Xfce: take some load off your graphics card
5.3. Even lightweight champion Xfce has relatively "heavy" compositing by default. Reduce its weight like this:

a. Menu button - Settings - Desktop Settings
Window Manager: change Xfwm4 + Compositing into one of the following two options:

- Xfwm4 + Compton (recommended). This will cause some speed gain because of the simpler and more lightweight compositor Compton.

- Xfwm4 (discouraged). This causes maximal speed gain by disabling all compositing, but it also often causes screen tearing, when scrolling through a web page or when watching videos. So there's a pretty stiff price attached to disabling compositing.... Therefore I don't generally recommend it.

Note: Marco + Compton provides the most simple and therefore lightweight compositor; window manager Metacity and its variations are just a low-performance stopgap for maximum hardware compatibility.

b. Remove the unstable and unreliable Compiz, that you never need in any case:

- Launch a terminal window.
(You can launch a terminal window like this: *Click*)

- Type (use copy/paste to prevent errors):

sudo apt-get remove compiz-core