[compiz] reason for bad performance on i915 (AIGLX)

[Mirco Müller]

Greetings everybody!

	For about two weeks I'm now a happy owner of an intel-powered laptop
(chipset, wifi, gfx) and wanted to give it a full test-drive of compiz
and other GL-intensive programs.

	The laptop runs Xorg 7.1.1 and the i810 driver that comes with it
(stock rpm from FC6). I'm forced to start compiz 0.3.4 with these
options...

	--use-cow
	--strict-binding
	--indirect-rendering

... to merely get compiz to work. I cannot leave out any of those
options, otherwise I don't see anything rendered by compiz. While I'm a
bit spoiled regarding performance coming from my desktop-system
(nvidia-driven, using nvidia's AIGLX), I did not expect the i915 (AIGLX)
solution to be such a bad performer. At a resolution of 1280x800 I can
barely use the cube-rotatation, switcher or drag-rotate while moving
windows to different workspaces. Furthermore GL-apps leave artifacts on
the screen when dragged around (even if ran under metacity) and I don't
seem to be able to get transparent GL-apps working (e.g. try
gl-cairo-cube from people.freedesktop.org/~macslow).

	I know that the i915 is an integrated graphics-chip solution using only
system-memory, but I remember people showcasing screencaptures of such
systems with much better performance under compiz.

	Is all this only a Xorg/driver problem or will I never get any decent
performance (and feature-parity compared to low-end nvidia-hardware)
from this laptop when running a composited desktop-environemnt? Also the
screensaver seems to be to much for this setup as it only display a
black nothing (only the mouse-cursor is visible and I have a hard time
entering my password to unlock it again).

	What disappoints me also is the lack of support for transparent GL-apps
under compiz on the i915. I'm not sure if this is a purely a driver
issue or partly my fault (not selecting the correct visual in e.g.
gl-cairo-cube). All my transparent cairo-hacks work fine.

Thanks in advance for your time and kind advice!

Best regards...

Mirco "MacSlow" Müller

-- 
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