luksamuk

If your window manager is screwing up your performance, you're doing something wrong. I run kwin and turn off compositing when I'm going to try a game.

Which was your previous setup? (if it was gnome3, I can understand - it's a POS no matter where you look)

I was using XFCE with its default WM. Thing is, I use NVIDIA Optimus and I didn't run the WM on my NVIDIA card. I believe the DE itself was somehow weighting the processor. It couldn't be the GPU.

There's no way xfwm was being a heavy weight, it's pretty light. It is outdated, though so it might be that.

Also, proprietary drivers are always hell to get working.