CrossOver Games Preview & Benchmarks

[phoronix]

Phoronix: CrossOver Games Preview & Benchmarks

While we're continuing to see new Linux-native games introduced (such as the recent Shadowgrounds announcement) and the continued work by Linux Game Publishing with different games, the Linux gaming market is still far from being saturated and it keeps many gamers from even trying out Linux because of the limited choices. As they near version 1.0, WINE has been making strides at allowing gamers to run their Windows game binaries on Linux and last year Transgaming had introduced Cedega 6.0 with expanded game support -- among other improvements. Today though another option has been introduced and that is using CrossOver Games to run your favorite Windows games on Linux.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=12096

[cquilliam]

Just wanted to give my experiences with Crossover Games yesterday. First off, i'll state my system specs:

HP m8120n
Intel Quad Q6600
4GB DDR2 667 ram
2x320GB Seagate Sata2 drives
eVga Nvidia Geforce 8800GT 512MB

At the time, I didn't have Linux installed on my system, so i downloaded the new Kubuntu 8.04 64-bit release and installed it fresh on that.

My main reason for gaming in Linux is to get Team Fortress 2 running as close to Windows as possible.

The initial install went fine, so I grabbed my Orange Box, popped the cd in and followed the instructions. Everything went flawless.

After the install, launched TF2, configured my controls, changed the resolution to my native 1650x1080, and launched an online game. The FPS wasn't bad at all, somewhere around 40-50, but everything was pretty ugly. When I attempted to change my graphical settings to increase the texture detail, my FPS dropped to around 10FPS in an online game with a server of 29 other people. Playing at the default settings are possible, but its really ugly, and even basic things like an opponent uber charge looks corrupted.

I tried messing around with some other settings, forcing DirectX9 and 9.1 from the command line, which would load fine, but the texture detail was on low, as soon as you set it to high, the game defaulted back to directx 7 hardware detected and it wouldn't render anything. No surprise really, they say on the codeweaver forums that dx9 is buggy at best.

So, a quick breakdown of my experiences:

There are definite improvements with this over Crossover Office 6.2. The mouse click bug is fixed, which affected me greatly because i use Left-mouse to shoot and right-mouse to move forward, so i couldn't move forward and shoot at the same time. Microphone support is finally there, not great, but better than nothing. The performance is better than 6.2, and way better than anything else available for Linux.

When I get home today, I'm going to try a 32-bit ubuntu install and see if that makes any difference, probably not, but worth a try.

So, I will probably buy this, even though it's not fully functional for my use, but the 1 year of free upgrades is a definite bonus. Coming from donating $5 a month to Transgaming for 2 years and seeing no improvments in any games I play (HL2, TF2, Guildwars), I will definitly cough up the money for a working product.


And, if anyone has any suggestions on tweaks for 8800GT card, or with crossover games, let me know :)

[Malikith]

Interesting, I look forward to this because it will only help the Wine project. Unlike Transgaming, Codeweavers will actually give some code back to the Wine project. That and if I were to choose between Cedega and Crossover Games, I'd choose Crossover Games in a heartbeat.

[gilboa]

Interesting, I look forward to this because it will only help the Wine project. Unlike Transgaming, Codeweavers will actually give some code back to the Wine project. That and if I were to choose between Cedega and Crossover Games, I'd choose Crossover Games in a heartbeat.

/+1.
Once Crossover Games matures a-bit, I'll purchase it.

- Gilboa

[cquilliam]

/+1.
Once Crossover Games matures a-bit, I'll purchase it.

- Gilboa

Don't forget that when you purchase Crossover Games, you get free updates for a year. This was the final selling point for me. Unlike Cedega that will keep taking your money weather they release something or not.

[Kano]

The biggest difference is that Codeweavers directy contribues to the wine project - Transgameing uses a differnt branch which does not help to improve wine at all. Of course they could add more "hacks" that way but the "cleaner" way is to improve wine directy. That of course means that the free wine releases will get better too.

[givemesugarr]

Don't forget that when you purchase Crossover Games, you get free updates for a year. This was the final selling point for me. Unlike Cedega that will keep taking your money weather they release something or not.

well, cedega just takes 3 months of pay and you should be able to run also new games that get out after the engine is released.
i personally would preffer wine since it's free. it's more difficult to install stuff than with cedega and codeweavers but once installed it doesn't perform less than the other 2.

[cquilliam]

From my experiences, Crossover is well worth the money. I went a little over two years paying for Cedega subscription only to not see any improvements in the one game I wanted to play, and it was Guildwars a "supported" game according to them.

I am basing my opinions right now on Team Fortress 2, which under Crossover Games runs almost perfect compared to Wine or Cedega. Last night playing, I got 60-70 fps with ever graphical setting on max (except HDR), and it ran perfectly. However, I do understand that this is most likely not the case for all games, but, its well worth the money for me, and it will only get better.

And then there's the warm and fuzzy feeling of in-directly contributing to the wine project :)

[StringCheesian]

i personally would preffer wine since it's free. it's more difficult to install stuff than with cedega and codeweavers but once installed it doesn't perform less than the other 2.

The benchmarks starting on page 4 (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=crossover_games&num=4) appear to show otherwise, especially the Lobby one.

[aerosquid]

it would have been cool if XP was included in the benchmarks since the majority of windows users still use it and not vista.

[Michael]

Vista was used just since it came preloaded with the notebook :(

[givemesugarr]

Vista was used just since it came preloaded with the notebook :(

well, my experience with it was the following:

a notebook with 2ghz processor, 2gb ram ddr2 pc5400 and sata drive made out 2 minutes and 23 seconds of time to boot into the os.
after that i couldn't connect to the wireless router for some unknown reason (is suspect that broadcom chips are really pieces of crap also on windows and not only on linux). after 30mins of download of the sata controller floppy i reinstalled xp (30min) and the sytem booted in less than 48 seconds.
then the dual boot was completed with openuse 10.3 which booted in 51 seconds with compiz decorator (with autologin enabled).
i'm really happy not to use that stupid os on my pcs. i'll try out to make the notebook producer refund me for the vista price. i'm realy angry that you cannot find anymore pcs with xp or without os.

the last thing that left me really impressed was the following:
in a normal supermarket i found out a desktop pc with ubuntu preinstalled. that was really awesome, since it's price was more than 150 euros less than the same pc with vista home basic preinstalled and since it was exposed into a normal supermarket were usually only windows gets visibility.