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

[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

[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.

[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.

[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]

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

I can't argue with that results. Anyway, i'd like to see your results with the integrated compositor.
You can activate xfwm's integrated compositor through window manager settings app, in the configuration submenu.
It has no fancy effects except for translucency and shadows, though.
Metacity in GNOME 2 had something similar, but it didn't manage translucency as far as I know (and I tried, I didn't like the idea of running compiz when all I was trying to use was translucency and shadows around the windows :P).

EDIT: I just remembered that the only thing I couldn't get translucent with Metacity were the panels and menus. Terminal background and windows decoration do get translucency.

[OlegOlegovich]

One big caveat with GNOME Shell is that it does only unredirect fullscreen SDL windows, which covers a lot of native games, but not anything running in Wine.

You do know, that wine can be forced to use override-redirect (globally on on per-application basis)? If not, uncheck "allow window manager to control the windows" in winecfg -> Graphics.

[whizse]

You do know, that wine can be forced to use override-redirect (globally on on per-application basis)? If not, uncheck "allow window manager to control the windows" in winecfg -> Graphics.

Yep, works with some games, with others you get no keyboard input

[OlegOlegovich]

Yep, works with some games, with others you get no keyboard input

Yeah, override-redirect is a rather hacky solution in general (it probably should not have been used by SDL in the first place).

[whizse]

Yeah, no kidding.

There are some plans to introduce window manager atoms an application can set to request to not be composited, that would be the proper fix.

[OlegOlegovich]

There are some plans to introduce window manager atoms an application can set to request to not be composited, that would be the proper fix.

Can you give me some links to where such discussions take place (mailing lists/blog posts etc.) if possible?