I think I am a little confused. If I'm not mistaken, a Render Target is a surface that you can instruct DirectX to render to. So, this can either be an off-screen surface or an on-screen surface (back buffer, or whatever). I'm browsing through MSDN to find more details on this. It looks like the device interface has some methods for creating and setting a render target. My confusion stems from the fact that I have never called this functions, yet I am able to run my demos just fine. When I create a device using the IDirectX9 interface, is this method using the PresentParameters to create the render target for me (the on screen surface with back buffer) and setting it on my behalf? Or are the onscreen/backbuffer surfaces not considered a render target per se?

Cool, thanks! I'm wanting to abstract the render target thing a little. Each render list in my program will have its own target, and it could be the back buffer, or it could be an off-screen surface, or it could be just a small window within the back buffer, or whatever. So, it'll need to keep track of which DirectX render target its using, along with its view port, and some other info. Thanks for your help.