My fresh ubuntu 12.10 install is slow, not something extreme but dragging windows, switching workspaces and things like that are just slow and look horrible. it feels like the fps is dropping in a game. Doing some photoshop work in windows was even a relief! This effect gets worse if I connect my external monitor.

My system is an intel pentium dual core T4500 with 4gb memory and a GeForce 8200M G/integrated/SSE2 graphics chip. Nothing fancy but should be able to run ok. My "experience" in ubuntu is set to standard. (MSI cr500 laptop)

I've installed the nvidia drivers, tried current and experimental and the experimental drivers seem to perform a bit better but overall bad anyway. I set the mode to adaptive in the nvidia-settings tool and it goes to maximum setting directly and doesn't come back.

Using htop I found out that compiz or the X server always use a few percent of my cpu, more than I think it should and the time consumed is 5:18 for compiz, 4:33 for /usr/bin/X and 2:41 for google chrome(about 30 tabs open so not too strange I think.) What can I do to increase the visual performance cause this makes me not want to use ubuntu in public!