My laptop performs very poorly for 2d graphics. For example, Docky's zoom effect and compiz effects are very choppy. In Jaunty, I was able to fix this by adding the following line under the "Device" section in my xorg.conf:

Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"

In Karmic, there is no xorg.conf by default, so I copied my old one (from Jaunty). However, everything is still slow. Here is my xorg.conf:

Section "Device"
    Identifier	"Configured Video Device"
    Option	"MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier	"Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier	"Default Screen"
    Monitor		"Configured Monitor"
    Device		"Configured Video Device"
EndSection

From googling about, it sounds like "MigrationHeuristic" is only an option for the "EXA" mode, while Karmic has switched the intel driver to "UXA". So I tried adding this line under the "Device" section:

Option "AccelMethod" "exa"

But this didn't help.