The forum

Booman, I have finally gotten Arch running with the 13.8 beta drivers for Catalyst. I had downgraded to 13.4 because I didn't think that there was a package for 13.8 beta drivers with PowerXpress support. Found out tonight that there IS a 13.8 beta package, and immediately installed it. Guess what??? It works! I can fully switch between my Intel card and my ATI card with no trouble. On the down side, Bioshock crashes on the Intel card. On the upside, I can play Bioshock using the discrete card, but the graphical issues make it irritating. The game runs fairly smooth (there is slight jerking from time to time), but it is playable. Some of the Wine versions play nicer than others. I'm going to keep tinkering with it in Arch to see if I can get it playing a bit more smoothly. Oh, by the way, I always see this code in the dump when Bioshock crashes on the Intel card. I'm pretty sure this is a driver issue, but wanted to share it with you: 0x7d4b0363 in i965_dri.so.
Let me know if you have any idea what this is. Thanks for your help again!

Nice, its nice having updates that fix problems with newer technology.
I have a feeling its still better to use the AMD chipset instead of Intel. Artifacts and gliches can ruin a game, so its really up to you and how stubborn you want to be.
I've played games all the way through with gliches because its better than no playing, but some people can't stand it and give up.

What I don't fully understand is how can you install drivers for both Intel and AMD in the same Distro? I'm talking proprietary drivers...
Either its not possible, or one of them is using open source drivers which won't give you the performance you need for Bioshock.

What I don't fully understand is how can you install drivers for both Intel and AMD in the same Distro? I'm talking proprietary drivers...
Either its not possible, or one of them is using open source drivers which won't give you the performance you need for Bioshock.

I see, what a pain!
I wish there was a BIOS setting where you could choose which GPU you wanted to use before booting. That would be nice.

Really? That Intel GPU plays Portal 2 with open source drivers?
That is news to me... very cool

Yes, for sure... the hybrid graphics IS a MAJOR pain in the rear! I agree with the BIOS option, but the way my laptop is set up, the hybrid graphics is controlled via a software switch instead of a hardware switch. In Windows, there is a program that allows you to decide which chip every single program runs on. I have to admit, the Windows setup is pretty nice. On Linux, you have to choose which chip you want to use, and you have to reboot every single time. I don't mind rebooting... My laptop is fast, so it doesn't take that long.

As far as Portal 2 working with open source drivers- I just finished playing through the first five levels of Portal 2 with the Intel chip, and I had only minor issues- some stuttering audio and slow load times. I have never seen good load times on Linux in newer Wine applications, so that, to me, is a non-issue. I'm certainly going to keep at it with Bioshock and see if I can get the game rendering properly on the AMD card. Who knows, I might just be able to get it to work on the Intel card as well... we'll see what happens!!!

What resolution and graphical settings can you run Portal 2 on?

Yes, keep us updated... some games and some GPU's can be so stubborn.

Sorry it took me so long to respond. Here are my settings with my integrated (Intel) chip:
Native resolution: 1366X768
Anti Aliasing- None
Filtering- Trilinear
VSync- Enabled (Double Buffering)
Multicore Rendering- Enabled
Shader detail- Low
Effect detail- High
Model/Texture detail- High
Paged Pool memory available- High

I haven't played with Bioshock much lately, but I'm hoping I can play around with it some this weekend and see if I can get SOMETHING working. I have been working on getting Arch up and running to where I need it to work. It's been a lot of work getting this distro up and running to where I need it to be, but I'm really enjoying it now!!!

Wow, that is pretty impressive from a GPU integrated into a CPU.
Thanks

Yeah, that is why I decided to stay away from arch and just use Openbox in Mint instead.
Keeps the processing low and frame rates high.

Yep. Wanna know something really weird? When I load Portal 2 with the discrete card now, Portal 2 tends to crash, and I have to hard shutdown my laptop. With the integrated GPU, Portal 2 runs smooth as silk.

