Glxgears-Huge result differences with various Desktop Man.

[GeneC]

I dont know how much this means, or if it amounts to anything of consequence. But, it was a bit alarming.

Just for the heck of it I ran Glxgears on a LMDE partition fully updated to the SID repositories.
I have Gnome, XFCE, and Mate as desktop managers.

My video specs

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gene@zordon:~$ inxi -G
Graphics:  Card NVIDIA GF104 [GeForce GTX 460] X.Org 1.12.1 Res: 1680x1050@50.0hz 
           GLX Renderer GeForce GTX 460/PCIe/SSE2 GLX Version 4.2.0 NVIDIA 295.49

I expected that the result would be the same or very close for all three. But, there is a HUGE difference.
I had nothing running in the background. Only difference was in the Desktop Manager used.
No Compiz.


1. Gnome Fallback

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gene@zordon:~$ glxgears
116757 frames in 5.0 seconds = 23351.303 FPS
121911 frames in 5.0 seconds = 24382.186 FPS
123100 frames in 5.0 seconds = 24619.955 FPS
122966 frames in 5.0 seconds = 24593.168 FPS
122977 frames in 5.0 seconds = 24595.367 FPS
123294 frames in 5.0 seconds = 24658.791 FPS
122727 frames in 5.0 seconds = 24545.283 FPS
123883 frames in 5.0 seconds = 24776.596 FPS
122990 frames in 5.0 seconds = 24597.906 FPS
121206 frames in 5.0 seconds = 24241.020 FPS

2. XFCE (about 1/2 the speed of Gnome Fallback)

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gene@zordon:~$ glxgears
60350 frames in 5.0 seconds = 12069.837 FPS
62360 frames in 5.0 seconds = 12471.907 FPS
61681 frames in 5.0 seconds = 12336.197 FPS
59951 frames in 5.0 seconds = 11990.149 FPS
61423 frames in 5.0 seconds = 12284.534 FPS
62758 frames in 5.0 seconds = 12551.547 FPS
62366 frames in 5.0 seconds = 12473.043 FPS
61968 frames in 5.0 seconds = 12393.435 FPS
61740 frames in 5.0 seconds = 12347.910 FPS
61427 frames in 5.0 seconds = 12285.252 FPS
58645 frames in 5.0 seconds = 11728.953 FPS
62370 frames in 5.0 seconds = 12473.851 FPS
61762 frames in 5.0 seconds = 12352.304 FPS

3. Mate (almost 1/3 the speed of Gnome Fallback.2/3 of XFCE)

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gene@zordon:~$ glxgears
43413 frames in 5.0 seconds = 8682.581 FPS
42526 frames in 5.0 seconds = 8505.068 FPS
40602 frames in 5.0 seconds = 8120.234 FPS
45710 frames in 5.0 seconds = 9141.925 FPS
42282 frames in 5.0 seconds = 8456.150 FPS
43765 frames in 5.0 seconds = 8752.850 FPS
42161 frames in 5.0 seconds = 8431.996 FPS
41754 frames in 5.0 seconds = 8350.760 FPS
43536 frames in 5.0 seconds = 8707.120 FPS
43391 frames in 5.0 seconds = 8678.191 FPS
42775 frames in 5.0 seconds = 8554.861 FPS
44698 frames in 5.0 seconds = 8939.519 FPS

Everything LOOKS fine. I don't do any heavy video stuff. YouTube vids, et.
Would anyone else be alarmed by this? Or am I concerned about something, not serious.

[xenopeek]

Unless you need the 3D performance, I wouldn't be worried about it. Glxgears may also not be the best way to test real-world 3D performance...

[GeneC]

Thanks Vincent.

After a little 'googling' glxgears. I read that its not much of a benchmark.