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

[zistenz.1945]

On 6/2/2023 at 8:23 PM, 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.

AMD's FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) is like Nvidia's DLSS: it renders the game in a lower resolution, then an AI procedure upscales the output onto a higher resolution screen. Obviously, this enchances the performance, at a price: lower image quality. The AI method only extrapolates from the lower resolution images, it can't "create" much finer details, especially if there're high resolution textures or objects in the source, like faces, laces or fingers. Usually it isn't a problem, GW2 doesn't have any high-res textures.

FSR (as DLSS) requires newer AMD cards (as your 6600 or my 6650) and Mesa/Vulkan drivers on linux. This WINE option (which also requires Proton-GE) just forces GW2 into this mode, the game doesn't support natively it. You can try to fine tune it with the WINE_FULLSCREEN_FSR_STRENGTH (controls sharpness, where 0 is the highest and 5 is the default) or WINE_VULKAN_NEGATIVE_MIP_BIAS (surface details). Look it up on Google for the details.

[Master Ketsu.4569]

Does anyone have some good Proton flags for a low end laptop?

I'm trying to get a Thinkpad t450 running kubuntu ( Latest KDE ) and has an i5 with a Intel HD 5500 graphics to be able to run GW2 using proton. I obviously do not expect amazing performance out of this, but would like to get it playable for casual.

I got it running with proton 8, and it runs on low settings at around 30 FPS, which is relatively playable. The problem is it experiences massive frame dips during lots of skill usage ( Regardless of how many players are on the screen), as in 2-5 FPS, which isn't really playable at all. 

 

Edited June 7, 2023 by Master Ketsu.4569

[Veprovina.4876]

3 hours ago, Master Ketsu.4569 said:

Does anyone have some good Proton flags for a low end laptop?

I'm trying to get a Thinkpad t450 running kubuntu ( Latest KDE ) and has an i5 with a Intel HD 5500 graphics to be able to run GW2 using proton. I obviously do not expect amazing performance out of this, but would like to get it playable for casual.

I got it running with proton 8, and it runs on low settings at around 30 FPS, which is relatively playable. The problem is it experiences massive frame dips during lots of skill usage ( Regardless of how many players are on the screen), as in 2-5 FPS, which isn't really playable at all. 

 

Try WINE_FULLSCREEN_FSR=1 and maybe gamemode. You have to install gamemode for it to work.

Quote

gamemoderun WINE_FULLSCREEN_FSR=1 %command%

Something like that...

And in game - use "Subsample". WIth FSR it doesn't look that bad, i play like that.

Edited June 7, 2023 by Veprovina.4876

[Sina.9208]

I have recently made an effort to increasingly part ways with Windows for obvious reasons.

Currently I'm running GW2 from its ntfs folder via the Steam client. The game itself runs fine and is not crashing. However there is an odd problem. Basically while I play GW2 it slowly over time completely crashes my desktop. First Discover &  System settings crash  & cannot be started up, then 10 minutes later I can no longer watch video files with VLC & much later down the line the whole desktop disappears, while I can continue playing GW2 smoothly in full screen mode. If I close GW2, then suddenly everything recovers.

I'm on KDE Neon(Ubuntu flavor) and due to my relatively exotic multi monitor/gpu setup I pretty much have to stick to KDE and X11.

Any advice? Should I just distro hop in the hopes that this is an Ubuntu/Neon probem?  (If it's a Debian problem that would be pretty bad, because I've been struggling to get Nvidia stuff working with my hardware on the other big systems such as Fedora & OpenSuse and I have no intention to spend the time and effort required to maintain a rolling distro) 

 

edit: I may have figured out the problem. (blushing)

I do know that Ubuntu used to create a swapfile during install, if a swap partition is not found. Apparently Kde Neon is not Ubuntu enough to do this. I have obviously rectified this problem, will edit this post again, if during tomorrow's intense gaming activities my desktop crashes again.

Edited June 12, 2023 by Sina.9208

[Veprovina.4876]

6 hours ago, Sina.9208 said:

I'm on KDE Neon(Ubuntu flavor) and due to my relatively exotic multi monitor/gpu setup I pretty much have to stick to KDE and X11.

Why do you think you need to stick to X11 and KDE? What kind of setup are you running? I mean, since you're on Nvidia, sure, X11, but why only KDE? Not that there's anything strictly wrong with KDE if it doesn't bug out on you. Just wondering what kind of setup.

