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

[GamerToad.9248]

I hope linux becomes native.

Edited May 24, 2023 by GamerToad.9248

[Veprovina.4876]

2 minutes ago, GamerToad.9248 said:

I hope linux becomes native.

You mean a native client for GW2?

Given how well Proton works, it's highly unlikely Anet will develop and maintain a native linux client. Even if linux becomes more popular.

They can however, make sure it's playing nice with Proton, and honestly, that's enough... The game works beautiful on linux now. Especially compared to how hard, convoluted and bad it was before.

[Tanker.9802]

1 hour ago, Veprovina.4876 said:

You mean a native client for GW2?

Given how well Proton works, it's highly unlikely Anet will develop and maintain a native linux client. Even if linux becomes more popular.

They can however, make sure it's playing nice with Proton, and honestly, that's enough... The game works beautiful on linux now. Especially compared to how hard, convoluted and bad it was before.

I can say for my own experience on Linux.
First time I ran it with just wine, it was "ok", then lutris it had some nice improvements, there was no GW2 on steam yet, when it got release I test it, proton 5 I remember didn't play nice on Debian, I keep playing with Lutris until Proton 7, Debian, nobara, pop-os, MX-linux... it was working just fine, in recent months I switched to Arch and with the new release Proton 8 I haven't had a single issue, keep in mind that I'm using a very old rig almost 11yo, still using DDR3.

So like he said.

[zistenz.1945]

20 hours ago, Hell Nirvana.9045 said:

Did this ever get fixed for you? Mine's still in 12-hour mode :C

KDE user here too, it is still in 12-hour mode. Tried to add "LC_TIME=hu_HU.utf8" to the command line, but it doesn't work. I think the game uses some other method to acquire locale information, because when I was on XFCE and Hungarian locales, the 24-hour mode was the default.

[zistenz.1945]

(double post)

Edited May 24, 2023 by zistenz.1945

[zistenz.1945]

Arch users, mesa 23.1 is out, RADV_PERFTEST=gpl no longer required. Everyone should update their pacman files too.

[Veprovina.4876]

8 minutes ago, zistenz.1945 said:

Arch users, mesa 23.1 is out, RADV_PERFTEST=gpl no longer required. Everyone should update their pacman files too.

I have to admit I'm having trouble with the update pacman files lol.

Probably why I can't update mesa.

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

On 5/24/2023 at 2:01 AM, Veprovina.4876 said:

It did, yes. But i'm not on KDE anymore, i use Gnome now, and here it all worked fine.

KDE was extremely buggy and unstable, as well as SDDM which started crashing, and i just couldn't deal with it anymore. So whatever happened it probably had something to do with KDE.

KDE is rock solid. As is sddm. But you never know what your distro of choice adds in stupid patches.

 

Same goes for locales...

[zistenz.1945]

On 5/25/2023 at 5:28 PM, Veprovina.4876 said:

I have to admit I'm having trouble with the update pacman files lol.

Probably why I can't update mesa.

Do you have any pacman customizations (e.g. ParallelDownloads or IgnorePkg)? If there isn't any, then just do this:

cd /etc

sudo mv pacman.conf pacman.conf.old

sudo cp pacman.conf.new pacman.conf

Look into the /etc/pacman.d folder too and apply the same to the mirrorlist file too.

I was able to update mesa yesterday before I did anything with pacman, so maybe there's another issue with your config?

----

EDIT: Actually, it is NOT recommended to use the new pacnew files (yet?). I found it removes a lot of sources, especially if you have a customized Arch like mine (EOS), and the mirrors are all disabled. I went back to the old files after a few small problems and missing updates.

Edited May 28, 2023 by zistenz.1945
revision

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

I have 24h clock.

XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=KDE
LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=''"

 

[zistenz.1945]

Some Mesa 23.1 experiences (6650XT with BAR enabled): the game feels smoother now. I didn't saw any significant fps bumps, but the lower 1% feels better.  No more new object texture lags (like jumping on the raptor on a new map, or rotating the camera around), everything looks better, snappier.

