Linux and Graphics Card Problem (Nvidia)

[tazmn23]

Well, this is my first post, and I decided to join these forums because it seemed like it received the most attention from users. I am having a slight problem (possibly).

I play WoW, and I have installed on my computer a Nvidia 9500GT Graphics Card with 4 gigs of ddr2 ram and a dual core amd 64 processor clocked at 3.0 Ghz. Now, given this information, one would think that I should be able to run wow at "good" settings (High and Ultra are the steps further).

Well, when I am playing WoW in Wine, I can only set some settings at "Fair", because "High" and "Ultra" are in red and not even clickable. It says I need to update my video card driver to it's latest version.

Now, when I click the video card updater that linux provides, it tells me that my cards are up to date to the latest version. I looked online, and it shows a different version of card (but not much higher than my current version).

Ok, this is it. I am wondering shouldn't my card be putting out more power? When I ran WoW in Windows XP, I could set everything to "High" settings and it would run smoothly...Now in Linux+Wine, it runs choppy even at fair settings. I hope someone reads all of this, because it is quite a mouthful, but if anyone has ANY ideas, please let me know.... Otherwise ill probably end up just buying Windows 7 :/

Edit - I use Ubuntu

[Rubberman]

Unfortunately, Wine does not give full access to the video hardware, so WoW in that environment will be somewhat "stunted" as you have seen. If you want to stay in the Linux operating environment and still play these games, you might try installing a virtual machine manager like KVM or VirtualBox and run WoW in Windows natively there. I'm not sure about KVM, but VirtualBox has support for 2D and 3D graphics and a Windows driver to give it better access to the audio and video hardware. I can run full-screen video at 1920x1200 resolution (haven't tried more than 720p though). It's not as good as running the same video directly on Linux, but it does work, so you might get more out of WoW that way.

[coopstah13]

did you switch to opengl mode?

[tazmn23]

Unfortunately, Wine does not give full access to the video hardware, so WoW in that environment will be somewhat "stunted" as you have seen. If you want to stay in the Linux operating environment and still play these games, you might try installing a virtual machine manager like KVM or VirtualBox and run WoW in Windows natively there. I'm not sure about KVM, but VirtualBox has support for 2D and 3D graphics and a Windows driver to give it better access to the audio and video hardware. I can run full-screen video at 1920x1200 resolution (haven't tried more than 720p though). It's not as good as running the same video directly on Linux, but it does work, so you might get more out of WoW that way.

Would I have to reinstall wow on Virtualbox?

did you switch to opengl mode?

I don't know... I think it is on opengl mode? not sure.

[coopstah13]

yes, because you would be running windows in a VM, you will have to install the OS and then wow

if you didn't explicitly set opengl mode, then it isn't using opengl

World of Warcraft universe guide - WoWWiki and WineHQ - Wine Application Database should both have the information for setting opengl on