I'm trying to render my entire scene to a render target (using a DirectX v9.0 wrapper) and I'm confused about a few things. It seems like my backbuffer uses the X8R8G8B8 format, but I'd like to use alpha transparency on my render target so is it ok to use the A8R8G8B8 format? My main interest is not to lose any quality what-so-ever. Also, what other description options should I specify for my render target? There is a mipmap option which I think I need to set to 0 (is that right?) and a depth stencil option that I set to disabled. (is that right?)

A8R8G8B8 means that you have 1 byte for alpha, 1 byte for red, green and blue each. So don't worry, you can do alpha blending.