[Veprovina.4876]

5 hours ago, zistenz.1945 said:

Do you have any pacman customizations (e.g. ParallelDownloads or IgnorePkg)? If there isn't any, then just do this:

cd /etc

sudo mv pacman.conf pacman.conf.old

sudo cp pacman.conf.new pacman.conf

Look into the /etc/pacman.d folder too and apply the same to the mirrorlist file too.

I was able to update mesa yesterday before I did anything with pacman, so maybe there's another issue with your config?

Thsnks, I'll try that and see if it finds any new updates. I didn't have any special configs in that file.

 

EDIT: Did that, worked perfectly. Just had to uncomment multilib from the new pacman.conf file.

But i think the issues was that i didn't update the mirror list lol, now that i have the new pacman.conf and mirrorlist files, it found the mesa update immediately.

Thanks! 🙂

Edited May 25, 2023 by Veprovina.4876

[zistenz.1945]

On 5/25/2023 at 7:13 PM, Veprovina.4876 said:

But i think the issues was that i didn't update the mirror list lol, now that i have the new pacman.conf and mirrorlist files, it found the mesa update immediately.

I had many problems with the new mirrorlist, I went back to the old one and did a refresh.

[Veprovina.4876]

44 minutes ago, zistenz.1945 said:

I had many problems with the new mirrorlist, I went back to the old one and did a refresh.

Your providers probably didn't update it yet. But it says you should use the new one (i think) because the old mirrors are either not going to work anymore, or are still on the old pacman repo.

I saw on reddit or somewhere that it sometimes takes a while for the mirrors to update, so maybe that's what you've been having problems with. If that's the case, it should be done by now, maybe try the new mirrorlist again?

[zistenz.1945]

1 hour ago, Veprovina.4876 said:

Your providers probably didn't update it yet. But it says you should use the new one (i think) because the old mirrors are either not going to work anymore, or are still on the old pacman repo.

I saw on reddit or somewhere that it sometimes takes a while for the mirrors to update, so maybe that's what you've been having problems with. If that's the case, it should be done by now, maybe try the new mirrorlist again?

I did a refresh and I have the latest mirrors. The previous pacnew file was full of servers, but everything was disabled in there. And combined with the new pacman.conf that disabled the multilib and the eos repos, I had a few problems with updating the system. It is working now.

[Veprovina.4876]

34 minutes ago, zistenz.1945 said:

I did a refresh and I have the latest mirrors. The previous pacnew file was full of servers, but everything was disabled in there. And combined with the new pacman.conf that disabled the multilib and the eos repos, I had a few problems with updating the system. It is working now.

Cool, all that matters is it's working. 🙂

I updated both like you described, and it's working fine no for me too.

Edited May 28, 2023 by Veprovina.4876

[argard.1789]

Hey there, been running GW2 on linux for a few days now. Game runs fine through steam, but performance really takes a dip on metas and such. Is there a way to improve it? 

My current launch options are: ENABLE_VKBASALT=1 RADV_PERFTEST=nggc DXVK_ASYNC=1 gamemoderun %command% -provider Portal

My distro is Linux Mint, my GPU is a RX 6600 with a 4650G CPU.

[Veprovina.4876]

30 minutes ago, argard.1789 said:

Hey there, been running GW2 on linux for a few days now. Game runs fine through steam, but performance really takes a dip on metas and such. Is there a way to improve it? 

Lower the number od people rendered in game.

No other way. This has got to do with the fact that the game only uses a single processor thread mostly.

Not really related to Linux I think.

[argard.1789]

36 minutes ago, Veprovina.4876 said:

Lower the number od people rendered in game.

No other way. This has got to do with the fact that the game only uses a single processor thread mostly.

Not really related to Linux I think.

