Gaming/Graphics Performance On Unity, GNOME, KDE, Xfce

[xpander]

dunno whats xfce's own composition tho.
but i tested both without compiz and fps is about the same in both DE's
seems 110 fps is the limit of unigine or some config is limiting it to that

[mrugiero]

system: AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE @3,2 ghz, 8 GB 1333mhz ram, Nvidia GTX 560 Ti 1GB, Linux Mint 12 64 bit, kernel 3.2.0 , nvidia driver ver 290.10 , ext4 filesystem
Oilrush settings: 1280x960 windowed, max settings from game

Mate Desktop with Compiz enabled: 75-110 fps
Gnome 3 with Gnome Shell: 60-92 fps
Xfce with Compiz enabled: 75-110 fps

I think the bottleneck in XFCE and MATE Desktop is Compiz. Can you try the benchmark with XFCE's own compositor? And (if it does have one) MATE's one?
I think that would add to the discussion, just as a guess.

[Suzuran]

If there are a way of use Gnome Shell with my integrated ATI HD 4250 I would like to know the trick. i also have a Nvidia 9600, but I do not want to plug in it only to test Gnome 3.

I have an ATI HD 4250 on a laptop; A Fedora LiveCD (summer 2011, not sure what version) dumped me to fallback mode, but on Ubuntu 11.10, Gnome-shell works perfectly. I didn't have to change anything, so I can't give you any hints. I am using oibaf's PPA for graphics drivers, and I don't remember if I updated that before I switched from Unity.

[xpander]

system: AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE @3,2 ghz, 8 GB 1333mhz ram, Nvidia GTX 560 Ti 1GB, Linux Mint 12 64 bit, kernel 3.2.0 , nvidia driver ver 290.10 , ext4 filesystem
Oilrush settings: 1280x960 windowed, max settings from game

Mate Desktop with Compiz enabled: 75-110 fps
Gnome 3 with Gnome Shell: 60-92 fps
Xfce with Compiz enabled: 75-110 fps

[Bestia]

Oil Rush performance

I've tested performance of Oil Rush on my PC running Ubuntu 11.10 with different shells:

AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+
nVidia 9600 GT NVIDIA Driver Version:280.13
2 GB RAM

fulscreen 1920x1080, anti-aliasing off, graphics medium, textures high

Enlightment E17 (with ecomporh enabled) from 39 to 60 fps (mostly 46-50 fps)
Razor-qt from 37 to 60 fps (mostly 41-50 fps)

Unity (using Daniel van Vugt PPA's for Compiz and Unity)
Unity 2D
Gnome Shell
Gnome Classic (no effects)

all four of them are locked at 30 fps (sometimes going to 28 fps)

I've used built-in fps counter of the game and played on the same map always loading the same save.

[korrode]

i was wondering the same thing. personally i like lxde (i'm using it right now) and i found it to be noticeably faster than xfce. i personally hate xfce, i'd rather use unity. back before the gnome 3 days, xfce was just about as heavy as gnome 2, but offered less features and yet it strived to be lightweight.

I don't know what distro you use or how you obtained your Xfce setup, but Xfce's performance is regularly ruined by changes/additions made by distributions (like the mountain of sluggish fail that is Xubuntu).

I ran openbox for years, then i ran fluxbox for years. I'm extremely minimalist and greatly value responsiveness from my desktop.

These days I run Xfce, session managed and all, on ArchLinux and am happy with how it performs.

How you can be a fan and user of LXDE but say something like "i'd rather use unity [than Xfce]" boggles my mind. But each to their own.


<insert fanboyism here over Xfce trumping the competition in the benchmark results>

[energyman]

in a perfect world the window manager should have ZERO impact on gaming performance with a fullscreen 3d game.

Which makes all results with the nvidia driver look VERY fishy. Something is not done right there.

[GreatEmerald]

http://blog.fishsoup.net/2011/06/13/...r-performance/

Thanks, that was a very interesting read!

[gedgon]

Unless the WM is doing something stupid, all of the non-compositing ones should have about the same performance.

Indeed. I have no idea how Michael gets these results for uncomposited DE.

Here's lightsmark on GTX 275/C2D E4500

[drago01]

Yea, KWin doesn't unredirect fullscreen windows at all by default, because it causes annoying screen corruption when combined with overlay windows (like the Amarok OSD). So while it should be considered a bug, it still explains the poor performance. To be fair, all tested games should have been run in windowed mode, in order to truly compare the compositing performance, and not the unredirection performance.

Though at least for me, using latest Catalyst drivers with KWin causes screen blackening, so I have to keep it off regardless...

http://blog.fishsoup.net/2011/06/13/benchmarking-compositor-performance/