1 Pixel more needs +98% CPU

[T-Bone]

Still, rendering a 1024*256 image shouldn't be all that hard, it shouldn't use all the cpu, even on a crappy computer, if it's just rendering a single image.

Don't make assumptions. Ensayia was making a screensaver for someone at some point, and after a lot of frustration, discovered that the target computer choked when handed anything bigger than 256x256. The solution is simply to cut your huge image into smaller pieces.

Well, I'm talking from my own experiences. My netbook isn't very powerful but renders 1024*256 images and still runs in 60 FPS. But it can probably vary between computers quite a lot.

[Ensayia]

What kind of graphics hardware does your netbook have? I believe the issue I was having with the screen saver was that the laptop I was making it for had a really crappy 3rd party graphics chip. Those do not play nice with LOVE, or anything for that matter.