Intel Ivy Bridge: Unity/Compiz Continues To Impair The Linux Desktop

When running Nexuiz, the slowest desktop was the default Unity desktop with Compiz on Ubuntu 12.04. The desktops leading to the fastest results were KDE with suspended effects and then Xfce 4.8 with its default window manager. The KDE desktop led to an OpenGL frame-rate 16% higher with Nexuiz than the default Unity desktop.

With OpenArena 0.8.5, the default Ubuntu 12.04 LTS was again the slowest desktop for Linux OpenGL games. Xfce and KDE (with suspended effects) were 21% faster than Unity 5.10. Unity 2D was 8% faster than the Compiz-controlled Unity desktop and even the default KDE was 12% faster.

The new OpenArena releases that makes use of GLSL and other rendering improvements slows down the frame-rate a lot to the point that the desktop environment has little overhead for this Ivy Bridge graphics comparison.