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05-11-18, 11:26 AM   #1
kaimox
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Blizzard is abandoning DirectX9 so what should I buy ...

As the title says, I need a new graphics card. I was still happy with my rather old card on my rather old machine and I can't spend a lot of money. Since I'm under Linux/wine and I will not download anything from proprietary websites I prefer AMD.

Does anybody have recommendations?
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05-11-18, 03:31 PM   #2
Tim
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It's hard for people to give you ideas not knowing what kind of budget you have for the gpu.
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05-11-18, 08:08 PM   #3
d87
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Was your card really 11 years old for it not to have dx10 support? 1060 is good value, but you can buy almost anything if it's just for wow.
I heard these days nvidia is way easier in terms of drivers. Open source radeon drivers are fine too, but they don't always support the latest models and are slower
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05-11-18, 08:15 PM   #4
Tim
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Originally Posted by d87 View Post
Was your card really 11 years old for it not to have dx10 support? 1060 is good value, but you can buy almost anything if it's just for wow.
I heard these days nvidia is way easier in terms of drivers. Open source radeon drivers are fine too, but they don't always support the latest models and are slower
My experience with nvidia has always been good, especially with drivers. The last amd card I had was about 8 or so years ago, think it was a 6750 or something of the sort. I always had nothing but issues with the drivers. Ever since I just don't even bother.

Once again though for the OP, we need a budget for more precise recommendations. Also will need to know what kind of setup you have, can't just plug and play everything.
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05-11-18, 08:33 PM   #5
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Also, the graphics card is what will ultimately decide what your power supply will need to be. So as has been requested, what is your current setup, what is your budget and what other type of work will the computer do outside of gaming ( as this may affect suggestions ).

If your computer is really that old, you might want to look at some of the base computer builds out there for gaming and see which if any fits your usage and budget requirements.
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05-12-18, 07:10 AM   #6
kaimox
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Thank you all, you asked all the right questions. I had no idea DirectX10 was that old. I did not even think to check whether my card is capable enough. My old card is a [AMD/ATI] Cape Verde PRO Radeon HD 7750 and probably has Dx11. Facepalm.

The problem is somewhere in my wine setup, I'll have to check that.

I can now wait until the cryptominer hype has settled and cards are back to normal prices. Thank you again.

So about nvidia: Is it possible to operate them with open drivers only? I've heard it's not. Since I prefer open source I was sticking to AMD, their open drivers work ok. But if open nvidia drivers are good enough that would be good to know.

Last edited by kaimox : 05-12-18 at 08:29 AM.
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05-12-18, 09:41 AM   #7
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Originally Posted by kaimox View Post
The problem is somewhere in my wine setup, I'll have to check that.
What version of Wine are you using? If it's the version from your Ubuntu-based distro, it's probably about as old as the earth; go to https://wiki.winehq.org/Download and add their repo so you can get updates directly from the source. The "staging" branch at version 3.7 (my current system version of Wine) works just fine with DX11. The "devel" branch did not work as of (I think) version 3.3, and I assume the release branch (which is at 3.0) doesn't either.

That said, I get (much) better performance from an unofficial build of Wine. I'm currently using the "pba-3.3" build of Wine downloaded through Lutris; I have no idea where it actually comes from. The difference is very drastic; just logging into Orgrimmar and turning the camera back and forth, the official staging build gives me 15-20 FPS, while the pba build gives me 70-90 FPS.

(Edit: source for the "pba" builds is https://github.com/acomminos/wine-pba)

I also use a dedicated Wine prefix for WoW (and the Bnet app) and used Lutris to configure it for WoW (though I don't actually use Lutris as a launcher, just a setup tool and, at some points in the past when official Wine builds weren't working with WoW, to install third-party builds). You can see the setup script Lutris uses, with winetricks calls and registry edits, on https://lutris.net/games/world-of-warcraft/ (click the arrow next to "install" and select "view install script"). I do use the env vars listed in there, though I've also tried not using them, and didn't actually notice any difference.

Originally Posted by kaimox View Post
So about nvidia: Is it possible to operate them with open drivers only? I've heard it's not. Since I prefer open source I was sticking to AMD, their open drivers work ok. But if open nvidia drivers are good enough that would be good to know.
In my experience, no, kill them with fire. I run Linux Mint with the Cinammon desktop and a GeForce 750 Ti, and if the open source nVidia drivers (nouveau) are not blacklisted to prevent them from getting anywhere near the light of day, I get system lockups that require a hard reboot every 1-2 hours regardless of whether or not WoW or anything else remotely graphics-intensive is running.
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Last edited by Phanx : 05-12-18 at 09:56 AM.
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05-12-18, 09:54 AM   #8
kaimox
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I'm using Lutris too and I have a very well working Dx9 install from last years script by Dox. Now I will have to upgrade it somehow to Dx11 and a new wine version but I'm not completely sure how to go about that. Change the existing prefix? Reinstall with the new Dx11 script? Side by side would be best but how? Will it overwrite? Do you have any experience with upgrading the wine version used in Lutris? It seems that Lutris doesn't help with downloading a new wine version like POL does. I'd prefer to keep my system stock debian (no 'buntu) by keeping system wine as it is but use wine versions administered by Lutris instead. This was easy under POL but seems to work differently with Lutris.

