New 8500GT Graphics card - no improvement under Ubuntu/Wine

This is a rather strange case, since I should have a big improvement and don't seem to be doing anything wrong.

We have two computers, both of which have graphics integrated motherboards, and I have finally bought a very similar model of PCI express card for the older of the two so that I can play GW with my partner at better than 800x600 @ 10+fps.

Her PC still runs XP, while I use Ubuntu. It has a more powerful processor (Athlon X2 4200+ rather than regular 1800+) but I have eliminated that as the bottleneck to some degree. Both motherboards are Asus M2*-VM, both have at least 1GB of system memory, and both now have 8500GT graphics cards (an eVGA and MSI), which both rather strangely consistently (ok, the new one arrived in the post today) report having 512MB DDR2 rather than 256.

Now, the weird thing is that I don't get more than a few frames per second (I haven't been scientific) improvement in GW using -perfs, which is clearly not the point of the exercise. I booted back into Windows for the first time in more than half a year, installed the drivers from the CD, and managed to get just over 20 fps in my GH - at highest settings for all graphics options, including 4xAA and a maximised screen - this on a 1800x1440 monitor, so 4 times as many pixels.

What worries me is that when I downloaded a cross-system benchmark (from unigine.com), I got roughly the same results on the two PCs, both just under 6 fps (the 8500 is not a high end card).

The CPU load on the linux PC did not top 90% under either OS, although it was 80%+ under both XP and Ubuntu, so my only remaining thought is that it could be Wine... but surely I should at least get SOME improvement from using a non-integrated solution?

I'm either missing something really obvious or something incredibly subtle. I hope that someone with experience of budget graphics cards under Linux can help!

if you are trying to run GW at that high resolution with just an 8500 on max settings then I am suprised that you even get 20+ fps.

I'm not desperate to run it at that high of a resolution; the other PC which has a widescreen LCD monitor manages 1680x1050 at roughly 30 fps full screen. I'd probably reduce the screen estate on my big monitor to about that size so I can have IM and TV open too.

The 8500 is great for GW under windows; my frustration is that I'm not getting any better AT ALL than I did with a 6150 under Linux. I'd be perfectly happy even if I only got halfway, like 25 fps @ 1600x1000. It isn't great at running newer games, but Company of Heroes is "playable" even if I get a lowish fps at times. I don't have many other data points, tho.

return it and get an 9600GT. It will then improve by alot.

that was a very helpful post there

/sarcasm


It seems to be a Linux problem with your card.... there may be a driver for teh 8500 that will work better under Linux. I'd try that as first option.