KDE 4.1 sluggish on Kubuntu 8.10

Hi all,

I got a new machine about a week ago, and decided to slap on a fresh Kubuntu install with KDE 4.1. -- mainly because it's just. so. beautiful.

But I'm finding the system response pretty sluggish. All the settings are at their default values, and I don't have compiz or anything fancy running. KDE 3.5 was super responsive of my old PC, and this one is a bit more flash. Look, I'm not going back to 3.5, but I'd be interested to know what your experiences have been like.

For instance:
* Moving widgets around is so slow as to be almost non-functional.
* WinXP under VMWare (using the exact image from my old PC) is (subjectively) about 30% slower on quicker hardware.


My PC specs are:
Linux 2.6.27-7-generic #1 SMP Tue Nov 4 19:33:20 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux
AMD-64 Dual Core 5400+
2GB 1066MHz DDR2
NVIDIA GeForce 9400 GT 512MB
ASUS MB with onboard Geforce 8600
400GB Sata HDD

There is a known problem with the Nvidia driver and KDE 4.* atm, they are working to resolve the problem.
Installing a beta driver 180.06 will resolve some of the problems but not all.
To get the true native speed of KDE right now you have to use AMD/ATI hardware and drivers.
Bummer I know, but it will be fix.....sometime

Interesting.. of course the first thing I did was go to the NVidia website to look for new drivers (177 was the latest I saw there).

So thanks, I'll give it a go.

What also bums me is that SLI is only supported under Vista, so the onboard GPU is just collecting dust at the mo'.

Ok, so after downloading Ver. 180 (BETA) and following the instructions
here,
things are MUCH better.

Thanks for the tip, trenton.

Pleasure.
Glad I could help.