XGL/Compiz and 3D games

[xt600]

Is it wise to play Opengl and or cedega games while running compiz? I'm just asking because I have not installed any 3D action games yet but plan to soon.

[kelvren16]

i don't think it really matters; or at least it shouldn't. i always play with it on so i can do the "exposé" thing since "alt+tab" does strange things for me. it might make a difference depending on what kind of video card you have, but I'm not sure. hope this helps.

Marco

[joost]

You can't play opengl ontop XGL for all i know. Either way it's always wise to disable that stuff when playing games.

FPS = Life

[SLiguykyle]

Is it wise to play Opengl and or cedega games while running compiz?

nope... not at all.. i love the games that i've got on linux, but i set up compiz, and figured okay, whatever.. and boy am i frusrated now... 3D+ compiz (as weird as this may sound)= not the best of friends... take it from me.... not... smart... i just hope someone will let me know how to kinda temporarily disable compiz (i posted about it) lol... yea.. dont' do both..

[Zolra]

From what I've noticed it's just slower but I'll usually right click fusion-icon and switch into metacity if i'm playing a game seriously.

If I'm just screwing around I'll do it with Compiz on because it looks more impressive to passersby

[archwndas]

Guys AIGLX or XGL and Compiz is not really good when one is interested in running OpenGL applications on top. All that nice stuff in Compiz are being implemented in the graphics card. This way the memory and GPU in the graphics card are occupied by doing all this nice rendering you observe. It is the same thing when you are running 2 executables on the same CPU. The execution time slows down as opposed to one CPU running one executable. If you want to make a simple test do the following:

Install all the Compiz-Fusion stuff + AIGLX and open a terminal. Move the terminal at the right bottom corner of your desktop. In the terminal type:
# glxgears

You will see some numbers corresponding to frames per second. The better your graphics card the higher those numbers will be. Now, try to disable all the compiz stuff by commenting out in the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file all the compiz related stuff. See some compiz documentation for the details. Rerun this test. You will see that you get much higher numbers. That means that you graphics card unleashes its full potential since it is free from the Compiz stuff.

that's all.
So no Compiz with demanding OpenGL applications on top. It just slows them down. You can understand from this simple test that Windows Vista which also provides Compiz like stuff occupies the graphics card no matter whether or not the user wishes it to do so. So the performance of games in Windows VISTA will be inferior of the Windows XP unless one knows how to switch all that fancy rendering stuff in VISTA off.

Cheers,
Archwn.

[stevencomerthornley]

I really haven't noticed a drop in performance, but I don't know all the ET TCE maps yet so I'm just bullet fodder right now


but then again, check my specs--> maybe I won't notice unless I run two or three executables

[archwndas]

try:
# glxgears

[stevencomerthornley]

got 'em

but, I don't try to engage a rotating desktop when I game.