kwin compositing: cpu killer

pedepy · 2010-01-03 23:59:35

well, maybe not killer, but definitely not optimal..

following a rather random failure of compiz to comply with the latest mesa upgrade, i was left to play with kwin for my compositing needs. last i had used kwin, it's performance was extremely uneven, usually starting quite snappy but becoming sluggish after a short while. i never could explain that, and any attempt to ask a kde dev for advice always resulted in the answer of "it's your video driver's fault"..

anyway, this time around it's quite fast i have to say. maybe it's my video drivers, maybe it's kwin, maybe it's certain settings i'm using or not using ... however, i've noticed that even while 'idle', when running kwin with composite turned on my cpu usage never drops below ~10%, with X and kwin sharing the load at more or less 5% each. i know this doesn't seem like much at first and it's really not noticeable very often, but it does make my cpu run hotter, a good 10C hotter than it normally would as it probably has a harder time cooling down never being truly idle.

i'm just wondering if anyone else is experiencing that .. ive got all the latest & greatest drivers and xorgs and mesas installed .. ive tried with different combinations of window decorators and disabling certain 'effects' .. without effect.

help!

flamelab · 2010-01-04 00:02:54

Which card and drivers do you have installed?

mikioma · 2010-01-04 13:08:36

@pedepy

I have that very same problem!! (using nvidia propietary drivers, btw). It's true... it's not very noticeable, but my laptop's cpu temperature is higher than running gnome/compiz on the very same machine. Also, cpu fan never ever stops while in KDE4... but it does while in gnome/compiz.

Any workaround for this?

pedepy · 2010-01-04 23:17:31

im using the open source ati drivers on a mobility radeon x1600 card ..

i was able to circumvent some of the consequences by properly configuring cpufreq, which i found had not been properly configured since i has went 64 bits

Arch Linux

#1 2010-01-03 23:59:35

kwin compositing: cpu killer

#2 2010-01-04 00:02:54

Re: kwin compositing: cpu killer

#3 2010-01-04 13:08:36

Re: kwin compositing: cpu killer

#4 2010-01-04 23:17:31

Re: kwin compositing: cpu killer

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