Something has regressed in the desktop effects performance.

Previous:
Gentoo 2.6.33
KDE-4.4.5
xorg 1.8.2 & 1.9.0

4.5 difference
Gentoo 2.6.35 kernel
KDE-4.5
xorg 1.8.2 & 1.9.0 (went back to 1.8.2 to see if it worked better)

I had serious corruption in fullscreen video game (vendetta online to be exact) overall the desktop effects themselves seem slower and choppier. the panel is doing funky things like going from gray gradient to translucent blue gradient.

i like the new panel icon set though!

i am tossed up on the win 7 style system tray. i like the old one but hated the corruption when opened and closed it would put part of icon in the clock. these cleared up when clock updated. the win 7 style keeps that from happening. this also adds another little thing that makes KDE-4.x feel like a win 7 clone.

lastly i like the old system settings a bit better. the less common things on second tab. most common on first tab. it really felt less cluttered.

i am currently rolling back to 4.4.5 due to main issue being that bad and will be unable to provide any additional info. (unless it persists after rollback then it would definitely not be a KDE issue anyways)

because your overall graphics are less, maybe the drivers that come with the upgrading of the kernel (and nvidia/ati/intel driver upgrade) are the cause of your problem;
on my pc, the effects are just much faster

Maybe you can give us (if you want it to be solved) the manufacturer and type of your video card, and when the driver of the video card is upgraded last time..... Thanks

1) wkin - what if you revert to defaults in the desktop effects advanced tab? is blur effect disabled?

2) gaming - try turning off composting when running full screen video games alt-shift-F12

3) system setting - the new setup is so much more logically organized and having all icons on a single window makes it much easier to find things

4) funky panel - try a different desktop theme

5) win 7 system tray - don't have win 7 but the hidden icons and new notifications are much better than earlier trays