1. A method for a computer system having a system frame buffer and multiple surface buffers allocated in video memory, the method comprising: automatically detecting that a window surface associated with a first application is an exclusive window surface for a display; automatically transitioning to a full-screen mode in which a graphics processor flushes content to the display including flipping between a front surface buffer and a back surface buffer associated with the first application, the transitioning to the full-screen mode in response to detecting the exclusive window surface; automatically detecting that the window surface associated with the first application is not an exclusive window surface for the display; and automatically transitioning to a windowed mode in which the graphics processor flushes content to the display including flushing the system frame buffer, wherein transitioning to the windowed mode includes a minimum number of buffer content copy operations between the front surface buffer, the back surface buffer and the system frame buffer.