6 hours ago, Sina.9208 said:

Any advice? Should I just distro hop in the hopes that this is an Ubuntu/Neon probem?  (If it's a Debian problem that would be pretty bad, because I've been struggling to get Nvidia stuff working with my hardware on the other big systems such as Fedora & OpenSuse and I have no intention to spend the time and effort required to maintain a rolling distro) 

It's very possible it's an Ubuntu problem because they're kind of way behind on well, everything. That's the point of Debian. Old but stable.

If you're running any kind of newer hardware, you shouldn't be running Ubuntu or Debian. And i'm just assuming, but from what you described, you might be.

Arch based distros and Fedora distros are the way to go then.

You can try EndeavourOS if you wanna try arch, and Nobara if you want to stick to Fedora.

Nobara is "the gaming distro" so it should have everything you need for drivers. Arch has everything so...

 

If you figured out the problem, that's great! Idk why a swap file (or the lack of it) would so badly impact your system while gaming, but if it doesn't happen again - great.

But KDE/Ubuntu aren't your only choices, though, if you have Nvidia, X11 might be.

If you can - do not run anything from the NTFS partition. It'll create more problems and it's not worth it. Have the NTFS partition for storage and dual boot if you do that, and move everything you run on linux, to its native partition.

[Sina.9208]

1 hour ago, Veprovina.4876 said:

Why do you think you need to stick to X11 and KDE? What kind of setup are you running? I mean, since you're on Nvidia, sure, X11, but why only KDE? Not that there's anything strictly wrong with KDE if it doesn't bug out on you. Just wondering what kind of setup.

 

I need to run X11, because Nvidia prime display doesn't work on Wayland & I have an old but great 40" TV connected to the iGPU's dsub vga output. I have to run KDE, because KDE's compositor can effectively combat the heavy screen tearing I get on that display with video playback. (alternatively I could just use Windows of course :X)  I've been struggling with this problem for years & it was one of the bigger reasons why I kept booting up Windows every day. (KDE actually made some headway in exotic multi monitor support, I did try various KDE desktops a long time ago & it was not as functional as it is today)

I remember being happy about Wayland gaining traction & Nvidia starting to take Linux and Wayland a bit more seriously, but I suppose not enough people use "Prime Display" to warrant a Wayland implementation, so here we are..

Edited June 12, 2023 by Sina.9208

[Veprovina.4876]

42 minutes ago, Sina.9208 said:

I need to run X11, because Nvidia prime display doesn't work on Wayland & I have an old but great 40" TV connected to the iGPU's dsub vga output. I have to run KDE, because KDE's compositor can effectively combat the heavy screen tearing I get on that display with video playback. (alternatively I could just use Windows of course :X)  I've been struggling with this problem for years & it was one of the bigger reasons why I kept booting up Windows every day. (KDE actually made some headway in exotic multi monitor support, I did try various KDE desktops a long time ago & it was not as functional as it is today)

I remember being happy about Wayland gaining traction & Nvidia starting to take Linux and Wayland a bit more seriously, but I suppose not enough people use "Prime Display" to warrant a Wayland implementation, so here we are..

Yeah, Nvidia is notorious for holding their drivers hostage and refusing to work on more modern imlementations...

Gnome does work with X11 as well though, and i find its compositor way less buggy than KDEs.

On KDE, i always had to turn kwin off when playing a game because gaming with it was just impossible. It would skip frames constantly, making every game unplayable. FPS counter showed 60FPS, but it looked like 15. So i tried KDE wayland but KDE's implementation of Wayland is horrible. Gaming on that was great, but the desktop showed all kinds of artefacts on screen, it was horrible.

Then SDDM crashed and i just about had enough of KDE and reinstalled everything with GNOME and i'm happy. Everything works great.

 

If this happens again - you can give Nobara a try. I hear they have an easy way to install Nvidia drivers and all, and it's supposed to work out of the box. They use gnome-shell for their desktop, but heavily modify it, so it kind of looks like KDE.

And it will have way newer packages than Ubuntu does.

 

[Sina.9208]

I'm not even sure if Nobara would install on my PC right now. Fedora has a bug that makes it nigh impossible to install 38 on Z97 boards. There are workarounds, but I really don't want to go through that again. I can & have installed Nvidia drivers on both Fedora & Tumbleweed, but monitor configuration just kept crashing the driver on Tumbleweed & Fedora had another ridiculous problem with the installer and even grub. (beyond just the installer not working at all due to a bug that is going to be fixed in 39)

I don't have new hardware & I don't like living on the edge. Also Debian 12 got released like today or yesterday & has more than up to date packages right now, if the current setup keeps failing that's going to be my next stop. (though it seems pretty good right now, I have played 2 hours of Death Stranding with no issues as well.)

