So how come the pixmaps are slower to render to the backbuffer? Do they have to be passed over to the video ram before being rendered?
Yes, images are ready for the video card and its memory, which means (I think ) they could also be compressed. This also means more speed. Where as pixmaps are only CPU addressable, which is going to make them slower.
I generally use them for image construction, then copy the pixmap to an image via LockImage. See this example:
http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=41440
I think there is a faster way to do this but you will need to keep track of the pixel format for the PixMap.
L8r,