Callahan wrote:

No, explorer effects, icons listings, start menu etc. are accelerated by ddraw.

Don't you mean GDI?

Though some of those effects do run on the CPU.

Nope.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windo … v=vs.85%29.aspx

"GDI automatically enables DirectDraw when the display driver is initialized. To provide better interaction between DirectDraw and the graphics DDI portion of the driver, a driver that also supports the DirectDraw DDI can implement or call the following functions:
DrvDeriveSurface

A driver-implemented function that wraps a GDI driver surface around a DirectDraw driver surface, allowing any GDI drawing to DirectDraw video memory or AGP surfaces to be hardware accelerated (rather than being drawn in software via the DIB engine). Typically, if the driver already supports off-screen device bitmaps, this function should require only a few additional lines of code.

DrvDeriveSurface improves the performance of DirectDraw applications that also use GDI, and it also eliminates cursor flicker when a software cursor is used with DirectDraw or Direct3D applications.
..."

Thats why on w2k dx7 vga is so important... as is also in xp and later...

I recall that DirectX 7 era cards also were the first to support GDI+ functions.

Still isn't a big deal. Those effects are easily disabled.
And general rendering and icon drawing is plenty fast unless you are running it on a 486/33 or something

So it runs better with DX7 but it is by no means required

I tried to install a Matrox G550 card but there don't seem to be NT drivers for it, so went back to the G450.

I tried the DX5 hack and got a couple of LucasArts games to run that didn't previously. Other DX5 games still won't work though. OpenGL performance for games that support it is very good.

How to get USB mouse wheel working?

Install MS Intellimouse 4.0. It adds wheel support.