If you are referring to the shutdown screen fading, it might be a good idea to merge the MMX code into TDE.
Regarding the fadeaway, long ago I wrote a bug report to provide a KControl option to disable the fadeaway. The fadeaway is too slow on older hardware. To me the fadeaway adds no meaningful value but I'm not asking for a complete ripping. :) Lots of people like that kind of eye candy, but we should have an option to disable the effect for those who don't.
http://bugs.pearsoncomputing.net/show_bug.cgi?id=258
Darrell