Again, this is how it appears.  This may not be how the conversions
are actually completed.

James