I recently upgraded to KDE 4.3 and have noticed after about 30 minutes or so, my 3d and 2d performance drops considerably. Normally i would just be running firefox & amarok which ends up using very little resources. Normally my memory sits at around 500MB of 2GB and cpu usage 10% or so. After a while, if i minimize any windows they start to get really choppy. The same happens when i open any. At first i thought it was an Nvidia problem, and possibly powermizer throttling my card, but thats not the case.

So when this happens, i normally have to reboot to get any performance back. It happens whether it's idle or if i'm working. I've already ruled out powerdevil, since i've set everything to performance and i'm on a desktop anyway. I can't remember this ever happening in 4.2, even if it has been a couple of months since i last used it. I've just done a fresh install also, and it didn't have any effect.

I've tried turning off most options in kwin, and also tried using and not using vsync. The options i have selected at the minute are:

Login - Logout - Minimize Animation - Shadow - Taskbar Thumbnails - Translucency - Present Windows.

I also have very few plasmoids active. Folder View, Lancelot, YaWP, Notes, System Monitor CPU & System Monitor Hard Drive. I've also tried eliminating any of those as a cause. But like i say, my resources are pretty slim with very little cpu and ram being used.

So i have tried compiz, and haven't experienced any slowdown problems. Therefore i figure kwin is the culprit, but i'm not sure what to do about it. Since i prefer kwin as it's more integrated.

Here's my setup
AMD X2 5600+
Asus M3A78 Pro
Nvidia 8800GTS
2GB Ram

Software
Arch Linux 64-bit
Vanilla KDE (i have tried kdemod and it had the same problem)
Drivers - Nvidia 185.18.31-1 (i'm using a beta driver at the minute, 190.25-1)

My xorg.conf

Code: Select all

#Section "ServerFlags"
        #Option          "DontZap"               "false"
#EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
   Identifier     "X.org Configured"
   Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
   InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
   InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
   Option           "BackingStore" "False"
EndSection

Section "Files"
   ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
   FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
   FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
   FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
   FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"
   FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
EndSection

Section "Module"
   Load  "extmod"
   Load  "glx"
   Load  "dri"
   Load  "dbe"
   Load  "xtrap"
   Load  "freetype"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
   Identifier  "Keyboard0"
   Driver      "kbd"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
   Identifier  "Mouse0"
   Driver      "mouse"
   Option       "Protocol" "auto"
   Option       "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
   Option       "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "LG W2234"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 83.0
    VertRefresh     56.0 - 75.0
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Card0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "nVidia Corporation"
    BoardName      "G80 [GeForce 8800 GTS]"
    BusID          "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce 8800 GTS"
    Option         "Coolbits" "1"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
# Removed Option "metamodes" "CRT: nvidia-auto-select +0+0, DFP: nvidia-auto-select +1680+0"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "TwinView" "1"
    Option         "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "CRT-1"
    Option         "metamodes" "CRT: 1680x1050 +0+0, DFP: 1440x900 +1680+0; 1680x1050 DFP: 1440x900; DFP: 1280x720;"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Could you please try to deactivate all desktop effects and see if you can reproduce? (System Settings -> Desktop -> [Desktop Effects] -> uncheck "Enable desktop effects").

Actually i think i found the culprit, Present Windows. I remember there was an issue with it a few months back. I'll keep testing to see if the slowdown has disappeared now that i've disabled that option.

Ok, that wasn't the problem. It seems to be random, whether i've just compiled a kernel or whether i'm just sitting browsing. I tried what you said and it was the same with the effects turned off.

Though i just changed opengl to xrender and it seems much smoother...I'll see how long this lasts...

Edit: Yeah xrender seems to have fixed it. Weird though, i would have thought it would run better on opengl.