I don't know about your target device. Is this for a kiosk, a game, a projected screen shomewhere?

I suggest using SlimDX, it has done wonders for me and it is really fast: http://slimdx.org/

Depending on the capabilities of your target device, you may choose XNA, which comes with a nice batch of features which does not necessarily has to involve games (I'm doing 3d mapping software and the speed is great, while displaying many many features on-screen).

A more important question should be: what do you want to draw? 2d or 3d? What have you tried already?