I have asked in the Lutris forums but hearing from you would be helpful too.
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05-12-18, 10:39 AM   #9
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I had to upgrade for some 7.x major patch... maybe 7.3? when Blizzard apparently added some new copy protection scheme into WoW and my then-current wine-staging-2.2 no longer worked. Here's what I did:

1. Rename the existing Wine prefix folder, e.g. /home/phanx/Games/wow ➞ /home/phanx/Games/wow-wine2.2
2. Delete the existing WoW entry in Lutris
3. Install WoW again through Lutris (this does not actually download WoW, just the Bnet app, which is quite small)
4. Launch the new WoW entry in Lutris (actually launches the Bnet app)
5. Point it to where my existing WoW install actually lives

If all goes well then you can delete the old Wine prefix and corresponding entry in Lutris.

Like I said in my last post, I don't actually use Lutris to launch WoW, as it just adds an extra step. Instead I use a shell script that references the Lutris-installed version of Wine, the Lutris-created Wine prefix, and the appropriate env vars:

Code:
#!/bin/sh

PREFIX="/home/phanx/Games/wow"
RUNNER="/home/phanx/.local/share/lutris/runners/wine/pba-3.3-x86_64"

env WINEDEBUG=-all \
	__GL_SHADER_DISK_CACHE=1 \
	__GL_SHADER_DISK_CACHE_PATH="$PREFIX" \
	__GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 \
	mesa_glthread=true \
	WINEPREFIX="$PREFIX" \
	"$RUNNER"/bin/wine \
	start /unix /home/phanx/bin-wine/world-of-warcraft/Wow-64.exe
I did notice that the current WoW install script for Lutris uses a different Wine build, but I haven't tried it yet since the pba build works great and I don't actually play the game, haha.

Also, you can easily add/remove different Wine versions in Lutris. From the main window, open the "Lutris" menu and select "Manage runners". Scroll down to Wine and press the "Manage versions" button. From there just check the box next to any Wine build you want to add, and uncheck the box next to any old builds you want to remove. If you launch WoW from Lutris, right-click on the WoW entry, select "Configure", switch to the "Runner options" tab, and change the "Wine version" dropdown.
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Last edited by Phanx : 05-12-18 at 10:42 AM.
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05-12-18, 11:07 AM   #10
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Hey folks. Friendly neighbourhood tech support MVP here.

Just a note here - going forward only Direct X 11 and Direct X 12 are being supported by Blizzard. All code dealing with Direct X 9 and Direct X 10 is being stripped.

This means that if the highest Direct X your card can run is 10 you will not be able to run Battle for Azeroth. Nope no "will run but will run at about the speed of mollusc dipped in quick hardened cement sinking in quicksand". Will not run. Full stop.

I can see this causing an issue with Wine users as (at least how I understand it) their Direct X 11 implementation is spotty at best.

Here are the Battle for Azeroth system requirements -

https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/137431

Bookmark this page as requirements may change as beta progresses.
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05-12-18, 04:08 PM   #11
kaimox
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@Bluespacecow: No, my card actually runs Dx11 and Dx11 support in wine has been vastly improved recently, so I'm hoping for the best. I'll have to make do with whatever comes out of it cause NO WAY I'm ever going to use M$Win again. Not even for WoW. It took me a long time to get away from it and only thing I regret is that I did not manage earlier.

As a side note, with Dx9 WoW is smoother under wine than under Win, especially load times improve a lot. I'm hoping for the same effect with Dx11.

@Phanx: Great rundown, thank you very much, it worked like a charm. Performance is ok as before. I'm so glad I asked you guys :-) No w I can log into the beta :-D

Last edited by kaimox : 05-12-18 at 04:13 PM.
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05-13-18, 04:41 AM   #12
Phanx
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Originally Posted by kaimox View Post
As a side note, with Dx9 WoW is smoother under wine than under Win, especially load times improve a lot. I'm hoping for the same effect with Dx11.
I had the same experience. When I switched from Win7 to Linux at the end of 2015, I gained about 20 FPS in WoW.

I did get a large FPS boost when switching from DX9 to DX11, but I'm pretty sure all of it came from switching to a different Wine build, since I lose all the gains (and then some) if I run WoW with DX11 with the official Wine build, as mentioned in my last post.

The only problem I do have under Wine is that many smoke/fog cloud effects cause dramatic stuttering. Lowering all graphics settings to their minimum values has no effect, though I haven't done any other research into its cause or possible solution. If I were going to actually play again, I'd probably just upgrade my system as a first step; my FX 6100 was a respectable CPU in 2011, but that was a long time ago.
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08-03-18, 01:30 AM   #13
Theroxis
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Originally Posted by kaimox View Post
As the title says, I need a new graphics card. I was still happy with my rather old card on my rather old machine and I can't spend a lot of money. Since I'm under Linux/wine and I will not download anything from proprietary websites I prefer AMD.

Does anybody have recommendations?
NEVER FEAR!
DXVK IS HERE!

No really though, look into installing a recent Wine-staging release for your Linux distribution and installing Vulkan support for your GPU. Many older GPUs have vulkan support through the Linux binaries, and with DXVK and WINE you can run the DX11 WOW client without issues. See this video, for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlaoLWv72w8
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