Ubuntu 7.10 + WINE vs. Windows XP

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu 7.10 + WINE vs. Windows XP

This week's release of Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon" is a significant win for the free software community. Not only does this release incorporate an updated package set -- most notably with the Linux 2.6.22 kernel and GNOME 2.20, but it also delivers on new desktop innovations from BulletProofX and displayconfig-gtk to Compiz Fusion being enabled by default on supported systems. However, for those business professionals and gamers that remain dependent on some Windows-only binary applications, the WINE (WINE Is Not An Emulator) project has been making some excellent headway into supporting Windows applications on the Linux desktop. With Ubuntu 7.10 and WINE 0.9.46 in hand, we had set out to compare the performance between Windows XP and Gutsy Gibbon with WINE on two popular DirectX benchmarks.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=11258

[Trek1701]

I wonder how the results would be if this was "Phoronix: Ubuntu 7.10 + WINE vs. Windows Vista".


Trek1701

[xeros]

@Trek1701: I wonder that, too.
And I wonder how would the tests come with Wine 0.9.47 on Ubuntu 7.10 with Compiz-Fussion disabled and some no needed CPU and RAM eating processes killed (Ubuntu starts some not needed in most cases services on boot like bluetooth and tablet PC touchscreen config in xorg.conf - I don't remember which services besides that I've disabled just after first boot).
It would be great if the tests would cover games which have native Linux clients to compare performance between native games and Windows binaries under Wine like Quake 3 & 4, Doom 3, ET: Quake Wars, Unreal 2, UT 2004, etc.
The last thing - I'd like to see those tests compared with ATI/AMD cards on 8.42 driver, too.

[.CME.]

well, i have the feeling, GLSL was disabled during the benchmark?, because it can give a big performance gain

[immudium]

I haven't done any extensive benchmarks or anything, but I found wine 0.9.46 to be a particularly bad version for DirectX performance when playing Command and Conquer Tiberium Wars. It was so bad that it was nearly unplayable where previously it ran very well. While 0.9.47 seems to have restored most of the lost performance from .46, I find that versions of wine <= 0.9.43 for now have the best DirectX performance, at least for that particular game. This is using an NVidia 7800GTX. I can't help but wonder why they picked that particular version. Perhaps it was simply the highest revision available at the time they locked down their packages.

[Michael]

well, i have the feeling, GLSL was disabled during the benchmark?, because it can give a big performance gain

GLSL was enabled (from the Registry) in a second set of tests and with 3DMark it actually caused worse performance.

[remm]

Personally, I'm having serious problems these days getting anything 3D to run with Wine. No problem with Linux native OpenGL apps, however.

I'm using a 8600GTS with the proprietary nvidia driver. Any special driver setting I should be aware of ?

[Malikith]

My experience in Wine has been generally good. However I haven't been able to test Wine with decent video performance due to ATI driver issues. But on my Geforce FX 5500 everything that had a gold rating on the Wineapp database ran decent. Especially if it was a opengl game. I tend to remember Deus Ex ran flawless in opengl mode in Wine for example.

Personally, I'm having serious problems these days getting anything 3D to run with Wine. No problem with Linux native OpenGL apps, however.

I'm using a 8600GTS with the proprietary nvidia driver. Any special driver setting I should be aware of ?

What kind of apps/games are you trying to run?

[Thetargos]

It would be great if the tests would cover games which have native Linux clients to compare performance between native games and Windows binaries under Wine like Quake 3 & 4, Doom 3, ET: Quake Wars, Unreal 2, UT 2004, etc.
Unreal 2 was never released for Linux. It has a DirectX-only renderer, and uses an early version of the Unreal Engine 2 (not nearly as polished as UT2K4 is)

[Kano]

Did you try what impact enabled compiz has?

[Leffe]

Was this test done using nVidia's AGP driver or the system's? For me, using nVidia's built-in AGP driver results in a considerable performance boost (almost on the level of disabling the compositing module).

It's set in xorg.conf's video card section, see the documentation for more information.

Option "NvAGP" "2"

[Anato]

Nvidia and AMD/ATI uses thousends of labour hours for tunning their windows drivers to get high scores on benchmarks. No linux driver get's such attention and Futuremarks test's are developed only for windows so there is no tunning for these tests in linux 3d drivers.

To make meaningful WINE test use something which is developed for windows, but hadn't been so owerly tuned by driver developers!

[bouc]

I wonder to see the same test with ATI cards
fglrx and open source driver ;)

[Noneus]

I think testing for 3DMark isn't the right way to go. You should have tested games. Source games and probably other stuff. There are games that run great with wine and other don't.

[Kano]

You could try renameing the executable in Win then maybe some gfx driver hacks are disabled.

[d2kx]

I think testing for 3DMark isn't the right way to go. You should have tested games. Source games and probably other stuff. There are games that run great with wine and other don't.

The last time I was able to play a HL2 based game was years ago with my nVidia GF FX 5600. Even Wine 0.9.47 won't let me play. Crashes at game startups (at the moment), blackscreen after map loading, Steam is not updating etc.... I've got all of that. If you're running fglrx and HL2 based games, I'd like to know what you've done for that.

[Noneus]

I'm using crossover office and nvidia...

[Strunkenbold]

@michael
Could you please check 3dmark03 with wine-0.9.45?
Im creator of http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9768
As no one has verified the correctness of the bug Im looking for someone with 2 graphic cards

When both cards reaches higher fps in wine .45, its probably a bug somewhere in wine.
If only the 8600GT has higher speeds, its just another performance bug in the nvidia-driver.
thx

[Michael]

[quote=Strunkenbold;15441]@michael
Could you please check 3dmark03 with wine-0.9.45?/quote]

Yeah, sure. It may take a couple days to get to it in my schedule, but will try to test it with WINE 0.9.45 ASAP.

[Tillin9]

Wine > 9.45 has been making a lot of changes to how Direct3D is handled. They transfered from GLX to WGL (i.e. moving a lot of lower-level graphics routines into wine) to improve compatibility. Also, if you check the wine release docs, you'll see almost a hundred Direct3D changes in the combination of 9.46 and 9.47. The net result is a decrease in performance and a whole bunch of regression issues for (hopefully) some improved long-term compatibility and maintainability. If you check the 3DMark 2001 SE winhq database, http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=4544 I'm (tillin9 = Scott) the one making all the comments. At least with my 9700 Pro, these recent changes took a mostly working benchmark (some pixel shader things were unsupported, either by wine or the ATI driver) and broke it. Another big issue for running Windows games under wine is the OpenGL child issue, which prevents Project64 1.6 http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=5779&iTestingId=6006 from working (despite a fix for this issue in 9.47) I'd actually appreciate it if an Nvidia user tried it (as this might be an ATI driver issue).

Also won't hurt if anybody on the forums is a registered wine user to vote for these apps to increase developer attention.

[mitcoes]

As you compare native vs. emulator. perhaps it would be nice other comparatives as native windows (XP & Vista) vs. Xen, Virtual Box, and Wmware installations.

And for a good an fair comparation as VB and Wm has windows and linux versions, compare
winXP native vs winXP virtual in XP vs winXP virtual in Vista vs Linux virtual.

And for further benchs a test only with opengl games and games with 2 versions as Id software titles.

I've read that Xp runs faster virtuali than native (becouse of no need for antivirus programs).

[Thetargos]

I've read that Xp runs faster virtuali than native (becouse of no need for antivirus programs).

That doesn't make sense... Windows can be messed up virtually or locally installed. The spread of the damage could be minimized when virtualized, but it still could be compromised.