As Dom0 uses software rendering, it is better to turn off the compositor / any dom0 visual effects to reduce power consumption? I see high CPU load in dom0 with it enabled.
Personally I try to use as few effects as possible for similar reasons, keeping things as uncomplicated as possible 
I just use an intel 12th gen mainboard with no external gpu.
Would love to hear other more data-driven or scientific thoughts from other community members. I can only anecdotally say ‘yes, disabling effects without hardware rendering tends to yield better performance’.
edit: i think i have the compositor on though, but with most effects off? I will have to check.
That is not my understanding. dom0 / sys-gui would be the one place that uses hardware acceleration since it has direct access to the hardware. This would affect window borders and all XFCE GUI and apps as well as e.g. the Qube Manager.
The contents of the windows in specific qubes is rendered via software and shared with dom0 / sys-gui to be displayed.
That would indicate to me that indeed software rendering is happening, which means you probably have a driver issue?
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Thanks. I’m running an i915 with KDE / OpenGL 3.1.