Ubuntu experience feels sluggish on modern hardware

Question

I've installed Ubuntu on my home workstation (HP Z400 with ATI Radeon HD 5800). At the mercy of the prompt, I agreed to installing the ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver. One would think that the system should be quite snappy, but far from it - there are numerous problems with visuals. For example the login screen has a fade in animation which takes a lot longer than it should, and dragging windows about feels like some steps are not being rendered.

The Ati Catalyst Control Center appears to function correctly, and let me setup dual monitors without any problems. What should I do to fix this behavior? I can only assume that there's a pro "make my ubuntu snappy" switch somewhere. I've tried searching the interwebs, but I was only able to find old results, which suggested turning off tripple buffers. I found no such configuration in the Ati Catalyst Control Center app.

glxinfo output:

name of display: :0
display: :0  screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: ATI
server glx version string: 1.4
server glx extensions: *SOME*
client glx vendor string: ATI
client glx version string: 1.4
client glx extensions: *SOME*
GLX version: 1.4
GLX extensions: *SOME*
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series 
OpenGL version string: 4.1.10665 Compatibility Profile Context
OpenGL shading language version string: 4.10
OpenGL extensions: *SOME*

Answer 1

It could be Ubuntu itself. Did you have dual boot? If so, is the other OS showing the same behavior? If so, it's a hardware issue

How long has this been happening for? Is it since your dual monitor was put in? If so, try unplugging it and restarting.

If you can I would try uninstalling ATI Catalyst Control Center.

And if all else fails, you could try reinstalling Ubuntu.