On an XP machine, I updated the display driver from the standard plug and play the driver I downloaded from the phillips website. Now a DOS program [don't ask] is very slow.
It caps the amount of FPS that your monitor can display at your current refresh rate (60Hz for most LCDs). You should be able to disable it in your graphics card's control centre. But I seriously doubt that it's the case
What type of DOS application is it? Maybe that'll help.