Games running REALLY slowly (Starcraft 2 / WoW)
 

Hello everyone,

I'm still fairly new to this whole Linux thing I'd appreciate it if any potential resolutions could be given to me in step-by-step form :)

I recently finished Starcraft: Brood Wars (worked fine on Linux) and downloaded Starcraft II (I'd bought it back when I had Windows). I got everything to install (PlayOnLinux) and I can open it but everything is reeeeeeeeeeeeally slow/laggy. It takes me close to 2 minutes to scroll down to the bottom of the user agreement.

I thought that maybe I'd fudged up and my computer wasn't strong enough for the game (which could very well be) but after a few months hiatus I redownloaded WoW and I'm having the same issue.

Pre-Ubuntu I was around 60 fps in game (30-40 in Dalaran) and now I can barely scroll down to hit "Agree" in the User Agreements.

Does anyone have any ideas on what I can do to fix this?

It may be that you are not running a video driver that supports 3D acceleration (in which case the 3D will be emulated by Mesa, which can be quite slow).

Which version of Ubuntu are you running?

Which brand is your graphics card? The following command run in a terminal will provide more information:
Which drivers did Xorg find? The following command run in a terminal will provide more information:
For example, if you have an Nvidia card under Ubuntu 10.10, it will be using the open licensed nouveau driver by default, which does not support 3D acceleration. To get 3D acceleration, you would have to install the Nvidia proprietary driver.

Thanks for the quick response :)

I have Ubuntu 10.04.1

I have an nVidia GeForce 9800 GT.

For the drivers it comes up with the following:
(==) Matched nouveau as autoconfigured driver 0
(==) Matched nv as autoconfigured driver 1
(==) Matched vesa as autoconfigured driver 2
(==) Matched fbdev as autoconfigured driver 3

That indicates that you don't have the proprietary nvidia driver installed (nouveau currently has limited support for some 2D acceleration but not for 3D, and nv does not support acceleration at all).

You can either install the one from the Ubuntu repositories (you may need to enable the multiverse repository), or install the one from the Nvidia website. The first way is probably easier.

I followed the instructions on that site but now I can't figure out how to increase my resolution again since everything is super-sized on my screen.

Also, when I go to the Monitors under System -> Preferences it says "It appears that your graphics driver does not support the necessary extensions to use this tool. Do you want to use your graphics driver vendor's tool instead?"

Figured out the configuration thing, changed the driver from the newest one to the 173 version.

AND my games work, thanks for your help! :)

Edit: Well, they were working before I changed the driver back to the 173 one, now Starcraft 2 won't even open =/ It says "Starting Starcraft II" in the task bar but then it closes and nothing happens *sigh*.

You can force screen resolutions if the driver does not correctly detect the monitor, though this requires delving more into the technical side of video configuration.

I'm not sure why the 173 driver didn't work. According to the Nvidia site, both the 173 and 260 drivers support the GeForce 9800 GT. Possibly something in the install failed, and it isn't loading the driver at all, in which case it would revert to the nv driver (which could prevent any OpenGL program from running).

You can get more information by running programs from the command line (since you will see the error messages), or using dmesg to look at the log. Also, the mesa-utils package has some useful diagnostic tools, such as glxinfo to display information about the OpenGL acceleration, and the 3D test program glxgears.

The best way to get it working properly (I've also got a Ubuntu machine with a similar video card) is to download the proprietrary drivers from NVIDIA. Here's the link of the driver itself: http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/linux...driver-uk.html

Click {Download} and depending on your webbrowser {Agree and download} or Right-click that button and choose {Save link as...} to download it.

Now log out your graphical interface to the main login screen.


Press: {Ctrl}-{Alt}-{F1} to switch to a text terminal

Login over here with your main user who also is the administrator of your machine.

In order to compile a new driver into your kernel you need to install a few utilities to make it possible for the NVIDIA script to do its work:

Let's find out wich kernel you have:

A text like "2.6.32-25-generic-pae" should appear. Use this text in the next command by putting linux-headers- before it, for example:

[code]sudo apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.32-25-generic-pae"

Now go to the directory where you've downloaded the new drivers from NVIDIA.

