Its video memory manager can manipulate video memory with ease, taking full advantage of the blitting and color decompression capabilities of different types of display adapters.
Because DirectDraw is a 2D API, it contains commands for 2D rendering and does not support 3D hardware acceleration.
A programmer could use DirectDraw to draw 3D graphics, but the rendering would be slow compared to an API such as Direct3D which does support 3D hardware acceleration.
There has been a deterioration of Windows compatibility with old games that rely upon DirectDraw, with Command & Conquer, Warcraft 2, and Theme Hospital among those affected.
In newer Windows versions, some games will refuse to run under a 32-bit bit depth (Dangerous Waters for example), others showing a black screen or glitching when switched out.