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Playing Guild Wars 2 on Linux - Performance optimizations and more.


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@"ZenAge.4863" said:lol... I'm getting deja vu... this is oddly familiar to p18...

And btw... I'm not sure there is such a thing as "experiencing an optimal experience with GW2." It is inherently un-optimal, no matter what system you are on.

We'll have to disagree then. Surely by definition of the word "optimal" you understand what's being said.

The whole upgrade path with purchasing new pc hardware, CPU, GPU is to ensure you experience an optimal gaming experience with the games you play.

Here we are presented with a couple of options regarding operating systems and choice of api used to render the game.

Clearly the choice that provides me with the smoothest frametimes, lowest framespikes and stutter with peak output of frames per second would be logically the optimal choice?Isn't this just common sense?

Linux is great but.........Sub-optimal by a long way considering the other option available.

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By your logic, I could just buy a $200k PC and be rocking those FPS... I wonder who will be sub-optimal then.

Surely you understand, what I meant by saying the game is inherently un-optimal... yes we can use all these tweaks and upgrade our rigs... but to me "optimal" means I don't have to mess around with all this, as the "optimal" part should be in the base code of the game. Everything else... is an "Enhancement"

Furthermore, this is not as simple as choosing "this" because "my game runs xfps better", because you are focusing on 1 point "the game" and leaving out everything else that comes with the OS that runs the game. Which leads back to your optimal argument.

Consider two islands. One has everything you would need, generally peaceful mobs running around... the problem is... it lacks Mangoes...Now the other island has TONS of Mangoes... but now... unfortunately... it lacks the other things and there are some dodgy mobs running around... might not sleep too well at night..

Now... if you love Mangoes so much, then yeah... go to that island... my "Optimal choice" however, is to stay on the first island.... couldn't care much for those extra mangoes ;)

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@"ZenAge.4863" said:By your logic, I could just buy a $200k PC and be rocking those FPS... I wonder who will be sub-optimal then.

Surely you understand, what I meant by saying the game is inherently un-optimal... yes we can use all these tweaks and upgrade our rigs... but to me "optimal" means I don't have to mess around with all this, as the "optimal" part should be in the base code of the game. Everything else... is an "Enhancement"

Furthermore, this is not as simple as choosing "this" because "my game runs xfps better", because you are focusing on 1 point "the game" and leaving out everything else that comes with the OS that runs the game. Which leads back to your optimal argument.

Consider two islands. One has everything you would want, generally peaceful mobs running around... the problem is... it lacks Mangoes...Now the other island has TONS of Mangoes... but now... unfortunately... it lacks the other things and there are some dodgy mobs running around... might not sleep too well at night..

Now... if you love Mangoes so much, then yeah... go to that island... my "Optimal choice" however, is to stay on the first island.... couldn't care much for those extra mangoes ;)

I'm sorry you don't understand the example in context what's being said. I've got better things to do than spoon feed you and debate symantics. And the fruit analogy omg ?

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I really hate to see this Windows vs Linux thing on this thread, it's not what it's for. Anyhow my thoughts on the subject:

I think it's obvious many games perform better on Windows, it's their native environment and with GW2 especially this is probably a no brainer. With that said, I think most Linux gamers are aware of the slight performance loss in some games and have come to accept this trade off in favor of (in my opinion) a disastrous OS such as Win10.

I'm a heavy gamer myself and I'm aware I lose a few fps in games (not all of them run as poorly on Linux as GW2) however I don't feel like I'm gimping myself here. I haven't had to worry about viruses/malicious software, internet activity behind my back, software running in the background and such things as BSOD's for the last 6 years.

To keep it simple: If all you care about is gaming and max fps - then probably Windows is best for you. It's a bit pointless to keep arguing about this Windows vs Linux performance topic ;)

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@ArmoredVehicle.2849 said:I really hate to see this Windows vs Linux thing on this thread, it's not what it's for. Anyhow my thoughts on the subject:

I think it's obvious many games perform better on Windows, it's their native environment and with GW2 especially this is probably a no brainer. With that said, I think most Linux gamers are aware of the slight performance loss in some games and have come to accept this trade off in favor of (in my opinion) a disastrous OS such as Win10.

I'm a heavy gamer myself and I'm aware I lose a few fps in games (not all of them run as poorly on Linux as GW2) however I don't feel like I'm gimping myself here. I haven't had to worry about viruses/malicious software, internet activity behind my back, software running in the background and such things as BSOD's for the last 6 years.

