Slight annoyance

[Tyranthraxus]

I finally put version 1.03 onto my quad-core, as a comparison against the 'slow-down' issues experienced in forests etc...
The game absolutely flew, and my character could run through the trees at full pelt!
However, one intermittent piece of strange behaviour has manifested, in that the bottom right section of the screen, with the extra carrying slots and some of the narrative, up to just under the map screen, flashes a bright blank white before returning, and can sometimes do this several times.
It seems to be tied to whether a monster/NPC is present on the very border of the game screen at the time, while not fatal, it can be rather distracting.

Speaking of the slow-down issue, I was unable to test one theory, due to some puzzling behaviour on the launch screen.
On both my XP based computers, the rendering option is a straight choice between DirectX7, and OpenGL. Even though both run DX9, I thought this might just be a "backwards compatibility/lowest common denominator" issue.
However, on the quad, running the accursed Vi$ta at the moment (with DX10), DirectX9 is also an option (in fact, it's the default).
Is there any reason why XP DX9 machines can't select DX9 as an option? I was already looking at the DX7 rendering as a possible contributor to the slow walking problem, but can`t test this theory both ways.
I can test if selecting DX7 degrades the performance on the top machine, but cannot test whether DX9 improves the performance of the two others, which at the moment show no marked difference between single/dual core, and a generation difference in graphics cards.

[CrazyBernie]

That's odd, I had DX9 as an option on my XP laptop. However, my experience was that DX7 was much faster than DX9... by a good 30-50%. Of course, it's a old laptop, so the Vid-card might not handle DX9 all that well.

[Tyranthraxus]

That's odd, I had DX9 as an option on my XP laptop. However, my experience was that DX7 was much faster than DX9... by a good 30-50%. Of course, it's a old laptop, so the Vid-card might not handle DX9 all that well.

Could well be, that`s one of the things I was hoping to compare.

Flashing Box update:

I have a suspicion that a tool tip coming up behind the game screen may be involved, not easy to check though (roll on 'dual-layer' monitors)!
Like several other games, (Civ4 Colonisation and the King's Bounty games), there appears to be a transparency where the mouse is concerned, and clicking certain areas on the game screen, actually activates something behind it. Unfortunately, on Book 2, 1 popup tip positions itself exactly behind the disk icon.
Damn Micro$oft!