Mutter Can Cause A Gaming/OpenGL Performance Hit Too

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Mutter Can Cause A Gaming/OpenGL Performance Hit Too

Last month we looked at the cost of running Compiz by means of looking at how the window manager affected the frame-rate of several different games and whether compositing was used. We also tested out several different drivers and pieces of hardware. When Compiz was running rather than GNOME's Metacity it often caused a measurable drop in the OpenGL performance and then we later found this to be the case too with KDE's KWin. Today we are seeing if and how using Mutter, the window manager for the GNOME 3.0 desktop that uses Clutter-based compositing, will affect the performance of several different open-source games.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=15047

[d2kx]

Sometimes 50% faster, sometimes 50% slower 3D performance with just another window manager WHAT THE ****

[SkyHiRider]

I am using Gnome shell but switch to Metacity when running a 3D app. Too bad when I kill the terminal that switched to Metacity my desktop environment breaks... Wonder why its affecting performance so much, shouldn't only the stuff thats being rendered and used at the moment be using gpu cycles?

[kazysmaster]

nothing unexpected

http://smspillaz.wordpress.com/2010/05/25/half-a-logical-step/

[curaga]

Very surprising result in Padman & no compositing - a low-end Intel i3 beating the highest-end R500!

This is either props to Intel or shame to Ati, or maybe both

[kazysmaster]

overall results are not surprising

http://smspillaz.wordpress.com/2010/05/25/half-a-logical-step/

[madman2k]

Sometimes 50% faster, sometimes 50% slower 3D performance with just another window manager WHAT THE ****

michael just fails at getting any benchmark right. If you have vsync enabled you get 60fps in a quake3 based game. If you dont you hit the 90fps limit by the engine. Thats why serious benchmarking sites disable the ingame limit and EITHER compare with vsync on or vsync off..

[V!NCENT]

overall results are not surprising

http://smspillaz.wordpress.com/2010/...-logical-step/

Yeah you posted that twice. How about a reality check so that your ego can have a rest, shall we?

A while back people wanted to know just how much compositing window managers would affect overal performance. Michael posted the results.

Right now Michael came back with Mutter added to the known results with Metacity and Compiz required in current form to compare.

The title was Mutter can cause a performance hit too. This, however, was not a test of whether Mutter would actually cause a performance hit (y/n) but a continuation of previous findings in that Mutter also causes a big difference.

Sure 2D WM draws to a framebuffer directly while with compositing the 2D drivers just update an offscreen part of the framebuffer while the 3D drivers put together these pieces and draw the actual end result. When in fullscreen 3D the compositing WM's can sorta turn themselves 'off', which shows an incredible performance boost.

Get over it, smartass...

[Detructor]

try playing heroes of newerth (in windowed mode) on a Nvidia Geforce 7800GTX, with the newest driver and compiz disabled...it will take minutes until you see something and your CPU is working like it has to maintain the GPU things aswell.

if compiz is enabled everything is as it should be...

[kazysmaster]

Yeah you posted that twice. How about a reality check so that your ego can have a rest, shall we?

btw, I just registered to the phoronix and I managed to post twice. I didn't know how to delete the last message... and you're right about my ego