A method is provided for improving printing performance of a print job from a Graphics Device Interface (GDI) based Windows® application submitted to an XPSDrv printer driver which is utilized by a filter pipeline service, wherein a required conversion from an existing GDI/device driver interface (DDI) to an XML Paper Specification (XPS) performed by a GDI-to-XPS conversion unit is eliminated to reduce latency. The method includes replacing the GDI-to-XPS conversion unit with a printer graphics driver which converts DDI calls into raw spool data; and adding a dual head filter as a first filter to the filter pipeline service to handle the raw spool data generated from the printer graphics driver.