You can run, but you can’t hide
You can run, but you can’t hide from Michael Larabel. If it’s electronic and has the potential to run Linux, chances are he’s put it through its paces with the Phoronix Test Suite. But if you’re Martin Gräßlin, you’ve got nothing to hide from in Michael’s latest test. Larabel’s testing of the Intel Haswell platform has been ongoing since launch, and most recently he has put KDE 4.11 through the ringer to see how things are looking. Of note, he found the following.
To composite, or not to composite. That is the question
KDE, behind the scenes
KDE has always been the virtual telephony switchboard of the roaring 1920s — at least as far as breadth of configuration is concerned. And that doesn’t stop with KWin. One notable performance increasing setting has been prevalent for quite sometime — the ability to turn of compositing desktop effects for full-screen applications. Where does the performance increase hit home the hardest? Gaming. Whilst tying Intel’s Haswell platform to the proverbial whipping post, Larabel tested the following open source first-person shooters, demos, and other, with and without a desktop compositor.
- Prey v1.4.119
- Unigine Tropics v1.3 (Tech demo)
- Xonotic v0.7
- GPU Test v0.5.0
The results of the test are nothing short of astounding, with KWin losing an average of only 1 frame across all test with compositing turned on. This is a huge win for KWin. Now the only question left is whether we can expect the same in Unity once Mir finally arrives official.
For more info, check out the screen capture below (from Phoronix), or hit up the source link at the bottom.
