Managed DirectX® 9 Kick Start: Graphics and Game Programming

Swapchains and RenderTargets

So what exactly is going on with the device that allows it to draw these triangles? Well, there are a few things implicit on a device that handle where and how items are drawn. Each device has an implicit swap chain, as well as a render target.

A swap chain is essentially a series of buffers used to control rendering. There is a back buffer, which is where any drawing on this swap chain occurs. When a swap chain that has been created with SwapEffect.Flip is presented, the back buffer data is “flipped” to the front buffer, which is where your graphics card will actually read the data. At the same time, a third buffer becomes the new back buffer, while the previous front buffer moves to the unused third buffer. See ...