I would believe that was the cause except that it runs way lower than 60 fps (when set to 17 interval) on my cousins and mates machines, 1 of which uses a radeon 9200 .

I have no idea why it would happen but I have ruled out the problem occuring within delphi becasue you recompiled and sent me back the exe. Its very strange. Not just the dxtimer as said...all threaded ones like the one by carlos barbosa.

While I am here though, How do I centre text taht is written on dxdraw.surface.canvas?

When I want to centre labels I just say

MainFm.Points_Label.left:=(mainFm.width-MainFm.Points_Label.width) div 2;

I was wondering weather there is an equivelent? I notice TextWidth but it isnt the actual pixel width just the no. of chars?