To keep it simple: If all you care about is gaming and max fps - then probably Windows is best for you. It's a bit pointless to keep arguing about this Windows vs Linux performance topic ;)

Hardly a few loose fps when we're talking 40+ frames. Now that's obvious and I think you're downplaying the situation because you love Linux. For this reason you're overstating the whole bsod and malware situation too. I was posting my experience to ensure Linux users were informed of the performance available on Windows 10 using the d912pxy to render the game in DX12.

Being informed isn't pointless, I think it's imperative!

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@Little Howl.5231 said:

@ArmoredVehicle.2849 said:I really hate to see this Windows vs Linux thing on this thread, it's not what it's for. Anyhow my thoughts on the subject:

I think it's
obvious
many games perform better on Windows, it's their native environment and with GW2 especially this is probably a no brainer. With that said, I think most Linux gamers are aware of the slight performance loss in some games and have come to accept this trade off in favor of (in my opinion) a disastrous OS such as Win10.

I'm a heavy gamer myself and I'm aware I lose a few fps in games (not all of them run as poorly on Linux as GW2) however I don't feel like I'm gimping myself here. I haven't had to worry about viruses/malicious software, internet activity behind my back, software running in the background and such things as BSOD's for the last 6 years.

To keep it simple: If all you care about is gaming and max fps - then probably Windows is best for you. It's a bit pointless to keep arguing about this Windows vs Linux performance topic ;)

Hardly a
few loose fps
when we're talking 40+ frames. Now that's
obvious
and I think you're downplaying the situation because you love Linux. For this reason you're overstating the whole bsod and malware situation too. I was posting my experience to ensure Linux users were informed of the performance available on Windows 10 using the d912pxy to render the game in DX12.

Being informed isn't pointless, I think it's imperative!

I decided to give your suggestion a whirl and oh boyo, this Windows 10 mod really makes a big difference to the game ?I'm rockin a 2070 graphics card here and 3700 is my processor. Shame it doesn't work on Linux

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@Little Howl.5231 said:

@ArmoredVehicle.2849 said:I really hate to see this Windows vs Linux thing on this thread, it's not what it's for. Anyhow my thoughts on the subject:

I think it's
obvious
many games perform better on Windows, it's their native environment and with GW2 especially this is probably a no brainer. With that said, I think most Linux gamers are aware of the slight performance loss in some games and have come to accept this trade off in favor of (in my opinion) a disastrous OS such as Win10.

I'm a heavy gamer myself and I'm aware I lose a few fps in games (not all of them run as poorly on Linux as GW2) however I don't feel like I'm gimping myself here. I haven't had to worry about viruses/malicious software, internet activity behind my back, software running in the background and such things as BSOD's for the last 6 years.

To keep it simple: If all you care about is gaming and max fps - then probably Windows is best for you. It's a bit pointless to keep arguing about this Windows vs Linux performance topic ;)

Hardly a
few loose fps
when we're talking 40+ frames. Now that's
obvious
and I think you're downplaying the situation because you love Linux. For this reason you're overstating the whole bsod and malware situation too. I was posting my experience to ensure Linux users were informed of the performance available on Windows 10 using the d912pxy to render the game in DX12.

Being informed isn't pointless, I think it's imperative!

Read my post again, I wasn't referring to just GW2. As I stated, not all games perform as badly on Linux (and you can verify this by checking out a few youtube benchmarks). I find nothing wrong by sharing your experience and informing others and once more, yes GW2 runs better on Windows and I wouldn't be surprised if in some cases it performs 40fps better.

When I said it's pointless to argue about it, I meant it in the way that if you want the best performance for gaming, Windows is the way to go but if you can tolerate less performance while still being able to play the game and enjoy Linux at the same time, that's also a possibility. And this is more or less what the others have been trying to tell you :)

Again, this thread is not for comparing which OS performs best and there's no point in bringing up the topic over and over.

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@Little Howl.5231 said:

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:

@Little Howl.5231 said:Quite simply, the performance using DXVK is sub-par compared to running Windows 10 using the d912pxy. After running performance benchmarks in fractals and wvw, pvp and general i'm seeing differences of 40-50 fps in lots of situations.May i ask for your specs or more precisely how many fps you consider normal when running under Windows 10? Because my rather old pc runs at about ~50-60 fps normally with about 10-15% less running on Wine, so a loss of 50 fps under linux sounds incredibly strange.

