wine users - Apr 2011 - Performance Issues with Games in Wine (EVE Online, TF2)

Lets get this out of the way first. My laptop has:
Wine Version 1.3.18
Linux Mint 10 64-bit
Intel Core 2 Duo T9600 @ 2.80GHz
nvidia GeForce 9400
nvidia GeForce 260m SLI
nvidia Driver Version 260.19.06
If theres anything I left out let me know and I'll do my best

My problem is that on the games I am running through wine, I am getting a
reduced frames per second compared to what I had before the switch from Win 7 on
the same hardware. When running one client of EVE Online, with the settings at
defaults and at my native resolution (1440x900) I get around 20 fps. When
running two clients, each in their own virtual desktop, I get only 10 fps. I
don't have any actual numbers from before my switch, as I never thought to
look, but I would estimate that I was getting at least 30 fps with two clients,
and at least 40 with only one. The there is also a difference with TF2. I now
get 20-30 fps, and I probably used to get around 40-50

My question is, are these drops in fps within the range of what I should expect
when running a game in wine? Is there any way to improve them?

I read the AppDB pages for each of these games, and they are functioning
correctly, except for one bug where EVE crashes when trying to apply changes to
the graphics settings (http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26237). I am using
steam for TF2, of course, and the non-steam version of EVE. I tried running
openarena as a point of comparison, and I was consistently getting 90 fps,
though this may not be a fair comparison because it didn't seem like a very
resource intensive game.

I suspected that the powermizer feature of the nvidia graphics driver was at
fault, so I did some searching and came across this.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=828369 It forced the powermizer setting
of my GeForce 9400 to stay on performance level 3, but did not increase my fps
on either game. I also read (I have lost the source, sorry) that adding:

Code:
Option  "RegistryDwords" "PowerMizerEnable=0x1;
PerfLevelSrc=0x3322; PowerMizerDefaultAC=0x1"


to /ext/X11/xorg.conf under the devices section would increase my performance.
This forced the performance level of the GeForce 9400 and both 260m's to
level 3, and made them run significantly hotter (the GeForce 9400 was above 85 C
at one point) but did not increase my performance.

I'm not really sure what to do now. Am I forever stuck at low fps? Must I
trade graphic quality for performance? Is my hardware not as good as I had once
thought? Any information or ideas for solutions would be greatly appreciated. I
will try to help in any way I can, but I'm still new at this whole Linux
thing, so try and go easy on me.  :)

Just to add to this: I have a very similar issue with Anarchy Online. 

8800GTS,
e6750c2d
4Gb RAM

I notice that through WINE, AO plays with acceptable-ish FPS 22-30. Sometimes it
goes upto 40 in some areas.

1. I have noticed that decreasing GUI clutter on the screen gives me more FPS

2. I use 100% View Distance - when there is far to look on the screen, FPS
drops.

But, why? If it is simply because of the fact that this is the best the WINE can
do, then I am happy. But, if I am missing something obvious myself, and probably
the OP would like to know.

3. I have installed nVidia drivers - latest. Confirmed that I am using them
also.

Like I say, AO is playable, but I do see lesser performance in general.

Yep, wine usually has somewhat lower FPS than Windows
at same game settings.

See http://wiki.winehq.org/Performance

> Is this conversion from DirectX to OpenGL done by the GPU or CPU - or does
that not matter?
It's done by Wine. The GPU wouldn't know how.