Fast drawing functions

Question

Are there faster drawing functions than the system.drawing ones? I need to draw many individually colored rectangles (filled or open) based off an array on a full screen form. I'm not concerned with flickering as there is none, however the redraw step takes a significant amount of time and the pre-update and post-update screens are both visible during redraw.

Mahesh Chand · Answer

You can try creating a GraphicsPath and add all rectangles to the Path and Draw the path. I am not sure how fast/slow it will be. Other option is, create a Bitmap with your shapes and display the image. This will be faster than drawing individual shapes.

Mike Gold · Answer

If you are not satisfied with the existing GDI+ speed, you can try using the managed DirectX library.  If you do go this route, though, you'll want to make sure you take advantage of any graphics card you have installed.