Just curious...I've been experimenting with 4.5.0's blur effect just for fun and it's kinda slow...no big deal. I can do without it.

But I am curious. Is Intel GPU's just not up to the task hardware-wise or is it a matter of the driver not being good enough just yet?

My HW is an Intel G33, and according to lspci it's a:

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VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31 Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 10)

At least in my experience on openSUSE 11.2, the graphics driver simply isn't up to the task. I have seen a GM965 with openSUSE 11.3 run Blur fairly smoothly though.

I'd say a combination of a and b. The hardware is of course no where near what you get from NVIDIA or ATI, but on the other hand we are probably the first ones to really stress the driver on the X11 plattform. Compiz blur does use GPU assembler directly, while KWin uses GLSL, so we are little bit more modern here and demand more from the driver.

mgraesslin wrote:I'd say a combination of a and b. The hardware is of course no where near what you get from NVIDIA or ATI, but on the other hand we are probably the first ones to really stress the driver on the X11 plattform. Compiz blur does use GPU assembler directly, while KWin uses GLSL, so we are little bit more modern here and demand more from the driver.

I dont want to attack you or something, but why did you choose a new technology which video card drivers doesnt support well instead of older but more stable and faster technology like compiz? In fact, theres no difference in blur appearance with compiz and kwin.

The Intel hardware sucks, plain and simple. Even in Gnome and with Compiz, blur and other effect kill it. Part of the reason, I'm assuming, is because the Intel hardware defers a lot of calculations to software.

Nece228 wrote:I dont want to attack you or something, but why did you choose a new technology which video card drivers doesnt support well instead of older but more stable and faster technology like compiz? In fact, theres no difference in blur appearance with compiz and kwin.

The technology which you call "new" is from 2004! The similar technique is used by Microsoft in Vista for blurring. The technique used by Compiz is to write GPU assembler. I think there is nothing more to add.

mgraesslin wrote:I'd say a combination of a and b. The hardware is of course no where near what you get from NVIDIA or ATI, but on the other hand we are probably the first ones to really stress the driver on the X11 plattform. Compiz blur does use GPU assembler directly, while KWin uses GLSL, so we are little bit more modern here and demand more from the driver.

Okay, that makes sense. I know Intel hardware is not as powerful as ATI or NVIDIA hardware, but I didn't realize the differences were that large. Still, for my purposes Intel is more than good enough (very limited number of available kwin-effetcs enabled, and no really demanding games installed) so I won't bother installing that Nvidia-card that lies unused somewhere.

Thanks for the insight!

The same issue exists in nvidia as well, I have turned off Blur.