KDE desktop effects and usage of graphic card resources.
 

Hi!

Recently I bought new graphic card ATI HD5570 and tested it's performance using glxgears. On the first run I got 8000-9000 FPS, quite good comparing with my previous ATI x300 graphic card which gave about 900-1000 FPS. After I decided to switch on KDE desktop effects, and glxgear gave about 2000 FPS.

I'm just wondering and curious, how much graphic card resources is needed for desktop effects with default settings in KDE? It looks like for my graphic card it is about 75%. Of course it's very simple and not precise measure but still. I know that my graphic card is not top gamers card, but it is not also lowest performance graphic card. I'm just wondering, why desktop effects needs so much graphic acceleration, almost all of my card?

I'm using Slackware 13.1 and AMD proprietary drivers.

Thanks in advance!

Greetingz!

Well, if you have things like "window transparency" or "Compiz Effects" turned on, these are supposed to take some extra Video Card resources. After all, when you're not doing something 3D-intensive (like gaming) with a powerful card, why not use all the horsepower to render the desktop?

However, if you don't want to tax your Video Card anymore than necessary, you could just turn off those effects (and maybe run a light-weight Windows Manager, like fluxbox)