[CentOS] slowness with new kernel+nouveau?

Hello,

New kernel version 2.6.32-279.2.1.el6.x86_64 in combination with xorg-x11-drv-nouveau Version:0.0.16 is somehow painfully slow on my laptop.

during start up it takes almost half a minute for gnome login to appear. After having logged in the following happens: - gnome top and bottom panels "slide/crawl" in to view one pixel line at a time. - starting the terminal takes much more time, 10-15, sometimes even up to 20 seconds. - Firefox also takes much longer to start.

Removing xorg-x11-drv-nouveau seems to resolve this "slowness" but then my attached monitor does not work.

Anyone else experiencing this issue or know how to fix/troubleshoot?