Hi,
Actually GDI+ is the native graphics functions from windows, they are really
fast but it has a main problem, it uses a single buffer to draw. What does
this means? That you write on a buffer that is constantly copied to the video
card memory, in other words, if you want to draw faster than the refresh rate
of your video you can see the graphics "blinking". This is why games use
DirectX and not GDI. DirectX solves this problem offering you one or multiple
backbuffers, so you write in a buffer and you decide when to blit into the
main one, therefore you can write and when you finish you flip, this produces
a very smooth graphical output.
But, back to GDI+, for single graphic operations is more than enough, all
windows use it. Indeed, when you create your custom control you can specify
to use a "virtual" backbuffer as well to improve button animations for
example.
I think the performance impact will be the result of your algorithms more
than GDI,
hope this info is useful,
best regards
Salva