Edited June 12, 2023 by Sina.9208

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

16 hours ago, Sina.9208 said:

I have recently made an effort to increasingly part ways with Windows for obvious reasons.

Currently I'm running GW2 from its ntfs folder via the Steam client. The game itself runs fine and is not crashing. However there is an odd problem. Basically while I play GW2 it slowly over time completely crashes my desktop. First Discover &  System settings crash  & cannot be started up, then 10 minutes later I can no longer watch video files with VLC & much later down the line the whole desktop disappears, while I can continue playing GW2 smoothly in full screen mode. If I close GW2, then suddenly everything recovers.

I'm on KDE Neon(Ubuntu flavor) and due to my relatively exotic multi monitor/gpu setup I pretty much have to stick to KDE and X11.

Any advice? Should I just distro hop in the hopes that this is an Ubuntu/Neon probem?  (If it's a Debian problem that would be pretty bad, because I've been struggling to get Nvidia stuff working with my hardware on the other big systems such as Fedora & OpenSuse and I have no intention to spend the time and effort required to maintain a rolling distro) 

 

edit: I may have figured out the problem. (blushing)

I do know that Ubuntu used to create a swapfile during install, if a swap partition is not found. Apparently Kde Neon is not Ubuntu enough to do this. I have obviously rectified this problem, will edit this post again, if during tomorrow's intense gaming activities my desktop crashes again.

you likely have a video memory leak on your system. this is usually caused by a buggy driver, and you should try older drivers instead of newer ones, as long as you have slightly older hardware that can use them. there's a reason why software is referred to as stable, because its been heavily tested.

 

the solution you found is probably working because your video card falls back to system memory due to insufficient vram from a leak, which in turn gets swapped to disk. its possible you've only covered up the problem for now, as that swap file might grow until it runs out of space and crashes too. i also highly recommend setting up zram instead of using physical swap, as it is much faster and more efficient.

 

your distribution likely doesn't create a swap file anymore because they don't work on modern filesystems like btrfs, and zram has pretty much replaced swap files entirely.

 

edit: set the following environment variable before running the game:

DXVK_HUD=devinfo,fps,frametimes,submissions,drawcalls,pipelines,memory,gpuload,version,api

 

if the memory used is much less than that reported by your graphics driver, you have a leak. if the amount is higher than the amount of video memory you have, then your graphics driver is always going to be using system memory to make up the difference and you need a good swap setup.

 

remember to take other applications like chrome/firefox into account, which use vram as well. generally speaking the rest of your system will probably need up to 512mb to itself.

Edited June 12, 2023 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[Veprovina.4876]

2 hours ago, Sina.9208 said:

I'm not even sure if Nobara would install on my PC right now. Fedora has a bug that makes it nigh impossible to install 38 on Z97 boards. There are workarounds, but I really don't want to go through that again. I can & have installed Nvidia drivers on both Fedora & Tumbleweed, but monitor configuration just kept crashing the driver on Tumbleweed & Fedora had another ridiculous problem with the installer and even grub. (beyond just the installer not working at all due to a bug that is going to be fixed in 39)

I don't have new hardware & I don't like living on the edge. Also Debian 12 got released like today or yesterday & has more than up to date packages right now, if the current setup keeps failing that's going to be my next stop. (though it seems pretty good right now, I have played 2 hours of Death Stranding with no issues as well.)

I only said try if the current config isn't working for you.

If it is, don't change it. Distro hopping should really be done only when something you need/want isn't working. 🙂

 

Neon has the latest KDE version too, so, those tend to be a buggy mess in my experience, and well, KDE in general. I only suggested Nobara since it comes with a gnome configuration kind of like KDE.

But you can install gnome on arch as well if this one fails.

 

Still, first figure out what the problem is, and if you can fix it on Neon. If you can, and Neon has everything you need - just stay on Neon. 🙂

I distro hopped a bunch between Ubuntu distros, and not one worked for me, but i needed low latency audio, virtualization as well as gaming, so Ubuntu being "stable" led to a lot of headaches with out of date and conflicting packages, not to mention, i had to replace the kernel to even get audio to work "kind of" low latency.

I stopped distro hopping when i found what works for me, and that's Arch. 🙂 If you have everything you need, no need to hop around.

[Sina.9208]

12 hours ago, Veprovina.4876 said:

Neon has the latest KDE version too, so, those tend to be a buggy mess in my experience, and well, KDE in general. I only suggested Nobara since it comes with a gnome configuration kind of like KDE.

