http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11285
--- Comment #1 from Roderick Colenbrander thunderbird2k@gmx.net 2008-01-20 07:41:39 --- I don't think it is neither a Wine or driver bug. Let me explain what I expect the problem is (you might also see fixmes related to the problem in the console).
Modern games use shaders for most of the rendering. In general the shaders get more advanced for higher quality settings in game. More complex shaders tend to use more 'uniforms' ('input variables for the shader'). Each different GPU generation defined by 'shader model 1/2/3/4' allows larger shaders and more uniforms.
The problem is that for emulating differences between Direct3D and OpenGL, wine steals 'some' of the uniforms and this can cause issues in games that push Direct3D9 (shader model 3.0) to its limits. The first shader model 3.0 cards are the Geforce6 and Geforce7 and they offer precise the number of uniforms required by shader model 3.0. This means that after Wine's magic there are not enough uniforms left. This can cause rendering issues. Geforce8 cards support much more uniforms than Geforce6/7 cards and don't have issues.