I'm not talking about Windows 10 native dx9 vs Linux with wine or dxvk ( vulkan )

I'm referring to running GW2 in DX12 with the d912pxy on Windows 10 and the performance gap against running on Linux with DXVK is HUGE.

i7 6800k @ 4.5 Ghz32 Gig 3200 Mhz DDR4512GB Nvme SSDAMD RX 5700xt

Playing on 165Hz freesync monitor vsync OFF @ 1440p resolution

and at the same time, you are running windows. Poor you.

Ok I'll bite. It's a shame people associate so strongly with an idea that they become so biased that their logic is completely flawed.Poor me, my Gw2 experience is optimal. ?

for you maybe. But for me, being forced to use windows on my home machine, would be a total show stopper.

I have enought work to do every day because of windows, I don't need that crap when I am home. It is that simple. So I loose some fps. Do not care.

Your optimal is not my optimal.

And you missed that point Zen made with the Mangos.

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@"Mack.3045" said:Hi guys, would someone be kind enough to share with me their mature GW2 DXVK shader cache with me ?Thank you

Here you go: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19uIZynEnCGWo7unY3ZO6FTX7hlonTJFj

Please note that this does not mean the game will not stutter, aside from this file both Mesa and Nvidia have their own cache implementation and the game may need to rebuild some of these with a driver update.

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:Also ACO is now enabled by default for radv:

WARNING: Unknown option RADV_PERFTEST='aco'. ACO is enabled by default now.

I've updated my system to 20.2.1 today, as I suspected it's just a warning and harmless to those running 20.2.x. Safe to say I'll keep it as is for those still on older versions. :)

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@ArmoredVehicle.2849 said:

@Redmond.5019 said:@ArmoredVehicle.2849 Is there an easy way to setup your custom version through Lutris?

Never used Lutris so no idea how it actually works. I did check the game's page though and apparently someone wrote an install script (click - show unpublished installers) which configures Wine in a similar way to my package. Seem to be a job well done too I must say :)

That was me, though I haven't messed with it in a while

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Hi there,

I'd like to make the switch from Kubuntu to Manjaro. Of course I'd love to play GW2 on Manjaro, too. This thread helped me finally get it to work on Kubuntu.

There are however some differences between Manjaro and Kubuntu. For instance, Manjaro has no Wine-32-Package. Will it make a difference? Anyone here got it working on Manjaro and wants to share his experiences?

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@"Montagsgott.7438" said:Hi there,

I'd like to make the switch from Kubuntu to Manjaro. Of course I'd love to play GW2 on Manjaro, too. This thread helped me finally get it to work on Kubuntu.

There are however some differences between Manjaro and Kubuntu. For instance, Manjaro has no Wine-32-Package. Will it make a difference? Anyone here got it working on Manjaro and wants to share his experiences?

I'm not familiar with Manjaro aside from knowing that it's based on Arch, even though they dropped 32bit support, I don't think they dropped support for it entirely. What many distros are doing is dropping support for actual 32bit (pre 2007) CPU's, but they're still offering some 32bit packages to support old games using those libraries.

I will run a GW2 test without any 32bit components (64bit exclusive Wine prefix) and try the game with it. EDIT: The game crashes without 32bit support, this is because the game itself is 64bit while the Trading Post/Black Lion Store is a separate 32bit exe. Sorry can't be of much further help, you can try asking on the https://www.gamingonlinux.com/ forums though, plenty of Arch users there.

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I just looked it up because it sounded strange that manjaro would use arch repos as a base to then remove the multilib repository. And at least the manjaro wiki lists core, extra, cummunity and multilib, exactly like arch does... Did they really remove those some time later and fail to change the wiki? :-o

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@ArmoredVehicle.2849 said:

@"Montagsgott.7438" said:Hi there,

I'd like to make the switch from Kubuntu to Manjaro. Of course I'd love to play GW2 on Manjaro, too. This thread helped me finally get it to work on Kubuntu.

There are however some differences between Manjaro and Kubuntu. For instance, Manjaro has no Wine-32-Package. Will it make a difference? Anyone here got it working on Manjaro and wants to share his experiences?

I'm not familiar with Manjaro aside from knowing that it's based on Arch, even though they dropped 32bit support, I don't think they dropped support for it entirely. What many distros are doing is dropping support for actual 32bit (pre 2007) CPU's, but they're still offering some 32bit packages to support old games using those libraries.

I will run a GW2 test without any 32bit components (64bit exclusive Wine prefix) and try the game with it.

EDIT:
The game crashes without 32bit support, this is because the game itself is 64bit while the Trading Post/Black Lion Store is a separate 32bit exe. Sorry can't be of much further help, you can try asking on the
forums though, plenty of Arch users there.

