loseridoit.2756

> @"Leo.3428" said: > Update: None of the information I could find on the web has been reassuring. The old Radeon cards have been a problem since at least 2013, and I'm not keen on installing a 2010 Linux out of LTS for kernel-driver compatibility. > > I did investigate a W10 boot but you know, it runs into even more issues on this old hardware. > > I dragged my wife into the game, ignoring the red flags around the engine, and now she plays way more than I do. I owe her a solution to keep playing the game... I haven't played in a week, spending my time searching for that solution. https://launchpad.net/~commendsarnex/+archive/ubuntu/winedri3 https://launchpad.net/~oibaf/+archive/ubuntu/graphics-drivers/ You can install the latest Ubuntu because upstream will never randomly drop hardware support. The open source driver should work well and you should get similar performance in comparison to windows. You can install gallium 9 which is Linux's native d3d9 driver. https://github.com/iXit/wine-nine-standalone https://wiki.ixit.cz/d3d9 You basically need to installed mesa with gallium 9 enabled and a patched wine to your system. You can use lutris to manage your wine installs. Yes, pre-vulkan AMD cards are supported. https://lutris.net/ > @"dusanyu.4057" said: > > as far as optimizing Linux to get it to game better here is a great guide for it and even links to a video walkthrough of the process https://christitus.com/ultimate-linux-gaming-guide/ > > good luck the game guide is pretty mediocre.....

Codeweavers are working on dxvk support on OSX. https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK/issues/203#issuecomment-682576084 I believe they will be working on dx9 support after dxvk support is done. If Mac users are ok with forking over a license next year, you should have much better perf than whatever Anet uses. I am always surprise at Codeweavers ability to make things work.

> @"Hypnowulf.7403" said: > I'm adding my voice to supporting Linux. You can get some distros that are quite Mac-like. Lutris makes setting up Guild Wars 2 a doddle—if not of British descent, a more recognisable parlance would be "piece of cake." > > _Here are some recommendations to note._ > > > 2.) Try Gallium9 and D9VK, find out which works best for you as it tends to vary depending on the hardware; > > 4.) Make sure you're using ACO (do some research on this) as the consensus seems to be that it yields better performance. ACO is a shader compiler for AMD cards. Gallium 9 works on modern Intel GPU and AMD cards. D9VK should work on all GPU with vulkan support.

> @"Hypnowulf.7403" said: > There's a solution I can see (I like solutions), and that's to compile Wine64 for Intel architecture under Rosetta, and then to run Guild Wars 2 via Wine via Rosetta. If Apple's Silicon is as good as they say, it shouldn't struggle too much. I'm not being ironic or sarcastic there. This should actually be a viable solution if the chip can pump out enough performance. > > A lot of the legwork has been done getting Wine to run on Catalina by stripping out the 32-bit elements. This means you won't be able to run 32-bit apps, but thankfully GW2 has a 64-bit downloader, launcher, and client. So that's a non-issue. I imagine that anything that can be compiled for Intel Catalina can be compiled with Rosetta, yes? > > This is what I've managed to piece together after some cursory looking around. > > For those who're already on Intel Macs and don't plan to upgrade soon, I'd recommend running Guild Wars 2 via Wine. It'd be a bit of a fiddle to setup but the performance should be alright there, too. I believe DXVK support is coming along nicely too, so that makes the situation even better. > > What I will recommend is downloading the entire client first. The performance can be terrible if you don't do that, just as a warning. It's not guaranteed to be terrible, perhaps especially if you have a high-end SSD, but it is... likely. > > I don't own a Mac, mind you. I just like researching things. > Ummm, codeweavers sells an ARM and x64 versions of wine and it should work better than the Cider Anet uses. https://www.codeweavers.com/blog/jwhite/2020/11/18/okay-im-on-the-bandwagon-apple-silicon-is-officially-cool > > > @"loseridoit.2756" said: > > Linux players probably have a better GW2 experience than many Windows players. > > Just wanted to add... Yes. This is actually true. Guild Wars 2 runs better on my Linux partition than on my Windows one. It loads faster, it has less frame dips in crowded areas... It's weird. I can only guess it's down to Gallium9, but I dunno! Not weird. Linux has better filesystem performance which allows better loading time. The Linux ecosystem have a driver development cycle more suited for MMORPG. Linux community cares more about correctness over performance. This preference avoid the terrible driver competition in the Windows ecosystem which leads to more bugs and a worse experience. As a side benefit, the performance improvements regress less and you have less FPS dips.

> @"nykur.2154" said: > > @"Danikat.8537" said: > > I'm not surprised to see them say that. [Elder Scrolls Online announced much the same back in November](https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/59187), although they said they will keep supporting old Macs for a while if there's enough users (maybe they have more Mac players?) > > Not sure how the Mac playerbase is, but ZOS actually put in the effort to make a MoltenVK client for macOS so ESO actually runs quite well on the platform, and they are now stopping because they don't want to get it working on Apple Silicon. GW2's Mac client never ran well and is just a slapped together WINE wrapper, so I personally wasn't surprised to hear ArenaNet will discontinue it. Oi. Do not disparage slapping together the WINE wrapper. Valve, Crossover, Collabora, linux community has turn windows API into a portable library. The wrapper is practically native in both performance and feature set. Linux players probably have a better GW2 experience than many Windows players. Arenanet choosed a crappy WINE fork called Cider maintained by Nvidia (formally Transgaming). Arenanet loses the years and years of Q/A Crossover devoted into WINE. Mac Port suffers from two issues: Crappy Wine Fork and Apple under platform investment.