OpenGL supports two types of render surfaces: window and bitmap, both for the OpenGL and GDI+ devices. Although rendering is usually faster with the window render surface, the default render surface is set to bitmap, because it does not depend on the installed video board and drivers. When rendering with OpenGL in a window render surface, the chart will automatically leverage hardware 3D acceleration if present. 3D acceleration is not always bug-free, because it largely depends on the video board manufacturer and driver versions installed on the machine. 

This of course does not mean that you cannot use hardware acceleration with Xceed Chart for WinForms. On the contrary, enabling the control to automatically leverage the video board hardware capabilities can be done with the following line of code:

chartControl1.Settings.RenderSurface = RenderSurface.Window

chartControl1.Settings.RenderSurface = RenderSurface.Window;

In general, we recommend that you distribute your applications with hardware acceleration disabled by default (render to bitmap). This will ensure maximum portability of your software. It is also a good idea to let the user decide whether or not to use acceleration. 

Developers writing web server applications need not worry about the render surface because in ASP .NET the chart always uses the bitmap render surface.

See Also

Settings | Caching Selection Rendering | Performance Tips