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by aidenn0 3127 days ago
I thought traditional WMs had the clients send the draw commands directly to the server, rather than doing any compositing themselves?

It's definitely true that different GPUs have different power profiles (and even the same GPU with different drivers).

2 comments

No Qt or GTK application sends draw commands to the X server anymore (except for the final "draw window-sized pixmap"). That only applies to xterm or maybe Tcl/Tk stuff.
This still isn't compositing. If I have 10 windows all with the same X/Y coordinates, the only window sending any draw commands at all is the top window with a traditional wm.
Don't forget "race to sleep". If the GPU takes 3x more power but completes 10x faster and can go back into low power mode sooner that could be another power savings.