Eric, Here is an observation or two and not a necessarily a commentary on higher CPU utilization with DirectX
In DirectX mode, I get a bunch of Unhandled Exception errors when using the GUI (clicking on buttons and such). If I click on the button to continue, CPU utilization goes from 25% to 3% I am beginning to think that once I receive an Unhandled Exception error, that the display parameter reverts from DirectX mode to GDI+. Could this be happening? The reason I am thinking this is that in GDI+ mode my CPU utilization is always 3-5%, but in DirectX mode (before the exception error) the utilization is 25%. After the exception error the utilization is 3%, but Setup still indicates that the display mode is DirectX. I have also found that getting a lot of these Unhandled Exception errors corrupts my video driver. This is indicated by CPU utilization running at 50% when nothing is loaded on the machine. ProcessExplorer from SysInternals indicates that these are all Deferred Procedure calls, indicative of corrupted software of bad hardware. They do not go away even after re-booting. There are no errors in the Event Viewer and the video "looks" OK after rebooting. It does take PowerSDR a LONG time to load in this state and it is very unstable. The only way to rectify the problem is to completely un-install and re-install the video driver. For now I am using GDI+ and don't have any complaints.
