How fast is Xfce's composite manager?

[Thetargos]

Just to add my voce to the discussion. I use the composite extension
in XFWM4 with the following Laptop:
Compaq 1211LA
Atlon4 850
ATi Rage Mobility P/M (with built-in Xorg's 6.8.1 [FC3 flavor] driver).

While it is slow, I've found that I can at least keep some of the
eyecandy xfwm4 --compositor offers, like drop shadows (my personal
favorite) and panel transparency (set to barely 25%, so it is
virtually invisible [see screeny shot in the link bellow]). I have
transparency for window dragging and resizing turned off and only
window frame is visible while moving the windows, so I don't have much
slowness when moving windows ;)

Under these curcumstances, I've found the performance to be not so
bad... actually it is better than compositor=off and showing the
contents of the window, without that nifty panel effect (I just love
watch the panel come up [quite speedy, I must say] when I move the
mouse over it).

screenshot of laptop's desktop (WARNING!! high quality .png file @1024x768):
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v328/thetargos/Desktop/xfce-desk.png