Ubuntu's Unity Decision Affects 2D Performance Too

Last week I delivered OpenGL/3D benchmarks of Ubuntu 12.10 when comparing the performance of the default Unity desktop to the now-defunct Unity 2D environment. Canonical's decision to kill Unity 2D means that for those now forced to use the Compiz-based Unity may experience lower frame-rates, high power consumption with Unity-over-LLVMpipe, and other differences. Additional testing has shown how Unity is affecting the 2D graphics performance.

This article features testing from the same CompuLab Intense-PC as last week's OpenGL testing on Unity vs. Unity 2D with Intel Ivy Bridge graphics. This time around we're looking at the 2D performance under Unity and Unity 2D desktops for different 2D workloads with Cairo, Qt, GTK, and X RENDER.

The low-power system was running an Intel Core i7 3517UE processor with Intel HD 4000 graphics and was running a recent snapshot of Ubuntu 12.10 x86_64 with an updated Intel Linux graphics driver stack. Testing was done in the same manner as last week's Ivy Bridge articles so let's jump straight to the findings.