World of Warcraft

What works

My system is dual card (Optimus layer, primus/bumblebee) with Intel(R) UHD Graphics (CML GT2) integrated video, and Nvidia GeForce MX330 discrete video.

In principle the intel card works (WoW installs and runs) without trouble, no flags needed, but relatively low framerate, so I wanted to be able to run using the nvidia card, via primusrun.

Wine 7.0-rc3 failed to work with primusrun, giving "Unhandled page fault on execute access". But it worked successfully after setting VK_ICD_FILENAMES.

What does not

Frame rate with the nvidia card ran initially at 10-17 FPS, way below expectations for an nvidia video card.  For this reason I was going to give a Bronze rating only. It's a bit unclear though. After playing a little longer it rose above 30 FPS, so I've given a Silver instead. The framerate would have to be high more consistently to warrant a Gold rating (and would need to work without stuffing around with environment variables like VK_ICD_FILENAMES to earn Platinum).

After installing with the nvidia card (setting VK_ICD_FILENAMES), the game then fails to run with the integrated Intel video card.  Running Battle.Net with plain wine (not setting VK_ICD_FILENAMES) and launching WoW, it says "3D support is not detected for this video card".  Running with VK_ICD_FILENAMES=/usr/share/vulkan/icd.d/intel_icd.x86_64.json to specify Intel, the Intel card gets detected (is listed in Settings/Advanced) and Wow launches. But trying to enter the game fails with the "ERROR #132  ACCESS VIOLATION"

Workarounds

To activate the nvidia card in a dual card system (with vulkan/dvxk installed) I needed to set VK_ICD_FILENAMES to install and run with primusrun. My installation command was

WINEARCH=win64 VK_ICD_FILENAMES=/usr/share/vulkan/icd.d/nvidia_icd.json primusrun /opt/wine-staging/bin/wine Battle.net-Setup.exe

The WINEARCH might not be strictly necessary. I wanted to make sure 64-bit programs were preferred over 32-bit. 

I installed on a fresh wine prefix, and have not used winetricks to install specific components (for dxvk etc).

Setting the VK_ICD_FILENAMES variable was absolutely crucial to get wine working with the nvidia card.  Without it, primusrun wine (even primusrun winecfg) for wine 7.0-rc3 (wine-staging) fails with "Unhandled page fault on execute access", and wine 6.0.2 (wine-stable) fails with "MarshalInterface Failed to create ifstub".
I got the idea to set VK_ICD_FILENAMES from https://bugs.archlinux.org/tas... and https://gitlab.freedesktop.org...

I also ran 

sysctl dev.i915.perf_stream_paranoid=0

as suggested by mesa warnings.

What was not tested

World of Warcraft 9.0.5 was not tested.  This report is for World of Warcraft 9.1.5

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU: Nvidia
• Driver: proprietary

Additional Comments

Running on debian unstable with standard vulkan, dxvklibvulkan1:amd64                        1.2.189.0-2

vulkan-tools                            1.2.189.0+dfsg1-1+b1

dxvk                         1.9.2+ds1-1

The dxvk installation includes both dxvk-wine32-development and dxvk-wine64-development.

The latest proprietary nvidia driver is installed:

nvidia-driver                            495.44-1
nvidia-vulkan-icd:amd64                 495.44-1

nvidia-primus-vk-wrapper 1.6.1-1 is also installed. nvidia-nonglvnd-vulkan-icd is not installed.  

primusrun glxgears -info  runs successfully with the nvidia driver at 60 fps, confirming the underlying nvidia driver installation and optimus (primus) configuration is ok.

vulcaninfo identifies both the integrated Intel card (Intel(R) UHD Graphics (CML GT2)) and the discrete nvidia card (NVIDIA GeForce MX330)