Comment #1 on issue 479 by rlblas...@gmail.com: xmonad & xft slow font rendering http://code.google.com/p/xmonad/issues/detail?id=479 I also suffer from this problem. I've attached a small utility which outputs large amount of text. In gnome I have around 30% CPU usage on X while running this app. But when I run this in xmonad X goes to 100% CPU usage. In reality there should be no load because the application is mostly sleeping (there's a sleep of 40 milliseconds between the writes). I've used urxvt in both cases (gnome/xmonad) for the above numbers but the issue is around with other terminals too. I use Terminus font which is a bitmap font. I also have an ati card with fglrx drivers (but the same issue is around with the open source drivers too). Attachments: stringdump.c 468 bytes