[plug] X11 performance under RH8/9

[Craig Ringer]

Hi all

I've been noticing that my system's performance isn't overly good under 
RH9 as compared to either Debian 3 or Win2k. I've now narrowed it down 
to the X server, which will eat 50% to 75% of my CPU time under some loads.

As an example, a maximised gnome-terminal displaying the output of a 
compile job will use more CPU time than the compilation. Screen res is 
1600x1200, driver is NVdriver, system is a 1.5GHz (1800+) athlon with a 
GeForce4 Ti4200 and ~750mb of RAM.

I'm confused. I can only think that it's the font AA/XRENDER stuff 
that's taking up the CPU time, but that's ridiculous. My 1.5GHz athlon 
should not be visibly redrawing mozilla windows (gtk2/xft mozilla RPMs) etc.

Ideas anybody?

Craig Ringer