I understand. Arch isn't for everybody. I was just frustrated with all the problems that I was having with the Ubuntu based distros. One of the biggest that I saw was in Ubuntu and Mint both, and it was worse in Mint: I would suddenly lose my ability to left-click with my mouse. Only way to get it back was to log out and log back in or to restart. It's happened ONCE with Arch so far. With Mint, it was happening once to twice a week!

Very strange... seems like there is always some new bug with so many people using Linux for games. I know that sounds bad for Linux, but even Windows has similar problems too. Its us gamers who push the limits in these operating systems.

I've never heard of a mouse issue like that, do you have a special gaming mouse?

Nope... I have a basic Logitech laser mouse with a unifying receiver. So far with Arch my only real problems is when I close a POL/Wine game. It tends to blank out my desktop items, and sometimes it brings my system to a crawl, but that's only sometimes. Most of the time, my OS runs stable and fast!

I've had that problem too. sometimes Wine can't close games properly and Wineserver.exe
So normally I will have to use Terminal and do a "killall" to stop wineserver.exe

Also, if you can Alt+Tab to PlayOnLinux, you can go to Configure and Wine Tab.
There is a Processes button that you can use to kill a game that is locked up.
I've used that many times.

Still confused about your mouse problem, sorry I don't have any solutions

Okay, I know how to bring up a terminal with keyboard shortcuts. So, to killall on the wineserver, is that wineserver -k, or is there another command? I'll keep the other stuff in mind. It's okay... with Arch, I haven't had that problem but once in a couple of months. In Ubuntu is was probably once ever couple of weeks, with Mint it was about twice a week. If that's as often as it happens in Arch, I can live with that. Hey, question! I just updated to the newest package in Arch for the 13.8 Catalyst beta. When I load my games in POL using the discrete card, everything works well for about 30 seconds. After that, my screen flashes, and all of a sudden I get a 800X600 screen (POL screen) with my normal desktop behind. It then flashes back and forth between normal and the 800X600 screen. With the integrated card, everything's fine. I would guess this is a driver problem. Any advice?

[code]killall wineserver.exe[/code]

Thanks for the info, booman. I'll keep it in mind. It's weird, I tried running the games on the discrete card, and now they work fine.... strange.

No problem.
I actually tried Bioshock 2 over the weekend and its a NO GO.
Stinking Windows LIve

Hey, Booman, wanted to let you know, I just bought a new system... built myself a desktop. It's not the most amazing thing ever, but it's not bad. It's an AMD FX 4300 quad-core (I think it's 3.8 GHz, but I'm not sure, I would have to go into the BIOS to find out for sure), 8 GB of RAM, 1 TB HD (6Gb/sec SATA3) and the MOST important part- an nVidia GeForce GT 640 video card!!! Of course, the first thing I had to try is playing Bioshock... and lo and behold, it works FLAWLESSLY!!! It's apparent to me that the ATI drivers are the problem for me on my laptop. I'm not sure why it doesn't work, but it doesn't. If ATI ever gets their crap together, perhaps a new video driver will fix the problem. Until then, I will be playing Bioshock either on this computer, or I will be playing it on my PlayStation3. I bought Bioshock Infinite, and it comes with Bioshock. Yay, I'm so excited that it actually works on my PC!!! It's much easier to play with a mouse than with a PS3 controller!!!

Very nice!
You have no idea how many times I've heard AMD drivers being a problem...
Its obvious that GeForce is the way-to-go since Valve chose it for their Steambox.
Now Nvidia is finally releasing some of their code too.

I'm glad Bioshock ran well, how ironic!
I saw Bioshock Infinite on sale on Steam for $13 this weekend, but I honestly don't need another game right now. Not to mention its having problems running in Wine.

Hey, booman, how's it goin? I've been having crashes on Bioshock on my desktop. It's odd, it doesn't happen very often... usually doesn't happen unless I've been playing for over an hour. It's not really all that bad unless I haven't saved my game. I haven't been playing it for a while, actually, so I'll see if updating my system makes any difference.

Updating might help.
I need to update my video drivers and eventually Mint also.
My system is running pretty stable so I've been holding off.
So how far are you in Bioshock?