Desktop Effects Performance/fr

Performance des effets du bureau

Les performances de Desktop Effects dans les espaces de travail de KDE Plasma sont principalement déterminées par l'interaction du matériel graphique (GPU), du pilote et de Compositor (Kwin). Le Compositor essaie de choisir les meilleurs paramètres disponibles pour votre GPU en interrogeant le pilote pour savoir ce que le matériel prend en charge. Quelquesfois on peut améliorer les performances en aidant KWin sur ce que le matériel peut réellement supporter.

Choix du gestionnaire correct de matériel

Déterminer le gestionnaire utilisé

Il est important d'installer et d'utiliser le bon pilote. S'il n'y a pas de pilote, ou qu'un pilote incorrect est utilisé, les effets de bureau reviennent à un backend non accéléré (XRender).

Les informations sur le pilote utilisé sont disponibles via le KInfoCenter. Cliquez sur Informations Graphiques -> OpenGL et analysez les informations fournies dans le module affiché. Les informations pertinentes se trouvent dans la section "Driver", en particulier "Vendor", "Renderer" et "OpenGL/ES version". L'information est fournie par le pilote et peut être difficile à analyser.

Informations OpenGL de KInfoCenter

Si le Renderer indique "Software Rasterizer" il n'y a pas de pilote d'installé. Pour tous les autres pilotes vérifiez que vous utilisez le bon.

Pilotes disponibles

AMD/ATI

Pour le matériel AMD/ATI, deux pilotes sont disponibles : le pilote propriétaire fglrx ou Catalyst et les pilotes gratuits Mesa (appelés radeon, r300, r600). ). Avec le pilote fglrx, toutes les fonctionnalités ne sont pas disponibles et les performances en général semblent meilleures avec les pilotes Mesa. La recommandation est de toujours utiliser les pilotes Mesa avec des effets de bureau. Si vous trouvez l'information "Mesa" dans la version OpenGL/ES, alors vous utilisez les pilotes libres et vous n'avez rien à faire.

Les pilotes Mesa existent dans une version plus ancienne et une autre plus récente. Assurez-vous d'utiliser les plus récents que vous pourrez identifier par le mot "Gallium" dans la chaîne de l'afficheur.

Intel

Le matériel Intel utilise les pilotes libres Mesa. Il n'y a pas d'autre possibilité.

NVIDIA

Pour le matériel NVIDIA, deux pilotes sont disponibles : le pilote propriétaire NVIDIA et les pilotes libres Mesa (connus sous le nom de nouveau). Les pilotes libres sont encore en plein développement et ne sont pas tous disponibles dans toutes les distributions ni pour tous les matériels. Généralement, il est recommandé d'utiliser les pilotes propriétaires. Vous utilisez les pilotes propriétaires si vous voyez NVIDIA dans la chaîne OpenGL/ES version .

Installation du pilote

L'installation du pilote est spécifique à la distribution utilisée. Veuillez consulter la documentation de votre distribution sur ce sujet.

Version OpenGL

KWin supports OpenGL 1.x and OpenGL 2.x. By default KWin uses features of OpenGL 2 if they are available. OpenGL 2 allows to use more effects, but requires stronger hardware. It is important to know that even if your driver only supports e.g. OpenGL 1.4 it is possible that KWin uses features of OpenGL 2 which are available through extensions in the driver.

Vous pouvez trouver la version OpenGL fournie par votre pilote dans la chaîne "OpenGL/ES version" de KInfoCenter comme décrit ci-dessus. La version est définie par les deux ou trois premiers chiffres, par exemple 2.1.

It is not trivial to find out whether KWin uses OpenGL 1 or 2 as this is completely determined at runtime. The best available test is to use the Invert effect which can be enabled in Systemsettings -> Desktop Effects -> All Effects tab. After enabling the screen should be inverted when using the shortcut Meta + Ctrl + I. If it inverts OpenGL 2 is used, if it does nothing OpenGL 1 is used.

It is possible to force KWin to use OpenGL 1 through Systemsettings -> Desktop Effects -> Advanced tab and unchecking Use OpenGL 2 Shaders. This can improve the performance for older hardware. In general it is completely safe to use OpenGL 2 Shaders if the driver reports a version of 3.x (only available with NVIDIA at the time of this writing).

Tip

For modern hardware the OpenGL 2 Shaders yield a better performance than OpenGL 1. Disabling this option is no receipt for best performance.

kwin_gles

Beginning with KWin version 4.8 it is possible to use the separately built binary kwin_gles as a replacement for kwin. It behaves almost the same as the kwin executable in OpenGL2 mode with the slight difference that it uses egl instead of glx as the native platform interface.

Warning

This also means that if your normal kwin does not work in the OpenGL 2 mode it is unlikely that kwin_gles will.

To test kwin_gles you just have to run kwin_gles --replace in Konsole. Since this is a rather new feature it is not as thoroughly tested as the normal kwin and feedback is always welcome. Assuming that the test succeeded and you want to use kwin_gles on a regular basis you can add an executable script to ~/.kde4/env/ that exports the KDEWM=kwin_gles environment variable.

Mise à l'échelle des vignettes

The Compositor supports different scaling methods for thumbnails as rendered in the taskbar preview or effects like Present Windows. It is tried to render the thumbnails as accurate as possible which of course requires more resources.

