Ok, I created a small engine, and even when I don''t BLT anything to the screen, I seem to get an FPS of around 76 or so. I''ve read through some of the older articles on this site, and some people have said that their FPS are tied to their refresh rate. My question is, why, and how can I stop this from happening?

Use these flags on your flip if you just want to see how fast frames are created in your program:

primary->Flip(NULL, DDFLIP_DONOTWAIT/DDFLIP_NOVSYNC)

However, there''s not much point in trying to make the frame rate go beyond your refresh rate. In the best case, you''ll get no performance increase. In the worst case you can get visual defects like shearing.

Very strange. I have some sample code from a DD engine I wrote a few years ago in DX5, and I''m not using the DDFLIP_NOVSYNC flag in the flip, yet I remember getting fps in the 300''s.

It''s not so much that I want the 300 fps to show for the user, but I''d like to at least know what I''m running at now, so I have an idea how much eye candy I can add later.

BTW, I tried the DDFLIP_NOVSYNC flag, and all it did was crash my system.