Why Direct3D application performs better in full screen mode?

Question

The performance of a Direct3D application seems to be significantly better in full screen mode compared to windowed mode. What are the technical reasons behind this?

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Answer 1

There's a bit on MSDN that says full screen mode uses buffer flipping, if set up correctly, as opposed to blitting. It makes sense.

Of course you can (and in a way, do) give exclusive control for part of the screen to an application, but what happens to the rest of the screen? You still have to blit, do occlusion checking, etc. on the rest of the windows, and I think that's what causes the performance hit.