openGL in xfwm4

[Brian J. Tarricone]

Harold Aling wrote:
> On Wed, 27 Feb 2008 08:52:46 +0100, Yves-Alexis Perez <corsac at debian.org>
> wrote:
 >
>> I *really* like xfwm4 look and feel. Compositor is nice, but could
>> behave faster (I guess) using openGL stuff in my intel card. And some
>> fancy stuff like bluring the titlebar text is nice. Cube effect, wobbly
>> windows etc. dont really attract me. I really prefer xfwm4 for all
>> window management stuff.
[snip]
> That's exectly how I would see it: using the power of OpenGL to draw
> exactly the same as the non-rocket-fueled Xfwm4.
> 
> I don't want any other effects than Xfwm4 offers at the moment
> (transparency and shadows) but then drawn by OpenGL for a performance boost
> and less CPU usage. If I really want all kinds of fancy stuff I'll use
> Compiz.

Has anyone actually done any reasonable benchmarking of opengl-based vs. 
xrender-based compositing/rendering, and run it on a variety of cards 
with different drivers?  I hear a lot of people throwing around "opengl 
is faster than xrender," but I see no proof of this.  I occasionally see 
some similar benchmarks on planet.freedesktop.org, but nothing 
comprehensive, and nothing that tests more than a particular (usually 
experimental) driver version on a particular card.

Even if opengl is shown to be faster, is this because using the card's 
3D engine is actually faster than the 2D engine, or is is it because the 
drivers don't accelerate 2D as well as they could?  Let's fix things 
where they need to be fixed; randomly picking things to change because 
"omg lulz opengl for teh win!" is never the way to go.

	-brian