Ya SpriteBatch is really fast for what it is supposed to be used for. Dynamic quad drawing with extra capability.
but
For static stuff that doesn’t need to keep changing like a map. Its of course faster to pre-build a vertexbuffer and just keep drawing it every frame.
Unlike spritebatch you just build the whole vertice buffer once though, so that is of course faster.
You need a effect though when you do it without spritebatch either your own (effect from the content pipeline) or you can use one of the pre-made ones like basic effect or sprite effect or alpha effect ect… You still have to set up the matrices yourself to pass to these effects.
world Matrix.CreateWorld(,) view Matrix.CreateLookAt(,) projection Matrix.CreateOrthographic(,)
You change the world matrix to move the vertice buffer around visibly, the vertex buffer basically acts like a model. The calls he was talking about here relate to the matrices you pass to the effects.