[Wolves] What makes Gnome/KDE slow?

[Deusiah]

I was wondering if anyone knows what makes Gnome/KDE slow. Is there a
specific component responsible like the panel or window manager? How
is it that programs like XFCE seem to have pretty much a lot of the
functionality of Gnome and still be fast?

I recently replaced Metacity with Openbox but didn't really notice any
advantage and so have been looking at alternative desktop environments
but none really seem to be what I want as what I would like is Gnome
but faster.

Thanks,
Chris