WoW plays better under Linux then WindowsFollow

for the last few months i have been playing WoW on a linux box via http://www.transgaming.com/ Cedega and the performance has been about the same as under windows so far as ingame FPS. few big differances that i noticed were that i was not having the lockup problems with my linux box as i was with my real powerful gaming box at home running windows XP.

that was until a few days ago i started getting such pore performance it made the game unplayable. im talking FPS of 2 when outside not looking at anything, and just forget trying to move anywere when near IF.

to solve the problem i just needed to reinstall my vid drivers so i upgraded while at it. boy i can tell you that Nvidia has done a wounderful job with thier linux drivers, it is now just as easy to install/upgrade vid drivers in linux as it is in windows. 1 program, run it, answere a few questions (NO NEED TO REBOOT) and you are done. so in a sence it is faster and easier under linux then windows as you do not have to wait on your system to reboot.

anyways onto the performance differances now. keep in mind that i dual boot this system between Debian Linux and Windows XP Pro so the hardware is 100% the same and both systems are 100% updated with the exception i refuse to run SP2 in windows, so i am running SP1 with all the patches for that.

system specs:

AMD Xp 2000+
1G PC2100 Ram
Nvidia GFX 5200 256M vid card
SBLive Values sound card
WD 7200rpm 138G 8M cache ATA133 harddrive
aDSL 1500/384 internet connection behind a Zyxel 642R router.

both run the game at 1280 x 1024 60Hz

both run with the exact same graphic settings (low level for the most part and best performance with a few exceptions)

FPS under windows: max = 35, inside IF at the AH once stable 15FPS
FPS under linux: max = 48, inside IF at the AH once stable 15FPS

so as you can see, i am not getting about a 30% BETTER performance out of linux then i am out of windows... my hat goes off to the coders at Transgaming and anyone who is sick of the crashes casued by windows, sick of the viruses you get under windows, sick of the spy/add/mallware you get under windows, you might really want to start checking out the newer Linux distros as several of them are very user friendly.

if you have any questions please ask i will do all i can to help.

Is that because you do not a regestered copy? ......JK
Just out of curriosity, are you running WoW in windowed mode? I see noticable inmprovements when I run in Windowd mode. SP2 made a noticalbe diffrence to me, I ran my box without it for a while but due to a work realated requirment I installed SP2, not only did I see a pickup in WoW, but overall system perfromace(it is possible that changes made to RAID caching lets my SCSI card work more effectivlay, doubt it.... it is all hardware). I tryed mandarke and man WoW ran poor, but i have a ATI card and their isntaller isnt as pretty as the Nvida ones.
But Congrats, any way to make the game run better I say Woo Hoo, I will have to try a diffrent flavor of linux, and work at it a little more.

its a legit Corp edition so that is not the problem. my issues with SP2 are all the things that get broke when it is installed. that and i personally HATE MS telling me what to do and not be able to remove some of the funcitons of SP2 like their horrid autoupdater, if you disable this you get crashing problems. heck its bad enough running SP1 with it disabled let alone under SP2.

see my last post, i am not a fan of MDK. the 1 and ONLY time i have been successful at even getting it to install it ate it self when i get it to upgrade (took about 2weeks to connect to their update server), so i have not used it since.

the FC line is very much like RH9 and i had great luck with that, and i know a handful of poeple having good luck with SuSe both home and Pro so it is worth checking out.

you can even do a Knoppix live CD install of debian onto a system now and it will handle a dual boot for you too. very nice. easier then learning the CLI and installing Debian raw from an ISO.

The unregesterd copy thing was a joke ;), I will have to try a SuSe install when i get home. I got a few boxs that will handle Wow, will have to see how it works, but I still dont have any issues with XP, my Main box has been up since early Feb with no crashes, no restarts.

I didnt feel like reading anymore, but this caught my eye. Blizzard is known for writing programs for being compatable for Macs, and since all of the Mac OSs are writen on a linux backbone, as well as linux not requiring the memory and processing power of Windows, you are getting those extra framerates.

not quite. pre newest nvidia drivers the performance was the same. 35 max and 15 low, with the newest drivers and newest vs of cedega i have been able to increase my performance.

that and i keep my windows box extreemly lean. with just the OS running i am between 90-100M of ram used, vs the base level install of 130-150M used.

also keep in mind that the cedega project (was wineX) is kind of like an emulator, but not. it creats fake calls for the DX so games can be tricked into running on a *nix platform (IIRC cedega runs on both BSD, Unix, and Linux systems), you would have to read the FAQ to get the real details on it, but it basically tricks the game/program into thinking it really is on a windows system. heck it even creats a fack C:/Program Files drive and folder setup. very neet how it does that.

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sorry about the keyboard :P

yes if you only use a windows system to play games and do not surf, do not use MS Office, you will be ok, but what good is a $2000 system if that is all you are going to do with it? *tease*

on my windows box at the house (gaming box) i run the following to keep it clean:

AntiVir (free antivirus software), plus i use my laptop to scan my windows box via f-prot
Ad-aware
Spybot S&D
Spywareblaster (yes that is all one word)
FireFox browser
Thunderbird (e-mail client)
Diskeeper (defragger that is way better then what MS supplies, not that the one for XP is horrid, but it is nothing compaired to diskeeper)
freezip (smaller and just as good as winzip for free, thus the name)
OpenOffice instead of MS Office.

thankfully only Antivir is something that has to run 100% of the time to help protect my windows box, but the rest do their job. 98% of the spyware has stopped getting into my system much thanks to no longer useing IE to browse. IE is about 70-90% of the comptuer problems that most people will have. normal EU that is.

anyways, i just can not wait to replace my ATI 9500 with a newer Nvidia card when i can afford it so i can drop windows 100% now that i can get such good performance out of cedega with nvidia drivers in WoW. WoW is really the only game that i play.