Mutter Can Cause A Gaming/OpenGL Performance Hit Too

The performance when running Mutter on the ATI hardware was close to that when running Compiz, which is a small setback from running Metacity without the compositing effects, but with the Intel Linux driver there again, was a large hit.

With Tremulous, a compositing manager on the open-source Radeon side actually leads to a performance increase (by a shocking 53%) when running either Compiz or Mutter, but on the Intel side there was a performance drop. Running Mutter led to a slightly larger performance drop than running Compiz with the Clarkdale IGP.

Like with Tremulous, running Urban Terror with Compiz and Mutter leads to an improvement in the frame-rate. The frame-rates were close between Mutter and Compiz. Meanwhile, on the Intel side, there again was a performance drop but the Mutter/Compiz numbers were close.

In a few of the gaming tests there was a larger performance drop when using the Mutter window manager rather than Compiz, but for the most part the impact was about the same when these games were running full-screen. The latest open-source Radeon driver stack in the newest Ubuntu 10.10 development packages is also comparatively performing better with Compiz/Mutter than the Intel driver. We will be looking more closely at the performance of the GNOME 3.0 desktop and its components as the release approaches this September.