# SDL\_OPENGLBLIT performance considerations

**URL:** <https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/sdl-openglblit-performance-considerations/4956>\
**Category:** SDL Development\
**Created:** [August 23, 2001, 9:33pm UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/sdl-openglblit-performance-considerations/4956 "2001-08-23T21:33:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Olivier\_Dagenais](https://discourse.libsdl.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/o/aca169/32.png) [@Olivier\_Dagenais](https://discourse.libsdl.org/u/Olivier_Dagenais)\
**Post date:** [August 23, 2001, 9:33pm UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/sdl-openglblit-performance-considerations/4956/1 "2001-08-23T21:33:00Z")

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I was wondering if there was a performance hit with SDL\_OPENGLBLIT on  
every call to SDL\_GL\_SwapBuffers or only when SDL\_Flip is called and  
hence when it has to do this trick to convert the 2D surface to a  
texture and draw it on top of the current 3D scene.

I’d really like to use 2D for the menus and prompts in my game. These  
aren’t that frequent, however I do not want to re-initialize the video  
subsystem (and back) every time I want to do 2D.

Any help or tips would be greatly appreciated, especially a tutorial  
on SDL\_OPENGLBLIT and how it was meant to be used.

Thanks!----------------------------------------------------------------------  
Olivier A. Dagenais - Software Architect and Developer