 

In my experience with Plasma all things are pretty good except Discover, which always have been unstable, but it's not that bad to deal with just one unstable system app. It can also be purged & then you can just update things from the CLI, though I kind of like the update alerts that Discover gives me. (for flatpak updates as well)

As for Gnome, Gnome straight up doesn't work with this gpu/screen configuration.(well it works, but huge unfixable screen tearing) It's a hard no, because the built in compositor is baked into Gnome so hard, that that there is no hope to use something else. I too would love to use Gnome, because it has a few  good features I kind of miss, but it is what it is. Though there is one thing I don't miss. For a couple of years I had Fedora on a laptop and every once in a while updates to Gnome made my Gnome addons fail to run & then Gnome reverted to its normal not so pleasant layout/appearance & then I had to wait quite a while until everything become compatible again..

[Sina.9208]

16 hours ago, SoftFootpaws.9134 said:

your distribution likely doesn't create a swap file anymore because they don't work on modern filesystems like btrfs, and zram has pretty much replaced swap files entirely.
 

I'm sure it would have made a 2gb~ swap partition, had I used guided install.

 

Thanks for the suggestions, you have given food for thought.

edit:

I think you might be right with the GPU memory leak idea. I'm going to backup my entire system with clonezilla & then update to 535.43.02 ^BETA yolo. According to Nvidia release notes they have fixed a memory leak that's been in the driver for many previous iterations, like since 515..

edit2:

Okay the 535.43.02 ^BETA  completely crashed my system, haha. Downgrading it is..

Edited June 13, 2023 by Sina.9208

[Veprovina.4876]

4 hours ago, Sina.9208 said:

 

In my experience with Plasma all things are pretty good except Discover, which always have been unstable, but it's not that bad to deal with just one unstable system app. It can also be purged & then you can just update things from the CLI, though I kind of like the update alerts that Discover gives me. (for flatpak updates as well)

As for Gnome, Gnome straight up doesn't work with this gpu/screen configuration.(well it works, but huge unfixable screen tearing) It's a hard no, because the built in compositor is baked into Gnome so hard, that that there is no hope to use something else. I too would love to use Gnome, because it has a few  good features I kind of miss, but it is what it is. Though there is one thing I don't miss. For a couple of years I had Fedora on a laptop and every once in a while updates to Gnome made my Gnome addons fail to run & then Gnome reverted to its normal not so pleasant layout/appearance & then I had to wait quite a while until everything become compatible again..

My experience with plasma was horrible lol. But more concerning SDDM. Plasma was great as a DE, but the bugs made it janky, and with SDDM it was always a gamble if it'll let me log in or not. I can't have that. I know it works for a lot of people, but it didn't for me.

Yeah, if gnome doesn't work for you, that's a no-go on Nobara or anything else in that regard. Gnome addons aren't gnome's responsibility though, the maintainers need to update them. That's just how it is. 😛 That's why i like that Arch holds the gnome updates until the XX.1 releases. By then, every addon will have updated. 🙂

3 hours ago, Sina.9208 said:

I'm sure it would have made a 2gb~ swap partition, had I used guided install.

 

Thanks for the suggestions, you have given food for thought.

edit:

I think you might be right with the GPU memory leak idea. I'm going to backup my entire system with clonezilla & then update to 535.43.02 ^BETA yolo. According to Nvidia release notes they have fixed a memory leak that's been in the driver for many previous iterations, like since 515..

edit2:

Okay the 535.43.02 ^BETA  completely crashed my system, haha. Downgrading it is..

What GPU do you even have? An older one or a newer one?

[Sina.9208]

6 minutes ago, Veprovina.4876 said:

What GPU do you even have? An older one or a newer one?

Gtx 1060.

Edited June 13, 2023 by Sina.9208

[Veprovina.4876]

7 minutes ago, Sina.9208 said:

Gtx 1060.

Hmm that's weird, that one should be supported pretty well...

But i don't know Nvidia drivers at all cause i use AMD. Nvidia on Linux does seem kind of a hit or miss... Hope you can get it stable!

[zistenz.1945]

Quote

Yeah, if gnome doesn't work for you, that's a no-go on Nobara or anything else in that regard.

Nobara has a KDE version too. I tried it and it's... okay? It has all the Nobara Project tinkering improvements, except the Gnome ones, and the KDE skin is the default bland version, not a customized one. I used it for a few weeks, but in the end I had problems with my usb headset (Fedora doesn't recognize it at the boot), so I went back to Endeavour/Arch/KDE. With my setup, Nobara didn't had any performance gain over Arch, it was exactly the same, actually, so I'm going to stay on EOS a while again.