Thank you for your testing!

@"Ooops.8694" said:I just looked it up because it sounded strange that manjaro would use arch repos as a base to then remove the multilib repository. And at least the manjaro wiki lists core, extra, cummunity and multilib, exactly like arch does... Did they really remove those some time later and fail to change the wiki? :-o

Well to be honest I don't know exactly. I just saw that in their repo there's no dedicated wine-32-package. Might the "normal" Wine suffice?

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I can only speak from the arch perspective, but didn't even know a dedicated wine32 existed. I use the same wine package for 32 and 64bit winearchs (or i should say i used the same wine. nowadays i compile one of the tkg builds myself, since wine-staging dropped esync support while they do some extensive rewrites.) All you need are the 32bit libraries.Those are contained in the multilib repository and i'm pretty sure they exist for manjaro the same way they do for arch. They may not be included with the things pacman checks for by default, but that's only a matter of opening /etc/pacman.conf, scrolling down and deleting "#" before [multilib] so they get checked too.

More problematic will probably be the fact that you really want wine-staging for esync support. I never tried on my normal pc but on this rather old laptop i'm working from at the moment esync makes the difference between unplayable 6-10 frames at best and solid 30-50 while moving in populated areas. And as i mentioned before that's not supported at the moment on newer versions of wine-staging (i think the last one with esync support was 5.9 and we're at 5.19 now... (on arch... i don't expect manjaro to be more than 1-2 versions behind).I don't know what you used on kubuntu as i haven't used debian/ubuntu stuff for quite a while, but i'm pretty sure it's doable (with some time/work invested)... Or you have all the usual suspects (playonlinux, proton, lutris) for a more automated approach in the repos too.

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@Montagsgott.7438 said:Hi there,

I'd like to make the switch from Kubuntu to Manjaro. Of course I'd love to play GW2 on Manjaro, too. This thread helped me finally get it to work on Kubuntu.

There are however some differences between Manjaro and Kubuntu. For instance, Manjaro has no Wine-32-Package. Will it make a difference? Anyone here got it working on Manjaro and wants to share his experiences?

I have been running manjaro for maybe 2 years now, and this package is working totally fine. I tested it on both AMD and nvidia GPUs, both worked like a charm.The things related to wine I have installed on my system:

  • wine-gecko
  • wine-mono
  • wine-staging
  • winetricks

It should be smooth sailing, and if you went through some issues or errors, it should be fairly easy to come up with solutions online. Note: I tried both KDE and XFCE, I don't think the environment would make much of a difference, but who knows :) .. Best of luck!

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as far as wine in manjaro i can give you some tips

first if you are using a AMD GPU turn on ACO you can do this by editing /etc/environment and adding the following lineRADV_PERFTEST=aco

next for WINE both regular and 32 run the following command it will add wine, winetricks, lutris and all the required libraries as well as gamemode

sudo pacman -S wine-staging giflib lib32-giflib libpng lib32-libpng libldap lib32-libldap gnutls lib32-gnutls mpg123 lib32-mpg123 openal lib32-openal v4l-utils lib32-v4l-utils libpulse lib32-libpulse libgpg-error lib32-libgpg-error alsa-plugins lib32-alsa-plugins alsa-lib lib32-alsa-lib libjpeg-turbo lib32-libjpeg-turbo sqlite lib32-sqlite libxcomposite lib32-libxcomposite libxinerama lib32-libgcrypt libgcrypt lib32-libxinerama ncurses lib32-ncurses opencl-icd-loader lib32-opencl-icd-loader libxslt lib32-libxslt libva lib32-libva gtk3 lib32-gtk3 gst-plugins-base-libs lib32-gst-plugins-base-libs vulkan-icd-loader lib32-vulkan-icd-loader lutris gamemode winetricks -y

those two steps will give you the best possible gaming experience for any game you could want to play and not just Guild Wars 2

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@Barabeam.4638 said:

@Montagsgott.7438 said:Hi there,

I'd like to make the switch from Kubuntu to Manjaro. Of course I'd love to play GW2 on Manjaro, too. This thread helped me finally get it to work on Kubuntu.

There are however some differences between Manjaro and Kubuntu. For instance, Manjaro has no Wine-32-Package. Will it make a difference? Anyone here got it working on Manjaro and wants to share his experiences?