The scaling method can be changed in Systemsettings -> Desktop Effects -> Advanced tab -> Scale method selection list. The following settings are available:

• Crisp
• Smooth
• Accurate

Le tableau donne un aperçu sur la manière dont les vignettes sont affichées en fonction des différents réglages.

Overview of how the thumbnails are rendered with the different settings
Crisp:
Smooth:
Accurate:

By default Accurate is used. On Intel hardware Accurate is never used and cannot be enabled unless the environment variable KWIN_FORCE_LANCZOS is set to 1.

Switching from Accurate to Smooth can significantly improve the performance of effects like Present Windows.

Vitesse générale des animations

Animations take some time and the length of an animations is what makes people think that this is a snappy interface or that it lags. This is a very subjective feeling and the difference between too fast and too slow can be milliseconds. It is impossible to have a perfect value for all users.

The global animation duration level can be changed through Systemsettings -> Desktop Effects -> General Tab -> Animation speed selection list. It varies from "Extremely slow" to "Instant" which does not render any animations. By changing from "Normal" to "Fast" many users reported having a more snappy interface.

Systèmes graphiques Qt

Since 4.7 (Released July 2011) the Compositor can use the Qt graphics system raster instead of native (X11). This is only relevant for rendering the window decorations and is not related to the compositing backends (OpenGL/XRender).

Which graphics system is used depends on the distribution defaults. For the Compositor raster is recommended especially if the NVIDIA driver is used. KWin will always select the best graphics system for your chosen compositor. The following general combinations can be recommended:

• OpenGL with raster

• XRender with native

• No Compositing:
  • native in case of remote connections (recommended window decoration: Laptop)
  • raster if using fancy window decoration (including Oxygen and Plastik in 4.10 or later)

Décoration des fenêtres

Some Window Decorations perform animations when a window gets activated. This influences the performance of effects if during an animation the active window changes. The performance impact can be reduced by using the graphics system "raster" (see above).

The default window decoration Oxygen provides an option to disable the animations: Systemsettings -> Workspaces Appearance -> Window Decorations -> Configure Decoration... -> General tab Checkbox Enable animations. Disabling the animations can improve the performance.

All window decorations which can be downloaded through the Get New Decorations... dialog use such animations, but it is not possible to disable them. If there is an performance impact due to the theme, it is recommended to use a different one. In general the themed decorations are not optimized and provided to look good and not to be fast.

Another area of window decorations which can impact the performance are shadows. Again the default decoration Oxygen provides a setting to disable them in the same configuration dialog as described above in tab "Shadows" and the themed decorations do not provide an option to disable shadows.

Blur Effect

The Blur Effect is one of the most expensive effects provided by the Compositor. By default it gets enabled for all hardware except Intel hardware. The performance impact of the blur effect depends on the number of open and translucent windows. Especially translucent widget styles (e.g. Oxygen Translucent) and translucent window decorations (e.g. Aurorae Themes) have an impact on the performance. If such a theme is used and the performance is bad it is recommended to either change the theme or disable the Blur effect.

The performance of the Blur effect can be adjusted through Systemsettings -> Desktop Effects -> All Effects tab -> Configuration dialog of Blur effect. Moving the slider for strength to "Light" requires less resources while moving it towards "Strong" requires more resources. Since 4.8 (release January 2012) the intermediate rendering results can be kept (default) which improves the performance even with translucent themes.

Configuration avancée des effets du bureau

The Compositor provides some advanced settings under Systemsettings -> Desktop Effects -> Advanced tab. Some of the settings have already been explained. This section focuses on the remaining settings. Changing these settings in general do not improve the performance but make it worse. The Compositor uses the best possible settings.

Type de composition

The Compositing type allows choice of the compositing backend, either XRender or OpenGL. By default OpenGL is used which is hardware accelerated. XRender is available even if no OpenGL driver is installed (e.g. virtual machines) and uses mostly the CPU for rendering. Many effects are not available with XRender.

Information

If there is no good reason to change, the default OpenGL is the correct choice. If OpenGL is not available there is an automatic fallback to XRender.

Garder les vignettes des fenêtres

This has hardly any influence on performance. It is an option to decide how long thumbnails are kept. Best is to not touch this setting.

Suspendre les effets du bureau dans les fenêtres en plein-écran

This setting influences the performance of fullscreen windows such as games. The compositor is suspended as long as there is a fullscreen window. The disadvantage is that it causes flickering when a window appears on top of the fullscreen window (e.g. a context menu) and is too generic. As well on some distributions (e.g. Kubuntu 11.04) the Intel driver causes a crash when closing the fullscreen window.

If the compositor should be disabled while a fullscreen application such as games or video is used it is better to disable compositing either through the shortcut Alt + Shift + F12 or since 4.7 (Released July 2011) through a window specific rule for the window.

Mode OpenGL

Warning

The setting is obsolete and has been removed in 4.7 (Released July 2011). Any setting except the default "Texture from Pixmap" is likely to break your desktop.

Activer les rendus en direct

Warning

The setting is obsolete and has been removed in 4.8 (Released January 2012).

The compositor determines by itself whether direct rendering can and has to be used. Changing this setting will most likely break functionality.

Utiliser VSync

VSync allows you to synchronize the rendering with the screen. Unless there is good reason to change, this setting should be enabled. Even if the setting is disabled the Compositor tries to use the frame rate the screen supports and by default a frame rate of 60 Hz is used.

For multiple screens it is important to know that the rendering can only be synchronized with one screen. In case the screens have a different frame rate it might be valid to disable this option and to set a manual frame rate.