Ran a few more tests:

Guild Wars 2 - My "usual" testing area is back to 80+ fps, in other areas where fps used to dip mid 20's is now 32-40 fps. Turning the camera now longer drops the frame rate or stutters (have yet to test in normal gameplay hours). Virtual Memory usage is increased. - Updated report below.

Path of Exile - The 32bit version of the game, stutters and throws random errors, also with this patch it runs out of Virtual Memory (4GB Limit) in less than 10 minutes whereas without, it takes like 3-4 hours to reach the limit. Couldn't get the 64bit version to run. - Updated report below.

I'm pleased with GW2 however, I'm noticing a pattern here, Virtual Memory usage increases a lot with this patch and that's not good for 32bit programs in Wine, as I also reported yesterday Witcher 3 was reporting 51GB VM usage. For 64bit games this shouldn't be an issue but 32bit ones are prone to crash sooner than usual.

Quoting: ShmerlSomeone already asked this question in this bug: https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42592#c75

I can't see that it is about duplicated work, just about Witcher performance

Quoting: tpauI can't see that it is about duplicated work, just about Witcher performance

Here is the question:

QuoteBuffer maps.. Is that any related to the new wine-PBA work?

So it is exactly about the topic above.

First of all, I'd like to say thanks again to Shmerl for helping me with a few last standing Wine issues earlier today.

I just gave Guild Wars 2 a good 2 hours test run, including one of the most popular and CPU intensive events in the game (Tequatl for those familiar with the game). This is based after my long time experience of running the game under Wine Staging 2.0 where it was the best and last version for playing this game under Nvidia....until today.

First thing you'll notice with PBA is that the game allocates 3.7GB Ram right away - Up to 2 hours of gameplay it peaked 5.1GB which I find 'acceptable'. In the usual game hubs framerate improved by about 10-15 fps, turning the camera remains smooth and no stuttering is present. In instances it's even better, framerate is overall the same as 2.0-Staging but fps keeps steady and again no stuttering.

The Big One - One of the game's most popular events (Tequatl) includes over a 100 players battling a boss, this is a common place for fps drops and getting below 20fps here can be easily achieved. I used same settings as always for comparison. Right off the bat the stuttering was gone, and when lots of players were on the same spot it didn't drop the frame rate to the usual 5-8fps crawl, instead it remained smooth the whole time. This was HUGELY much better than 2.0-Staging, overall throughout the whole fight it maintained a solid 25-40fps while remaining smooth during the heavy parts. ---- There are other areas and events where many players are together, this was just one example.

--------------------------------------------

As for other games tested:

Crysis Warhead (64bit) - 1920x1080 / Full Enthusiast Settings (Very High) + Gamer Shadows (High) / 2x AA / Motion Blur off. Framerates were in the 70-100 mark, except a few dips to mid 60's and occasionally 45. No Stuttering at all was present. Feels much better than normal Staging / CSMT.

Path of Exile - This one you need to use the 64bit Client if you want PBA otherwise Virtual Memory hits 4GB and crashes. I used to run this with Wine_Dev_3.2 and normal CSMT and got about 100fps max / with PBA I'm getting about 143 now, overall better but not strictly needed.


Conclusions: So far Guild Wars 2 benefitted a lot from this patch and although it allocates a lot of memory right from the beginning, I think the trade-off for much better performance is worth it.

If you wish to give this build a try I uploaded it to my google drive: Download Link


-------------------------------------------------------
My Guild Wars 2 Settings:




Registry Settings File (Adjust memory size to your GPU):

QuoteREGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\Direct3D]
"CSMT"="enabled"
"DirectDrawRenderer"="opengl"
"StrictDrawOrdering"="disabled"
"UseGLSL"="disabled"
"VideoMemorySize"="6144"

Also launch game with the "-dx9single" parameter for better performance.

Quoting: Avehicle7887Registry Settings File...

To enable CSMT you should use:

Quote"csmt"=dword:1

As per https://wiki.winehq.org/Useful_Registry_Keys

Or for Wine Staging:

Quote[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\DllRedirects]
"wined3d"="wined3d-csmt.dll"

Quoting: adamhm

Quoting: Avehicle7887Registry Settings File...

To enable CSMT you should use:

Quote"csmt"=dword:1

As per https://wiki.winehq.org/Useful_Registry_Keys

Or for Wine Staging:

Quote[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\DllRedirects]
"wined3d"="wined3d-csmt.dll"

I know about those. I'm not sure why I even use that key at all, 2.21 Staging already comes with the Dllredirect pre-set, I guess I just wanted to be on the safe side and be like "You hear CSMT? you must BE on!" :-) Thanks though, I guess I should omit such parts during guides.

Quoting: Avehicle7887...2.21 Staging already comes with the Dllredirect pre-set...

2.21-staging doesn't pre-set it (or at least it doesn't here)...? AFAIK CSMT is only enabled by default as of Wine 3.2

Quoting: adamhm

Quoting: Avehicle7887...2.21 Staging already comes with the Dllredirect pre-set...

2.21-staging doesn't pre-set it (or at least it doesn't here)...? AFAIK CSMT is only enabled by default as of Wine 3.2

Ah sorry I miswrote that, I meant that if you enable CSMT through the config UI in 2.21-Staging, then you don't need to create the CSMT key in regedit. My mistake :-)

Oh the GW2 improvements sound really interesting, so far I have spent ~6400 hours ingame via wine on Linux :)
I will test it and report back :D
I hope this version will be also added to PoL for convenience :P

Thank you very much for that test and effort Avehicle7887 .

Quoting: coesetaOh the GW2 improvements sound really interesting, so far I have spent ~6400 hours ingame via wine on Linux :)
I will test it and report back :D
I hope this version will be also added to PoL for convenience :P

Thank you very much for that test and effort Avehicle7887 .

I have just updated the link to a newer Wine build in the post above, it is a lot more memory friendly (by more than 1GB less usage).


More Guild Wars 2 tests (copied from my earlier report on github):

I Ran the test with GW2 on an i5-4590 / 8GB Ram / GTX 960 384.111 / Using latest PBA. Didn't notice any performance loss compared to my previous build. To say I went from 16 threads Ryzen 1700X to a quad core, the fps difference was minimal, in action areas such as fractals it did quite well at keeping that 42+. I'm very happy with the results.

I've also did Tequatl tonight with the i5 system, the frame rate was pretty good considering the amount of players during that event. I didn't experience any stutters even when the fps was down to 20, average 25-30 during the event.

Usages throughout the tests:

CPU: About 45% on 3 cores, 100% on the 4th.
GPU: 57% Peak, with about 31% Memory used (2GB Card)
RAM: (about 45mins Including Tequatl) game was only occupying 3.3GB

The Highlight of this build: The ram usage went down by at least 1GB and the at the end of the test the total difference compared with the old one was 1.4GB, meanwhile the performance remained the same for the most part (I did notice a slight fps increase with the Ryzen build though). The cores are also being utilized better, before with Staging 2.0 it was 2 cores at like 100% while the other 2 relaxed.