Why do games lag in wine for me but everyone else seems to not experience this?

Question

Everyone else in the world seems to be able to play steam games in wine just fine, except for me. I am running a brand new Nvidia GeForce 670, I have a quad core i7 920 2.67GHz, and 11GB DDR3 RAM.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, runs choppy in wine Left 4 Dead 2, runs choppy in wine Counter-Strike: source, runs choppy in wine

Even the native games such as Left 4 Dead 2 Beta and Team Fortress 2 run choppy in wine. Counter-Strike: Source natively runs good.

For the record, ALL OF THESE GAMES run 100% with excellent frames in windows 7 on this same computer.

I have tried all of the proprietary drivers, and I am currently set to 313. Am I doing something wrong? A bad wine setting? Keep in mind my wine drives are being set up by playonlinux.

If anyone can help, THANKS! I do not want to go back to windows, but it's looking like this linux thing is just an uphill battle that still ends up with poor performance. I've been using linux for almost 3 months now, it's like everything is a battle to get a task done.

Solution

Since you have a recent machine, you might be using hybrid graphics (nVidia Optimus in this case). If that's the case, you could very well be running on the weaker integrated graphics rather than on your dedicated graphics card, which causes lag.

If this is indeed your problem, you need to install bumblebee which will offer support for hybrid graphics. The procedure is described here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bumblebee#Installation

Once installed, you need to run your game using your dedicated graphics card. This can be done by executing optirun instead of directly invoking the command:

optirun wine yourgame.exe

Comments

[Bob]

From the bit of research I did, it appears bumblebee is meant for laptops. I have no choice but to use my dedicated graphics card, there is no integrated. I am on a desktop.

[Bob]

Like I just told the first posted, I am not on a laptop, there is no way that my computer could be using an integrated graphics card instead of my 670 because - I have no other! I'm on a desktop :(