I have a couple questions about ID3DXEffect and ID3DXEffectPool. 1) Do I need to release the ID3DXEffect* returned by ID3DXEffectPool::AsEffect? If so, I assume it doesn't release the pool itself. 2) Are calls on COM types expensive? In other words, should I store the ID3DXEffect* returned by ID3DXEffectPool::AsEffect or can I just call ID3DXEffectPool::AsEffect every time I need the effect? Thanks