Mame directdraw vs. direct3d / direct3d9ex for Windows 7? Upgrade questions.

[burn_654]

I'm looking at the possibility of upgrading my cab from Windows XP x86 to windows 7 x64 now that the new crt_emudriver with support for newer cards has landed.

What I would like to know is: on XP it was generally recommended to use directdraw from what I was seeing. I've had it running that way very well for most games with good performance, so I didn't mess with it. What do people recommend with Windows 7?

I mean, for Windows 7 I see that direct3d is *usually* recommended due to Windows 7 performance issues with directdraw. But you must use a framedelay setting to avoid input lag. Is that per game though? That seems a little annoying if so, playing through every game to figure out the right input lag...is it as big a deal as I think? Is it worth the trouble vs. using directdraw?

How well does d3d9ex work for people?

Are there any other options I should be considering? For what it's worth I never had to make custom resolutions under XP, I used the arcade_15 preset with a slightly tweaked modeline (reduced the max vertical pixels so more vertical games fit) and went from there. It looks like I might have to make some magic and/or super resolutions (still a little unclear on that) from what I've been reading.

Any thoughts or information is very welcome! 

[Calamity]

d3d9ex works just like ddraw lag-wise. Because there's no frame queue, the use of frame delay is up to you, to remove the last remaining frame of latency.

[burn_654]

That's good to know. Given that I was satisfied with directdraw's input/general performance I'll be checking out d3d9ex if I move my system over to Windows 7.

Other things are up in the air before I can do that but just wanted to understand the new elements a bit better. Thanks calamity!