Really? That's a shame, then. I had the model limit to lowest already, but I have frequent dips to 25 FPS on metas. Thanks, tho.

[Veprovina.4876]

28 minutes ago, argard.1789 said:

Really? That's a shame, then. I had the model limit to lowest already, but I have frequent dips to 25 FPS on metas. Thanks, tho.

Yeah, that happens on metas to me too.

 

Though, before you give up.

 

Which proton are you running? Depending on the version it's either RADV preftest or DXVK ASYNC. Never both. Dxvk ASYNC got replaced with radv in later versions and only works on some cards now.

DXVK ASYNC kinda became baseline.

 

So... Which proton version. This might affect your performance.

Edited June 1, 2023 by Veprovina.4876

[argard.1789]

12 minutes ago, Veprovina.4876 said:

Yeah, that happens on metas to me too.

 

Though, before you give up.

 

Which proton are you running? Depending on the version it's either RADV preftest or DXVK ASYNC. Never both. Dxvk ASYNC got replaced with radv in later versions and only works on some cards now.

DXVK ASYNC kinda became baseline.

 

So... Which proton version. This might affect your performance.

I'm using the latest proton, which I think it's 8 something.

Edited June 1, 2023 by argard.1789

[Veprovina.4876]

33 minutes ago, argard.1789 said:

I'm using the latest proton, which I think it's 8 something.

Maybe try a different proton. Or GE proton, those have slightly more optimisations put in them i think.

And don't use DXVK_ASYNC, that got removed in 7.50 i think, use RADV_PREFTEST=gpl instead.

And:

On 5/7/2023 at 9:31 AM, zistenz.1945 said:

You can consolidate these like this: RADV_PERFTEST=gpl,nggc

Helpful tip.

 

Other than that, that's just how the game is. Wherever there's tons of people like cities, VIP areas, WvW or Metas, FPS drops. Helps to lower the amount of people shown, but it is what it is.

[argard.1789]

17 minutes ago, Veprovina.4876 said:

Maybe try a different proton. Or GE proton, those have slightly more optimisations put in them i think.

And don't use DXVK_ASYNC, that got removed in 7.50 i think, use RADV_PREFTEST=gpl instead.

And:

Helpful tip.

 

Other than that, that's just how the game is. Wherever there's tons of people like cities, VIP areas, WvW or Metas, FPS drops. Helps to lower the amount of people shown, but it is what it is.

Appreciated, will try all those.

[argard.1789]

20 hours ago, Veprovina.4876 said:

Maybe try a different proton. Or GE proton, those have slightly more optimisations put in them i think.

And don't use DXVK_ASYNC, that got removed in 7.50 i think, use RADV_PREFTEST=gpl instead.

And:

Helpful tip.

 

Other than that, that's just how the game is. Wherever there's tons of people like cities, VIP areas, WvW or Metas, FPS drops. Helps to lower the amount of people shown, but it is what it is.

Just wanted to say that I added a launch option that improved my gameplay a lot. The option is WINE_FULLSCREEN_FSR=1. I do not know what it does, but I assume it somehow enables AMD's FSR? Anyhow, this bumped my crowded maps FPS from like 25-30 FPS to, what I've seen, minimum of 40 FPS.

If someone struggles like me there you have it, this may help you.

Edited June 2, 2023 by argard.1789

[Veprovina.4876]

4 hours ago, argard.1789 said:

Just wanted to say that I added a launch option that improved my gameplay a lot. The option is WINE_FULLSCREEN_FSR=1. I do not know what it does, but I assume it somehow enables AMD's FSR? Anyhow, this bumped my crowded maps FPS from like 25-30 FPS to, what I've seen, minimum of 40 FPS.

If someone struggles like me there you have it, this may help you.

Yes that's AMD's FSR. You can use it on any game in linux, it's baked into mesa. 🙂 I think it's in mesa.

In any case, yeah, that helps.