Which would be faster to draw? 2 triangles, a triangle strip, or a quad?

A triangle is faster if it is just one triangle, a quad is 2 triangles so it is slower obviously. And most cards don''t like quads now anymore as much as they like triangles.

Also triangle strips are faster if its for something like terrain because you draw like 1/2 the amount of verticies than with using all triangles. Hope this helps you.

I beleive it''s Triangle strip. It has to do with how many vertices you have. 2 triangles have 6 comparted to a quad or triangle strip having only 4.
I havn''t seen quads used in directx since that''s what I mainly use. But I think that tri strips are a smidgen faster then quads but I can''t be sure. Someone correct me if I''m wrong.
~Wave

What are you drawing? If you are doing a particle engine you only need one triangle for the particle - you just have to texture it the right way.

llvllatrix : This (about PS with one triangle) has been discused a milion times before. And the resulat as always the same. It is NOT worth it. Yes, you save 25% of transformation rate but you get to burn more than 25% extra fillrate.

jverkoey : It also depends on how many polys are you drawing. in scene with 1000 you won''t notice a thing but in 250k .. anyways go for vertex arrays using cache optimized triangle strips or indexed triangles.

You should never let your fears become the boundaries of your dreams.

well, just so you know what i''m drawing, it''s a tile map that''s 30x30 tiles big, and each y-vertex corresponds to a point on a 2d matrix (level[30 [30]) and that automatically raises the points.....so what''s the fastest way for that?

Doesn''t matter much. Its only 30 by 30. now if it was like 3000 bye 3000, then it would be triangles. But as long as your running at least a 150 mhz processer, 30 by 30 is nothing