So I have been using the CreateDIBSection thingy along with a BitBlt to the window and have noticed that it very rarely produces stutter-free movies when the window is larger than, say, 400x600. (the cpu can finish the computation of the frame at a much higher rate than 60fps). It there another higher performance interface that can be used?

DirectX?

CUDA/OpenCL?

Note that frame rates will be dependant upon many factors like what video hardware your have and what background tasks you run etc.

It is common to have to use double, and sometimes triple, buffering to get consistent frame rates even when using the GPU.

tthsqe, if you get stutter at 400x600 you are doing something wrong. When I code masm and I use 1920 x 1200 window using dib sections, I can output 200 million pixels randomly (using pseudo random generator) every second achieving 86 frames per second. And this all while using pseudo random (which is very slow)

When I don't output random pixels all over the screen it is not uncommon to achieve several hundred frames per second. of course you won't see all those frames.

If you want more frames you can go for a resolution that allows 75 fps using direct3d.

the 400x600 figure was indeed a little too small. more like 720x1300
My bad - I suppose it was the frame computation, which happens to be very memory & cpu intensive, that was getting in the way.
If the frame computation can be completed at a rate of over 120 fps, it seems that the playback is smooth at 60 fps.
If the frame computation rate hovers around or just above the playback rate, then it gets stuttery.