I have been running manjaro for maybe 2 years now, and this package is working totally fine. I tested it on both AMD and nvidia GPUs, both worked like a charm.The things related to wine I have installed on my system:
  • wine-gecko
  • wine-mono
  • wine-staging
  • winetricks

It should be smooth sailing, and if you went through some issues or errors, it should be fairly easy to come up with solutions online. Note: I tried both KDE and XFCE, I don't think the environment would make much of a difference, but who knows :) .. Best of luck!

Thank you for your insights!Did you use the script provided by ArmoredVehicle? Or just the Lutris installer?

@dusanyu.4057 said:as far as wine in manjaro i can give you some tips

first if you are using a AMD GPU turn on ACO you can do this by editing /etc/environment and adding the following lineRADV_PERFTEST=aco

next for WINE both regular and 32 run the following command it will add wine, winetricks, lutris and all the required libraries as well as gamemode

sudo pacman -S wine-staging giflib lib32-giflib libpng lib32-libpng libldap lib32-libldap gnutls lib32-gnutls mpg123 lib32-mpg123 openal lib32-openal v4l-utils lib32-v4l-utils libpulse lib32-libpulse libgpg-error lib32-libgpg-error alsa-plugins lib32-alsa-plugins alsa-lib lib32-alsa-lib libjpeg-turbo lib32-libjpeg-turbo sqlite lib32-sqlite libxcomposite lib32-libxcomposite libxinerama lib32-libgcrypt libgcrypt lib32-libxinerama ncurses lib32-ncurses opencl-icd-loader lib32-opencl-icd-loader libxslt lib32-libxslt libva lib32-libva gtk3 lib32-gtk3 gst-plugins-base-libs lib32-gst-plugins-base-libs vulkan-icd-loader lib32-vulkan-icd-loader lutris gamemode winetricks -y

those two steps will give you the best possible gaming experience for any game you could want to play and not just Guild Wars 2

Thanks, I'll get to that once I've set Manjaro up. You've installed GW2 with Lutris?

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@dusanyu.4057 said:as far as wine in manjaro i can give you some tips

first if you are using a AMD GPU turn on ACO you can do this by editing /etc/environment and adding the following lineRADV_PERFTEST=aco

next for WINE both regular and 32 run the following command it will add wine, winetricks, lutris and all the required libraries as well as gamemode

sudo pacman -S wine-staging giflib lib32-giflib libpng lib32-libpng libldap lib32-libldap gnutls lib32-gnutls mpg123 lib32-mpg123 openal lib32-openal v4l-utils lib32-v4l-utils libpulse lib32-libpulse libgpg-error lib32-libgpg-error alsa-plugins lib32-alsa-plugins alsa-lib lib32-alsa-lib libjpeg-turbo lib32-libjpeg-turbo sqlite lib32-sqlite libxcomposite lib32-libxcomposite libxinerama lib32-libgcrypt libgcrypt lib32-libxinerama ncurses lib32-ncurses opencl-icd-loader lib32-opencl-icd-loader libxslt lib32-libxslt libva lib32-libva gtk3 lib32-gtk3 gst-plugins-base-libs lib32-gst-plugins-base-libs vulkan-icd-loader lib32-vulkan-icd-loader lutris gamemode winetricks -y

those two steps will give you the best possible gaming experience for any game you could want to play and not just Guild Wars 2

wine package is updated the same as wine-staging is in the repos (both are at 5.19-1 as of now), so staging one shouldn't be necessary.I do not know why they have essentially two staging packages.

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Maybe i misunderstand your post but wine-5.19 and wine-staging-5.19 are not the same at all. While staging is used as a testing area for wine it's not some development-version in a classical sense where wine-staging-x.y is "promoted" to wine-x.y when it's deemed stable enough.Wine-staging is a separate special set of patches to be applied on top of wine, often to fix special problems/performance issues, sometimes with only a single game. Some of these patches are experimental or even quite "hacky" and while some of the staging stuff later finds it's way into the regular version there are some quick fixes that were never really meant to be kept but just temporarily "plug some hole" until a proper stable patch exists.So of course wine and wine-staging have the same version number. That's how it's supposed to be: Every wine-staging version has the same number as the regular version it's based on, then adds some patches (which can be added separately too instead of applying them all as many package maintainers do for the repos).And because of this wine and wine-staging with identical version numbers may have very different levels of stability/performance for many games and you should probably always use the staging branch if you're after the best possible performance...

PS: Speaking of experimental patches... Can someone confirm arcdps being broken on wine-staging-5.19? I had no time yet to do extensive tests to see if the problem lies in wine-staging alone (5.18 and earlier still works) or if it's also related to nvidia being nvidia and not providing a working driver for the up-to-date kernel...

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