Comment 5 for bug 1004251

Nicolás,

Yes, there is an FPS counter in the Benchmark plugin, which is part of package: compiz-plugins-extra
Just install that package. Though you might need to change the key combination for it (ccsm) before you can get it to appear.

The advantage of the workaround is that it uses a different rendering method, which is able to "offload" the waiting for vsync from the CPU to the GPU. That allows the CPU to prepare new frames faster and hand them over to the GPU early, held until it's time to show them on the monitor.

If disabling sync to vblank makes no visible difference for you then that usually means your driver has a setting forcing it on or off regardless of the application/compiz settings. This is common and all drivers are different unfortunately, with different defaults.

Sync-to-vblank is different between apps (glxgears), the compositor (compiz) and the graphics driver. At every stage, the lower level is allowed to virtualize the vblank event so the next level up still thinks it's happening even if it's not. Thus applications like glxgears might think that they are syncing to vblank, but they actually won't unless it's enabled in the next level down (compiz), and the level below that (the driver).