For example:

Let's see if the file is really there:

Now we're going to remove the old drivers first:

In order to install the new drivers we need to kill the display manager first.

In case of Ubuntu:
Kubuntu machines:
Xubuntu machines:
After killing X you'll get sent back to the terminal you've typed the last command.

Now it's time to install the new drivers by running the NVIDIA script:

Answer the questions the script asks to you (Always continue and agree, and never stop or quit)

After all its work the NVIDIA script should tell you a message like Installation is done.

Especially the first time, let nvidia-xconfig alter these new settings for you (last or one of the last questions you get after a succesful install)

Now if the screen has returned you to the console screen, you may test your new configuration directly (not recommended the very first time) by starting X from the console:

Or in order to see how your computer starts, and this way is always working:

Your computer will restart and the best available resolution will be chosen. After logging in, open an X console window to test your performance.

Now if OpenGL is working properly, 3 gears appear in your screen, making rotations. Move the rotating screen away from the console window in order to see how fast the gears can be put on your screen. My 9800 GT card can put 60-80K frames in 5 seconds. Yours should be able to that amount too.

This framerate counts as a framerate in WoW for 50-150fps (50 in Dalaran to 150 in open air). BTW the first thing to do in WoW and all windows games using OpenGL is setting your video settings to Windowed mode, turning off Vertical Sync, set the resolution one step lower than your real screen resolution. After pressing Ok and after the settings really have been applied, maximize this smaller window with the game and you got the maximum available resolution. Full screen or maximized Window mode in WoW itself can crash your pc (hardware video crash).

Succes.

Thanks everyone :)

Laurens, that first link you provided me doesn't work - just a guess but it looks like it got shortened somehow with the "..." in the middle?

I tried to reinstall the game but now I keep getting Microsoft Runtime errors when it's at about 51%.

To be honest I'm getting kind of frustrated - my Pidgin is giving me fits as well =/

The link gets shortened over here also. But it works over here... Maybe you need to choose an other download location from the NVIDIA site, by going to http://www.nvidia.com and clicking the following menu options over there: {Download Drivers} >> {Beta and archived drivers} <click> - in this new appearing page, select the type of video card 9800 GT and in Operating Linux 32 bit or Linux 64 bit, depending on your installed version. After Checking the types and clicking the Search button a new page appears. Choose version 260.1921 (latest stable release) and after this click the page appears wich mentioned in the post above.

Reinstalling the game won't work since you lack installation of the proper video drivers. When your video card is working as it should, the installation should be no problem by running the Repair.exe file in the ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/World\ of\ Warcraft directory

The problem with Linux is when being unexperienced with the system and having some issues with hardware support, it gets frustrating very easily. It's a system made for people who like to puzzle a lot with getting things working or people who don't have computer experience at all and knowing someone who can administer the machine. If you really want to get it working, you need to follow the steps above to succeed. Without the proprietrary drivers windows games won't work as smoothly as they do in Windows.

Awesome, thanks again :)

I'll try everything out when I get home today :)

Alright, so I went through the instructions and everything was going fine until killing the display manager (what is the display manager?).

It said that there were no processes found or something like that?

And it's telling me that it can't open NVIDIA-Linux-x86-260.19.21.run when I do the sudo sh command.

Just tried again and it looked like the Driver script was starting to go but it's saying that I'm running an X Server... how do I kill that?

Edit: Nevermind, I see now (sometimes I'm slow *sigh*)

How do I get past the "no process found" thing when I try to kill X server?

Alright, I finally figured it out...

I had to use

In order to kill X before I could run the NVidia script then

when I was done.

I ran glxgears afterwards but I'm only getting about 44k as opposed to your 60-80k - is there anything I can do to increase this or is it just due to my video card?

Alright, so now I upgraded a package today, rebooted, and now it's saying that it can't use the NVIDIA driver...

When I go to System - Admin - Hardware Drivers, it says I have no Proprietary Drivers installed...

Can someone please help me?