Edited June 13, 2023 by zistenz.1945

[Veprovina.4876]

2 hours ago, zistenz.1945 said:

so I went back to Endeavour/Arch

There's no place like Arch. ☺️

[Meagen.4098]

I'm on Pop_OS (a Debian distro), have been running the game fine on Lutris until recently when I started getting the "launcher is off from where the cursor is, and game crashes right after starting" error.

After some attempts at fiddling with graphics drivers and Vine runners, I gave up and installed the Steam version.

That tells me on the login screen "Guild Wars 2 has encountered an error: Windows XP Service Pack 2 or better". I can launch the game and log in, but the graphics and sounds are super jittery even in an area away from other players. Does anyone have a clue?

[Veprovina.4876]

20 minutes ago, Meagen.4098 said:

I'm on Pop_OS (a Debian distro), have been running the game fine on Lutris until recently when I started getting the "launcher is off from where the cursor is, and game crashes right after starting" error.

After some attempts at fiddling with graphics drivers and Vine runners, I gave up and installed the Steam version.

That tells me on the login screen "Guild Wars 2 has encountered an error: Windows XP Service Pack 2 or better". I can launch the game and log in, but the graphics and sounds are super jittery even in an area away from other players. Does anyone have a clue?

What proton are you running?

[Meagen.4098]

Just now, Veprovina.4876 said:

What proton are you running?

The default one, Experimental.

[Sina.9208]

On 6/12/2023 at 10:04 PM, SoftFootpaws.9134 said:

you likely have a video memory leak on your system.

Thank you, your suggestion was spot on. Going with the 510 driver -which is the last non memory leak affected driver- solved the problem. Also changed the textures to medium and the game's not bleeding memory anymore.

You are the best!

 

36 minutes ago, Meagen.4098 said:

That tells me on the login screen "Guild Wars 2 has encountered an error: Windows XP Service Pack 2 or better". I can launch the game and log in, but the graphics and sounds are super jittery even in an area away from other players. Does anyone have a clue?

I had a similar error, when I downgraded to Nvidia driver 470, before settling with 510. So if you are on Nvidia, then upgrade to 510! I did try PoP OS a short while ago & I think it may have been stuck on 470 with the 22.04 installer. (specifically 510, because those above are memory leak affected, as discussed earlier in this thread)

If the issue is not Nvidia driver related, then you can try installing ProtonUp & use that software to set GW2 to launch with Proton-GE 8.

[Veprovina.4876]

38 minutes ago, Meagen.4098 said:

The default one, Experimental.

Try one of the GE protons. You can install Protonup-Qt and install any proton for Steam to use. You don't have to use just Steam protons, though, Experimental should work just fine.

You can also look up what specific code it gives you and look it up here: https://help.guildwars2.com/hc/en-us/articles/201863018-Common-Error-Codes

Also, what do you mean by jittery? Low FPS? Or "normal" FPS but looks like it's lower? If that's the case, your compositor is skipping frames. Try disabling vsync in game. Or change display protocols Wayland/X11. Unless you're on Nvidia, then you're stuck on X11.

As for audio - pulseaudio or pipewire? I had nothing but trouble with pipewire so idk about that, never could get it to behave.

If it's just GW2, definitely look up error codes to pin what exactly it thinks it's missing.

Lastly.... I might get hate for this but, Ubuntu and Debian based kernels are really bad for gaming. And a lot of other things in my experience, like low latency audio. Now, i know that people use them for all of that but, i never could have used those systems without them becoming a real mess either right after an installation or in time due to conflicting or out of date packages.

YMMV of course. This was just my experience. What i struggled to run on Ubuntu based systems worked out of the box everywhere else.

Edited June 14, 2023 by Veprovina.4876

[Meagen.4098]

6 minutes ago, Veprovina.4876 said:

Also, what do you mean by jittery?

Like it's freezing up for a second every other second. Although it's better once I've let all the data download.

[Veprovina.4876]

22 minutes ago, Meagen.4098 said:

Like it's freezing up for a second every other second. Although it's better once I've let all the data download.

What GPU do you have? And what are you running, Wayland, X11?

[Meagen.4098]

40 minutes ago, Veprovina.4876 said:

What GPU do you have? And what are you running, Wayland, X11?

It's an old GeForce GTX 780 that I got from a friend when my previous graphics card gave up the ghost. It was running GW2 just fine under Lutris, even in a bigger crowd.

I don't understand your second question, but my system information lists "The X.Org Foundation" under the Graphics tab, so I assume the answer might be X11.