100% CPU usage when moving/resizing windows with Nvidia vsync OR --vsync enabled

[ghost]

Skip to end of post with updated findings

Hi. I'm having a bad issue with Compton. Any time I resize or move a window around the screen, my cpu (i7-6700k) usage spikes to 100% on the xorg process. If I quickly resize a complex window like Chrome, my system basically grinds to a halt rendering the screen at maybe 2 FPS.

I'm using Compton on Mint 18 Xfce. I've tried 0.1beta32 from the PPA, as well as the version in ubuntu's repos, 0.1~beta2-1. I'm using Nvidia proprietary 370.28 with a GTX 970. I'm on a fresh install of Mint, I installed it yesterday.

I have tried both by launching compton with compton --backend glx --vsync opengl-swc, as well as selecting "Xfwm4 + Compton" AND "Metacity + Compton" in Xfce's desktop settings.

I don't get this issue with Compiz or Xfce's compositor. Any ideas why this might be happening?

Let me know what other details you might need.

This happens when I take a screenshot while moving a window around. (100% cpu process is selected)

I ran the benchmark from the perf guide and did notice a lot of pagefults

$ /usr/bin/time compton --backend glx --benchmark 10000 ^CCommand terminated by signal 2 4.25user 5.69system 2:13.99elapsed 7%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 32604maxresident)k 0inputs+16outputs (1major+2294minor)pagefaults 0swaps

EDIT: Big discovery, partially fixed

Disable Nvidia "Sync to VBlank", then compton --backend glx = NO LAG
Disable Nvidia "Sync to VBlank", then compton --backend glx --vsync opengl-swc = LAG
Disable Nvidia "Sync to VBlank", then compton --backend glx --vsync opengl = NO LAG
Enable Nvidia "Sync to VBlank", then compton --backend glx = LAG
Enable Nvidia "Sync to VBlank", then compton --backend glx --vsync opengl-swc = LAG
Enable Nvidia "Sync to VBlank", then compton --backend glx --vsync opengl = LAG

--vsync opengl does NOT cause lag with Nvidia vsync disabled. I can turn Nvidia vsync on after launching compton with --vsync opengl and I do not get lag, but if I do it in the other order, I do get lag. It still tears though in both situations.

Nvidia Vsync enabled, and compton vsync disabled, I still get tearing.

[kn00tcn]

what happened to nv's 'let the application decide' like on windows?

at the bottom, did you mean lag = 100% usage & unusable performance? or lag = delay in animation?

interesting how the tears in the screenshot look like they're tiled, which was recently discovered http://www.realworldtech.com/tile-based-rasterization-nvidia-gpus/

[devonhk]

I had a similar issue with compton 0.1~beta2-1 and with any nvidia proprietary driver greater than 367. I'm on ubuntu 16.04 using a GTX 1070 and i5-4670k. If I had a browser open either (firefox, chrome, chromium) my CPU usage would usually hit a 100% on all cores. My solution was to downgrade my nvidia driver to nvidia-367.
The exact command I was using at the time was compton -f

EDIT
I just noticed compton -f still uses 1 core at a 100% at any given time.