Hello,
I am experiencing poor performance with a virtualized Windows 8.1 Enterprise. When I do not have the "RemoteFX 3D Video Adapter" added to the VM Windows 8.1 is more responsive (with simple things like moving windows around the desktop) but of course I don't get the benefits of RemoteFX.
I have a bench system setup to test RemoteFX in Server 2012R2.
Host Server:
- Windows Server 2012 R2
- Core i5-4570 (3.2Ghz)
- 8GB RAM
- SSD for VM's
- nVidia GTX750 Ti (tested with other nVidia and ATI cards with the same result)
The VM:
- Windows 8.1 Ent
- 4 vCPU's
- 4GB RAM (non dynamic)
- RemoteFX 3D Video ADapter w/ 4 Monitors and 1920x1200 resolution
The RDP clients I have tested with are Windows 8.1 Enterprise and Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 (RDP client says version 6.3.9600 and Remote Desktop Protocol 8.1 supported). This is all tested on a Gig LAN and the quality of the connection says "the remote computer is excellent and UDP is enabled".
The event viewer on the 8.1 VM shows RemoteFX being used as does the performance counters on the host. Everything is slow and does not really run as expected other then Windows Media Player. Playing HD movie on Windows Media Player it looks great but if I open the same video in VLC it is choppy. Youtube is also choppy.
I have tried disabling the NIC offload in the adapter and in the registry as seems to be recommended in a few different forums without success.
It seems to me that Windows Media Redirection works however the RemoteFX Media Streaming is not kicking in when required or it's not working well.
Using Windows Media Player I am getting average encoding time of about 2ms and frames skipped/second - Insufficient Server Resources is average 18. The other frames skipped options are 0. The total CPU utilization on the server is about 6%. (subjectively quality seems a little less then with VLC but audio is in better sync)
Using VLC I am getting average encoding time of about 51ms and frames skipped/second - Insufficient Server Resources is average 0.1. The other frames skipped options are 0. The total CPU utilization on the server is about 25%.
On other higher resolution movies using VLC I get some average encoding time is almost 100ms.
I ran the Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0 test the DirectX performance on the VM with RemoteFX. With the VM I got a score of 392 and it's pretty jerky. On the host, not using RDP, I got a score of 1108 and it was nice and smooth.
I assume that the perceived slowness is because of the Average Encoding Time. What can I do to improve this?
Thank you for your time,
Seamus